1. The new staff at my school. As my school is a new charter, we are adding a grade every year. Thus, we doubled the size of our staff in, this, our second year. Luckily, our new staff is as ridiculously amazing, funny, smart, and collaborative as our old staff, leading us to have ridiculously amazing, funny adventures while competing in a scavenger hunt around the South Bay and do ridiculously amazing, smart, collaborative things, like craft engaging curriculum for the 10th grade. Win.

2. My Toms wedges

3. The Neil Patrick Harris-directed production of “Rent” at the Hollywood Bowl. Having never been to the Hollywood Bowl AND having never seen “Rent” live made seeing this production one of the best nights in a long time. As did the impromptu Ke$ha dance party my friends and I had in the parking lot after the show while waiting for the cars to clear out. Throw in the fact that my (dorky) “High School Musical” loving heart got a kick out of seeing Vanessa Hudgens writhe on stage to “Out Tonight,” and you have an epic night.

4. My last week of summer. Last week (aka my last week of summer 2010), I finally met my boyfriend’s family, by taking his niece to Disneyland (my THIRD time since April. Childhood win!) and by going with his family to a Dodger game (which they won 9-1). I also went skating with said niece, my sister, and my roommate, which I haven’t done since I was 10. Lastly, I slept in pretty much every day until 9, which is late for me. Best.

5. Mad Men. Despite the fact that they cut out the scene my roommate was an extra in (Damn you, editors!), I am SO happy to have Don, Peggy, and even Betty back in my life.

6. Feeling like I’m good at my job. For the first time since I started teaching (granted, its only been a year), I feel like I have some sort of grasp on what I’m doing, and I finally feel like I’m the one truly directing what is going on in my classroom, instead of just following along with the crowd because I’m too afraid to venture off on my own. This is all mostly due to the fact that I’ve been helping new TFA-ers get accustomed to my school, but I’ll take it however I can get it. Hazzah for never being a first-year teacher ever again!

Looking back on some of the major turning points of my life, I realize most of them have come out of rash decisions. Momentary whims that turned into life paths and completely new directions.

Rash decision one: Give up theater, after a life time of dance classes, voice lessons, summer theater camps, and a performing arts high school, after a terrible college program audition (complete with crying phone meltdown to my mother) and a comment from my high school drama/playwriting teacher that my play read more like a sitcom. Instead of pursuing an BFA in Musical Theater (which I could not have done solely due to lack of necessary talent…) or even a BA in Theater Studies, I decided to major in Television and Film with the new dream of writing for Television. It was quasi based on my lifetime love of television, but looking back, it was also quasi reactionary. Even so, that decision shaped the next four years of my life.

Rash decision number two: Apply to be a counselor at a Jewish summer camp. A completely random decision a the time, having never attended camp myself. It came up after a third or forth viewing of the MTV Documentary “Fat Camp” with my friend Nick my second semester of college, during which I talked about how I almost went to sleep away Jew camp as a kid, but chickened out at the last minute. I thought about how I had nothing to do that summer and about how much fun I’d had the summer before working at a Performing Arts Day camp, and how I’d always secretly wished I had just sucked it up and GONE to camp that summer, so I, of course, randomly started researching and applying to Jewish summer camps in the Midwest. I heard back from several, got hired at one, and proceeded to have the best two summers of my life 20 minutes outside of Cleveland, Ohio, which in turn led to both my amazing Australian adventure with my two camp BFF’s and my third rash decision.

Rash decision number three: Apply to Teach for America. After my second semester junior year experience of interning and hating life in LA, I felt lost. My rash decision to major in TV was looking like an epic failure after discovering I didn’t, in fact, enjoy working in television, and I had no idea what to do with my life. The only vague thought I had was to maybe apply to Emerson to study Theater Education and circle back to my original love of theater and my new found (Thanks to Camp!) love of working with kids. I doubted I would get in, however, with my limited camp experience teaching drama one summer and my one vaguely related to education class, the Politics of Education. Then I saw one of those pesky recruitment signs touting the (horrifying) statistics about low-income schools, which reminded me of all the things I learned were broken in the education system in my one education class. I went to an info meeting, told my mom I was thinking about applying, and filled out the application in a day, figuring I would let fate decide, since I didn’t really have faith in my decision making skills at the time. Then a funny thing happened. Fate decided I should be a teacher.

And that’s where I am now. One year into my two-year commitment to TFA, which is when everyone in TFA starts asking “What are you going to do next Spring when you finish?” They, of course, are asking so they can steer you into staying in education, thus fulfilling step two of their two-part plan to close the education gap. And for the first time in a while, I’m not feeling like making a rash decision that will throw me in a completely different direction.

