THIS Has Gotta Be The Good Life

Well, folks. It's true. It happened. It finally happened. 

If you wait for it, it will come. 

Or is it, if you give up, when you least expect it, something good will come your way?

Eh, either way, I have no clue. 

But I am FINALLY employed, BEFORE the school year begins. 

You heard me correctly. After 5 years of teaching, after waiting each summer and wondering whether I will begin in the fall with all of my other teacher friends or not, after watching all of them begin and me sitting on my bum, after going through interviews with nothing to show each summer, I finally have a contract before August 1st. 

After being a kindergarten teaching assistant for two years, student teaching and long-term subbing for a year, teaching 1st grade for a year (as a part year hire), and teaching EIP for a year (as a part year hire), I am entering my sixth year of teaching. Only this year is my FIRST time beginning on my own from the very beginning. Can you believe I am nervous? I am more used to six different teachers handing me kids and saying, 'here you go, we'll talk!' Only now, they are all mine. I have to figure it all out. It's kind of scary. But, I am also excited because it is 2nd grade and I worked with 1st and 2nd last year. When I saw my class list I have some of my kiddos I worked with last year. Yay! 

Oh, did I leave that part out in all of my joy? I am at my same school as last year (so this is actually my third year there), my principal was able to get me back! I love her to pieces. I nagged her all summer (just like last summer, but I told her I was going to). 

Ok and here is the best part. When I got the call - my whole family was together waiting in the hospital to meet my brand new niece. I got a new job and a new niece in the same day. All just one week ago. 

I don't know who was happier me or my dad! But I will say this, on the way home from the hospital that night (with my two and a half year old niece in the car with us) we did stop to buy a lottery ticket - just in case! ;) 

Lessons Learned:

This was one of the best summers I have had in a long time and until a week ago all I knew was that my last paycheck was coming on July 31st and on August 31st I would have no more insurance. Ironically, I wound up in the ER this summer with 6 stitches and also took my first vacation in 3 years on my own. 

I am as broke as ever. 

I did not go on a single interview. 

In a way, I had given up. I had resigned to the fact that perhaps I really was not meant to reside in the teaching profession. 

I suppose sometimes we have to let loose, live a little, a trust that in the end things will work out the way they are supposed to. 

I was surrounded by family when I got the news. Exactly how it should have been. 

Now to learn the art of saving.