It's all downhill now

Now that the AP Exam is over I have very few excuses left to keep me from getting my new place organized but you best believe I'm trying to come up with things to keep me occupied. The registrar at school is thrilled because I fill out her forms and return them immediately. She calls me "Speedy." It's the little things, I guess.

One of the really fun things I've been doing lately is appliance repair. Apparently the move up three flights of stairs caused problems to both of the secondhand appliances that I recently purchased so today I had a repairman TWICE and the maintenance guy from the apartment complex once. It's been fun. The maintenance guy hates Texas (he's from Florida where it's humid but there's the ocean) and the repairman thinks I should move in with my mom or find a man to buy me a new washing machine.

So, sexism is still alive and well...have no fear! I've also talked myself out of and back into (and out of and back into) grad school. I think the compromise I've come up with is to defer my start date to the fall semester so I have time to prep and plan for the plot twists that are coming this fall that are basically impossible to plan for but I'm still going to try. It's also referred to as "driving myself batshit crazy."

I also had my end of year summative today. It was interesting because I was never actually formally observed by anyone so there were only a few areas that we could discuss. What we did discuss was how I worked hard to forge those relationships with students and coworkers, alike, and how I am "the real deal." At one point, my appraiser even said, "Best hiring decision ever!" so that was a fun time. He alluded to me being able to take on more advanced classes next year and being able to continue working directly with my counterpart from this year which makes me happy.

As I was detailing some of the highlights of my summative during our Zoom this afternoon and we were laughing and talking about room clean-out (they've already been; I go on Thursday), I got a text from my work bestie who was, very clearly, distraught. It seems that the additional custodial staff hired to clean and sanitize our building went a little crazy and threw away some of the (irreplaceable) items hanging on her wall: notes from former students and stuff like that. I feel her pain. I would be devastated if that happened to me. It makes me concerned as to whether or not my box of mementos will be intact when I go up there to shut my room down on Thursday.

It's not the quantity of them, or even what they say but instead it's the intent behind them. Notes are personal. They take time. They take effort. The mean something. And each time I read them they take me back to reliving those moments with the writers and that means the world to me.

Aubs