The last few days when I should have been recapping my trip to LA or my day trip to Annapolis, reading my TFA readings or  my new found novels, I’ve been online shopping…well, online window shopping, mostly for my future LA apartment. See, picking out items and decorating in my mind makes me feel less like I’m living at home for a few months and more like I’m just passing through, planning for my new fabulous life, which I suppose I am, even though it doesn’t feel like that most of the time.

Some of my favorite finds include:

1. 3-D Chandelier – Urban Outfitters

2. Autumn Kiss – Original Papercut Art – Tinatarnoff on Etsy

3. Yes Frills Jewelry Organizer – Urban Outfitters

4. EXPEDIT Bookcase – Ikea

5. Phone Gocco Screen Print – Labpartners on Etsy

6. Brighton/Vanity Desk – Crate and Barrel

7. Wall Art Vinyl Decal Sticker Decor Headboard – Art Wall Project on Etsy

8. Happiness Ring Catcher – Five Tress on Etsy

In searching for apartment dressings, I inevitably end up on Etsy, which then inevitably leads me to look at pretty, pretty jewelry (and the occasional purse and headband) for hours and hours. I mean, how adorable slash beautiful is this stuff?

1. Ruffle Linen Bag with Lace – Straige

2. Strech Me On Sterling Silver and Pink Swarovski Ring – Always Chic

3. Leaf in a Drop Earrings – Shlomit Ofir

4. Pearl Scented Rosebud Stud Earrings – hot-pins

5. Poppy Ring with Gold Centre – Simone Walsh

6. Citrine and smokey quartz double sterling silver necklace – Essensual Jewelry

7. Long Double Element Necklace – Simone Walsh

And now I guess you can add writing this post to the list of things I’ve been doing instead of what I should be doing. Ugh. Off to do some reading…maybe…oo look at this ring!

I’m not old. I know that. By any regular view of the world, I’m right on track with the normal pace of life. I’m 22. I just graduated college. I’m starting a career…soon. Sometimes, though, when my google reader gets to zero, and there’s nothing but bad romantic comedy marathons on television, and I get to facebook stalking some of my old high school friends, I start to feel like I missed out on some giant life shift in the last four years when everyone else became a kind of adult, and I stayed the same. 

Well, that’s not entirely true. I am world’s different than I was in high school, but my changes have been mental. I’ve gained confidence. I’ve learned about myself. I’ve kind of figured out what I want in life. A lot of my high school friends, however, in just four years, have gotten engaged, bought houses, gotten married, and had babies. I feel like I just saw them. I feel like I was just singing next to them in the spring musical,  going with them on midnight runs to Steak and Shake, gossiping with them about our English teacher, and sometimes, I feel like (no, I know that) I’m STILL doing these kinds of things. I feel like they are living lives that I can no longer relate to in any way, like they’re adults, and I’m still this weird teenager-young adult hybrid.  

Not that I want their lives. A lot of them are still living in their hometowns or some remote suburb just like it. Most of them have jobs like cosmetologist, army wife, or fast food restaurant assistant manager – not that these aren’t respectable choices, but they are just not where I see or want my life going, so it’s not jealously I’m feeling. I just…I don’t know… find it so weird that in four short years, all of our lives have taken this ridiculously drastic turn away from each other. We were all the same. We all related to one another. We all hung out, and now I’m living at home after finishing college, planning on moving to West LA to live with my gay best friend, while my former classmate is in a hospital praying with her Navy officer husband for their 16-week-premature baby. (I found their blog about him via facebook – if you want to keep him in your thoughts.)

All my friends aren’t in this situation. I certainly have a lot of high school friends still in college. I have friends who have moved or are about move to New York and LA, and friends who are single and loving it. It’s just easier for me to process their situations, because we are all still on the same level, in the same place. To me, they are normal. It’s hard for me to process marriage when I haven’t had a boyfriend for more than 3 months…ever. It’s hard for me to process having babies when I minorly freaked out at the thought of babysitting a 13-month old. It’s hard for me to feel like I have all the time in the world to get married and have babies when it seems more and more people already have. When did this happen? When did all these people I know as teenagers become adults? One day, we were all the same, and the next, I feel like I don’t even know who these people are anymore. 

