Rachel K. Crunch

It's crunch time.

Lately I've been feeling overwhelmed with everything that I need to finish and underwhelmed with how I've been living my life lately.

I've been bouncing around the country every two weeks for awhile now. Spending time in Los Angeles visiting my friend Tristyn and my sister, Laura with Kevin was a blast! We saw Nickelodeon studios, where my sister just finished an intern position. Then, last week I joined my family in Boston for the Emerson College graduation ceremony and saw my sister and all of her friends in the beautiful sunshine.  On June first I'm heading south to San Francisco to hang out with fellow former-JETs Amy and Natanya in the foggy city! I'm hoping to be a little bit more relaxed then than I am now since the GRE will be over by that time and I'll be studying for tests that are less pointless.

So right now I'm in the middle of my most stressful week. On Monday I flew back on a disgustingly early flight from Boston to Seattle and immediately felt under the weather. The next day I had my 3 hour teaching interview at UCDS, where I taught a quickie lesson on algebraic concepts (fancier sounding than it was in actuality) and got to know some of the 4th and 5th graders and teachers in the block. UCDS is an amazing school right off the bat. It's beautiful, well-lit, well-designed, and it looks like the Disneyland of elementary schools. It's a stark contrast to the peeling paint on the walls of the public school I volunteer at. Those kids need pencils, these kids have macbooks and smart boards (the Ferrari of chalkboards). I'm not sure how the interview went, but I can say for sure that I really liked working with the teachers (Diane, Meg and another person whose name I've forgotten). The kids were fantastic and I hope that they ask me to join their staff! I'll hear back on the first week of June for better or for worse.

Other than that, it's crunch time for the GRE. I'm trying to cram all those principles of triangles, geometry, binomials, probability, vocabulary, grammar, and everything else into my brain. It's not fitting, and I'm pretty certain that I won't do spectacularly on the test. However, I have no plans in the near future to submit a GRE score to anyone, so I guess at this point I should just keep swimming and hope for the best.

After the GRE is over and done with, my life will be all about iD Tech Camps and preparing for the training seminar in San Francisco, which by the way is the main reason I'm going down there in the first place.

It's amazing how being busy with all the things you don't want to do makes you realize all the things you'd rather be doing. I miss going climbing and working out and drawing and studying Japanese and getting up to the market more than once every two weeks. At least I'm squeezing in lots of mad men watching while I take practice exams. Surely that's conducive to learning.

Stay tuned for the next entry:

Standardized Victory

or

You can't spell Egregious without "GRE"

Rachel K. Goal-setting

To make this entry less ridiculous, I've decided to paste an e-mail I wrote to my family about the progress I've been making in the past few weeks with regards to teaching and whatnot.

Herro family,

SO there have been some developments in the misadventures of your daughter/granddaughter/niece/nephew/surrogate/shoe elf.

Firstly, I have been trying to get my grad school/life plan/job applications all organized and together. Right now they exist in a huge time line on the dining room wall. I think it compliments the room, personally.

So here are the goals... this is easier to send in an email than to explain anyway.

Jobs etc:

I have a phone interview with UCDS on April 28th. It's a private elementary school that Mo used to attend and they hire resident teachers, who are basically assistant teachers, every year. I hope to be one of them! The job would offer me about $30k as a salary with some compensation for health benefits. It would start right after summer camp and go up until next summer, so it would be the full on elementary classroom experience. I hope they hire me because I would like to have a full time job again someday.

 Volunteer Work:

As of tomorrow, I am starting at BFD Elementary School as a volunteer for two fifth grade classrooms helping out with math work. I'll be there from 9am until 12:30pm every week day from now until the end of school in early June. They seem really great there and I know I will learn a lot about how to become a teacher if I get to work with REAL ones and with other volunteers and student teachers. It's a public school, so it's good to see the differences between those and the private school that I applied to work for next year. I love the diversity at this school so far -- it's 60% minority, making it 160% less Japanese than my last school (or some non-apocryphal %). I'll let you know how that goes when I start tomorrow!

Grad School:

So far I haven't really applied to any graduate schools. Although, I did go to a q&a a session about the masters in teaching program that they have at UW. The program is two years long: the first year is courses and classroom experience and the second year is student teaching with minimal campus time to check in with mentors and supervisors. I would come out of this program with a residency certification (allowing me to teach in WA state) and I would attain my masters after the second year of student teaching. So, that would be ideal.
The only challenge to that program (the MIT) is that I need the following to be eligible:

• 60 hours or more of classroom observation time (which is why I am doing the volunteer work). 
• 6 prerequisite courses (which I would have to complete as a non-matriculated student, online or at night at community colleges before August 2011) 
• The regular letters of recommendation, goal statement, resume, etc. for the application itself. They're allowing me to transfer my application from this year to next year for no extra cost (Huzzah!) 
• taking and passing two state certification exams; the West-E and the West-B, which are for elementary school certification.
• No GRE. God is laughing at me.

So the challenges for this program are mostly going to come down to me figuring out how to complete that many prerequisite courses within the next year! It sounds expensive and if I get the UCDS job, I'm not sure I would be up to the challenge since I would already have a full time job teaching. Though, it's something to think about and although the application for this job is due Sept 17, 2010, they allow you the rest of the year to find out if you got into the MIT program and to complete your prereq. studies between then and 2011, which is somewhat helpful.


