Hi all,
Where do I even begin to describe the last few days. It has been the most exciting, scary, disappointing, weird, and overall exhausting four days I’ve had in a while. As many of you know, I enjoy telling stories so I’m sorry if you’re a “get to the point” person because you’ll lose the full narrative if I cut it short. Remember Jesus taught in parables and even if my story isn’t much of a parable, I still believe in the power of personal stories so here we go…
Monday
I got in to Seattle and it was lovely. No rain, just sunshine, not even very cold. I checked in to my FABULOUS (and terribly expensive) hotel and decided to go check in for the conference. The ladies in the “office” explained that we have little “mailboxes” (a file folder in a box) with our name on it that the school directors can leave messages for us. I checked mine and I had four messages already.
I got back to my room to peruse the informational packet and the messages I got. The four messages were all offers of interviews, two with schools in Turkey, one with a school in Dubai and one with a school in Poland. Hmm…
Anyway, I start looking through the list of schools who were coming and I noticed something…of the 14 schools I wanted to interview with, only four were actually coming. Yikes. I sort of panicked but not enough to be in full freak out mode. Then I started looking at the vacancy list. Now I really started to panic. The elementary openings dramatically shrank. Supposedly the final list was going to be given out Monday night at the orientation session, but it was not looking good at all. I tried to get my mind off the desolate situation by walking downtown to find some munchies.
Now you have to understand, I grew up in San Diego. I’ve been to Los Angeles and San Francisco. I’ve been to Rome and Hong Kong and the Philippines. I thought I had seen it all. But I had never been to Seattle. As I was walking down the street with my “I know where I’m going so don’t bug me” face, a man with purple hair and a black trenchcoat starts prancing after me yelling in a sing-song way, “Green scarf lady! Green scarf lady!” I merged immediately with a larger group, hid my scarf as best I could and managed to escape whatever the “green scarf lady” guy wanted. I passed 10 street musicians with varying levels of talent (kazoo man had tough competition with the four string quartet) and at least 12 homeless people wanting handouts or screaming at anyone who came near them. I had lunch at Pike’s Peak Market and wandered back to my hotel still fairly depressed.
That night at the orientation session they handed out the final vacancy list. Now panic hit full-swing. I had four interview options. Only four. No new interview invites from directors either. I came back to my hotel room and cried and cried. It was awful. I kept reading through Psalm 42 and 43 and crying out to God to intervene, to do something big. I had spent all this money to come, had put myself out there and now there were hardly any jobs to be had. I slept well that night mostly due to exhaustion and the bazillion thread cotton sheets that I paid way too much for. .
Tuesday
It’s hard to explain how competitive the interview sign-up session is. They have tables set up around the edges of two rooms and you wait in line to hopefully get an interview with a director. I was really nervous. I’ve never been that nervous in my life. I started lining up 35 minutes before they opened the doors and I was still 10th in line. As soon as the doors opened I started looking for the schools I wanted to interview with. Germany…not there. Spain…not there. Greece…no openings. Switzerland…director was late. It was only 3 minutes in and I literally had no options left. In desperation, I signed up an interview with the school from Poland which I hadn’t researched at all. I also got an interview with a school in Norway that had a surprise elementary opening. I finally got in line when Switzerland’s director showed up but I was the 15th person to line up and by the time I got there, she had no more interview times and quite obviously showed no interest in me. I had 2 ½ hours to set up interviews and here I was done in less than 15 minutes. I briefly considered just signing up to interview with random people, but every time I would walk toward the table, it was literally like hitting a glass wall. I couldn’t walk past. I just couldn’t.
I went back to my hotel room not really knowing what to do for the next three hours before my first interview. I researched the two schools as much as I could and got excited about them. They were small schools, but high quality and had a lot of things going for them.
I went to my first interview with Linda from Norway. She looked like Judi Dench, motherly, slightly disheveled and was very calm and reassuring. The interview went well and Norway had LOTS of perks: high salary, good benefits, beautiful town, wonderful school, etc. From there I went to my interview with Poland. The director had showed lots of interest and was excited to talk with me. Turns out, he had started several initiatives that my school is in the midst of as well so he was surprised by my experience. I spent the rest of the afternoon going to school presentations including Norway’s and Poland’s and I met several people who I was basically competing with for the same jobs.
That night was the social so I got all dressed up and went downstairs where I met several other candidates who were fun and friendly (including one teacher from Phoenix who lives in Aventura Apartments in Avondale! How random is that!). Anyway, besides the killer cheese platters (you literally couldn’t get any appetizers without accidentally throwing them across the room. I was hit by flying olives, pickles, crackers and cheese and threw a few things myself because the tongs were so faulty). I spent most of the time chatting with four ladies who were really funny but after an hour we decided it was time to “work the room”…and we all ended up within 30 seconds back at the cheese patter. All the directors were in their own little world and weren’t really into talking business. I made an attempt to talk to Linda from Norway, but within 20 seconds I basically knew I didn’t have the job. She gave lots of reassurances that I would probably get a job, but very obviously wanted to move on and talk to other people. The director from Poland who had been so interested completely ignored me.