Maybe it’s just because my life is going pretty well right now that I don’t feel like changing it and, eventually one small blip will send me looking at law school applications, but for now, for the first time ever, I’ve drafted out a plan for the next five years of my life, based on where I am now right now. It’s weird to write out where I want to be five years into the future, because for the last five years, my plans have been changing and evolving on a regular basis. There has never been a constant, because I have always felt unsure, like I wasn’t good enough to act or I wasn’t cut-throat enough for Hollywood. It’s kind of scary to feel stable and to plan, because I have a history of planning and then pursuing those plans only to chuck them out the window and do something totally different. I even wrote my college admissions essay about how I did this, and after that, I changed my mind again!

But maybe those rash decisions were all just leading me here, to the place I was supposed to end up. I just had to make those giant, seemingly random leaps because I wasn’t going to get to this place fast enough unless I made mistakes, took on random jobs and left a few things up to fate.

Maybe planning just feels scary, because, as I’ve seen, life doesn’t go according to plan, and I’m just afraid to fail. In the past, as my plans have changed or been only a few months ahead of me, I’ve never technically failed. I’ve gotten everything I’ve really tried to do. I don’t know how I would handle it if I made this plan, went for it with all I had, and then didn’t succeed.

Then again, life is scary and unpredictable, as I’ve seen, and I might fail, but I think I need to focus on the fact that right now, in this moment, I’m so incredibly grateful that I made those decisions, and that life, unpredictably, brought me here to this place where I can make plans for my future, because when I think of what my life would have been had I not made those random, rash decisions, I wouldn’t have all the life experience that is now factoring into my plans. I guess I just have to trust that even if life doesn’t go according to the plan, it can still lead you to a good place.

I’ve never really known where home was. We moved so much when I was growing up, I never had a home base or a home town. The sports teams I follow are from PIttsburgh. My best friends from my childhood are from Alabama. My high school diploma is from Ohio, and I spent the last four years living in Boston.

When I say I’m “going home” for the week, what I really mean is “I’m going to where my parents live.” Right now, that is Delaware. I lived here for a couple months after graduating last year, but I don’t have any friends here. I have no old hang-outs to visit, and I basically hang out with my parents and work-out at the JCC when I come here. It’s not home, except for the idea that home is where my parents live.

When I told people I was coming to Delaware this week, I said I was going home for the week, but being here and in Pittsburgh at a family reunion for the weekend, I realized, I’m not at home. I love my parents more than anything, and emotionally, yes, whenever I am in their house, I will feel some sense of home, but I had a surprising realization last night.

When I fly back to LA on Wednesday, I’ll be going home. I’ll be going to the place I feel like I truly belong at this point in my life. I’ll be going to the little home I’ve created with my best friends in our apartment. I’ll be going to the place where I can grab dinner and a movie with my sister at a moments notice. I’ll be going to the place I can drive around without thinking. I’ll be going to the place I feel comfortable and happy and settled. I’ll be going to the place I can’t imagine moving from any time soon, which is exactly the opposite of how I thought I would ever feel about Los Angeles.

The first time I lived there, I thought it was pretentious and loud and too spread out and too sunny. (Odd, I know.) Now, I’ve embraced and conquered (at times) the traffic. I’ve made amazing friends who always keep me busy when I want to be. I’ve found a job I’m (almost) really good at and that I feel fulfilled in. I’ve learned to love the constant sunny and 70 degree weather. I’ve found an apartment that feels cozy and comfortable and (almost) decorated, and I’ve found (for now) a guy who indulges me in seeing Toy Story 3, takes me to Dodgers games, enjoys hanging out and doing nothing but watching movies and eating pizza, and who doesn’t make me feel nervous or self-conscious or crazy about anything I do, say, or feel.

I’ve had a great weekend with my family, revisiting my favorite childhood theme park, Kennywood, hanging out at a waterpark with my cousins, and dancing to a super local Pittsburgh band at a hotel bar with all my aunts and uncles, but I am really excited to go home.

It is the first official full week of my summer vacation, and it has taken me this long to wrap my head around the fact that I’m not a first year teacher anymore. Everyone kept saying that this would be the hardest year of my life, and while my job was difficult and stressful and took up a lot of my time, this was actually one of the most fun and most fulfilling years I’ve ever had.

