Bad Timing?

It started in February 2010. There was a vice principal at my middle school who found me in the copy room one morning and said he had a job for me. He said he would be relocating at the end of the year to be the principal at my dream school (which shall remain anonymous). He said I could teach sophomore and junior English and have class sizes of 20. I was in the first year of my master’s degree at the time and had one more year to go.

He saw me again in the hall at the end of the year and said,  “I’ve got 65 applications. You could make it really easy for me if you just took the job…” I thought about quitting grad school. The offer seemed too good to give up. But I did. He said to keep in touch and let him know when I’d finished because perhaps there might be an opportunity next year.

Yeah right. I missed my golden moment, so I thought. Oh well. I went back to teach middle school again, part time while I finished my degree at BYU.

Then February 2011 came and I emailed the principal at my dream school. He said I should come over and have a chat with him. So I did. I thought I’d stay for maybe five minutes, just to catch up and say hi because nothing had really happened since I'd seen him last. An hour and a half later he was still talking about the school and how he took students to lobby at the capital to pass a bill that would enable his charter school kids to continue playing sports in a joint partnership with another high school, and how he had received over 600 applications to be entered into the school’s lottery enrollment system for the fall and how parents would sometimes come by his office with $2500 donations for the school because they just appreciated how insanely incredible an institution it is, etc., etc. And I’m listening to this the whole time, wondering why he’s going out of his way to waste so much of his time—his whole afternoon was scheduled with visits to the state science fair at the University of Utah where some of his students were being awarded prestigious scholarships—if he didn’t have an opening in his English department.

As it turned out, there was a position. An unprecedented, glorious opening. I interviewed for it in May. I got great feedback. Everything felt right. I was going to teach senior English at my dream school!

I waited. School ended at Elk Ridge. I went on a cruise and thought about my dream school the whole time, wondering how I would start the first day of class and mentally planning my  writing assignments and what books we would read, since I would have total freedom at my dream school. I started working for the writing project on June 20. Still, no call with a job offer from my dream school.

Finally, I had to know. Designing syllabi in my head was no longer productive. So I called the principal of my dream school at the end of June. He was sorry to report that he had kept me waiting, because the job would have been mine. But then the school board had the budget meeting and revealed to the principal of my dream school that they could not afford me. Curse the gods of charter school bureaucracy. I would have worked for free, but I can’t afford that either.

Honestly, I was disappointed. Okay, devastated. Jesse was even more devastated. But I got over it five minutes later when a head hunter from a major healthcare company called Jesse and asked if he wanted a better job. Jesse said, “Yes, I would like a better job,” or something to that effect. So they flew him to their office and interviewed him. They made a good impression on him. Then we waited. We went on vacation in the meantime and thought about the potential job offer the whole time. The anxious what-do-I-do-in-the-meantime-what-if-they-don’t-want-me-what-if-they-do-want-me feeling kind of took over our lives for the month of July.

And what was I going to do when we moved? I would be jobless. I was actually okay with being unemployed, but Jesse promised me shopping sprees and dinner at Fleming’s if I tried.

I wanted to teach middle school, but there were no openings in the entire state. Even at the school that fired every single one of its teachers. Plan B was to see if I could get a job teaching college. Jesse found me a list of campuses and I started making phone calls on July 26. The first person I called said she had jobs for fall semester—send cv and cover letter ASAP—and that she was hoping to fill the remaining positions by the end of next week.

We still hadn’t heard from the major healthcare company. They said they’d have an official offer as soon as the upper echelons returned from the Hamptons during the week of August 8^th. Jesse convinced them to hurry up. But just as I was secretly reveling in the thought of unemployment, I had a job.

I had a video chat via FaceTime on my computer today. I made sure my top half was decently dressed, but kept my pajama pants on and lounged on the couch while I talked to the department chair of the writing and rhetoric program, who offered me a job after 10 minutes of the most casual conversation in the history of the universe—I had to practice using FaceTime with Megan and her iphone last night, because I didn't know what it was, and I needed to get used to the feeling of looking directly at the camera on my computer so it would look, on the other end, that I was making eye contact at the right angles without distorting the size of my nostrils or forehead. 

So, I have a job. I guess grad school paid off. Thank you directors of BYU composition for hiring me, even though I missed the application deadline last year!

Jesse got his official offer a few hours later. We're moving to Rhode Island. We just had to—even though I’ll be teaching at a university whose mascot is “Rhody the Ram” and Jesse will be sitting in an office in a town called Woonsocket—because the Ocean State is home to the Tiffany & Co. manufacturing headquarters, and America’s first circus (1774 in Newport), and the first open golf tournament in 1895, and The White Horse, America’s oldest operating tavern (built in 1673), and the invention of the Quonset hut, and the world’s largest bug (a blue termite, 58 feet long and 928 times the size of a real termite), stationed on the roof of New England Pest Control in Providence, and cumberlandite (RI’s state rock).

So, thank you Utah, you’ve been great! We report to work on August 29. I kind of feel like breaking out the Rebecca Black and singing off key: "We so excited! We so excited!" Does anyone want to rent our house? 

  Jesse took this picture on the way to his interview. We named him Ralph.