One of my unofficial New Year's resolutions was to keep track of some of the media I consumed. Music, newspapers, and magazines would be ridiculously impossible to monitor. I haven't purchased any of these media in the last year, but I frequently manage to get my hands, ears, and eyes on them.

Instead, I chose to mention the books I read and films I watched in my livejournal. I didn't mention snippets of books and movies, because I wanted an account of how much I completely read and view. I left television out, because I tend to only watch in binges when I go home. Not to mention that I'd be somewhat embarrassed to reveal just how much E! True Hollywood Story I have devoured in one summer...

So since January, I have completely read the following books: Random Family (again)
Broke Diaries (again)
I Am the Central Park Jogger
The Nanny Diaries
Julius Caesar (multiple times)
Antigone (multiple times)
Running with Scissors
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Jenny and the Jaws of Life
The Bluest Eye (again)
The Secret Life of Bees
Inside Mrs. B's Classroom
Why I'm Like This
Surviving Your First Year of Teaching
Nickel and Dimed (again)
Educating Esme
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Heartburn (again)
The Toughest Indian in the World
Birds of America
I Feel A Little Jumpy Around You
The Body Eclectic
A Box of Matches
Dry
Oh! The Places You'll Go
Playground
Little Plastic Castles score
Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules No Lifeguard on Duty
From the Mixed-Up Files... (again)
Letters from a Nut
Everybody Into The Pool
Derailed,
Bee Season (again)
The Catcher in the Rye (again)
The Price of Salt
Rich Dad Poor Dad
Everything About Me Is Fake...and I'm Perfect, Bait and Switch
Female Chauvinist Pigs

I have completely watched the following films:
Hoop Dreams,
Coach Carter (don't laugh at me!),
War of the Worlds
My Cousin Vinnie
Ghost
Slums of Beverly Hills
Taxi Driver
The Crying Game
Saw
Lolita
Requiem for a Dream
Ray
Office Space (I love it!)
About A Boy
In the Realms of the Unreal
Slacker
Born Into Brothels
Girlhood
Are We There Yet?
Planes Trains and Automobiles
The Woodsman
All About My Mother
Devil's Playground
F.E.D.S.
High School High
Terms of Endearment
I [Heart] Huckabees
In America
Steel Magnolias
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Saved
Prozac Nation
The Emperors' Club
Mean Girls
Love Comes Softly
Gia
Big Fish
The Goodbye Girl
Sneakers
Open Water
The Manchurian Candidate
Napoleon Dynamite
Helter Skelter
Raising Victor Vargas
Airplane
Put The Camera On Me
Closer
American Psycho
The Squid and the Whale
Walk The Line
Derailed
Syriana
Memoirs of a Geisha
Calle 54
Drop Dead Gorgeous
The Wedding Date
SNL: Best of Jimmy Fallon
Cho Revolution
Better Luck Tomorrow

I feel that my consumption is down, because I student taught my last semester of college. I also have felt unmotivated to read this summer, because the public libraries in Corpus Christi are quite lacking. I'm excited about getting a New York Public Library card once I have completely relocated. It's truly one of the things I look forward to most.

Time to do something else. I'm out.

I have some writing I want to do, but I'm currently making sure my cousin Jessica doesn't 1) get attacked by our dog who is merely pining for more attention and is not an evil monster, or 2) injure herself on something of the heavy furniture or tile floor variety. She's pretty resilient, though. And cute.

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

-Aldous Huxley

So you want to be in Teach for America?

I did, too. After seeing a promotional video for the program my freshman year of college, I was sold. I planned to apply at the earlier deadline and rank New York as my top placement choice.

One of the reasons I wanted to be in Teach for America was that I was already teaching and loving it. Along with my English degree, I was working towards teacher certification in a special program at my university. I had all the knowledge of an English major and all the pedagogical training (and even more experience) than an Education major. "Hello, my name is Great Asset to TFA."

And I was. I planned on teaching for two years after graduating to figure out what to do next, so Teach for America's commitment was perfect for me. Of course, I could teach on my own, but being part of such a prestigious program might give me even better training. I did the initial online application, got a package telling me to prepare a five minute sample lesson, bought a suit, and knocked 'em dead on the day-long interview.

