Today I stayed in my pajamas until 1:00, during which I put a final coat of polyurethane on Will's dresser and cooked vegetarian meatballs (oh the irony in the name, I know).
I owe this glorious ability to remain in my pajamas on a semi-perma basis during the months of June through August to the career I chose in education.
But that wasn't my original career path, and it all sort of fell into place...by chance.
I spent the ages of 5-8 pretending to teach my stuffed animals (I also pretended to be married to Joey McIntyre, but what NKOTB fan didn't?). I graded fake papers and always gave the grumpy Care Bear an F. I'm pretty sure I also made stars just like my second grade teacher did. They were swoopy and loopy and always in red pen.
On the first day of 10th grade, coinciding with my first day of French class, I took the French textbook home and poured over it, sitting in my room and reading it aloud just to hear the sounds of the language.
It's okay, I already know I'm a dork. This blog entry is only reaffirming that.
I spent a year in college tutoring students in basic French, and it was here I realized I had a knack for helping them remember all of those ridiculous conjugations and grammar rules.
But why would I pick teaching as my major?
So, after four years of journalism school at America's newly crowned number one party educational institution (sigh), and an internship in NYC where I told the managing editor of Rolling Stone that I really disliked his magazine, I accepted a "job" at Men's Health magazine. I was all set to move into a drab furnished apartment in the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania so that I could spend my days copy-editing snippets about foods to improve male sexual performance when it dawned on me that all I really wanted to do--my dream job, if you will--was teach French. And coach cheerleading. Forget working my way up in the magazine ranks and wearing Louis Vuitton and sitting behind a desk by day and attending fabulous parties by night.
No, my dream job involves wearing what's on sale at Target, being on my feet for eight hours and grading papers at night.
I know. Several of you are rolling your eyes and going, "Seriously? That was your 'dream job'?"
And I stand firm in my answer of, "Heck yes it was!"
I spent many lunch breaks working at the Gap studying The GRE for Dummies (and still managed to score right around "dummy" level thanks to a surprise math section that said, "We realize you've already taken a math portion, but we need to test some questions. You do not know which math portion will be scored. Good luck!" and forced me to click randomly on answers). I then spent two years writing silly papers on classroom management strategies and ridiculously long lesson plans that I have never used, nor gone back to for reference.
By chance, the two other French teachers in my program and myself all landed jobs in the same school district, before we had even graduated.
Also by chance, my building needed a cheerleading coach!
And so it began...of course, I quickly realized...er...after five years realized that coaching cheerleading was an enormous ball of teenaged girl stage mama drama that I did not wish to have in my life anymore, but that French teaching dream, well, that I was living.
And I continue to live it.
Was it all by chance? It all seemed to fall in to place as though it were meant to be. So was it manfiested? There's that tricky fine line between "luck" and "destiny" again.
I'm sad to report that my own school district that I grew up in has cut their French program. Gone. Au revoir. This incredibly beautiful language, and its food and history and landmarks will no longer reach those kids, in the way that it reached me.
There is no longer that opportunity--that chance--for a kid to stumble upon French education. Sad day, indeed.
And then I remember I'm still in my Target pajamas and it's not so bad after all.
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