10 years later ... part three

The first day of school in 2013, I pitched up at the business college without a residency permit because it still hadn't been approved. And the director who had hired me said, "oh, by the way, we don't have enough hours for you here, so we're sending you to a technical college up the road to complete your contract." This was the first day of school!  And the technical college up the road was 15 miles up the road.  I didn't have a car.  I didn't have any money because I didn't have a contract because I didn't have residency yet!

But somehow, everything worked out.  My friends helped me find an apartment.  My landlord lent me furniture. With my first paycheck I could afford a used Renault Clio. That first year I taught 5 hours at the business college and 17-18 hours at the technical college where I was the only English teacher.  In addition, I had to complete 80 (count 'em, eighty!) hours of continuing education classes in Graz (80 miles away!) to earn the credentials to teach the classes I was teaching.  I even had to prepare students to take graduation exams in English (and they all passed!).  

As I said, it hasn't always been easy. I didn't get along with the colleagues or director at the business college (this is putting it mildly... observers will tell you I was downright bullied) and put in for a full-time transfer to the technical college. The students there only have 2 hours of English a week (i.e. 100 minutes - if they are lucky they get 60 hours of instruction a year, 300 hours of instruction over the course of five years) so it is a challenge to get them to the level they need to graduate.  There is a lot of resistence on the part of the students to learn English, although, if they were smart, they could do it by watching videos on YouTube in their free time.  I am almost always stretched so thin you can read through me. At the end of the school year I am unable to think for the nine weeks of summer vacation.  And I have virtually no social life because teaching 18-20 lessons (plus prep and grading) every week drains every ounce of energy I have to give.

I've all but given up the dream of teaching at the university.  Sometimes I think about teaching Latin in an Austrian high school, or going back to my research on Pliny the Younger, or the Roman frontier. But these are all issues I'll have to consider when I'm not preparing for the next school year (which starts Monday, September 10).

If you've made it this far, thanks for sticking with me.  And please don't think for a moment that this is a lament.  I have never, ever regretted the decision to move to Austria - a place surrounded by mountains, dotted with lakes, a place where I feel more at home than I ever felt in the United States.  Here I have supportive friends, a Prince Charming, terrific colleagues, and a handful of students who make it all worthwhile. The only drawback is that I am 5000 miles away from my parents, but modern technology (Skype, WhatsApp) does wonders for peace of mind on both sides of the pond.

I definitely may have taken the long way 'round, but I am exactly where I am meant to be.