A Week in the Life
So I promise to post about the last third of my cross-country journey soon (I know interest has hit fever pitch) but I just wanted to write a little about my week last week, because it was extremely challenging.
After a solid week of looking for a new apartment, I was on my way to the Journal Square area of Jersey City with Andrew to look at another place. I was getting really frustrated because I had seen about 20 places but only found two that fit my needs. Then, I didn't get picked to live in the two places I liked! So I was seriously bummed.
Then, I was making a left hand turn across a lane of traffic stopped at a light. A shuttle bus had left a gap for the intersection with the road onto which I was turning, and the bus driver waved me through, across the lane.
About six or eight feet in front of the intersection where I was going, the lane of traffic that was stopped at the light turns into two lanes. So, in a hurry to get to that double-lane section, a Suburban swerved out from behind the stopped shuttle bus and zoomed forward. I know he couldn't see me turning when he came out from behind the bus, but I'm not sure if he saw me once he had, because he didn't slow down at all. He hit me on the rear passenger's side.
Nobody was hurt, which is the good news, but the rest is all bad news. My car is really banged up, and the right rear wheel is bent in. We called AAA (they were confused about me being in New Jersey and so had a rough time helping me) and decided the best thing to do would be to drive the car back to my place (only a few blocks away) and get a tow on Monday morning. So I spent the weekend planning my life--I had three days of orientation at Rutgers in New Brunswick, my two first classes at Hudson County to plan (which I would have to have proctored because of said Rutgers orientation, scheduled during my first class meetings) and my first days of teaching at Dominican College in Rockland County, NY. In addition to making it much harder to find an apartment, not having a car meant taking public transportation to these locations.
Also, I can't believe that I drove my car all the way out here with no problems only to get hit as soon as I arrived. Welcome to New Jersey.
I called AAA for the tow at 6:00 a.m. Monday morning (I needed to be on the train to New Bruns. at 8:00 a.m.). They told me it would take 60-90 minutes. At 7:45 the truck had not arrived. Andrew called and offered to wait for them, making himself late to work. I took him up on his offer, left the car keys under the mat, took the bus to Hoboken, missed my train by three minutes, then took PATH to Exchange Place to Journal Square (getting from my house to Hoboken to Ex.P to JSQ takes about 25-30 minutes; JSQ is 10 minutes from my apt. by bus) and then took PATH to Newark and the train from Newark to New Bruns. Whew. So this was my first taste of life getting complicated without a car.
On my way home I was supposed to meet a prospective roommate at JSQ, but things went awry here also. My insurance agent called me as I was getting on the train in New Brunswick to head home, so I told her I would call her back and then put the phone in my pocket since I was boarding the train and couldn't put it in my bag. Then the prospective roommate called and asked to push back the meeting, and we arranged for me to call him when I got to JSQ. As we hung up the train pulled into Newark, my stop. So I put my phone down on the seat, grabbed my bag, and walked off the train. Just walked off and left my phone there. I realized this as the train was pulling away, and had one of those "Noooooo!" moments where the train seemed to be leaving in slow motion as I realized what I had done. So, all of a sudden, no phone, no way to contact the roommate, no way to call my insurance agent, nothing to do but go home. Eventually I went to Andrew's and we called my phone but rather than turning it in someone had taken out the SIM card. So, no phone. We managed to get in touch with the roommate and go see the apartment, but it wasn't right for me and so I asked my landlord if I could stay another month. He graciously said yes, so that was one good thing. Then after all the drama of the day I had to get ready to teach my first college course the next day.
Tuesday, unfortunately, was the worst. To get to Dominican you have to take the shuttle through the Lincoln Tunnel to Port Authority, whereupon you board a bus that takes you right back through the tunnel, into New Jersey, and then through many, many, many picturesque and indistinguishable upstate New York towns. This takes a long time and is no fun in a giant bus. I made it to the bus and settled in. We were to arrive in Rockland County at 9:17, leaving me enough time to find my rosters, make the appropriate number of syllabus copies, and then head to my first class at 9:45. No problem, right?
