In which the world falls apart and my fish and chips are late.

Yesterday I managed to accomplish a rare feat of unintelligence, even for me. I left home having forgot to bring my lunch. That alone is not so unusual. This happens to me about once a week. Usually I notice before I get to the highway, and I come racing back to my house, ushering forth a flurry of expletives as I crash through the front door, thunder into the kitchen, and grab my lunch from the kitchen table. But yesterday was different, because after turning around and racing back home, I walked into the kitchen, drank a glass of water, petted the cat, and then went outside and got back into my car, having forgotten my lunch again. By the time I remembered, I was five minutes late and still two miles away from work. There was no chance of going back for that lunch.

When I forget to bring lunch to the school that I work at, it's more of a hassle than a serious problem. The school is very close to a mall, and all the chain restaurants that exist in symbiosis with the mall. There's a Red Robin and McDonalds and a Friendly's. There's also a small pizza shop and fish and chips store, which is either locally owned or corporately modeled to look locally owned- plastic booth seating, the menu done up in those little plastic letters on the black background, etc. That's where I went on my lunch break yesterday, where I ordered some fish and chips.

As I waited for my food, I received a text message from one of my roommates, hereafter referred to as R1 (for roommate one) that said:

"There is a real estate agent here telling me that there is a closing on the house TOMORROW and we'll have new landlords. WHAT THE FUCK"

Now, back up two years.

Essentially, the house has been on the market since we moved in almost exactly two years ago. It hasn't sold because it is full of asbestos and lead paint and the outlets aren't grounded. It would cost many thousands of dollars to turn into a safe living space. Because nobody can afford to pay thousands of dollars to do so, we have lived here happily, playing less than what we would usually pay in a comparably convenient place for the privilege of exposing ourselves to carcinogens and electrocution. Kids about to graduate college- this is what adulthood actually looks like.

Every now and then, I would check in with my landlord about the state of the sale. I would encounter him in one of the rare moments when he was actually doing something he had said he would do, like when he came to cut the grass once a year, or that one time he shoveled our driveway. I would say, "So, how's the real estate market?" and he would chuckle and say something like, "Bad as usual!" Once in a while an unannounced Realtor and a gaggle of enthusiastic potential buyers would track their muddy shoes over our living room rug and let the cat out when they forgot to close the back door. Once in a while inspectors would come over, also unannounced, and awkwardly try to measure walls and take paint samples while we were still occupying the beds laying against those walls. We would become outraged. Then we would sigh, knock back some brewskies, and agree with each other that, "It's not bad for downtown, really."

But there was R1's text message. The house had been sold. Realtors had come over thinking that we were expecting them, shocked that our absentee landlord hadn't notified us of the sale. This began approximately 75 phone calls I would make to my landlord's various phones from different numbers over the course of the next 24 hours. Not only is he avoiding me, I'm starting to suspect that he has actually left the country.

So that happened. Then, while I'm on the phone trying to reach my landlord who I hope was cowering in a corner, shaking at the sound of my voice on his machine, I notice on my Device that I've received a new e-mail from Toronto. I open it to find that the University can't offer me admission officially until I get my college to send them a letter saying that I graduated in good academic standing. My college didn't have grades, which was one of the best things about it, but for some reason it took the University this long to figure out that they couldn't tell from my stellar recommendations and the evaluations on my transcript that I had actually graduated correctly. This meant a call to my college's registrar's office, a notoriously scary place from which people sometimes don't emerge for weeks at a time. They're good at losing your paperwork, especially the important paperwork, and suddenly forgetting not only which classes you registered for, but that you're a student at all. I crossed my fingers as I dialed, wondering where my fish and chips were.

"Hi," I said, "I'm and alum and I need to prove to my graduate school that I finished College in good academic standing."

"We don't do that," was the response, "We don't do GPA equivalencies."

"OK," I said, "I don't think that's what I need..."

"Well we don't do that."

"But surely," I said, "Surely students from this college go to graduate school?" I know some who have.

"You know what, you need to call Becca Barker*."

When I heard that name I knew it was OK. Becca Barker is who everyone gets sent to when nobody in the Registrar's office knows what to do with them, and somehow she always knows the answer. Sure enough, after a phone call to her, she had the entire letter drafted and in the mail by the time I had received my lunch. I had to eat it on the go- the conversations and e-mails and ordering had taken up my entire lunch break. It was OK.

Today I remembered my lunch, but I have no idea who my landlord is. It's not bad for downtown, though.

*obviously fake name

The fat envelope

When I was applying for college, admissions counselors, fellow applicants, parents, and teachers often made jokes about "the fat envelope." I'm not sure if this is already an obsolete reference. I imagine that rising postal costs, the strain the recession has put on even wealthy schools, and the ever growing access to the Internet in this country may have already transformed those huge orientation packets into one "Congratulations! Please click on the following hyperlink to accept your offer of admission," e-mail. In any case, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to expect as a potential graduate student. Do you get giant admissions packets? Do you get e-mails? Do you get anything???