I think what’s especially weird for me is my parents were those people – those people I in no way relate to. They were married and moving to Oklahoma for my dad to start his time in the Marine Corps at 22. I’M 22! Does that mean I’m an adult now, too? Maybe that’s the whole problem…

Yesterday I got a package in the mail. My mom asked if I ordered something online. Sadly, I answered, no. It wasn’t a fun jewlery or a new MacBook. It was books. Many books. 8 large, bound, small-print books from Teach for America. Books with titles like Instructional Planning and Delivery; Diversity, Community and Achievement; Literacy Theory, and Classroom Management and Culture. Basically, it’s four years worth of college educational instruction packed into 8 books of information for me to read in the next four months. 

Thankfully, they break it down into 8 easily stomached lessons to get through in the next few weeks. It’s not that overwhelming time wise, but it is definitely overwhelming emotion wise. 

The first reading is about a successful TFA corps members and her struggles and triumphs over four years of teaching in Houston, TX. It is already SO hard to imagine myself doing half the things or having half the successes that she has. In fact, I had a dream slash nightmare about it last night, where I was kicking ass on my first day of school only to have half of my 50 (yes 50! My classroom was for some reason more akin to a college lecture hall, except it was filled with judging 14 year-olds) students walk out of the room in anger over something I’d said, all while I was being observed by the school’s principal and my program director from TFA. I woke up feeling like a failure, reminding myself that it was a dream and I hadn’t failed at anything yet. 

I keep replaying the words one of the TFA staffers told me on the phone the night I was accepted: “We don’t make mistakes. If we choose you to be a corps member, we have no doubt that you can do this. Just imagine that there are students out here waiting for you.” I just have to internalize that myself.

I really fell off the NaBloPoMo wagon quickly, didn’t I? I blame me wanting to soak up every last moment of my last week of college. I’ve done pretty well so far. Saturday, we had a special Saturday taping of “Bay Sate” followed by a read-through slash viewing party that ended with Jillian, Josh, and I singing “I Kissed A Girl” at one of our favorite bars. Sunday, I had my last sorority chapter then headed out to Megan’s to finally eat at a diner featured on our favorite show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Monday, I had my last photography class (and found out I got an A!), then had a final Gossip Girl viewing party with Jillian, complete with delicious fro-yo from our favorite fro-yo joint (even though it was about 15 degrees when we went to get said frozen yogurt.) Yesterday was my final acting class, followed by a trip to our school’s pub with one of my best school friends who I rarely get to hang out with, then over to my final Bay State taping, after which, I, of course, gave a minor speech and cried. We then had to go to our traditional post-Bay State dinner spot, Sunset Cantina, for drinks, nachos, and curly fries. Mmmm. Josh, Jillian, Megan and I ended our night doing karaoke (I did some amazing renditions of “Come on Over” and “See You Again.” Me=cool. Clearly.) and toasting to future drinks in LA. 

I think the final Bay State has been the hardest thing yet. I’ve been working on that show since the first month of my freshman year, and I’ve climbed through the ranks, starting as a PA and ending as a Co-Executive Producer. All my best friends are now from there, and it has definitely been the biggest constant, besides sorority stuff, in my college life. It still hasn’t hit me that I won’t be back. In fact, it hasn’t hit me that I only have one more college class left, and that at this time next year, I’ll be in charge of my own class. 