I think, as opposed to calling it the hardest, I would call it one of the most eye-opening years. I’ve learned and grown a ridiculous amount, as a teacher and as an adult, this year. I thought that today, as I try to wrap my head about this past year and all the knowledge and wisdom I’ve taken in, I would attempt to recount some of the nuggets of goodness I have acquired this year. Here goes:

- Kids lose EVERYTHING. Staple things to their faces…or just teach them to be organized before doing anything else.
- There will always be one more thing to do. At some point, you just have to accept that, stop working, and go buy shoes.
- Coffee cures all, most importantly, mid-afternoon caffeine-withdrawal headaches that come on from not drinking coffee in the morning. On a related note: don’t get too addicted to coffee.
- Grading sucks.
- Kids get annoyed when you take six weeks to grade an essay that took them three weeks to write.
- Kids will call you out when you misspeak, misspell, or misquote ANYTHING. They will take great pleasure in it.
- Students are oddly interested in their teachers’ lives. Tell them a little something about yourself to get them interested in anything else you are talking about.
- Staying up late to get work done helps no one. You cannot face a classroom full of children on less than 6 hours of sleep without exploding.
- If kids don’t know WHY they have to learn something, they won’t WANT to learn it. Explain why you are making them take three pages of notes or write that fourth response to literature essay if you want them to care enough to actually complete it.
- Make time for students before and after school, even if you have 9,000 other things to do. If they are asking you for extra help, they deserve your time and undivided attention.
- Don’t take things personally. Take obnoxious teenage comments as constructive criticism. Fix the problem. If kids complain that they’re bored, be more interesting. If kids complain that they have too much to do, teach them to manage their time.
- Kids care. Even when they act like they don’t, they really really REALLY do.
- The kids you think aren’t listening sometimes are. They kids you think are angels sometimes aren’t.
- In the end, you’ll be surprised by who claims you were their favorite teacher. You’ll claim you don’t care if kids like you, as long as they learn, but its still ridiculously nice to get the “Thanks and I’ll miss you!” hug on the last day of school.

I probably have more, but I’m tearing up. I’ll leave you with my favorite student letter to me on the last day of school, not because she said nice things (She did), but because of how observant she was and how well she seemed to know me. It completely caught me by surprise. I always forgot that these kids had to stare at me for two hours a day, five days a week, for nine months. They noticed EVERYTHING I did.

“I think it was really funny how you would sing or hum when you were trying to get the class to calm down or when you used to “hmph” really quietly. lol You are a great teacher Amanda, and I love you for that.”

And now….to summer!

(Photo stolen from Andrea.)

So….Vegas happened.

It was, once again, ridiculous and magical and full of hugging and laughing and inside jokes and and and me looking FREAKISHLY good in hats (and also a bit like Jason Mraz when I quickly glance in the mirror after several afternoon drinks).

(FYI I look good in all hats. I feel I may have mentioned this in a post before…oh yes, here.)

So, there was my ride with Ev’yan and Andrea, during which we stopped for SONIC, which I have not had in years and which made me flash back to sitting in the back of my boyfriend’s truck after Battle of the Bands when I lived in Alabama in 10th grade. Yes, that happened.

Then there was the mad sprint Nicole and I went on while trying to get to the Planet Hollywood “I Just Came from a Theme Party” Bar Crawl before everyone else, caused by the fact that instead of actually, you know, walking towards the giant hotel marked “PLANET HOLLYWOOD” we walked in the opposite direction, forcing us to haul ass back the correct way in order to beat the large group slowing converging on the bar and causing me to almost knock down a small child.

A little later was the time I fell asleep (also known as passing the eff out) only to wake up to Kerri to shouting that she needed to go out and “live my life!”

The next day, there was us getting free stuff by the pool before  Chelsee and Michelle (and husband) ran around the strip like crazy people looking for a giant statue of David and taking some photographic evidence.

After that there was a ridiculous amount of laughter, Kori teaching us that life is never that bad when you’ve got a jaw and that hooker cards are meant to be organized, me rediscovering I look great in hats, a delicious meal that was made “breader” by bread, Amy and I discovering we are clearly soul-mates, fountain-jumping, 60-year old brides belting out “Simply the Best” (“Maybe her husband IS simply the best…”),  insane amounts of dancing at Margaritaville (but sadly, NO Ke$ha!), AND a tiny penis straw.

Lastly there was an incompetent cashier, creepes covered with bacon, (finally!) champagne, and more carbs than I care to mention.

And after that, I went home and  there was LOST. OMGLOSTICRIEDFORFOURHOURSANDSTILLCANNOTPROCESSWHATHAPPENED….

