The Story of My Life.

I played soccer for one autumn.

I took riding lessons for a few months.

I played piano for a year or so.

I made the 'major' little league team in fifth grade, and never once swung the bat in a game. Ironically, I was afraid of striking out.

I played the cello for five years and hardly practiced.

I was in Honors classes and barely studied.

I did math homework in class.

I decided that acting would be fun, but never made an effort to really audition for anything.

My dream was to be an Olympic gymnast, but even in my youth I was too easily frustrated and not motivated enough.

I took two years off in middle school when my legs hurt too much and I was bored.

On the high school gymnastics team, I was too easily distracted by various aches and pains to practice hard, and too scared to learn anything new. The vault was my favorite event in elementary school, but in high school it scared the crap out of me.

I joined the yearbook staff my senior year as a half-assed way to boost my resume.

I graduated from high school with a 3.55 GPA, which even then felt almost worthless, since I hardly did any work.

I only applied to three colleges.

The UCLA application required an SAT II, and the only subject I felt I could scrape a score was in French, even though I hadn't taken it in two years. And I didn't study for the exam.

I completed the FAFSA on time but didn't qualify for aid, since my teacher parents were too comfortably middle-class.

I never bothered to apply for a single scholarship.

I was accepted to the University of Arizona and Western Washington University. Going out of state sounded kind of exciting, but it was five times more expensive.

So I took the easy way out and went to WWU.

Science was always my favorite subject, and genetics sounded interesting, so in college I thought I'd do a biochem major. The college-level pre-calc homework was so confusing and frustrating that I never completed it and somehow scraped by with a C+.

I still loved chemistry and tried to challenge myself by moving up to o-chem sophomore year. I fought to survive the first term and only lasted a week into the second before dropping.

Then I couldn't decide on a major, so I transferred to the University of Washington.

Upon entrance to UW, I declared a double major in French and Women Studies. I dropped the French major at the end of the year because it would have required an extra year to finish both.

After college, I couldn't decide what to do, so I applied to AmeriCorps.

When I was waitlisted, I kept working at Starbucks because I had zero idea of what to do in the real world.

After I quit my office job in 2004, I applied to AmeriCorps to be a team leader, and to the Teaching Fellows. I never heard back from AmeriCorps. I never called to check on the application. So I came to New York as a default because I figured I should do something.

In New York, I couldn't be bothered trying to learn about individual schools and the job fairs were either cancelled or crazily overattended, so I couldn't find a job.

I remained in the reserve pool until called for a permanent position. I've been there ever since.

I'm a pretty good teacher, but I never take work home with me.

I go to conferences and workshops on my own time, but rarely incorporate new ideas or practices into my teaching.

I don't 'plan lessons.' I just think of things and jot down a couple words in my lesson plan book. I never even had a lesson plan book until this year.

I roughly follow the curriculum, but I'm always behind. I can't be arsed to keep up.

I take a lot of pictures, but almost never make an effort to plan and execute and perfect. I received some technique books and only began them. I glossed over the technique pages because it's too confusing.

And I feel like an incompetent wannabe with a camera.

I get cards or little gifts in the mail, and I never respond. I want to, and mean to, but...don't.

I never read a newspaper or watch the news. I see things on the Daily Show or SNL (yes, I'm *that* twentysomething), or sometimes on blogs.

I feel kind of dumb about that.

I don't read the 'real' edublogs because the posts are long and boring.

I can't even make an effort to think of interesting things to write about my own blog.

I'm reasonably smart, but I've never bothered to work to reach any kind of potential.

This is the story of my life, and I am ashamed.