When I got home from work on Friday Dan had prepared an early Valentine's Day meal (steak, mashed potatoes and green beans). He also surprised me with an electric neck massager, because I get a lot of tension in my neck when I'm stressed. We watched new episodes of our favorite sitcoms and went to bed early, as he was driving me to the test site the next morning.
Saturday was full of test taking. It was a long, painful, and tiring event. I had thought ahead and took some excedrin before the first test and right before the second test. I also wore stick on heat pads on my back and shoulders (I am apparently an elderly woman). I think I did well, but with standardized tests you can never really know for sure. I feel relatively positive about the Writing Subsection and the Language Arts Subsection of the first test. The Math section is anybody's guess. I was more prepared because of my math class, but there were still some math areas where I wasn't confident. And surprisingly, the Reading section gave me more difficulty than I expected. They actually told us that this would happen, but it still surprised me. The problem is that there are usually two "correct" answers, but one is BETTER than the other. So I did a lot of vacillating between what I "thought" was right and what the test "thought" was right. We'll see.
The second test of the day (content area) covered Math, Science, Reading Comprehension, Social Studies, Health, Music, Art, Dance and Drama. For this test the math was actually the easiest portion. The toughest questions were about the subject matter in terms of teaching pedagogy. I haven't taken classes in teaching theory, so I had to do a bit of guess work. Normally you take this test halfway through your second year of graduate school, so there's that. Anyway, I think this one could go either way.
I finished the second test 2.5 hours early, so I was suddenly done and without a ride. I called Ryan to let him know I'd finished up and then headed to a pub across the street from the school, where I managed to drink four glasses of wine before he picked me up. We had some fun searching for Huck Finn's Donuts and then had a nice post test talk on the drive back to Chicago. When I got home Dan was waiting with a bouquet of roses and a pint of mint chocolate chip. That man, he knows me.
I spent Sunday in a daze, running about Chicago looking for a nice pair of shoes and tights for the interview. We also briefly stopped by to say hello to the babies and walked a bit in Lincoln Square. It seemed that everyone was outside, what with the weather in the low 50's. We enjoyed a bit of overdue vitamin D.
This morning was the interview. It was very different from what I was expecting. They asked me to spend the first ten minutes briefly summarizing my background. The other fifty minutes was a very intense decision making session where they asked me what I would do in various situations. I think I did well. I answered honestly and I think I made some points that they weren't expecting. I was able to cover my experiences at Shakes, Columbia College and Northwestern, which I think makes me look pretty fancy. And I also talked about my experiences with Blackbird and Open Books, which seemed to impress them a great deal.
And now... more waiting. I get the test results mid-March and they said I'll hear back about whether I have a second interview sometime in the next four weeks. All this waiting makes a girl pretty nervous.
This week will likely bring more whirlwinds. I'm trying to ride it out and to not let myself get down or stressed out. Pushing through seems to be the current motto.
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