Two weeks ago I received an e-mail that I ignored for two days. The e-mail was from the department at the school that I hope to study at in Toronto. The sender was one of the admissions counselors, a name that was completely unrecognizable and completely ordinary to me, like "Sally Jones" or something similar. The "subject" field looked something like this- "RARU* would like to invite you to..." and then because I was reading it on my Device,** the rest of the subject disappeared. I've been receiving periodic e-mails that start like this, usually just announcements about fun and interesting events on a campus eight hours away from my home. Two days after receiving this e-mail I decided to finally open it, as depressed as it might make me about not living in Canada yet.

"Congratulations!" The e-mail said, "RARU is excited to offer you admission into the XYZ M.ed. Program for Fall of 2012. THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL OFFER OF ADMISSION. This means that you have been recommended for admission by..."

And it went on, describing how I've been recommended by the admissions committee of the institute within the university that I applied to, that the graduate school admissions committee of the entire university still has to approve my admission, but that this almost always happens and I should go to Toronto in a week to check out the program. There was going to be an open house, wine and cheese in the library, and a chance to meet with fellow applicants. Also it was on a Tuesday in the middle of a workweek, directed at applicants who already work in education, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. But I decided to go anyway- this took place last week.

I called in sick for work for two days, which was both easier and more difficult than I had anticipated. Every night before I go to bed I threaten to call in sick to work the next day. The next day, no matter what, I always go to work. I'm just afraid of my principal. I'm afraid she's going to show up at my house later and judge me not sick enough and punish me somehow. I was covered in open poison ivy sores on more than 70% of my body this fall, wrapped up almost completely in gauze, and I still tried to go to work, just because I was afraid of my principal punishing me for not being sick enough. So calling in sick to work when I clearly was not only not sick, but IN ANOTHER FUCKING COUNTRY, was incredibly bold of me.

"I can't come to work," I said, "I'm throwing up a lot."
"OK," said the principal. It was 6:30 in the morning.
"I mean I'm really sick," I said, "Also I have a fever."
"OK," she said and hung up. We repeated the same ritual the next day. I am so afraid of that woman.

Anyway, after going to this orientation, which clearly convinced me that I'd like to do this program, and also that it has serious organization failures and I will never ever get a job ever for the rest of my life, I went back home. I can't begin the process of moving to Canada until I have an official offer of admission. So every day I've been scanning the mailbox as I walk to my front porch. Does it look like it's bulging a lot today? Is there a giant envelope refusing to allow the top of the box to close? Today I pulled the mail out and found a tiny little envelope from the institute housing the program that I applied for.

I ran to the kitchen table, dropped the rest of the mail into a pile, and ripped into the envelope. It contained two rejection letters.

Not one. Two.

"I didn't get into Canada!" I said to my roommate, who was watching a musical episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.

"Weird," he said, "Wait, didn't you get into that program already?"

This is when I began to anticipate every single conversation I would have for the rest of my life.

"I thought you went to Canada"
"Well I thought I got into this program and then I didn't."
"Weird. They can do that?"
"Well..." And so it would continue.

But then I looked again. It turns out I was rejected from two programs. Two programs I had not even really applied for. On the application, I was asked which program I was applying for. Then I was asked to choose two other programs I might be interested in. I took the ones with the longest titles. I literally put no thought into my other two choices. And, accordingly, I had been denied admission to both.

But not to the third program. Meaning the first program. Meaning the program I actually applied for. That was not in that envelope. So that must mean that I did get in, and that information will be enclosed in a forthcoming envelope.

THAT IS TO SAY, BE SURE YOU READ THE ENTIRE LETTER BEFORE READJUSTING YOUR LIFE PLANS.

So far, the whole process strikes me as a bit sadistic.




*OBVIOUSLY FAKE INITIALS HERE

*"Device" refers to my Galaxy Android tablet computer. I call it my Device because I can never remember what the damn thing is called or even what kind of technology it is. It's not a computer. It's not an iPad. It's not an mp3 player. It's not a freaking CD player. WHAT THE HELL IS IT????

But it's not supposed to work like that!

The other day at work, I was eating my lunch in the faculty lounge where I overheard a story between two teachers. One teacher was discussing a friend of hers at the high school, who had a student join her homeroom who had a very obvious, severe weight problem. The girl was described by the teacher telling the story as weighing over 400 pounds. Apparently it was very difficult for her to get around the school, and her new homeroom teacher was horrified. The homeroom teacher asked her if she was getting any medical treatment for her problem, and the student said that there was a residential program at a local hospital she was trying to get into, but that her insurance wouldn't cover it. The homeroom teacher then called the office of one of their US senators, and after a few phone calls and telling this very sad and compelling story to several staffers, the senator arranged for the girl to begin treatment at the hospital.

