New Year? No Fear!

Good morning and happy new year to all of you fine folks out there. Not that any fine folks necessarily read this scatterbrained lady's ramblings, but glad salutations to all of you anyhow. It has been well over a year since I last posted (and that was because I got sick and tired of being TOLD what to write about), and that just isn't fair to my patient blog machine!

So these days (since I graduated from UNI back in December!), I have been waiting for my teaching license and substitute agency materials to be processed. Let me tell you, being unemployed, living with your folks (though I love you G & J), and having no money and therefore no financial freedom, one begins to feel small and helpless. Also, when your boyfriend gets a great new job and is working all the time in Iowa City (which is one of my favorite places), you start to get jealous of everyone else having a place and purpose. Sigh. My day will soon come (I hope!).

And I do mean that. I plan on applying for teaching positions as soon as I can get my resume updated. Which should be fairly easy, since there are all kinds of awesome places these days to get resume help. My students at Clear Creek Amana were working on resumes right before I left, and we were able to find many different sites that would help automatically generate a resume, or give you the tools and the information to manually put one together. (oh yeah, that's where I student taught my 2nd half! Loved my sophomores!) So that, combined with cover letter, portfolio and letters of recommendation should pretty well prepare me for the application process.

Of course then there's the actual interview.... but methinks the outgoing Scholastica will be able to handle that  :)

As most of my posts go, we don't really have a set subject going on here. However, my title was New Year? No Fear! I sincerely hope to use this phrase as a sort of mantra for myself in 2013. Being out in the "real world" and in the job search is intimidating, because up until this point I've only been a student! Ironically I have been a student of teaching... and have discovered that it's the only thing I want to do with my life. But there have been obstacles: boyfriend's roommate committed suicide, first cat got run over :(, close friend killed in car accident, a lot of things to really bring me down in 2012. And my spirits and confidence in myself have been affected lately with many feelings of self-doubt. Will I be a good teacher? Do I have what it takes to give students a strong foundation of English language and communication skills?

I've decided to knock of the negativity, self-doubt, and timidity of 2012 (there WAS timidity, some of my friends might not have guessed it) and go for positivity, energy and clarity. I'm sort of going for a lot of zen here. And I'm dragging Colin into it too, because with a new job at his disposal, the possibility for positivity is high!

So wish me luck all, because I think this year looks pretty promising. Let's hope I snag a teaching position in the meantime ;)