How to make summer disappear in two seconds

In May I met a teacher who confirmed my growing suspicions about the imbeciles who run the RI State Office of Education. When I couldn’t get a job teaching middle or high school kids how to write coherent paragraphs and revive the art of putting periods at the end of their sentences, I thought something was wrong with me, and I may or may not have been a little bit depressed for a while. On Tuesdays and Thursdays when I wasn’t at URI, I horbgorbled around our apartment in my pajamas without brushing my teeth or fixing my hair and I made multiple batches of cupcakes and ate them all myself. I stalked people on Facebook. I consumed entire boxes of Kleenex and drenched our throw pillows in soggy tears. I even read the news for a while. I couldn’t figure out what my problem was. I was applying to schools that posted ads like this: “Seven English teachers needed, no experience necessary, bachelor’s degree preferred. Convicted felons discouraged from submitting applications.” What was wrong with me?

And then in May after a training meeting at URI, I met a kindred soul. But her story was full of more intrigue than mine. She was the AP teacher at an expensive boys Catholic school, which happens to be across the street from our house, and to which I also applied. She fell madly in love with the English department chair and they decided to get married. He’d been divorced and when the headmaster (they still have those here) found out they were engaged they were uninvited to return the following year because he wanted to remarry after having a divorce, and divorce alone = unalterable impending doom in the Catholic worldview. Or something like that. So my newfound friend and her husband sought employment elsewhere. They each had about 10,000 years of experience and he had a principal’s license (even though he wasn’t an education major; he did alternative route to licensure). Every school he applied to said, “Sorry. You have to go back to college for four years and get your official teaching degree like everyone else. Then you can reapply. When my friend applied for jobs they told her they couldn’t hire her because she had a master’s degree and too much experience and they couldn’t afford her. That explained everything! I cannot get a job in RI because I have a master’s degree. And a level II teaching certificate. And a reading endorsement. And teaching experience. And because I tried to be proactive and hand deliver my applications to several schools that advertised openings so I could introduce myself to the principals. That sort of behavior is frowned upon here.

So maybe I gave up my job search prematurely. I sort of quit looking in May, but I had the feeling that no matter how hard I tried, I wouldn't have found anything. There might have been openings at high schools in Providence with the sort of reputations that inspire front page news articles about how students beat up teachers and the teachers get sued for hitting back in self defense. I wasn't interested in those jobs.

I needed something else to do with all the extra time I would have after giving up on finding full time work. So one day while I was sitting at home staring at the wall after eating a dozen red velvet cupcakes I made to celebrate my belated half birthday, I remembered that I live in the great state of Rhode Island, home of the Rhode Island School of Design, and that such a renowned institution probably has summer classes. I thought, “I could learn how to paint!” so I poked around on their website to see if they had a watercolor class in June or July. They didn’t. But they do have an extensive continuing education department with certificate programs in everything from jewelry design to personal property valuation. I saw children’s book illustration on the list and signed up for the program—mainly because they accept everyone whether you can draw or not.

I signed up for three classes, which, as I soon discovered, is too many for summer. And because someone asked me to run a half marathon with them in September and I said yes because I didn’t have anything else to do at the time, my whole summer looked like this:  

I would get up in the morning and if I was lucky, I’d see Jesse before he left for work. And then I’d see him for five minutes after I got back from class. And then I’d fall asleep. It was a fun summer.