Major Big Things

On June 13, I moved all of the things I need for the summer to Evanston in order to work this summer. I am an Assistant Residential Coordinator for the Equinox program, run by the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University. What does this mean, you might ask?

This means that I do all of the work.

Okay, in reality I am part of a residential coordinator team that oversees all aspects of residential life here at Equinox. I have a staff of 19 RTAs (Residential Teaching Assistants) who work directly with the students in the program. We have nearly 270 students in the first session, all of whom will be taking classes for three weeks. All of our students are considered "gifted and talented," and many of them will be taking an entire AP course in just 15 days of class. If you can think of something that needs to be done in order for them to successfully live and enjoy life on campus, you've just essentially listed a job responsibility of mine.

I am sore and tired and mentally exhausted. I've literally reached the point where I'm out of words... but I love this. I love my team members and I love my program director and I am pretty sure I'm going to love my RTAs and the kids. It's an intense amount of work (75 hours of work in just 6 days), but it's MY kind of work.

My RTAs move in tomorrow... more to come, when I can find the time :)

Wowzers

You know that series of job interviews that I talked about nailing in my last post? Apparently I am prophetic, because at 5:21 pm today, June 12, 2012... I was offered a job. 

I'm a real person now, friends. With benefits and a respectable salary and my own classroom and everything. The job is an elementary position at South Shore Fine Arts Academy. I'll be teaching either third grade, or a fourth/fifth interdisciplinary type thing- this will be talked about on Friday. 

The job starts on August 6. My summer jobs ends on August 4. Nothing like the craziness of life to smack you right in the face. I have about a day to recover from an intense summer and move into a new classroom and get ready for my first crop of kids to arrive on August 13. 

I am SO pumped. Bring on the ideas... all summer long! 

And Thus It Begins...

The last few weeks have been relatively crazy, as you might be able to judge by my online absence as of late. I have secured a summer job, nailed a three part CPS interview, hosted a CouchSurfer, navigated a romantic landmine, saw a weird movie or two, watched the fireworks at Navy Pier, hung out at the Blues Festival, got really sunburned, procrastinated on packing up my apartment, actually packed up part of my apartment, planned a party for my brother, and spent copious amounts of time lying in front of my fan.

I'm moving myself and some of my things to Northwestern University tomorrow morning, to start 10 days of pretty intense staff training. I'll be an "Assistant Residential Coordinator" for the summer- basically supervising a staff of Resident Assistants (RAs) who in turn will be supervising high school students attending a summer program. These kids are apparently all "gifted and talented," so coordinating activities might get interesting. It's a rather intense summer job (my daily schedule is 7am-11pm, and I get a total of three days off between tomorrow and August 4th) but I think it is going to be fun.

This post is boring. I realize that... I just needed to put something new out there. One of my goals for the summer, aside from not dying, is to blog more often. That's the goal, at least