So the bus didn't get there until 9:30. I rushed in, met people, grabbed the rosters, made the copies, and was ready to walk to my first class by 9:40. So then I asked someone where it was, and they told me that Dominican is split into two segments, about 1/2 mile away from each other. I was on the first segment and my class was on the second. My directions-giver told me to "drive to the second stoplight and turn left" to get there. Everyone drives there, even the students. I figured that if it were really only 1/2 mile away I could get there in time if I hustled. So I set out at a very brisk walk, with my boots and heavy bag, in the hot August morning. I passed the first stoplight in pretty good time and kept going. And going... and going... and going. Finally I reached the second stoplight at around 9:55. I had been intermittantly running and speed-walking but it still took me 15 minutes to get there. So I looked around, but I didn't see any college buildings. I asked three women on a porch and they told me that the college was back by the first stoplight I had passed!!! I couldn't believe it! So I started running for real this time, forgetting about my feet in my dress shoes and the fact that I didn't want to be sweating buckets when I arrived. I just ran, and ran, and ran. I raced all the way back to the first stoplight (a distance which I later learned was well over 1/2 mile simply between the two of them) and arrived, red-faced, sweating, hair everywhere, and panting, at my classroom at 10:05.
Nobody was there. The students had left. They left a sign-in sheet with their names at the front and took off. I just stood there in shock for a minute before I sat down at the desk and just cried. I missed my very first college class! I couldn't believe it. I haven't felt so awful in months and months. I could say that I would have made it if I'd had my car, or the bus hadn't been late, or the guy in administration hadn't given me the wrong directions. All these things are true. But at that moment, all I could think was that I had worked so hard to achieve this goal, to actually teach college English, and I had come right to the limit and failed.
Eventually I pulled myself together, got cleaned up (I actually had bugs in my hair) and realized that it wasn't the end of the world and that in all likelihood it was better for me to have missed the class than to have rushed in looking like a bespattered windshield. I managed to teach my next two classes, one composition and one literature, and then try to get myself home. I missed the first bus (it drove past me and left me in its dust) and waited an hour for the next one, eventually making it home about three hours after I'd left the campus. I was exhausted and defeated. This has basically been the theme of my week.
All in all, it's been tough. The insurance agent has not been answering her phone, and the auto repair shop can't start fixing my car until they get the ok from the insurance. I went to New Brunswick three days this week, and to Dominican two days, and it cost me over $100 in transportation. This is the reason I brought my car out in the first place. And it may take all the way until the end of next week to fix it at the rate things are going. So basically I have no phone, no car, and a long week ahead of me as well. And this past week I was only teaching at one campus--this next week I start for real at Rutgers and Hudson County, for a total of seven courses. Thank goodness for three-day weekends.
After a solid week of looking for a new apartment, I was on my way to the Journal Square area of Jersey City with Andrew to look at another place. I was getting really frustrated because I had seen about 20 places but only found two that fit my needs. Then, I didn't get picked to live in the two places I liked! So I was seriously bummed.
Then, I was making a left hand turn across a lane of traffic stopped at a light. A shuttle bus had left a gap for the intersection with the road onto which I was turning, and the bus driver waved me through, across the lane.
About six or eight feet in front of the intersection where I was going, the lane of traffic that was stopped at the light turns into two lanes. So, in a hurry to get to that double-lane section, a Suburban swerved out from behind the stopped shuttle bus and zoomed forward. I know he couldn't see me turning when he came out from behind the bus, but I'm not sure if he saw me once he had, because he didn't slow down at all. He hit me on the rear passenger's side.
Nobody was hurt, which is the good news, but the rest is all bad news. My car is really banged up, and the right rear wheel is bent in. We called AAA (they were confused about me being in New Jersey and so had a rough time helping me) and decided the best thing to do would be to drive the car back to my place (only a few blocks away) and get a tow on Monday morning. So I spent the weekend planning my life--I had three days of orientation at Rutgers in New Brunswick, my two first classes at Hudson County to plan (which I would have to have proctored because of said Rutgers orientation, scheduled during my first class meetings) and my first days of teaching at Dominican College in Rockland County, NY. In addition to making it much harder to find an apartment, not having a car meant taking public transportation to these locations.
Also, I can't believe that I drove my car all the way out here with no problems only to get hit as soon as I arrived. Welcome to New Jersey.
I called AAA for the tow at 6:00 a.m. Monday morning (I needed to be on the train to New Bruns. at 8:00 a.m.). They told me it would take 60-90 minutes. At 7:45 the truck had not arrived. Andrew called and offered to wait for them, making himself late to work. I took him up on his offer, left the car keys under the mat, took the bus to Hoboken, missed my train by three minutes, then took PATH to Exchange Place to Journal Square (getting from my house to Hoboken to Ex.P to JSQ takes about 25-30 minutes; JSQ is 10 minutes from my apt. by bus) and then took PATH to Newark and the train from Newark to New Bruns. Whew. So this was my first taste of life getting complicated without a car.