My two colleagues where understandably in awe of the heroism of their friend at the high school. I was also impressed. There are so many people dealing with so many serious health issues in this country that it was incredible that a senator would respond to the individual needs of one high school student. Undeniably, there is a significant chance that this girl's life will be better now.

But wait! There's more.

Here are the things that did not sit well with me about this story:

1. The teacher felt that she was able to make a comment about the health of her student because in our culture it is considered acceptable to look at someone's body and judge whether or not they are too fat. Especially if that person is a girl. Now, 400 pounds is quite large for anybody, regardless of their age, and I can imagine that that person may look to be very uncomfortable and ill. But there are people who "look" sick all over the place. If a teacher had a student who seemed especially prone to asthma attacks, or seemed to be having trouble regulating his diabetes, or regularly came to school looking exhausted and uninterested in anything, the teacher might feel it is her place to ask if they were OK. But would the answer, "My insurance won't pay for the inhaler that actually works for me," or "My insurance only covers one type of antidepressant" set in motion a chain of events resulting in the interference of a senator? Probably not. It is because fat shaming is so acceptable in this culture, because it is so normal to be worried about somebody else's size and the health associated with that size, that that kind of emergency intervention was possible.

2. When I heard this story, I thought to myself, "But it's not supposed to work like that!" In a country with even basic national healthcare, not only would insurance cover programs to help treat the symptoms of obesity in teenagers, that particular teenager would have been receiving adequate health services before she reached the point where her teacher felt compelled to ask a senator to interfere in her medical treatments. What the teacher did was heroic- but it shouldn't be necessary, not in one of the most industrialized nations in the world, not when we have no real excuse for not being able to insure adequately the vast majority of our people.

3. All over the country, there are people struggling with health conditions that are not as immediately visible as being very overweight. There are people with invisible illnesses like lyme, ehler-dahns syndrome, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MS, cancer, HIV/AIDS, and various other ailments. Many of those people also have difficulty having their treatment covered by insurance. Those people also go to school, sit in class, struggle with getting around the building, and may struggle with quality of life issues. Even when they try to ask for help from teachers, for instance, they may not receive the same intervention, because their conditions don't look as disturbing to that teacher. I worry that by thinking of this story as having a happy ending we can easily forget that although this one person is now receiving healthcare, there are countless others who never will.

The teacher in this story was doing everything she should have done, and more. I really do applaud her efforts to help her student, and I hope that the student benefits from the hospital program. But I just can't help but feel that rather than being a feel-good story about a teacher who is so dedicated to her students, this story is just another example of how the US healthcare system is so dangerously inadequate.

Hello world!

Hello world!

Once again I seem to be committing the act of starting a blog. This time I'm hoping I last longer than three posts. I'm going to introduce myself briefly and then continue on to something more interesting:

I am a 24 year old female-identified person living in Western New England. I've been in a relationship for the past six months that is so far going fabulously. During the day I work as a paraprofessional in an autism support classroom in a neighboring town. You'll hear a lot about my work on this blog, but I'm going to be really careful about identifying characteristics for my privacy and the privacy of my students. When I'm not at work, I also tutor one of my students in his home, and I do respite work for several other local families who have children with autism. There are things I love about my work and things that I really hate. I definitely have a complicated and at times conflicted relationship to it. All of this will become clear as I post more and more.

Additionally, I am a bike riding enthusiast. I live in a particularly bike friendly area and have been privileged by growing up in a similar area, with a mother who really pushed me to learn how to ride a bike even though it was difficult for me. I commute to work whenever possible and throughout much of the summer I don't use my car at all. I started bike riding for financial reasons, but it turned into an obsession- bike riding makes me feel healthier, more confident in myself, and gives me some time to myself that is so hard for me to find otherwise. Many of my ideas about everything, especially education come first from bike riding, hence the title of this blog.

Another interesting fact about my life right now is that I've just been accepted into a school in Toronto to earn a Masters of Education. Part of the reason I decided to begin keeping a blog was so that friends from home would be able to stay abreast of my life in a new place. I have also found the emigration process really scary and frustrating so far, so I figured it'd be good to have a place on the internet where other future ex-pats can go to see how the process works. I also thought that having something concrete like that to blog about would get me used to blogging and writing regularly again. That is kind of the point of this project so far- I need something to get me to start writing again.

I don't pretend to have the answers to everything, but I'm hoping to ask lots of questions and address them through this blog. I welcome lots of feedback from everyone. I also appreciate you taking the time to help me sort through my thoughts. One of my goals in this blog is to learn how to write succinctly without many extra words. So with that, I think I'll move onto the next post. Thanks for coming along with me!