The only thing keeping me sane is not thinking about leaving here and instead thinking about going to Australia. I’m leaving next Tuesday, so its unbelievably close. I got an email from the lovely Sarah asking me if I was ok spending New Year’s Eve at her beach house with some friends. Um..is that even a question? When I wrote back, I had to note that last year, I rang in the new year in Israel, and I’ll be ringing out the year in Australia. In between, I’ve lived in two major cities (LA and Boston), and shifted my entire life plan. That makes my life sound much more exciting than it is…or maybe I just don’t realize how exciting my life is. 

Anyway, it looks like my sister will be guest-posting while I’m gone, so that should keep you all entertained. Look forward to that and an emotional breakdown type post come Saturday when I’m in my parent’s car with everything I’ve accumulated through the last 3 and a half years of my life piled around me, driving away from Boston, the closest thing to a hometown I’ve had in a while.

Today, after getting one last email from an LA program director, I went online and clicked the confirm button.

I’m now officially a member of the 2009 Teach for America – Los Angeles corps. 

It’s going to be a crazy two years.

LA bloggers: you better have as good of get-togethers as the Boston Bloggers do.

This  morning I got up early to go to visit the KIPP Academy in Lynn with some other recently accepted TFA corps members and a Boston area recruiter. 

The school looked unassuming. It’s basically a converted church with some modular (trailer like) classrooms surrounding the building. You walk in and there are some murals on the wall, but there is definitely not money pumping into this school. 

Then we walked into a classroom, and my jaw dropped. Every kid was silent, sitting up straight, and appeared to be actively listening to the teacher. When the teacher asked a question, every hand shot up in the air. (Granted, it’s part of their system that every child raises their hand with one, two or three fingers raised, indicating how confident they are in answering, but still, they were all participating.) The room (and every room we went into subsequently) was adorned with sayings like “Every student will learn,” and the school’s motto, “Work hard. Be nice.” We walked into another room where a student was reading a story for the class, and when he got done, every child, after sitting silently and listening to him, burst into applause. In another room, kids were in a number of small groups looking at cells in a microscope and drawing what they saw. Again, there was silence, even as they milled around the room. Even as the kids walked through the halls to lunch, they were in perfect lines following their teachers, not a one out of line. 

We talked to a number of the teachers who were TFA alums (over half the faculty is made up of TFA-ers), and each of them said the school culture was responsible for it all. Students come in the summer before their fifth grade year and learn the rules and expectations of the school, and from what I saw, most of them were meeting those expectations. (And the ones who hadn’t that day, we saw head into lunch detention.) The biggest thing to note is that these are not necessarily the “gifted” kids from the district. Kids are put into a lottery to get into KIPP, so theoretically, any school could achieve these kinds of results with their students. (The stats are staggering – if you are a minority student in Boston Public Schools, you have a 3% chance of graduating from college. If you attend KIPP, you have an 80% chance.) You set specific expectations, and these kids meet them. You don’t need exessive funding and high caliber technology. You need strong educators working towrads a specific goal and sharing that goal with their students.

We looked at a bulletin board filled with “Life Maps” the kids had created about their lives. Almost every one of them had a pit stop that said something to the effect of “I started KIPP Academy and started loving school.”  

One of the things that struck me too, was how weird it was to be in a middle school again after so long. I mean, I have such distinct, vivid memories of my middle school days, but being at a school like that now, it seems so different.  Also, it was creepy (and encouraging) to see teachers who looked about my age commanding the attention of a classroom of students. I mean, when you are a student, even the young teachers seem old, so it was hard to picture myself as one of them, but seeing those kinds of teachers now altered my perception a bit. I could totally see myself being them. 

When we walked out, one of the other girls asked if you could fall in love with a school in an hour, because she definitely had. I did too, and what made me most excited about the prospect of accepting TFA’s offer is that 30% of the LA TFA corps members teach in charter schools like this one. In fact, they place in LA’s KIPP academy. If I could get into a school with like-minded individuals like KIPP, I feel like I’d really be able to put all my efforts towards working with my students, rather than dealing with bureaucratic bullshit that comes with working in some of the larger public schools. Luckily, we fill out preference forms where I could make that preference known. 

