Plan B

Okay, so the teaching position thing hasn't worked out for this year. Now what?

One thing I know about myself fairly well at this point is that I do not stagnate well. I tend to freak out in the middle of the night and make really big decisions without totally thinking them through. I applied for my study abroad in Spain this way. I applied for my Habitat for Humanity trip to Argentina that way. I applied to teach in England this way. (Notice a pattern?)

And so, the evolution of my fall has gone something like this:

- mid August: finish Elite

- one week of panic

- two weeks of work in a job I didn't get

- One or two days of panic and sad faces

- Sign up for the GRE and decide to apply to graduate school. In Boston. Or Chicago. Or London!

And so goes the story of my life. My primary focus is, and has always been, on setting up a relatively safe, small life. I want to find a teaching job at a suburban high school and stay there long enough to see my own students return as teachers. If and when I tire of the adolescent environment, I want to get a PhD and teach English at the university level. I want to have children and give them the opportunity to have childhoods similar to my own: K-12 in the same schools, with the same friends and a stable home life.

The problem is that my simple, safe, conservative life plan keeps getting thrown off course. And when it does I feel like I need to do something decidedly different, exciting, adventurous, and even risky. Like move across the country. Or to a different country.

I've been researching options for about a month now and the schools I've settled on range from the very safe (UCI summer program - wouldn't have to move or give up working) to the very adventurous (London for a whole year). So now, I work on applications and writing sample and dream of the options (3 summer sessions in NY at Columbia University! Taking weekend trips with Joe from London! Moving to OC and actually just having the boring life I wanted in the first place!)

There's a lot to consider, of course. Money and time and delays to other plans (marriage, kids). But there's also the consideration that if I don't do something adventurous now, while these options are here in front of me, I'll probably never do it. There's so much of the world I want to see and so many things I'd like to experience before I have kids. And if I have an opportunity to do it now, with Joe and while I'm still pursuing one of my other goals anyway, shouldn't I go for it? Even with costs and time considered, I doubt we'll look back in 25 years and think, "Wow, I wish we had had a baby a year earlier instead of going to (insert name of interesting city here) for a year..."

The thing is, grad school is still Plan B. While these daydreams completely exhilarate me and I feel adventurous just imagining them, if I were offered a full-time teaching position I would take it in a heart beat. Teaching is Plan A. My adventurousness is, as always, contingent on feeling like the safe option just isn't available to me at the moment.