But, yeah…Vegas. Vegas was awesome, as I knew it would be. The end.

Almost a year ago, I packed my car up with all my stuff, shipped it cross country, then packed the rest of my belongings in a ridiculously large bag, and boarded a plane to Vegas.

The first Annual Bloggers in Sin City extravaganza was a lay-over for me in between two lives. On one side of the weekend was college, my parents, the East Coast, and my last little bit of non-adulthood. On the other side was my own apartment, teaching, a new(ish) city, and some old friends. In between was one of the craziest, most ridiculous, most fun weekends of my life.

I met awesome bloggers, danced on the Strip. saw a Cirque show, ate some delicious Italian food, drank cheap foot-tall drinks, watched hilarious you-tube videos, played in the most beautiful bathroom in the US, and laughed until I cried.

Tomorrow I leave for round two. On either side of the weekend is the same life. A life I’m pretty happy with. A life I’ll be happy to return to on Monday, but this weekend, I’m hoping to capture some of the ridiculous  magic of last year.

See you on the other side.

Last year, in May, I officially graduated from college.

I sounds so cliche, but it feels like yesterday. It feels like yesterday I was walking down the street in Boston, trying to drink in the city. It feels like yesterday that I got the email that I needed to prep for a phone interview at a small charter school, that I read their entire website and instantly fell in love. It feels like yesterday since I packed and pumped myself up for the madness that would be the first ever Bloggers in Sin City Meet-Up. It feels like yesterday that I was cooking my parents elaborate good-bye dinners. It feels like yesterday that I was offered an amazing job at that small charter school.

I feel like all I’ve talked about (if I’ve talked at all) these past few months has been how fast my life has changed and how different it is now, but most days I don’t think about it. I get up, I got to work, I come home, I got to sleep. I don’t think about how much time is passing. This week, though, my Austrailian BFF (you may remember her from my insane, amazing trip to visit Australia last year) is visiting, and I realized that while I feel like I just saw her, it’s been a YEAR AND A HALF. I visited her right after I finished college, and that was a YEAR AND A HALF AGO!

I know this is going to happen again with the Vegas trip this month too. It doesn’t seem like that first Vegas trip was a lifetime ago, but in a way, it was. I went to Vegas on my way out to LA. I literally had half my life packed with me in that hotel room. I’d never stood in front of a classroom before, nor did I know what the hell to do if I did.  Now I consider LA to be my home, and I like to think I have some idea of what to do in front of my classroom.

The month of May is reminding me that while I miss some things about my old life (all of which I was reminded of when I took my students on a college tour last week….oh all-you-can-eat dining halls. How I miss you so!) that is now feeling farther and farther away, I feel very settled right now, like my life is where it should be. Hopefully, next May, I’ll feel the same way.

For the first time in a long time, I’m not here to apologize for not blogging. Not because I’ve been blogging a lot. Clearly, I haven’t been. No, I’m not apologizing, because I’m not sorry I haven’t been blogging. I got an email about a week ago from the lovely BlogHer ladies reminding me I hadn’t posted in two weeks. Usually when I get these emails, I’m stung with guilt. I usually rack my brain for something to post and throw something up, head hung low in shame. That didn’t happen this time, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.

Thinking back over the last few months, I realized that the only times I’ve really been driven to post has been when I’ve been stressed, tired, or needed to vent. Lately, I haven’t felt like that. These last three weeks, I’ve been genuinely happy. Work has been stressful and crazy, but good. My personal life has been weirdly calm, simple, and comforting. I’ve figured out that when I’m happy, I kind of just want to keep it to myself. I don’t want to share it with the internet. Maybe I think I’ll jinx it. Maybe I’ve taken one to many TV writing class where I’ve been told no one likes stories without conflict or drama. Maybe (no….for sure) I’m not as amazing a writer as some of my blog friends, who can make even the smallest and happiest  things in their lives interesting and funny in a way I can’t.  Whatever it is, I don’t like writing about good things.

And the weird slash sad thing is, I haven’t really missed writing about my life, probably because I’ve been pretty happy living it. And now thinking back over the last three years since I started blogging, I’ve found that the times I’ve blogged the most have been when my life has been at its (relative) worst. (Note: I’m not claiming my life has ever been terrible.) For instance, I think my blog hit its creative peak the miserable summer I spent living basically alone in Boston before my senior year. I needed blogging to be creative and sane and to have human contact. Now, my creativity and human contact is tapped out during the day, so when I come home, the last thing I feel like doing is giving any energy to the internet.

