Use your time wisely

Good news: the phone interview on the interstate in Boston was enough...I landed a second one through Skype, and did enough research through the interweb to discover what school and position I was actually applying for: Coordinator of Residential Life at the College of St. Scholastica--Google saves the day, yet again.

So, just like that, within a few weeks, I was on a plane to Duluth, MN, to interview for the position: I was in the actual city (plane landing to take off), for less than 24 hours, and about 6 of those included interviews--talk about being efficient with your time.

First View of the School...looks like a Castle

I think it went pretty well, but then again, I'm biased. When walking the lake walk with a mint chocolate chip ice cream from the local malt shop, I happened to accidentally spill a little bit of it...all down my chest and on my shirt, it's cool though, it was just a nice mint green on my deep blue tank. I hoped that the people I was with didn't notice (my potential coworker and his wife), as I attempted to wipe it off casually and keep walking and talking. Let's just say it was difficult, and sadly, not that uncommon for me. 

After I left Duluth in the afternoon, I traveled back to Alaska to then start my first day as a substitute teacher at the local High School, and my alma mater, Wasilla High School, Home of the Warriors. 

No worries though, everything went just as planned. We had a 4 hour layover in Arizona, so I was pretty late getting into Anchorage, and didn't make it home until about 4:00am. Thankfully, the skills I learned in college paid off...how to operate well on two hours of sleep. 

It was go time. 

Before being a substitute teacher, I thought I was fairly decent at crowd control, and pretty 'cool.' Wrong. 

I kid you not, at one point, there were literally pencils in the ceiling, paper airplanes flying, and 35 14 year olds trying to convince me that I don't know how to do fractions. It gets better...then, I lost a kid. 

I actually lost him. He seemed to be behaving, so I thought I'd let him be rewarded and allow him to go to the bathroom. He left his book and belongings, so I never thought anything of it. Boy, was I naive. 

After the bell rang, he never came back, and his book was just sitting there--like he was sucked up in the second coming! A teacher came by and asked for the student, and I had to look her in the face and explain I wasn't exactly 100% sure where he was at the moment. She just looked at me and said, "ya, he does this a lot." What?! Students like that should come with a warning.