The Last Day of School

Tomorrow is the last day of school. 

Even as I sit here and look at these words, I don't even really know what they mean.

Any way you look at it, the last day of school is weird. Whether you love school, hate it, are a teacher, student, parent, etc., it is just plain bizarre to have something that you have done day in and day out for the last nine months just - end. But not forever! To be resumed in two and a half months! In basically the same orientation! Doing the same things! But different enough that the First Day of School is also insanely weird!

As a child, I loved school to absurd proportions, so the Last Day of School was not something I hungrily looked forward to, but it always arrived nonetheless, and always passed in a whirlwind, as we usually followed a different schedule and I ran around grasping at my friends for one last goodbye before the dreaded summer break began.

High school and college were similar, though felt slightly less absolute, and the Last Day of School was typically concerned with final exams and later, haphazard moving out of dorms and apartments.

As a teacher, the Last Day of School is weird in a different way. First off, even though we may be doing something completely different with the schedule - field day, class parties, or what have you - as the teacher, I am still doing the exact same thing: managing students. Despite any vision I have of special surprises, heartfelt goodbyes, ardent summer wishes for these beloved students - the day passes pretty much like any other, with the same reminders to wash hands, wait, have a seat, go to the bathroom, and so on, and before I know it, I am standing in front of the school, just like any other day, and the kids are on the bus, just like any other day. Except it's not any other day - it is the Last Day of School, and now we are "all finished."

And then what? After nine months of one reality, how to return to another?

This is why I stood forlornly in Dollar Tree this evening, on the brink of tears trying to find something to give to my students that expresses how grateful I am that they exist and for what I have learned. And then my thoughts wander to all of the other students who have touched my life this year, and I begin to realize: it may be impossible to encapsulate this year in any sort of understandable form. And it is going to be extremely difficult to transition away to the long-anticipated summer break. 

Teaching in the traditional school year is like one really long work day. Weekends and evenings and the occasional non-contract day notwithstanding, from September to June basically only one thing happens. So it is no wonder that I'm left feeling somewhat helpless. I've felt this before when I worked as an instructional assistant, but this year is rather different.

An advantage of this nine-month work day that is now abruptly ending is that it provides the opportunity - no, it necessitates - reflection. 

Where was I nine months ago and how have I, myself, grown and changed? What was I like on the morning of this extraordinarily long, challenging work day?

What a loaded question. 

Sheesh, that's hard to write about. I'm not quite there yet. 

But I do have a lot to reflect upon.

Nine months ago, I was a wide-eyed intern, fresh from an intense summer of grad school which I enjoyed more than I'd like to admit. Before I even knew what was happening, I lived in Rockaway Beach and was an essential part of a school environment in Tillamook. That was like the "morning circle" part of this school day.

Then, each day: rise earlier than early, drive to work, prep like crazy, work with students all day, inhale lunch while running between buildings, stay late working on paperwork, calling parents, putting things back together, try to make it to the YMCA, but usually wind up wandering around Fred Meyer grabbing things for my classroom, drive home, sit down for about eight minutes, go to sleep, repeat. The days, weeks, months, slipped by.

Then I blinked and it was morning snack break, or as others might like to call it, Christmas break. For half a minute I stopped, looked around me, and faintly remembered what it felt like to be Sarah Nelson. But then the bell rang, and back I went, plugging away and plugging away.

In February it all fell apart.

(That is for a different blog post, one or several later, or maybe zero never. I'm not sure.)

Anyway, the lunch break of this painfully long school day happened when I resigned from my internship and had almost a month off before starting a new student teaching placement.

This was the kind of lunch break you have when you get to leave the building, but you have to run several errands and somewhere in the middle your car breaks down, there is a long line at the bank, and you still wind up sitting on the side of the road eating chocolate for lunch in the driver's seat. You get a brief respite, but before you know it you are walking back in the door. You know you should feel rested, yet you don't.