On my way home I was supposed to meet a prospective roommate at JSQ, but things went awry here also. My insurance agent called me as I was getting on the train in New Brunswick to head home, so I told her I would call her back and then put the phone in my pocket since I was boarding the train and couldn't put it in my bag. Then the prospective roommate called and asked to push back the meeting, and we arranged for me to call him when I got to JSQ. As we hung up the train pulled into Newark, my stop. So I put my phone down on the seat, grabbed my bag, and walked off the train. Just walked off and left my phone there. I realized this as the train was pulling away, and had one of those "Noooooo!" moments where the train seemed to be leaving in slow motion as I realized what I had done. So, all of a sudden, no phone, no way to contact the roommate, no way to call my insurance agent, nothing to do but go home. Eventually I went to Andrew's and we called my phone but rather than turning it in someone had taken out the SIM card. So, no phone. We managed to get in touch with the roommate and go see the apartment, but it wasn't right for me and so I asked my landlord if I could stay another month. He graciously said yes, so that was one good thing. Then after all the drama of the day I had to get ready to teach my first college course the next day.
Tuesday, unfortunately, was the worst. To get to Dominican you have to take the shuttle through the Lincoln Tunnel to Port Authority, whereupon you board a bus that takes you right back through the tunnel, into New Jersey, and then through many, many, many picturesque and indistinguishable upstate New York towns. This takes a long time and is no fun in a giant bus. I made it to the bus and settled in. We were to arrive in Rockland County at 9:17, leaving me enough time to find my rosters, make the appropriate number of syllabus copies, and then head to my first class at 9:45. No problem, right?
So the bus didn't get there until 9:30. I rushed in, met people, grabbed the rosters, made the copies, and was ready to walk to my first class by 9:40. So then I asked someone where it was, and they told me that Dominican is split into two segments, about 1/2 mile away from each other. I was on the first segment and my class was on the second. My directions-giver told me to "drive to the second stoplight and turn left" to get there. Everyone drives there, even the students. I figured that if it were really only 1/2 mile away I could get there in time if I hustled. So I set out at a very brisk walk, with my boots and heavy bag, in the hot August morning. I passed the first stoplight in pretty good time and kept going. And going... and going... and going. Finally I reached the second stoplight at around 9:55. I had been intermittantly running and speed-walking but it still took me 15 minutes to get there. So I looked around, but I didn't see any college buildings. I asked three women on a porch and they told me that the college was back by the first stoplight I had passed!!! I couldn't believe it! So I started running for real this time, forgetting about my feet in my dress shoes and the fact that I didn't want to be sweating buckets when I arrived. I just ran, and ran, and ran. I raced all the way back to the first stoplight (a distance which I later learned was well over 1/2 mile simply between the two of them) and arrived, red-faced, sweating, hair everywhere, and panting, at my classroom at 10:05.
Nobody was there. The students had left. They left a sign-in sheet with their names at the front and took off. I just stood there in shock for a minute before I sat down at the desk and just cried. I missed my very first college class! I couldn't believe it. I haven't felt so awful in months and months. I could say that I would have made it if I'd had my car, or the bus hadn't been late, or the guy in administration hadn't given me the wrong directions. All these things are true. But at that moment, all I could think was that I had worked so hard to achieve this goal, to actually teach college English, and I had come right to the limit and failed.
Eventually I pulled myself together, got cleaned up (I actually had bugs in my hair) and realized that it wasn't the end of the world and that in all likelihood it was better for me to have missed the class than to have rushed in looking like a bespattered windshield. I managed to teach my next two classes, one composition and one literature, and then try to get myself home. I missed the first bus (it drove past me and left me in its dust) and waited an hour for the next one, eventually making it home about three hours after I'd left the campus. I was exhausted and defeated. This has basically been the theme of my week.
All in all, it's been tough. The insurance agent has not been answering her phone, and the auto repair shop can't start fixing my car until they get the ok from the insurance. I went to New Brunswick three days this week, and to Dominican two days, and it cost me over $100 in transportation. This is the reason I brought my car out in the first place. And it may take all the way until the end of next week to fix it at the rate things are going. So basically I have no phone, no car, and a long week ahead of me as well. And this past week I was only teaching at one campus--this next week I start for real at Rutgers and Hudson County, for a total of seven courses. Thank goodness for three-day weekends.