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. Family Envy

I went to bed last night and watched Chuck in order to ignore my crippling feelings of inadequacy that I seem to get every time one of my cousins gets a full ride scholarship to a graduate school... and by "every time" I mean twice now.

Seriously though, how awesome is that!? My cousins are like Brilliantosaurus Rex! One of them, Olivia [pictured left], is studying and working for her PhD (I think) at NYU. She gets to study things in petri dishes, which she seems to thoroughly enjoy. The most recent news from the East coast family is that my other cousin, Dave [pictured left], is going to be studying and working for his masters at a school in Louisiana. They're both so focused on the things they want to study and they're both REALLY good at those things! It's no wonder the schools they've found want to pay them to be there and to help them expand their knowledge of the great wide world. Underneath my happy familial pride and joy, I'm envious as all hell! Man! Where does one find a program that pays YOU to go learn and earn a masters??? Maybe those only exist for obscure studies like the weirdo things Olivia and Dave are into (biochem and ... chasing alligators outdoors on motorcycles?)


I guess the fact of that matter is my cousins and my sister are all super brilliant at the things they do. My other cousins are all doing their own things in their own places and they're doing them WELL. Kristin [pictured below, top left], in Baltimore, is also attending a masters program and I believe she isn't paying full tuition either. I'll have to talk to her more about what she's been up to in order to give you more gossip. My culinary cousin Alan [below, bottom left] went to a two year culinary program in North Carolina and now he's working as an asst. chef in Virginia. Lastly, my sister [below, bottom right], who I am forever proud of, is working as an intern for Nickelodeon in Los Angeles. I'm so happy that she was able to break into an industry I only half-heartedly tried to get into myself in 2006 and 2006. She worked hard, applied to lots of internships, and now she's livin' the junior dream! My youngest cousin, Mo, is only twelve years old, but he amazes me already. He's athletic, kind and bright. There doesn't seem to be any challenge this kid can't defeat, and I know he'll do wonderful things now and in the future.

I just want to live up to the extraordinary expectations my family members are setting. I can't help like feeling like I don't tend to set or reach long term goals because I'm so used to inconsistency in my life. The whole never living anywhere for longer than four years, changing environments drastically, new friend groups,  new hobbies, new likes, new dislikes, and new jobs as different from one another as they come. How do I know I can achieve my goal of getting into a masters program and following through long enough to become a teacher when I was convinced I wanted to be an animator or a film director when I was 18? Or when I was trying to break into the casting industry in 2006? Or when I decided I was going to live in Japan and open a coffee shop in 2008? If there's always the expectation of an expiration date on whatever I'm doing and wherever I'm living, how can I make myself think long-term thoughts? How does anyone else do that anyway?