Back in Louisiana

So I've actually been back here for a week now, and done with institute for a week and a day, but haven't been in a particularly reflective mood to do any blogging. It's Saturday night, I kinda bailed on my plans, so I guess now is as good of a time as any to be reflective.

I cannot believe that only one week ago I had just gotten back from what everyone keeps saying is going to be one of the most rigorous things we'll ever do in TFA. All I can think is "eh, yeah it wasn't that bad." Of course I'm saying that with total and complete hindsight and there were so many days where I went out to get something for dinner and I thought to myself, "how easy would it be to just keep going on 61-North until I am far away, anywhere but this god-forsaken region. Or the days where I thought of more life-threatening and strange excuses why I couldn't get out of bed in the morning than I ever came up with in college to get out of going to class. But even without the hindsight, I hope that institute isn't one of the hardest things I'll have to do in my teaching career. Yes, it was challenging. Probably the most challenging thing I've ever done before, but it was a different sort of challenging; a very non-autonomous challenging.

Enough about institute though because I still kind of feel like it was a very long dream, and it didn't really happen. Also, I could probably talk all night about how all my students did not meet their end of summer goals (although some of them did, and about half didn't show up for the last week so potentially a lot more could have) and how much of a strong personal responsibility I feel about that, but I'm already feeling bad enough about bailing on my plans tonight - I don't need the weight of 16 fourth graders' futures hanging over my shoulders too.

Still no job on that front, but really please, stop worrying about me. I'm going to get a job. There's still two weeks until school starts and although that does not seem like a lot of time, it's a pretty big span of time in the TFA hiring world (or at least, so I've been told). But really, I'm fine. However, check back with me at the end of next week, and I might have developed somewhat of an increased frustrations and bitterness towards this all. At this point though, I'm just living the life down here. Well not really because I would love to be planning for the year, but there's no use stressing about something I have no control over.

I just finished up Round Zero, TFA orientation, whatever you want to call it. I call it hopefully the last time I have to sit in sessions all day for many consecutive days. Today we had our all-corps meeting with the 2010 CMs. It was pretty cool to have everyone together - this is the first time we've done that since getting to SLA. I'm excited to be part of this awesome corps and really start the year off!