So at this point, I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I want to accept, but accepting is still a scary thought. I told myself this morning I’d wait until I finished reading Relentless Pursuit, but I can’t imagine the last 50 pages are going to convince me not to do it, which is basically what would have to happen for me to reject the offer. I mean, after everything I’ve seen and been told, can I say no? 

I think what’s really sealed it for me is seeing myself in the corps members I’ve talked to, which is what scared me the most about my LA entertainment industry internships – I couldn’t see myself being one of the producer’s or executives. I just wasn’t like them. These teachers and TFA staffers are like me, and that is comforting. I know it will be hard and stressful, and I’m sure I’ll have days I hate my life and cry, but to be around people I relate to, doing something that is ultimately important is what I’ve been wanting and asking for. I can take a challenge, and I think I’ll take this one.

Yesterday, I had some time to kill before going to work, where I would sit around doing nothing, so I figured I might as well stop at the bookstore and pick something up to read. I’d been dying to read American Wife by Curits Sittenfeld, because I LOVED Prep, but when I got to the store, I remembered a book that was mentioned anytime I looked up LA – Teach for America. 

It’s called Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America, and it actually follows four ’05 corps members through their first year in the program. I hesitated before purchasing it, wondering if I really wanted to take in an account of what my life could be like – gritty, terrifying details and all (especially, as no matter how journalistic the author’s intentions may be, she is still writing a book and needs conflict, and I assume, tended to gravitate towards the more dramatic, compelling [and thus more frightening  me] stories.) Despite all that, I ended up buying it and reading it all last night and at work today. 

I was 100 pages in when a Program Director from the LA office called me last night. Unfortunately, 100 pages in, the ’05 corps members were deep into their “What the hell am I doing here?” phase, which may have colored the percentage I gave the PD when she asked what my odds were of accepting versus rejecting. (I told her I was about 80/20, when really,  I’m probably more 95/5.) She was extremely helpful, though, not pressuring me and really giving me all the information I asked for. I definitely felt better after talking to her. She told me the story of how she cried gonig to the airport to training, thinking “What if they made a mistake when they picked me? What if I’m not really cut out to do this?” Then, when she got to induction, the first thing the TFA staffer told them was “We didn’t make a mistake.” Then she said the same to me. 

Today, I got about 150 pages further in the book, as I actually do nothing at work, and am now into the stage where the corps members are seeing results. It’s uplifting after all the crap they’ve been through, but still tough to read. I mean, at this point, I feel like I can’t turn down the offer, but it’s so hard to say yes to something that I know at some point will cause me to say, “Why the hell did I sign up for this?”

To me, it feels like I have to choose between feeling underutilized, bored, and powerless and feeling challenged, stressed, and tired (all. the. time. according to most former corps members.) In the book, one of the male corps members who admitted to crying on the drive home some days said, even after all that, he still wouldn’t trade places with his friends, who, according to him, were working low level jobs as “glorified salesmen” and spent their days bored out of their minds. And right now, I’m feeling the same way, because my main complaint at every job I’ve had (besides camp) has been boredom and the feeling that I’m too smart to spend my day making copies and answering phones. Why would I turn down a job where I get to be in charge 95% of the time, where I get to lead a group of people, where I get to use every skill I’ve amassed over my life? Plus, there’s that whole job security thing. 

Tonight, 256 pages into the book, I went to the matriculation dinner, which was basically a free dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant with TFA alumni and the recently accepted, soon-to-be corps members. I really connected with a girl who taught 7th grade literacy in New York. We talked about her classroom management strategy, finding your teaching style, and what books her kids liked to read. (Unsurprisingly, they were all addicted to Twilight.) I could see myself in her, and I could see myself having the same struggles she described, but also the same successes. She helped me see myself doing this more clearly. I told her I wanted to teach middle school over high school, and she assured me that as that is rarely the case, I would probably get to teach middle school if I made my preference known. That helped calm my nerves about potentially being stuck in a class with 12th graders barely two years younger than me. 