From mid-March on, it has been the afternoon. Still a lot of important work to do, and for whatever reason feeling slightly more relaxed, you are more able to embrace change, take a deep breath, and enjoy your surroundings. Maybe it's the light at the end of the tunnel, maybe it's the change of pace. Nonetheless, you enjoy it and are able to think about how far you have come since this morning, when you dragged yourself out of bed and have since been running non-stop, as if you know nothing else. 

Then the bell rings. Time to go home. But what does that even mean?

==============================================

Overinflated analogy notwithstanding, I am not the person I was nine months ago. A whole school year has passed. And in this particular year so much has happened.

I'm thinking about my students in Tillamook.

Thinking about my students in Vernonia.

Thinking about all of the adults I have worked with, teachers, assistants, administrators, parents, community members.

Thinking about my identity, both professional and personal, and how that is changed. Despite everything, I do think of myself as a special education teacher now.

Thinking about the places I've lived.

The communities.

The highs and lows, successes and failures, the extremely painful lessons I've had to learn and am still learning.

How to ask for help. How to recognize that I need help, and subsequently asking for it. The intricacies of special ed paperwork. The necessity of lesson planning. The even greater necessity of attending to my own life outside of my classroom (extremely difficult in this one-long-work-day-of-a-school-year thing).

The negative changes in myself; also, the positive. Sometimes, it is hard to tell which is which.

I don't know what's happening next. I have no job lined up for next fall. But, I know that no matter what I find, I will build upon this year.

I'm content right now. I am very happy with how the last three months have gone professionally. So I am sad to see this school go, sad to see these students, this staff, this building which has become my daily routine, suddenly stop existing, as if this is a perfectly normal thing. I'm reluctant to let go of this year of being a teacher-learner, though I suspect that both will always be true. The mass of things that have happened in this year is staggering and daunting to reflect upon. 

Clearly, I'm also reluctant to let go of this blog post. It is much longer than is appropriate. This is probably why I got out of blogging to begin with. 

As always, I'm grateful, grateful for life and the wicked curveballs it throws at us. Time for my three-month long weekend, and (one can only hope) many happy returns. 

10 by 30

I count myself lucky that I am still young enough that a period of time as fleeting as a year, two years, three years still feels long; that a year can stretch for what seems like an eon considering all of the changes that I go through. When I look back a year, two years, three years, I am at once shocked that that version of myself ever existed, so long ago and faraway is it, but also at how quickly the time has gone.

Two years ago, spring of 2011. I spent my days subbing in small rural school districts around Appalachian Ohio, regularly going all around Athens County and as far as the Ohio River for a day's work. I loved it. I thrived on the constant adventure, and I relished the opportunity to hone my developing teacher-skills in various scenarios. It was during this time period that I first experienced and later fell in love with special education, though that is a story for another day.

It was mid-May, a few weeks before my twenty-sixth birthday. I was subbing in the Southern Local School District in Racine, Ohio, a town of around 675 situated on the banks of the Ohio. West Virginia lay a few minutes away on the other side, and a huge coal plant stood silhouetted against the rising sun as I headed into town each morning. I have learned some painful lessons over the years about the luck of the draw that composes a school climate - sometimes, it's the right school for you, and sometimes - it is not. I got lucky with Southern; despite the 40-minute drive and my seeming outsider-ness, it worked. I subbed there quite a bit.

One day I was to sub in an elementary classroom, but got pulled over to the high school (across the parking lot) to do a few periods of 11th-grade English. In one of the classes, students were asked to write about 10 things they wanted to accomplish by the time they turned 30. Asking 16-year-olds what they would like to achieve by age 30?! The students were utterly snowed. The only advice I could give them: 
"30 is a lot farther away than you think. It feels like it has been a very long time since I sat where you sat, and I can yet barely envision 30. Think of anything you would like to do in the reasonable future, and chances are, that reasonable future exists before you turn 30."