I gave away my drink ticket (I felt so dumb, I thought it was for a door prize at first and then when I asked for Smirnoff Ice the bartender said, “Oh we’re not serving hard alcohol” and I felt like a drunk) and made my way back to my room and just sat there. My hope was dangling by a very thin thread that was fraying in all directions. Once again I went to bed emotionally exhausted from the highs and the lows of the day.
Wednesday
I woke up knowing that today I was going to find out one way or another if I had a job or not. I tried to take it easy, going to the gym, leisurely taking a shower and finally going down to my mailbox. Sure enough there were two notes for me. I took them and like a junior higher made my way to the bathroom and opened them up. As I had guessed, they were both rejection letters. “Nice to meet you…not a match with our school…good luck…” and that was it. My fair was over.
It was my worst fear coming true. I had gone all this way in faith, trusting that even though things didn’t look good at all that God would show up and do something. I spent the next several hours trying to work out in my head what I was feeling, trying to keep my negative emotions in check and figure out what I was supposed to do next. As I was riding in the elevator to check my mailbox, I ran into one of the ladies from the night before, Amy. Turns out that all four ladies I talked to got job offers. Then came that awkward moment when she turned to me and said, “So how ‘bout you?” She was so excited and I didn’t want to ruin her moment so I said something lame about neither interview working out. I could see that she felt bad, but I didn’t want her to be apologizing for being excited so I asked her about her new school and what she was looking forward to.
Later that afternoon, I spoke with Mary Harding, the assistant director for the agency I’m registered with and she gave me lots of good advice on what to do next and said I should keep in touch with her since invariably someone backs out at the last minute and leaves schools in a bind.
A few hours later I came back to the candidates lounge to use the computer to check in for my flight and did some fabulous eavesdropping (so bad, I know, but hey, if you’re going to be speaking that loudly…). In the center of the room, was the guy who had gotten offered 3 elementary positions, including the Norway one I really wanted. It was so difficult to listen to him. Granted, he was very confident and charismatic the kind of person you automatically gravitate toward, but he was arrogant and annoying. He actually asked a director from Dubai (a VERY conservative Middle Eastern country) if he was able to bring girls back to his school apartment to have sex or if that wasn’t allowed. Can you imagine asking that in an interview?!?! Not only that, he kept talking about how nice “Cathy, the Norway director was”. I wanted to scream, “Her name isn’t Cathy, you idiot! It’s Linda!!!”
Needless to say, it was a lesson in self-control, but also dealing with the seeming unfairness in life. I had to combat my own arrogance when faced with his. You know what it sounds like…”I’m so much nicer than him, I would have been so much better for that job, I…I…I”. But it’s not about me, is it?
Thursday
Nothing too exciting. I spent $14.00 on French pastries, packed up and left for the airport. In yet another awkward social situation of my life, I was sitting at the airport waiting for four hours for my flight and just happened to sit behind two of the ladies who ran the fair. I don’t know if they recognized me or not but they did not talk with me which was good, because I didn’t really want to talk about the fair.
Now I’m trying to sort through what happened and what I’ve learned from it all. My mom has been a great sounding board as far as giving advice, but also offering perspective as well. She’s also very discerning. She claims she’s not a prophet, but here’s the crazy thing…Tuesday night, she walked into the living room, looked at my dad and said, “Someone just took Rachel’s job. I think someone just took Rachel’s job, but they’ll back out.” My mom was kind of freaked out because she didn't know where it came from. Whether it was my mom being a protective parent and hoping for the best or if it truly was my mom hearing God’s voice (due to her track record, I’m leaning toward the latter one), I know Seattle has meaning.
So here’s my thoughts so far:
- I went for it. Most people never even try for the dream God has given them. Usually they stay put and complain about how much they dislike where they are. But I went for it and I’m still going for it. I’m not giving up and I’m not going to get stuck in a pity party for myself although it is very tempting.
- I should have been more prepared for the attack. I have never been so spiritually attacked since I pledged money toward the Seize the Moment campaign. My emotions were all over the place. At times, my shield of faith was just barely there, made of soggy cardboard. It was evident but not really effective.
- I know I was supposed to go to Seattle. I don’t know why. I don’t know what will come from it, if one of the jobs I interviewed with will come back open or if it’s just a lesson in obedience for me. Even though it seems like I just wasted a month’s worth of rent, I know God had me at this place and time for a reason, if only to learn to trust Him when it makes no sense.