Tomorrow, I have my last round of TFA investigation. I’m going on a school visit to a KIPP middle school outside the city. Hopefully, once I’m there, I will really be able to envision what my life would be like if I click that ominous “Accept Offer” button. I’m so close to being there, but I just want to be sure.

I thought while I’m in the midst of figuring out my next life move – I have a phone call with someone from the TFA LA office tonight and a matriculation dinner tomorrow night that I’m hoping with solidify a decision for me – I thought it would be fun to dig through my old, real, paper and pen diaries to see what I wrote when I decided on my current life situation – where I would be attending college. (Partly inspired by some amazing diary excerpts from Dooce and Metalia.)

March 7, 2005

I feel like I’m on the brink of something big, the calm before the storm. Soon things will start happening and everything will start changing. Hopefully for the better, but still changing. Nothing will ever be the same. I’ll get college acceptances soon, figure out where I’m going, finish high school! I mean, I complain about how slowly this year is going, but it’s all going to be happening soon. 

(Next came an extremely concieted rant about how I can’t wait to be surrounded by my intellectual equals which actually contains the phrase “I just want to fit in without conforming.” Wow. Just…wow.)

I just want to know where I’m going next year NOW! I want to be able to really envision myself in college. And I must say that saying “I’m going to [college that waitlisted me] or “I’m going to [college I currently attend] both sound extremely good right now.

___________________

March 31, 2005

And I’m going to [where I go now]! Yep, after years and years of looking, the search is over. 

It’s so weird after all this time and all the searching that I’m am actually done. I know where I’m going to college – where I’ll be spending the next four years of my life, where my degree will be from. It’s crazy. It doesn’t feel real. Maybe it will set in once school ends. 

Wow, typing that all out – I realize my diaries are a lot more boring when typed out and that I took myself way too seriously in these writings.  I do, however, think it’s interesting that I feel exactly the same way now as I did then. I know my whole life is about to change, but I don’t feel like it at all right now. I’m still here at school, hanging out with my friends, taking classes. No one else is close to the end, so it just feels normal. I think once I make a decision about TFA, it might seem more concrete, but right now, its still this weird idea I can’t quite grasp.

As for my second entry, it’s bizarre that that single decision has brought me here, that I’m still living out the consequences of that day (in a good way!). It’s also weird that my mind didn’t think about my life after college. I think in high school, you can only focus on the next step. I focused on college for so long that taking a step afterwards feels like walking off the edge of a cliff, like there is nothing concrete left.

Lastly, I realized, while finding these entries, that I will definitely have to post some of my more melodramatic writings in the future, one of which was written at 2AM on a Saturday night between these two entries and begins with me extensively quoting Green Day, as I felt it was all that could capture my angst. Awesome.

Today I was talking to my mom, and I jokingly suggested we take the Joe Biden train from Wilmington to DC on January 20th to go to Obama’s inauguration. I’ll be home by then, I thought. (Well, at my parent’s house…) What else will I have to do? Then I started thinking about that fact…

I’ll be home by then. I’ll be done with college. I’ll have already turned in my last assignment. Moved off campus. Attended my last college party.  I’ll have already traveled to and from Australia and experienced a once-in-a-lifetime trip with two of my best friends. Maybe I’ll have already held a koala or spotted a kangaroo. (God, I hope I get to hold a koala.) I’ll have already spent a week in LA, double checking my decision not to move there and pursue a job in television. I’ll already know if I’ve been accepted into Teach for America or if I’m going to be applying to grad school. I’ll probably know if I’m moving back to Boston in the spring or if I’ll be keeping my sister company in New York. I’ll have a much more clear picture of my life…well, my life for the next two years. 

