The Career Change: Starting Grad School

Yay for grad school!!!  I know it's crazy to be cheering for additional work to be added to my already overly burdened schedule but let explain why I'm so psyched.  Seriously though...

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My first grad school class began last night at Boston University's School of Education.  As I've mentioned before, I will be attending classes over the next two years in order to get my Masters Degree in Education (with a concentration in English).  I'm extraordinarily excited to be getting some real life, actual useful training that I can utilize in my classroom immediately.  My professor is amazing.  He is a career teacher who still is in the classroom, who has been teaching for about 6 years and who will be giving us some actual tools and training on lesson planning and classroom management. This is exactly the kind of training that TFA should have been giving us, but didn't.  I wish I could have taken this class six months ago to be better prepared for teaching, but that being said, I at least can apply all this knowledge immediately.  My classmates are fellow TFA corps members (15 of us altogether) who are equally thrilled to be finally get some actual useful training from an amazing dedicated, non-TFA educator. 

There are a couple of downsides to this program.  One, I won't be taking classes with my three besties from City College (Raina, Franka and Yolanda) - the wonderful friends who got me through my undergrad with so much love, laughter, and the perfect amount of snarkiness.  People in TFA tend not to be snarky - probably because they're 22 and are still ridiculously wide-eyed optimists.  I'm the only realist in the room - other than the professor. The second problem is that traveling to Boston one night per week is a big and expensive pain in the derriere.  Last night, it took me an hour and twenty minutes to get home from Boston - a full half hour longer than it should. In addition to getting lost in Boston for 10 minutes because I took a wrong turn, the Towbin Bridge which leads out of Boston is having major construction and three lanes had to squeeze down to 1.  Ugh!  But other than those two minor negatives, I am looking forward to this semester.

While I am being slammed with work at the moment and am exhausted beyond belief, it's a good exhaustion. An exhaustion that is brought on my trying to hardest to do my best for my students.  But seriously, I need a good stress relieving massage!  Okay, gotta go do some grading.