Relief and Accomplishment

For the past month, I've been working on a big editing project.  One that has required us to reflect.  One that has asked us to look at the key experiences of the past six years of our school's life.  We are preparing for our accreditation visit next month and I'm on the writing and editing team for the self-study.  It has been an interesting journey.  My assignments were to write chapter one (the school profile), head up the focus group about curriculum and instruction, and then edit the whole project.  Last week, I was editing every spare moment.  Some sections went through three and four edits, and some are first drafts (and it shows).  When different people are writing different sections, it's challenging to try to put it all together as if it came from one source, one voice.  Hence the late nights and the hours (five and six hours each the past two nights) of work after a full day of teaching!!!  All told, I logged over 50 hours of overtime--for which I cannot be paid since I'm on salary.  Something's a little skewed about that, but that's another story. . .  

All of those 50+ hours, I was accompanied by my friend and colleague, Jill.  She is actually the leader of the whole project and she truly has put her heart and soul into it.  She was able to take Monday off as we finally put the project in the mail to the visiting team at about 5 p.m. last Sunday.  I took a few hours off, but didn't want to miss out on my teaching.  The principal sent us out to dinner and a show Wednesday night, though, and we had a good time, first going to Brios for supper (delicious) and then to the Mesa Arts Center to see The Good Lovelies in concert.  Now, prior to last week, I had barely heard of this band, but Jill knew their music and really wanted to go.  I'm always game to learn new things, so I didn't mind going...and was pleasantly surprised and the delightful time we had there.

Our seats were great--third row in a small, intimate theatre that held about 200.  This women's trio of Canadian folk singers were funny...and good.  It was somewhat of a shock, though, to look around us and see that we were, besides the singers, the youngest people in the room, by far.  Don't know why that demographic...but we all enjoyed ourselves.  The girls kept saying "thank you for coming.  You're all so attentive!  And it's true.  The audience was on their best symphony hall behavior, quietly listening during the songs and clapping enthusiastically at their conclusion.  We also gave them a standing ovation at the end, which I believe delighted the singers enormously.  They are relatively new--only about 6 years old as a band.  I was impressed.

Of course you pay for doing something like that mid-week.  I have indeed been scrambling ever since to get everything done that needed doing before this day ended. But...it's all done now.  And so I go to my rest tonight tired, but with an enormous sense of relief and accomplishment . . .