What Was I Thinking?

After a fitful night's sleep, the alarm woke me up at 6:15 am. I got up, showered, and headed out the door by 7 am. I hit the freeway towards Riverside and arrived at the high school a little before 8 am. There, I spent the next four hours taking the CBEST, the test you have to pass if you want to teach in California.

What was I thinking? OK, I knew what I was thinking when I signed up to take the test. I thought, Gavin is going to be in 1st grade this year. That means, for the first time in 17 years, I will not have any kids home with me all day long. I've thought this would be a good time to go back to work and help boost mine and Rom's retirement. A full-time job commitment doesn't seem like a good idea to me right now, but I thought substitute teaching would be doable. I could accept jobs on my own terms and be able to pitch in to help with the family income. So, I signed up for the CBEST.

Now, I also know what I was thinking last night. What, am I crazy? What if I have a complete brain malfunction? What if I fade half way through and can't finish the test? I didn't even study for this -- what, do I think I'm still 18 years old with English and Algebra just under my belt? What if they ask me to find the area of a triangle? Or the mean/median/mode of a group of numbers? What if they ask me to use laid/lay/lain properly in a sentence? What if I get a huge migraine during the test and can't find my way home and end up driving around in circles for hours on the freeway?

Well, I have to admit taking the test wasn't as easy as it used to be. I did have some strange brain functions. Once, I was numbering some items in order largest to smallest. For some reason, I wrote an 8 instead of a 3 next to one of them. This really threw me off when I went to record my answer, and I had to renumber everything. Then, I thought, "Oh, I see -- it's just like when I say 'refrigerator' when I mean 'dishwasher.'" I wonder how many more of those I did that I didn't catch?

So, now I'm paying the price -- I'm more exhausted than I've been in months. I've given up on accomplishing anything more today. I'm just counting the minutes until I can go to bed. But, you know what? I think I did OK. And, I think it's worth it. Sometimes, you know you're going to pay for it later, but you just have to go for it. I'm glad I did.