That, however, got me to thinking, and once the students were quietly working away, I sat behind the teacher's large oak desk, strewn with assignments and that day's sub notes, and got to thinking. I would be 26 in less than two weeks, so 30 was just over four years away. If these 16-year-olds in Meigs County, Ohio, could have "10 by 30" lists than darn it, so should I! 

Bearing in mind the advice I had given the student - that anything you would like to do in the reasonable future probably will come to pass before you turn 30 - I did come up with two lists, a "Do before 30" list and a "Do this ever" list. I wrote these lists with the full self-awareness that even creating such a list was probably a bit naive, that I had no idea what 30 could possibly mean, and that even more so I had no idea if Future Sarah would want the same things as Current Sarah.

I suddenly remembered those lists today, a few weeks after my 28th birthday. I have less than two years to go until I begin my fourth decade of being alive (wait. . . what?!) and though I still have no clue what it will actually feel like to be 30 (probably about the same as it will feel to be 29 and 364 days), I thought I would revisit this list and assess my progress.

And so I give you, my 10 x 30 list, and my 10 Things Ever list: (with progress noted)

10 Things I'd Like to Accomplish by the time I'm 30

1) Master's Degree (well....almost)

2) Marathon

3) Live another somewhere else

4) Visit another country

5) Fall in love at least once

6) Sew something ("learn to sew")

7) Make homemade jam

8) Play in a musical group of any sort

9) Decide if I want kids

10) Publish something I've written

10 Things to Accomplish Ever

1) Finish going to all 50 states (I did check off two more after making this list)

2) Make a home with another person/ a partner

3) Own a bike again

4) Live nearer my parents for a while

5) Stay being happy and healthy

6) Have a job teaching in some way

7) Try out for Jeopardy (I did one of those online things, which may count)

8) Hike on parts of both the AT and PCT

9) Grow a garden

10) Learn some self-defense

Considering how often I tend to change my mind, I actually feel pretty good about the fact that I have actually accomplished anything on this list. My biggest dilemma now is how avidly I will try to achieve the rest of these in the next two years. Even when I made this list, I feel like there were a few that I added on simply to round things out. Maybe I need to create a modified, 10 x 30 redux - v. 28.

Cheers to the ongoing adventure that life has turned out to be!

wordle

so i live in portland now

so i live in portland now

in a big tall house
with hardwood floors and roommates
crammed next to many other
big tall houses
with hardwood floors and roommates
on a long, narrow street
with cracked gray sidewalk
that intersects with countless other
long, narrow streets
with cracked gray sidewalk
numbered streets, hundreds of them
bisected by streets named for pioneers and explorers
a few presidents
gens. sherman and grant
and the pescatory pride of the northwest: salmon
i run for blocks and blocks into miles
past equally unique neighborhoods filled with homes
with hardwood floors and big windows
painted wood paneling
babies and bicycles
coffee and cracked gray sidewalk
turn-of-the-century homes
(old for oregon
young for ohio)
the forecast calls for rain
the radar says it's clear
i run anyway
under heavy, overcast skies
it's misting
(not raining
but not clear)
up one street and down another
hopping over cracks in the sidewalk
waiting at intersections
endless streams of cars and bicycles
and people on the sidewalk
with their hoods up against the mist
give me a firm, brief look
and continue walking
coffee shops squeezed between bars and boutiques
brick buildings
painted wood paneling
hardwood floors and lattes
big windows, bagels, craft beer
(old hat in oregon
new buzz in ohio)
our history frames our understanding
past leads to present
i splash in a puddle
(not raining
but not clear)
the bikers and walkers splash too
but they maintain their paces
lattes and bagels in hand
heading indoors
toward hardwood floors and big windows
a concrete front stoop
from a cracked gray sidewalk
up the stairs in a tall house
to roommates and bicycles
and a new adventure

so i live in portland now.

