I was just thinking about how different my life is than how I thought it would have turned out one year ago. Last May, I had just graduated with my Bachelor's, Jacob was done with sitting-in-a-classroom schooling and was preparing to student teach, and we were both working the same jobs we had been working since before we were married.
We were looking into graduate schools, trying to decide where we could both go, and if we could both go. Although our program choices had changed since the previous year, we were both sure that we would both be applying shortly for Fall 2013 enrollment. I signed up to take the GRE and enrolled in an online class to meet a requirement for admissions.
At the end of summer, we got our first surprise. Jacob's choice of grad program, education, would not accept applicants who did not have a Level 3 teaching license, i.e. the license you get after teaching professionally for three years. Sooooo, Jacob can't go to grad school until he gets a job. Okay, we can deal with that.
Second surprise: I felt terrible about applying for grad school. By September, I had taken the GRE, was almost halfway done with my online class, and had printed out the requirements to apply to my dream program: Master's of Social Work at BYU. And I couldn't get anything done on it. There was so much doubt about how in the world Jacob was going to get three years of teaching done in a very specialized program with few job openings if we set ourselves up for going to one place. My immobilization turned into complete disinterest and finally we agreed that I would skip applying for yet another year.
Third surprise: Jacob gets a job. Not only did Jacob get a job, but he got a full time job in his field TWO DAYS after he finished student teaching. They basically head hunted him for it, and within a month's time, we had gone from not knowing what the crap was going to happen to with our futures to having one pretty much handed to us. The only catch was that he had to do such a bang-up job and get so many students interested in taking German that they wouldn't cut the program come spring. Okay, some direction. Finally.
Fourth surprise: We get pregnant. The decision to try to get pregnant is totally personal and complicated and anyone who thinks I give a crap about their input on our decision to start our family can kiss mine. But I have to admit that it was kind of a whirlwind chain of events that lead us to make the decision, and I second-guessed myself more than once. Once again, our lives changes dramatically in a very short amount of time. It kind of made sense - Jacob would hopefully be able to keep his job for many years to come and that was more important than me going to graduate school immediately. Still, it was only a few weeks where we went from "I have no idea to when we will start our family" to "We're starting our family." That mind-blowing decision was only intensified when it took us a shockingly short amount of time to get pregnant. And just like that, over the course of a few short months, our futures had changed again.
Fifth surprise: They're cutting Jacob's program. This was a heartbreaking week. When Jacob got the news that they would be cutting German, we both spent the whole week in a kind of distant fog, a little on the verge of tears. It was a little bit of a slap in the face, to get pregnant and almost immediately find out that we have no income prospects for the upcoming year. We were both thinking, "What are we supposed to do now?" but talking about it was too uncomfortable and raw to really get anywhere. (Let me add that it was not due to Jacob that the program was being cut. Jacob did an amazing job getting students talking about how fun German was, and students were dropping French and Spanish to take it. With only around 100 student currently enrolled, he had 167 sign up for next year's program, more than enough for a full-time teacher. The program was that with Canyon View's overall enrollment dropping, the state would only allot a certain number of teachers they would pay for. With Jacob being a long-term sub and every other teacher being a contracted teacher with the intent to return next year, Jacob made the most fiscal sense to cut.)
Sixth surprise: They're not cutting Jacob's program. After we talked about it and decided that staying in Cedar and having the baby here was a better option than moving to Virginia or somewhere crazy far away where they were actually hiring a full-time German teacher, Jacob went to his boss and let him know that if they were to offer German part-time, he would be willing to stay. It only took a couple of days for the news to come that they would offer German part-time. Mostly due to some extra funds that the school was able to secure, but I think in part due to the fact that they knew they would have an applicant for the position. And so our life is set a stir again. We will [hopefully] have a job, but it won't be much, and there won't be benefits. Something we can work with. We're very good on living on a tight budget.
The seventh event was not so much a surprise as it was a confirmation that we were going in the right direction. Jacob got the part-time German job. Against one other applicant, but still. It's the best news we've gotten since we found out we were expecting.
So we are now at a place very different from where I had imagined we would be. I thought this summer would be spent scoping out apartments in the city of one of our grad program's schools, packing up our crap and hitting the books this fall. How very wrong I was. Instead, we will be prepping for a baby, living as cheaply as we can, and praying that Jacob's program can go full-time as soon as possible. Crazy how life throws us around and puts us where we need to be.
