My Meteoric Rise

It all started with, "Can I help?"

The company I'm teaching for is struggling with the demands of a huge corporate contract they recently obtained. In a nutshell, three months ago there was no program at all here in Albuquerque - no office, no employees - zilch. Now, there are hundreds of people eligible to receive ESL instruction, with hundreds more expected over the next two years; about 20 newly trained instructors, many of whom work only part time; one very overwhelmed staffer stuggling to keep up with scheduling, payroll, sales, and all the other administrative tasks; a director trying to run the dang thing from another city; an antiquated computer system; mass confusion and chaos; not enough instructional materials to go around; lots of room for error and disaster; and a platoon of stressed out, desperate, frustrated students and instructors.

This is the type of situation I excell at: just call me Superclerk. I'm ridiculously efficient, organized, and capable in an office environment, especially if there's a looming crisis. I get an adrenaline rush when I'm solving problems and handling touchy moments.

As one of the newly-trained and -hired teachers who experienced all sorts of stumbles (wrong student addresses, wrong class times, wrong phone numbers) in my first three weeks of classes, I was well aware of the growing buzz of frustration/desperation. So I said, "Can I help?"

What I figured was that I would put in a few hours each week in the office, cleaning up messes and getting some organization into it. That's what I thought. What happened was that within a week, I was "hired," put on a full-time admin schedule, whisked to Phoenix for training, given responsibility for scheduling and payroll, and whisked back to Albuquerque.

Now, while I was in Phoenix, the local instructor supervisor in Albuquerque had a meltdown and quit. I commiserated with the director and wondered which of my colleagues would be chosen.

Well, I was chosen. My second promotion in less than a month.

I'm now the instructional supervisor 3 days a week, and the service rep 2 days a week. I handle the instructor hiring and training, evaluate new students, evaluate the instructors, conduct "enrichment" classes, and every once in a while, do some fill-in teaching when an instructor is sick.

Someone is flying out here next week to train me on the new position, and then I'll be training 10 new instructors the following week. Sheesh! It amazes me that only two months ago I hadn't even considered a career in ESL, and by the end of the week I'll be supervising 30 instructors. Can I really be capable of this? All the mucky-mucks seem to think so, but I have my doubts.

I've been working 12 hour days, 7 days a week, trying to clean up the horrendous mess here, and I'm exhilarated/exhausted in that Olympian Apollo Ohno way: I'm ready to tackle the next race, but I'll need to collapse once it's done. I've had sleepless nights, which lead to cramping legs and feet, incipient cold sore outbreaks, caffeine overuse, more sleepless nights, etc. Today was the first day I could just loll around, read Vanity Fair, and eat a big salad.

Truthfully, my diet has tanked for three weeks. I was unprepared for the rush of work and fell back on fast food grabbed at odd hours of the day and night. Yes, mostly I ordered salads, but there have been a few burgers thrown down the gullet along the way, and that's not so good.

I haven't gained any weight this month; I haven't lost any, either. It's a wash. But I feel badly that I got off-track. I need to cook me a pot of brown rice and start bringing lunch with me. So that's what I'm gonna do tonight.

There's a chapter in one of the ESL advanced levels regarding management styles. The examples are Milt and Wilt. Milt is a can-do type who delegates all his work and looks terrifically calm. Wilt is frazzled, his desk is piled high with crap, and he's got dark circles under his eyes.

I'll be Milt one day soon. For now, I'm Wilt - with a cold sore.

Ah well.