Grayteful

The rain dots the morning sky, trickling down seemingly without end. When it does let up, the sky remains a shroud of gray hanging above the city. The streets and sidewalks, cement, are slicked with water. They too are gray. I drive into town and steely concrete buildings tower ahead, filled with untold offices, business, apartments.

I navigate the downtown streets, trying to remember which avenue runs one-way and in which direction, peering at signs - green street signs, flashing neon business signs, parking signs filled with what may as well be hieroglyphs. I've almost driven past when I see it: a parking spot! It's a Sunday morning, yet the three lanes around me are flush with vehicles. I scrutinize all of my mirrors before rapidly shifting into reverse and backing and filling into a spot at the curb. I find the curbside sign with the appropriate information for the spot I have chosen to see if I need to pay a meter.

I don't (they're free before 1pm on Sundays - how generous), so I scurry about my business. The raindrops have increased slightly in tempo, so I grab my umbrella. Most Oregonians stubbornly refuse to use umbrellas, preferring instead to blend into the drab scenery with sweatshirt hoods up, squinting into the rain, their canvas shoes and bookbags drenched. I never understood this phenomenon before, and I understand it even less now. Instinctively, I pull my hood over my hair; then, I proudly hoist my aquamarine umbrella into the sky and scurry about my errands.

Later, the sprinkle has momentarily subsided, so I fold my umbrella. The city is as gray as ever. The streets are busier than they were an hour ago. I wait patiently before merging into traffic. On this drive home, I don't miss a single turn. I even remember what lane I need to be in, and successfully change lanes amid busy, flowing traffic. As I drive to southwest Portland, I look over and see the Willamette River. Barely discernible blue mountains are shrouded in clouds and fog. I can almost feel the mist spraying up from the river.

Grumbling to myself as cars speed around me, I reflect on a piece I read the other day. The authors talked of how driving in traffic overstimulates the brain because we take in every last thing we see, even if we don't immediately process it. I can vouch for that; my levels of stress and confusion have risen enormously in the two and a half weeks I've resided here. The constant rain doesn't help, nor do slippery roadways, curving avenues, one-ways, streets that suddenly stop and start.

Evergreens line the boulevard on my drive. As I round a broad curve, a curve which my car effortlessly navigates and accelerates out of, I look around for a moment and take it all in. I nudge myself, remembering that I still gasp at the sight of Oregon license plates surrounding me on the streets. My little car and I, who not long ago idled lazily every day through a small town in Ohio, we have made it here. Here, to the monochrome west, the west of my childhood. This was what I wanted - a month ago, this was all I wanted.

So here I am, in the biggest city in Oregon, overwhelming in its hipness and wetness and greenness and differentness, but I am here because I made a choice. I don't know what the future holds - I hardly even know what tomorrow holds - and so much has changed so quickly. But for now, I am here, and I remind myself to be grateful. Why not?

from zero to grad school in sixty seconds

Hello, my dearest nonexistent blogworthy readers!

Since I have not updated this adventure blog in quite some time, you may be tempted to think that I have not had any adventures of late.

Wrong! I have had countless, untold adventures. More than I have room to write down (today, at least)! In fact, I have been so busy adventuring that I keep forgetting to blog!

I'll give you a moment to collectively shun me from the blogosphere.
















Okay, so now that that's taken care of. I actually do have quite a bit that I have been fully intending to blog about, and in great detail (at this, you should not be surprised at all).

After my last post on November 14, a lot of things changed. Even reviewing that particular post, the writing was on the wall: I was dreaming of the west coast, and I couldn't stop it, no matter how hard I tried and how much I consoled myself with the wonders Athens had wrought upon me.

So, I did what any logical person would do: I went home for Thanksgiving. And do you know how that went? I spent three days glued to either my mother's, father's, or sister's side, save for the moments where I flung myself on the dewy grass or gawked at the omnipresent mountains towering beneath the Northwest sky. As my flight took off, all too soon, from the Portland airport, I looked down at the swirling, rushing Columbia River and wept.