I don’t know what this means for my blog right now.  I’m still trying to figure that out. In a way, I kind of want to take an indefinite break and keep living my life. On the other hand, I love my blog, despite my neglect. And I don’t plan on being happy forever. I don’t think I’m that lucky. I’m sure in the future I’ll have another miserable summer where I’ll need my blog to stay sane. I don’t know when that will be, though. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

This week has been one gigantic fucking roller coaster.

I’ve had some of my toughest weeks teaching yet, mainly because four of my students were asked to leave the school, upsetting not only me, but also most of my students right as we started a new project I really need them to be excited about. I’ve been feeling bad for these students and wallowing for myself, feeling kind of responsible for not catching some of these problems earlier, neither of which I should really be feeling. Also, the amount of work I have caused me to come pretty close to having an actual panic attack this morning, as opposed to the ones I hyperbolically claim to be having most Sundays.

On the other hand, I started dating someone. This does not seem like that big of a deal to most people, but to me, who has been technically single since I was 16 and who has been screwed over more than once by boys in the intervening years, this is a (lovely and) big deal. Things are going eerily well, and the whole situation is literally the only reason I’ve made it through the past two weeks of ridiculousness. With all the other crap going on, I’m just trying to enjoy the this stage while its still fun and new and…filled with me smiling.

On yet another hand, my summer plans are once again up in the air. I was all set to head back to Camp this summer, but now scheduling issues have come up with my school, and it’s seeming less and less sane to fly off to Ohio for every single day of my summer vacation. I’m feeling more and more like I need a real and true break this summer. Plus, I possibly have a part-time job I could take with Teach for America in the summer that would alleviate the money issues that led me to seriously consider camp in the first place, but the whole situation still sucks.

And that is my roller coaster. Crying at school. Smiling with the new boy, and desperately scrambling to figure out what I’m going to do with my July.

This weekend, I flew across the country to see one of my best friends from high school, and one of the few genuinely awesome people I know, make her professional acting debut as Belle in the National Tour of Beauty and the Beast. Um…what!?

It was madness. There were huge pictures of her lining the lobby. There were little girls dressed up as her milling in the lobby. There were audible gasps as she entered the stage in her iconic yellow dress. I feel like I just was one of those little girls gasping at Disney Princesses, now one of my best friends IS one. What is my life? When did this suddenly happen?

We went back stage. She showed us around her dressing room. We had dinner with the cast, and I grabbed drinks with her after the evening show. We reminisced about all the bastards that were bastardly to us our senior year of high school, who were jealous of her freakish talent and angry that I sided her her, and who now have babies, and ex-wives, and apartments next to our old high school. I feel like it was just last week when we were wandering around the mall in Ohio, gossiping about people we hated and how awesome our lives were going to be some day, and now…they kind of are.

*cue bragging*

I’m living in LA. I’m a part of a nationally recognized organization that takes about 4% of the people that apply to be a part of it. I make good money (for a 23-year-old). I have health insurance. I drive a pretty sweet little Prius. On weekends, I run into Mathew Perry and Elizabeth Perkins on the street. (Note: I love the UCB theater for that…) I have friends who feed my passion for fancy food and mash-up parties. I can vacay in Vegas. (Note: I GOT MY ROOM FOR VEGAS! yesYesYES!).

And my friend? She moved to New York last Spring, and got called into this audition a mere two months later. She ran into Julie Andrews in the bathroom at her temporary job in Macy’s. She’s touring the country, with her ensemble boyfriend in tow (with stops in San Fran, Chicago, Florida, LA, and HAWAII) as an effin’ princess and when she waves at little girls? They spontaneously combust into tears.

And those bastardly bastards from high school?  Living in central Ohio. Raising babies alone at 22. Working dead-end retail jobs. Performing in local theme park shows. I mean, maybe that’s what they want. Maybe they are truly happy, and maybe I’m overly judgemental, but (and you are free judge to me for it) the inner 17-year-old in me (and in her) who had to deal with side-long glances in the hallway, bitchy comments during my monologues (Note: I went to a performing arts high school), and snickers at the posting of cast lists is taking great pride and happiness in the fact that I’m “successful” and happy and awesome and they…to me…are not.

But that is not what I wanted this post to focus on, while it is fun to focus on that sometimes. What I meant to focus on is that sometimes I don’t recognize  my life at all. I’m used to changing and moving and doing new things, but sometimes I find myself flying down the 405 or walking around the Farmer’s Market or standing in front of a classroom of 14-year-olds or watching my friend waltz in a giant yellow dress in front of 3,000 people that I stop and think “When did this become my life?”