The acceptance letters and emails started coming in. I was placed in New York and ranked my regional preferences. I wanted to work somewhere in Manhattan, preferably Harlem. I was also willing to work in Brooklyn. I did not feel safe working at a low performing school in the Bronx thus, I did not rank it as a top choice. It was a last choice, only included on my preference ranking survey because it had to be. Flexibility is an issue with any organization, but I was assured by the people I talked to at TFA that my choice was important. They hadn't let me down before - I'd been placed in the New York corps, my top choice. I trusted them.

I started student teaching in the spring. I became certified to teach in Texas and delved into my life of grading, lesson planning, and collapsing at midnight amidst unfinished paperwork. I had to get fingerprints made, observations done, and kept getting more and more mail about money and materials I would need for the approaching TFA induction and institute. My goal was getting expensive and everything was uncertain. All dates were tentative. I was guaranteed a job, but not necessarily one by the beginning of the school year when I was supposed to already be living in New York. If I didn't have a source of income, how was I supposed to live in one of the most expensive cities in America? Oh, TFA had financial aid...that would give me a smidgen of a grant and then a loan. You know, a new, pricey companion to all my student loans.

I kept the faith, though. TFA draws some of America's top college graduates into its ranks each year. It also boasts connections to good graduate school programs and allows members to defer student loans. It is an overachiever's wet dream. I am an overachiever.

Then I got this email from TFA:

Welcome to New York City's Region 1! Our region, located in the Bronx, is the birthplace of famous New Yorkers, including Jennifer Lopez, Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, and Colin Powell. We are also home to more New York corps members than any other region.

That's great, but the South Bronx is known for more than shitty musicians. It is home of some of the most notoriously dangerous and failing schools in America. I realized that I was supposed to want to "change things" and channel all my optimism, education, and energy into a needy school, but I wouldn't feel safe in most schools in the Bronx. And that was that.

I got my disappointing regional placement before most TFA members, because TFA had already lined up a job interview for me. It's great that I could have had a job that early. It's not great that it wasn't where I felt comfortable working. I feel I was placed somewhere with total disregard for my regional preferences, because I was exceptionally employable. Especially among a bunch of overachievers with no experience teaching.

When I called TFA to express dissatisfaction with my placement, I was told that nothing could be done about it. The Bronx needed me and I would become comfortable there over time. I also might get comfortable filing police reports and compromising my safety and morale by returning to some razor wire surrounded school/prison each day. I wasn't going to find out.

I dropped out of Teach for America before I could be placed in a school where I didn't want to work and unsupported by an organization that would tell me a school's failings were mine. TFA (ha! more like TFU) asked if I wanted to defer my membership another year; I opted not to. No one chased after me. There were plenty of other overachievers needing jobs.

Directions to the Armorer
By: Elder Olson

All right, armorer,
Make me a sword --
Not too sharp,
A bit hard to draw,
And of cardboard, preferably.
On second thought, stick
An eraser on the handle.
Somehow I always
Clobber the wrong guy.
Make me a shield with
Easy-to-change
Insignia. I'm often
A little vague
As to which side I'm on,
What battle I'm in.
And listen, make it
A trifle flimsy,
Not too hard to pierce.
I'm not absolutely sure
I want to win.

Make the armor itself
As tough as possible,
But on a reverse
Principle: don't
Worry about its
Saving my hide;
Just fix it to give me
Some sort of protection --
Any sort of protection --
From a possible enemy
Inside.

*Yes, that is me in the picture. Not Elder Olson.

In some ways I feel like Linus.

Texas is my blanket.

Lucy, my antagonistic sister, is my fear of failure and not living my life to the fullest (think: my intellectual clock ticking).

Charlie Brown is my umm, well I'm done here.

Sometimes I wish I could skip the first and go straight to the second, or better yet, the tenth. By the tenth, people know your name and maybe even your hometown and some predilections.

The first is weird, because it's gross and invasive, and you have to wake up extra early to get there on time. It hurts and you don't really know what to expect even when your parents/friends/acquaintances have told you all about their first.

Everyone has their own first. No two firsts are alike. If at first you don't succeed, then it was probably the closest thing to a normal first. But a first is not always really a first. One has mental firsts. We imagine ourselves having a first multiple times, but then it's actualized and we call it our first. Technically, it's not. Why aren't the mental firsts as legitimate as the sensual, physical, actual, witnessable firsts?

First is a funny word. First, first, first, first. It sounds like part of a ship or a surname on a fancy doorknocker or a British dish. Or a journal entry.

This is my first.