The last week has been very momentous in my life. That's right, readers. You are feasting your eyes upon my first blog post as a college graduate. (Please, hold the applause. It really isn't that big of a deal.) Let's keep some order while I outline the craziness that this last week (and really, this last semester) has been in the life on me, myself, and I.
1. Student teaching has come and gone. What a crazy experience (and I mean crazy in a good sense.) I posted the night before my first day at my first placement about jumping into this unknown experience and seeing what it had to offer. I was so scared that I was going to fail, but I was also cognoscente (I just really like that word) of all the help and support that I had surrounding me while on this roller coaster called student teaching. I'm going to be straight-up with you guys here: my first few weeks of student teaching were really hard. I cried a lot, I felt terrible about my preparation as a teacher, and I wanted to quit. The worst part wasn't that I thought I was bad at teaching, it was that I was so afraid that the career I had wanted to do for the greater majority of my life wasn't going to work out. I remember a conversation with a friend where he casually asked me how student teaching was going, thinking he was going to get a casual "Oh, it's fine" answer. Instead he got LONNG snaps about how terrible I felt about it, how much I hated it, and how much I wanted to quit. That friend told me to remember how big of an adjustment I was making- going from student to teacher. And that friend also told me that he knew I could do it, and that quitting would be a huge mistake. The most important thing I remember from that conversation is him saying "it's going to get better." Well, he was right. It did get better. I slowly became more and more comfortable in the role of teacher, I got to know my students, and I really began having a ton of fun. It's crazy to think how close I grew with the other teachers and students at each of my placements in just 8 short weeks. I sobbed the entire way home last Thursday after my last day at Spencer Middle School because I was just going to miss those kids so much. If I can bond that much with students in 8 weeks, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a crazy wreck when I have to say goodbye to my own students. Student teaching taught me a lot about myself- not just about myself as an educator, but myself as a person. I'm not going to share a lot of that because frankly you guys probably don't care and I would like to move onto the next point. If you're really invested and want to know *ALL* the things I learned about myself throughout my student teaching process, that's a conversation we can have (maybe, depending on who you are.)
2. I am happy to say that I am gainfully employed for the 2016-2017 school year! This didn't happen in the last week, but since I haven't put that bit of information out on this blog for all 6 of you guys to read, I'll put it on here now. I actually got a job in the district where I did my first student teaching placement, which I'm really excited about. I LOVED the other music teachers, and the administration impressed me from the start, which made taking the job really easy when it was offered to me. I will be a K-6 general music teacher. Yes, you read that right. Not a band director. General music teacher. I'm equal parts super excited and super terrified for this endeavor, mainly because I still feel like I have absolutely no freaking CLUE what I am doing. I've got lots of good ideas bouncing around in my head, and once I get them organized I think I'll feel a lot more confident about the whole thing, but right now I'm just overwhelmed and chaotic. But it will be alright.
3. Saturday, I walked across the stage in Siebens Fieldhouse, shook Fred Moore's hand, and officially graduated from Buena Vista University. Everyone's been congratulating me and stuff, but it doesn't feel real yet. I don't know what it is. I know I will start to feel real when I get my actual diploma, when my teaching license is issued, when I find out how much those monthly student loan payments are going to be, and definitely once the school year gets closer. But for now I just feel like I'm floating around aimlessly- no longer a student, but I don't feel like a teacher necessarily either. I don't know. I wasn't really that sad on graduation day until I saw my underclassmen friends at the Baccalaureate service, then I got sad. I don't want to leave them. I'm only going to be 30 minutes away, but still. That brings me to the next point.
4. Everything is about to change with my friends. I know it's going to happen, I don't think I can stop it, and it sucks. It already has changed. My friends have gone home for the summer, where they have their own lives, friends, etc, etc, etc. We won't see each other for months, we don't talk as much as we used to, and it's just got me feeling very lonely. Everything else in my life has gone all fruit basket upset on me, and those relationships are things I don't want to change. I know I'll make new friends in my colleagues and when I move to another town. But too much is changing all at once and it's just very overwhelming. I've yet to find a good way to deal with it (and if anybody out there has any ideas, let me know.)
That's about all the thoughts in my head for right now. Last week was long and full of happenings, so this week I'm hoping to chill out a bit and take it easy before my long summer of curriculum planning and French horn playing begins. Sigh.