As for other grad schools, I have a few in mind that I am going to apply for during the summertime. They have some teacher certification courses (no masters) and masters programs as well. If don't get the job with UCDS, I will look into ways to get some kind of certification while taking courses for the MIT program at UW. The downside is that I would likely have to get a part time job somewhere else to keep up with rent and study costs and food... things like that.

The Rest

Aside from all this craziness, I am trying to study for the GRE, which I will have on May 26th -- ready or not. I don't feel overly confident, but I also just want to get it over with so I can study for other things. I also need to eventually study for the WEST-E and WEST-B exams, although those will be a lot easier and less ridiculous.


Kevin and I have decided to visit Laura and Tristyn in LA at the end of the month to quasi celebrate our half-anniversary. Also, it's a good excuse to get out of Seattle for a while! Then I'll be traveling to San Francisco at the very beginning of June to visit Natanya and Amy, who live there, and to go to my iD Tech camp training seminar at UC Berkeley. I'm looking forward to that since I've never really gotten to explore San Francisco! And let us not forget, I will be spending a brief few days in Boston for Laura's graduation from Emerson. Bring on the Dunkin' Donuts and the funny accents!


I have a lot of work to do when it comes to the camp this summer. I haven't even opened my handbook, and I know I have a lot to read as far as being the asst. director goes. It's hard to make that a priority when there is so much else going on, but it's always in the back of my mind. That and refreshing myself on all the programs I might have to teach if the camp doesn't always have 60+ kids and I have to relegate myself to being an actual instructor again (oh no!) Oh well, the thought of a decent salary and free breakfast, lunch and dinner compensate my worries for now.


Kumon tutoring continues and remains totally awesome.

This completes my life outline to date.

Questions or comments are welcomed and can be directed to diplobrat@gmail.com to our Life Coordinator, Rachel Sreebny.

Best Wishes,

Rachel's Brain & Friends

Rachel K Meals on Wheels

I woke up at a decent hour this morning and proceeded to shower and then [gasp] study for the GRE!

Not only that, but I managed to REGISTER for the GRE, which was an easy process, but will be a grueling commute. Why can't they have a test center that is bus accessible? The closest bus stop to the center is still about a mile away so I'll have to walk after taking two buses, or rent a car from Zipcar. I'll figure it out; I'm sure it'll be the least of my worries that day, anyhow.

General financial panic is setting in as my Japan money still hasn't arrived and I'm not sure if the checking account correction I made and sent back to Tokyo ever made it. I trust in Japanese bureaucracy almost entirely, but when it comes to the postal service, I'm never sure. I just need those thousands of dollars so I can do things like buy real bed-side tables, get a coffee table, and go to the dentist. I still have enough in my savings account to last me more than the next few months of unemployment, but I want my Japanese pension refund already! I want it! Gimme!

Now begins the ides of March! Today after studying for a solid three hours (aided with TV in the background, coffee, tea, lunch, a snuggie-cape that I made complete with belt, and colour coded notes), I'm off to Kumon for tutoring! Then I will scurry off to meet Kevin at Chipotle for our weekly tradition; burrito Monday. It makes Mondays bearable and delicious.

The weekend was relaxing and exhausting. Kevin and I visited my old Starbucks to pick up my last batch of tips and to say hi to the weekend girls (Hilary, Ashley, Ally etc) who I miss now that I don't work there. Kevin said it was cute to see me with all the tittering girliness of the store -- and I was happy to have him see that I had friends outside of Megan and Sarah. Friends who I miss! We spoke to Hilary about joining us for rock climbing on Sunday and went off to the Mobile Food Festival near Safeco Field.

The food festival should have been cooler, probably. There were too many people, the lines were too long and there wasn't enough seating or shelter. The temperatures ranged between a chilly, sunny day and a blustery cold one. Kevin and I trouped through three lines total; pizza, hamburgers and finally hot dogs (after meeting up with Sarah and Ian from Fremont). The food was good, but in the end it was just too cold and crowded.

Kevin and I later played board games at his friend Greg's house and then we went home early for rock climbing with Hilary on Sunday! We sprinted for the bus to Ballard, which we then had to wait for, and met Hilary at Stone Gardens around noon.

We climbed and climbed! Kevin had gone climbing the previous day, but went again with me because he is a trouper and loves climbing fake rocks. Hilary turned out to be a BEAST. She did most of the bouldering routines with ease and grace and went to work out in the gym after Kevin and I were ready for naps and death. I wore myself out, but I feel like I'm making a little progress considering the dearth of times I have tried it. I'm able to do routines more quickly, although I still can't finish a lot of them. I need more upper arm strength and then I will be able to do things more easily, I think. In any case it's nice to have an 'athletic activity' that I do once in awhile. How unlike me!

After grabbing food at Zak's burger place on NW Market Street, we grabbed a bus downtown and tried to catch another bus to a game store in upper Queen Anne so Kevin could find this game called 'agricola' that he wanted. I was looking for 'Mexican Train' anyway, so I decided to join him. We sprinted for another bus, catching it narrowly and with awesomeness, and went to the game store. The store was really decked out in all sorts of games, but they did not have the ones we were looking for. A bit disappointed, we returned to my condo to nap until hunger struck again.

Kevin had the idea to take us out for pasta at The Old Spaghetti Factory, where we got to sit in the fake trolley table area and dine on delicious spaghetti and something called a 'strawberry citrus fizz', which was mostly high fructose corn syrup in pretty colors.

I came home on Sunday night to hang out with Megan and we watched the newest episode of America's Next Top Model. I'm not sure if that show is getting stupider or I'm just getting older, but it's probably some combination. O Tyra, why are you so crazy?