"I chose to be happy"

Job Update:

I didn't even get an interview because I took too long to respond. They had already filled the position. It wasn't something I was actively looking for so when I saw the ad, I mulled it over for a week before deciding to do anything about it. But hey, now I've got my resume updated and will be ready when the next one comes along.

And Al and I get to still hang out.

Now about Kiersten. She has had an incredibly difficult time with her school schedule. It's hard enough navigating your way through junior high without having the extra stress of schedule changes.

Before school even started I knew there might be some issues with her orchestra class. She had taken two years of early morning orchestra through the elementary and I felt like she should be in the advanced class not the beginner. So when we talked to the counselor he said that would be up to the teacher to move her. We left her schedule as it was for the first term and sure enough her orchestra teacher wanted her to move up. However, that meant rearranging her entire schedule for second term.

We managed to keep all her core classes the same but she had to drop creative writing for keyboarding (although she stepped into this class that had been going for a term already and was immediately competing for the fastest time).

Third term began and again we were dealing with a new schedule with some drastic changes for a seventh grader. She got switched out of her science class into a new teacher. She didn't get back into creative writing like they promised. And she is in a new lunch period with NONE of her friends.

I felt the pain she was feeling. But I also know Kiersten pretty well and knew that this was a girl who could and would make the most it. I told her to "come what may and love it."

We are two weeks into the new term and she informed me last weekend that the counselors would allow her to drop her PE class to get back into her old science class which would make it so she had the same lunch hour as her friends. All I needed to do was sign off that she was doing at least three hours of exercise a week. It all seemed a little fishy to me, but I agreed to it and sent an email to the counselor. He called me Monday morning to let me know that they had been wrong. It was never a district policy even though they had allowed several students last year to do it.

That was the nail in the coffin.

But like I said I know my Kiersten pretty well. She came home and told me the sad news. She told me how mad she was for two hours. "But then I decided that I could either be mad about the whole thing or get over it and be happy and make it a good day. And you know what? I decided to make it a good day and I had a pretty good rest of the day." She is a remarkable girl. She has such confidence and determination which are traits that kids her age struggle with. What an example she is to me!

I also think this girl needs a lunch date . . . with her mom . . . soon.