Orientation and a New Computer

Once again the self-imposed post quota was not met. I was so close too. But October promises to be an eventful month as I should be starting in the classroom within the next week, so the only thing to keep me from writing is busyness, or perhaps a mental breakdown.

And speaking of mental breakdowns, OCPS did their best to steer me down the path of insanity yesterday at Pre-Employment Orientation (PREO). I arrived on time, much to my surprise. Having left ten minutes behind schedule, and siting in Orlando rush hour traffic, I expected to be dashing in, breathless and confused. Instead I strolled in, and waited for them to let us in. Go me. Anyway, the morning session was entirely paperwork. Two hours of writing my name, address, phone number, social security number, signature and the date. Every so often I would actually read what I signed. Thank goodness I learned to quickly skim through documents and get the general idea in college. My favorite form was by far the drug test release form. Yes, you can study my pee, especially since my employment is contingent on the results of the drug test. Once I'd finished the substantial stack of paperwork, I went and did the drug test, got fingerprinted, and had my picture taken for my OCPS employee badge, then left for lunch.

The afternoon session was almost entirely form free, and completely exhausting. Never in my life have I had so much important information thrown at me in so little time. We had sections on payroll, health insurance, life insurance, retirement, teacher certification, OCPS general expectations, etc. They gave us this folder that has a cute collage picture on the front and scary information overload on the inside. Thankfully I have a couple of weeks to figure out insurance stuff and five months to think about my retirement plan. It's strange to think about retirement, since I haven't even started working yet.

Now that I've been hired, I decided to go ahead and get a new computer. My old Dell is on it's last leg, having spent four years in faithful service (except for that one time the hard drive died and I lost all of my pictures from Barbados). I can't say that I'm sorry to see the end of this era. Waiting a minute and a half for it to open Firefox (or any other program for that matter) has become more and more frustrating. So it is going into the computer bag forever and it's spot on my desk will be filled by a brand spanking new MacBook. Yes, I'm making the switch. And I'm pretty excited about it.