Then when I got back to Athens I applied to grad school, and approximately twenty-eight jobs in the state of Oregon. I made Christmas cookies and thought of my family. Then, on December 14, I got into grad school, a special education Master's program at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon (even the name of it sounds so - rugged!). The first day of school? Oh, January 4. No big deal.

So then I took a deep breath and kicked into high gear. In the next eight days, I planned a road trip (apparently, one of my favorite activities), quit my three jobs with apologies (here's to you, Sara C's dogs!), ran like mad around Athens saying goodbyes, packing up my apartment, shoving things off on friends (you know who you are - you're the best!), saying more goodbyes, working every last minute I possibly could, misplacing my driver's license (Yup. On the last day I ever lived in the state of Ohio I had to get a new Ohio license), figuring out housing situations here and there, and just for fun I decided to get almost-influenza.

So it was that before I knew what was happening I was on the road out of Athens for the last time, my still-cute and still-almost-as-shiny-new Suzuki loaded to the brims (with what, I'm not even entirely sure - the almost-influenza sure does a number on ya!) and really that before I even blinked twice I was Christmas shopping in Eugene with my dad and sisters. Whew! I still haven't been gone a month.

I promise you a blog post full of tales of my adventures westward. Driving across the country gets easier every time you do it (it's a little strange to have Interstate 80 as a road that I am familiar with), but it never falters in its beauty and wonder. I am still in such awe of our vast nation.

However, I know that that post will be very long and full of words and pictures, much as this one is, so I will pause for today. Also, I happen to be a graduate student and so I have real homework to do. I think that I will blog more, though, because I have to do a lot of journaling for one of my classes and it just gets me in the mood. Hoorah!

A year of adventuring

Autumn is, for some reason, always a time of deep reflection for me. I don't know if it's due to summer's slow decline into cooler days, the return to the school year, or something else that evokes this extreme nostalgia in me. This year is no different, and I have been thinking especially of my adventures of last fall.

I left Athens on November 6, 2010, and over the last week-plus I have amused myself by remembering where I was on this day a year ago, and reflecting upon all that happened and the change and growth that have been bestowed upon me since.

One year ago today, I awoke to heady gray skies in Boise, Idaho, and pulled myself onto the road for the last long leg of my journey westward. By day's end I would be in Eugene! That nine-hour jaunt was the conclusion of ten days of driving, weeks of planning, months of dreaming, a lifetime of exploring, and the affirmation of generations of pioneers.

I remember that feeling; after grinding gears and curving my way up the mountainsides in western Idaho, sweeping down through the Blue Mountains and seeing the valley before me, mountains azure enough, sun shining down as I broke through the clouds, every conceivable shade of green, and knowing, just knowing that I was home. Waves of elation and peace enveloped me. I drove on and on that day, and eventually before I knew it I was pulling up in front of my parents' house. In my car. Which I had driven away from there two-plus years earlier. To Ohio.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of home lately. I have many homes; for this I am lucky. There is Athens-home and Eugene-home, and within and around these cities are countless places that represent home to me. I recently passed my third anniversary of living in Athens, and throughout that time my greatest struggle has been to somehow reconcile these homes, at least internally, and to comprehend the great geographical divide that exists between Oregon and Ohio. After three years, I don't know that I'm any closer to figuring it out, but like I said, at this time of year I find myself growing homesick.

I'm feeling many of the same thoughts I felt a year ago, the last time autumn began its inevitable slide into winter. It really was summer once in between, but now that even Indian summer has ended and the days are determined to be gray and cloudy, it seems like last fall was just a flash of time ago.

I didn't realize until I had been back in Athens for about a month (this would be this past February or so) how much I had in fact changed and grown during my three months away. Some days I am shocked and impressed that I did in fact succeed in spending three months not in Athens; some days I am still quite bemused that I am in Ohio at all. I returned from those months with family feeling grounded and revived - and I was, and continue to be, so, so thankful for that time period in Eugene last winter and all that it meant to me, my family, and my Oregon friends.

