Decisions.

I have a hard time making decisions. Usually, if I am choosing between two or three things, I try to just do them all at the same time, equally.
"Chocolate or strawberry?" "Can't I just have both?"
"Teaching high school or graduate school?" "Can't I just do both?"

I gravitate to the older moiety of the Bible, and there we find Jonah. The Sunday school version of Jonah's tale leaves out what is a key element for me. What I see as the issue with Jonah was not that God commanded him to do something and he refused; the issue was that God told him to physically go in a specific direction (to Nineveh) and Jonah went nearly 180° in the other, headed toward Tarshish. The story of Jonah is one of my absolute favorite Old Testament stories. It seems to us as readers that it is a relatively simple lesson and that we certainly would avoid his mistake.

Right?

I have spent a part of almost every single day since early January 2010 working to get a job as a high school teacher. I counted up the number of packets I created (application, résumé, cover letter, writing samples, test scores, license, transcript) for jobs since then, and the number is 48. I'll say that again. 48.

All along, I was honestly not looking forward to being a teacher, even though I knew I would give 100% effort and heart if hired. I was not ready to give up the dream of being a professor. I planned to go to school in the evenings and summers, but I think I really knew that one was going to have to go, and it would eventually be grad school. What a sad things to be grieving something you haven't even lost yet.

But I still kept pushing to be a teacher. Kept going in that direction, darn it. Red flags and barricades flew up everywhere:

-I had a hard time getting into the licensure program. They lost my application once, and forgot to send me confirmation information once.
-The state police smudged my fingerprints and my background check therefore didn't go through, delaying my licensure.
-I was only offered positions at two schools this summer. One asked me to work 8-5 Monday through Saturday year round with two weeks off in the summer, and the pay was the state legal minimum for teachers (which came out to less than minimum wage before taxes). During the interview for the other position, I realized, when asked what I would do to ensure that the principal's son didn't fail English again, that I would be filling the spot vacated by the teacher fired for failing him.

And, after being hired this last time, when I typed up an email to the art department thanking them for the wonderful opportunity but apologizing and admitting that I would have to give up my teaching assistantship, my computer crashed right as I was directing the cursor to the "Send" button.

Hello. You would think I would have gotten the message.

But it took things getting really, really ugly for me to finally see that I was SO TOTALLY headed in the WRONG direction. And boy, did I get a giant whale. I was hired to teach 10th grade, and my first day was attacked by my coworkers, who wanted my salary for classroom supplies, my schedule, and my classroom. I was personally attacked by my new principal, who felt for some reason that it was appropriate to tell me that she thought my references (whom she had never met and who have known me since I was 6) would be disappointed in me for not putting up with being walked on. So I walked out.

I won't go further into that. But I am finally, completely, undoubtingly convinced that, at least right now, I belong in graduate school and that my direction points toward becoming a professor. And damn it, I didn't sell out, and I am incredibly proud of myself.

So. My first course as a TA starts tomorrow morning, followed by my first semester-long graduate course. I have been chewed up and spit out and I am finally headed to Nineveh.