I guess all this still seems so far away to me now, but thinking about that date – January 20 – really made me realize nothing is very far away. This semester is almost over. My life is about to be drastically different. At least Barack Obama knows how I feel.

This week has been hectic, to say the least. It’s also been a kind of “Hey, Amanda! Let’s quickly consider all of your options for the next year with handy specified days for each possible path.”

Let’s start with Wednesday: Wednesday I got up at 6:00AM, which is normally an hour which doesn’t exist in my life, to get myself prepared for my day long (Let me say that again…day long) interview for Teach for America. Now to give you some idea of the intensity of this process: for this interview, I had to collect official transcripts from my school, submit two recommendations, read five articles on education in low-income communities, and prepare a five minute sample teaching lesson. 

I was pretty calm about the interview, as I’d be happy and flattered to be accepted but if I’m not, I have other options (as evidenced below). This isn’t my only hope or anything. That said, the interview itself made me kind of nervous. You get there and there are eleven other impeccably dressed young people who all have resumes that include going to places like Yale or working on cancer research or doing extensive community service. Then you have to watch them all teach these inventive, thought out lessons, while you (read: me) thought that your lesson for high schoolers didn’t need worksheets or visual aids, which everyone else so happens to have. Then, you do this group exercise where you have to use your knowledge of the readings to think of a strategy for improving test scores at a fake middle school where you fake teach. THEN you have to write a reflection on the readings. THEN you have to take a multiple choice/essay “test” (they call it an “exercise”) with charts and data and reasoning….it’s tiring. After all that, you come back in the afternoon to have your hour long, one-on-one interview, which walks you through role play exercises and a bunch of those fun “what would you do in this situation” questions. Good times. Really.

Overall, I thought the day went well. They prefaced our morning with the note that we really weren’t competing with each other, as they judge everyone individually against their standards and choose from there. Because of that, the whole group was super supportive, especially through the sample teaching, which was nerve-racking for everyone. It was impressive how well we all worked together for having just met and kind of (but not really…) being in competition with each other. It made me feel like should I be accepted into the program,  I’d be surrounded by extremely smart but supportive people. 

Today, I went in to the Graduate Open House at Emerson, even though I visited this summer, as I thought it would be smart to get a real program overview from the faculty rather than just the students. We had a seminar about admission and financial aid, which given the whole our-economy-is-falling-apart thing was a little scary. The actual overview of the program turned into more of a discussion between the seven people who were there to look at the program, two current students, and the head of the program. I think what struck me the most was how the things many of the people there are feeling about their jobs and careers 2 to 10 years out of college are the exact same things I have begun to fear I’ll feel 2 to 10 years out of college, only I know about  them now. The whole disillusioned-with-the-industry, can’t-work-a-desk-job, wanting-to-give-back mentality is something everyone shared, and weirdly, something I already have. How am I disillsuioned with a world I have yet ot enter? I guess I’ve already seen it through my internships and jobs during college, but it’s hard to get people who’ve actually experienced it to believe that I have, too. Anyway, the whole thing made me feel like I’d found the right program for me, making me want to go there even more, which is both good and bad. I have a clear goal, which is good for me, but I fear a major meltdown should I not achieve that goal. 

I mean, I feel qualified to get a job in Film and TV (my current major), but my sister is having a really tough time finding a job in the field, and she actually wants it! I can’t imagine working that hard for jobs I don’t even think I’d enjoy….BUT, I’m not there yet. Not even close. First, I have to see what Teach for America says. Then, if that doesnt’ work, I have to get my application to Emerson in. If that doesn’t work, I’ll figure out something…I hope.

The other big news (I suppose) is that I’m attempting (emphasis on attempting) to participate in NaBloPoMo, which means I have to post every…single…day in November. Quite a change from my three posts in October. I’m trying to use this as a way to get blogging back in my routine, as it has clearly been pushed to the bottom of my priority list in favor of things like work, school, and sleeping. We’ll see how this works out.