Finally, I've had some uninterrupted time to work on my essay and applications. It's been enlightening and invigorating so far to have to articulate why I want to teach English for an academic audience. Come to think of it, I guess it's my first time writing an essay on this subject for an academic audience since ESL was not my undergraduate major. It's kind of fun because I have a lot of pent-up ideas in my head that are just tumbling out. At times I'm struck by a self-revelatory feeling of, "Wow, that is how I feel about that." or "Yeah! Well said. That's exactly what I think." I suppose that's what happens when you express yourself in writing succinctly about one of your passions for the first time. Or at least that's what happens when you are Joyce writing about one of your passions for the first time.

I said previously finally I have time to write because this week, which was supposed to be sanctified for grad stuff, has been one giant interruption. I spent hours this week going back and forth from the immigration office, changing grades, receiving countless calls from students that can barely speak English over the phone and replying to emails about the Uzbek trip. Actually, earlier today I was beginning to wonder if it just wasn't God's desire for me to work on my apps and I should just change my expectations. However, instead of coming to that conclusion I decided that life is just like that sometimes and I should still keep plugging on with my essay and applications. But to do this I had to put my foot down to the constant phone calls I was getting about grades today (this is the last day for the students to contest their grades) because I was pretty sure that anyone calling was just trying to squeeze another point out of me and I couldn't take anymore of it!! (My grades for my day students had been lower than they or I had expected, so for this reason I had checked their grades very carefully before turning them into the admin.) Maybe it was not nice of me but I just decided to not answer my phone anymore today (except for calls I need to receive-like from my boss or something) because I was getting so many calls about grades and most of the time I either had already taken care of it or had to stick to my guns about the grade. So thus ensued the case of the incredible, constantly growling cell-phone. I put my cell-phone on vibrate but soon it became the never-ending growling background music of my room. So I moved it under my pillow. BERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! GRRRRRRRRRR!!!! So then, I stuffed it between the cushions of my couch. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! BRRRRRRRRR!!! BLLLLLLLRRRRRRGRRRGGRRRR!!!! I could still hear it in my bedroom-the bottomless beckoning growl of my students to annoy me with requests I can not fulfill when I desperately need to do other things!! So finally I put the demon phone in the room furthest from my room and it's been quietly hummmmmming there ever since. The End. Good night children and remember the lesson we learned tonight in this bedtime story, "Don't annoy your English teacher when you grow up to be a big, grade-obsessed college student!" Good night! :-)