Tonight I opened a bottle of champagne all by myself. I know it is trivial, but I have never done that before.

I am doing a lot of things for the first time right now. I am also doing a lot of things I haven’t done in a long time, so it feels like the first time. A few days ago I covered this in my post, Logistics. Sort of.

Today I got my first teaching position. I mean, I have known about it for over a year. It was just a matter of getting my degree squared away and all that. But it is still exciting. It is no longer something to be speculated. It is actually happening, officially, on paper, as in “you will be teaching these specific courses right here, starting on this date.”

I was talking to the department chair and she is apparently giving me some very nice courses. I was under the impression that I would be starting with the remedial, intro to writing a paragraph type classes. I blurted out “you mean you are going to let me teach real English?” She said she has faith in me. Good thing one of us feels that way.

One of my friends explained to me that it is actually easier to teach literature courses. You are working on the assumption that the students already have basic writing skills to a certain level, and now you can get into the story, the narrative, as opposed to focusing on the technicality of constructing a paragraph. She knows how much I dislike technicalities. I may not know how many commas are appropriate within a 750 word span, but I can tell you about the story and its author.