Since my return, life in Athens took a little bit of time accelerating to levels of never-before-seen busyness, though I did learn how to quite effectively incorporate Sarah-Nelson-rest-time, something I credit to my winter months spent in the warm embrace of family and home.

My adventuring, at least such as it was a year ago, has slowed down some. I have entrusted myself to this city and to the adventures that I may find within Athens and the surrounding county on a daily basis. I realized that my standard for an adventure relied so much on whether or not I left Athens to complete it - what, then, is the point of my being here? In the past year, I have done countless interesting things here and elsewhere.

I know that I will always retain an adventurous spirit, and that perhaps the part of me that dashes off on cross-country adventures is currently just hibernating, but I have also realized that I can't just be an adventurer forever. I can't have my cake and eat it, too; if I want and need to have roots down somewhere, I need to dedicate myself to doing actual real things in that place. The clock of time is ticking just a tiny bit louder these days.

I'm also looking very much forward to the winter adventures that I do have planned - a barely-four-day jaunt to the Northwest for Thanksgiving, and another trip for the week surrounding Christmas. Today in Athens the weather is classic Pacific Northwest - gray and rainy, highs (and lows) in the mid-50s. There's a strange comfort in weather like this; it unsettles me at the same time as it calms me.

Here are some interesting places I have had adventures in the past year: Eugene for two months; Seattle; Portland; the Oregon Coast; Auburn/Bay Area/Southern California; Phoenix, Sedona, Flagstaff, AZ; Albuquerque; I-40 between Albuquerque & Oklahoma City; Fayetteville/Little Rock, AR; the Mississippi delta; New Orleans; the Gulf Coast; Alabama & Georgia; the Carolinas: Charleston, SC and Asheville, NC; the Atlantic Ocean; a few trips to Athens, WV and other locales in WV; Louisville; a half-marathon in Roanoke, Virginia, and another in Eugene this April; Athens, Athens County and Meigs County; Champaign/Urbana, Illinois; Indianapolis; Boise, Idaho, and I'm sure I am forgetting a few.

I have done many new things. One of the most important is what I was preparing, this day a year ago, to spend the next few months doing, and that was living, being around, and caring for (and being cared for by) my family and my mother in ways that were healing to us all. I connected with people & places in Eugene in a way I hadn't before.

(Interjection: One year ago yesterday my strong, brave, talented, wonderful mother had surgery for breast cancer. I'm sure that she is doing reflecting of an entirely different sort today, but above all I am so thankful that she is now on the path to recovery, and that an entire year has already passed since that particular adventure.)

I drove 5,000 miles by myself across the country. I got in a car accident. I bought a new car. I substitute taught; I was Ms. Nelson in front of classes of kindergarteners, 11th graders, and everything in between. I went to every school in Athens & Meigs counties. I subbed in special ed, and started to love it. I took classes at Ohio University. I worked for Americorps and got involved with the local food security movement. I ran four half-marathons. I went to a wedding and was in another one. I turned 26. I dated some. I read a lot of books - some classic and some not-so-classic. I painted my apartment. I spent a lot of time alone, and a lot of time forging friendships stronger than any I've ever had. I started graduate school, and I started thinking that I really really might want to not live in Athens anymore, so I have been spending a lot of time dreaming of further grand adventures!

Anyway, thanks for reading my blog and for sticking through this extremely long post while I wax nostalgic about my adventures and the ways I've grown and changed in the past year, as self-centered as it sounds. I just hope that I will continue to have fun and have adventures. Today, as I look back over the last year, I am filled with a wave of happiness. I'm looking forward to creating a new year/life of adventures, to seeing my family over Thanksgiving - oh yeah, and to seeing Oregon football continue its season of glory. Go Ducks! (yes, I will wear that T-shirt approximately three times per week for the rest of the season.)