Lo alto y lo bajo

The thing about starting a brand new, exciting, high stress, long-awaited, much anticipated job/internship/year-long-interview is that there are bound to be a lot of highs and lows. On Monday, me and 11 other M.A.T. interns started at our elementary school/new home for the next 10 months and let me tell you, this year is going to feel like a rollercoaster. Because it already does.

Day 1: On Monday we met with our university liaison and after talking with her, the principals, and other teachers we left feeling excited, nervous, hopeful and very overwhelmed. And oh did I mention that we already wrecked the hallway floors? One of our new intern jobs was to decorate this wall in the teacher’s lounge and we were told that the sky was the limit and we could pretty much have free range of anything we could find in the workroom. We found a big, rolling cart filled with different colors of butcher paper. Perfect! Now let’s think, what’s the most efficient way to get a to be determined amount of butcher paper (on a cart with wheels) from one end of the school to another? Let’s roll it down the hall! So we were working on the wall and several custodians come in VERY, repeat VERY upset about this big mark on the floor leading from the workroom to the teacher’s lounge and were not at all shy about letting us know how angry they were. Dear interns, you did it all terribly wrong and it will take weeks to fix. P.S. welcome to the building. But let’s get one thing straight, this mark is NOT that big of a deal. Really. There are about a thousand other scuff marks all over the floors throughout the entire building, and this one is not that noticeable. But oh well, you live and you learn, right?

Day 2: We show up at 8:00 on the dot and our liaison is nowhere in sight. So we’re waiting… we text her… work on our wall display… call her… “Are you coming to the school today?” “No. (but in an, of course not, why would I, you’re not doing things with me today way)” Glad they tell us these things ahead of time. Then the principals come into the lounge and talk to us about our display. It’s too much, we need to tone it down. So we make it smaller. Principals come in again. Turns out by tone it down they really meant re-do the entire thing. So we redo it and it looks good. Principals come in again. Wow, that looks great! But add this. Apparently, despite the sky being the limit there is a very specific and somewhat predetermined way of doing things. Then, when we were in the library, we helped move books from one part of the building to another. But don’t worry, we were reminded on several occasions that we should just leave the carts there and someone else would take them because they didn’t want us rolling anything on the floors. Word spreads fast ‘round these parts. We also got caught in the middle of a supply closet battle and were pretty much told we weren’t nearly fast enough at doing things. Dear interns, are y’all capable of doing anything right? Needless to day I went home feeling quite defeated. Good thing we're all in this together.

Day 3: Huge and somewhat overwhelming district meeting. But despite all the formalities and being told to wear our very best professional dress, it was pretty much just a big raffle. Not quite what I expected, but ok. Then we meet back at our school and the principals and the librarian thanked us interns and told the staff about all the work we'd done. This is our first day with the entire staff. We pretty much shadow our mentor teacher through all these group meetings but most of us haven’t gotten a chance to really even talk to our mentor teachers. Hi, I’m Kaitlyn, your new awkward Siamese twin! But these meetings were much more normal, or at least what I was expecting. Then I helped my teacher in her room and we talked about what the school day schedule looks like and procedures and all that. I’m starting to feel a lot more comfortable about this whole first grade thing. And then while we were cutting out laminating stuff we got a chance to just talk in general. So I started to just feel a lot more comfortable with her and less like an awkward Siamese twin. Then we were leaving and I realized I forgot something in the library so we said goodbye and I went to get it. But when I was heading out she was waiting for me by the door and we chatted a bit as we walked out to our cars. She could have left. But she waited for me. So she must actually like me? Dear interns, WELCOME to the building! P.S. We like you :)

This is going to be quite a year! ¡Vamos!