I’m ready for my closeup, mr. deMille!

Two years ago I had to stand up on stage in front of a year’s worth of Future Student Teachers, explaining the application and placement process to them. Guess what I get to do again tonight! Dr. Airhead is in Costa Rica, of all things, and so I’m the lucky winner. I actually have not been that nervous about it. Until now, as I’m thinking about it. It went fine last time – as I recall, I couldn’t even see the crowd for the bright lights shining in my face, and I didn’t faint. And since Dr. Airhead is so severely ADD and just confuses everyone when he holds these meetings, I know I do a far better job. But no need to pay me more than you do the receptionist, not at all!

Why no, I’m not bitter. Not a bit. We’re dealing with people trying to register, people trying to get admitted, people who are student teaching in the spring, people who are student teaching next fall, people who are student teaching this semester, people who are panicking about their licensure-only programs that I haven’t had time to do, people who aren’t graduating till December but are already panicking about getting their licensure paperwork cleared RIGHT THIS MINUTE so they’ll get paid (and boy are they not happy when I tell them they won’t be getting an updated license till January, at best), and people who are just panicking to hear themselves panic. My patience is completely gone. There IS such a thing as a stupid question, and I’m getting them all day long! Along with the 50,000 people who have called wanting to know why they have to go to this meeting tonight. K and I have both told people that they don’t have to go, actually, that we’re not forcing them to go, but we’re also not going to explain to them personally what they miss by not going. So there. Take that!

One good thing is that I am going to take this opportunity to scare the bejesus out of them about their applications. I can’t BELIEVE what I see coming through here. Every other word misspelled! Subjects and verbs not only disagreeing but locking themselves into separate rooms! Random senseless capitalization! Txtspk! One fragmented sentence serving as an essay… AAAGGGGHHH!!!!! Anyhow, I’m going to REALLY emphasize that they better make sure their grammar, spelling, sentence construction and logic is flawless because it’s getting harder and harder to find placements in and around this county, and schools are kind of hesitant to take on student teachers who apparently didn’t pass third grade grammar. Imagine that.

Well, I think I better start packing up and getting ready to walk over there. Yikes. At least K is going with me for moral support.