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the day has come

Tomorrow I'll be visiting two of the schools I'll be teaching in. On Friday, I'll be visiting the third school. Although I don't have to bring anything, I won't be teaching, and I'm not expected to speak fluent Japanese to anybody, I'm nervous as all hell.

I'm nervous about it because I get nervous about every new job I haven't started yet. I hate the adjustment period of a new job. I dislike the mental acrobatics of remembering how things are done, I dislike the worry that I'll forget something important and mess up. I really don't ever mess up, but still, I just dislike the whole period of getting into the swing of things in general. Basically, starting a new job is like being the replacement cog in a machine where others depend on you to do your job right, although you only have a framework idea of what that job is going to entail. The specifics are going to be thrown at you when you get in the door.

Being professional isn't rocket science, and now that I've taught for a year I'm comfortable being the trained monkey in front of kids. So that's not scary.

I think what makes me most nervous is that tomorrow and Friday are when I'll find out what the rest of my year is going to be like. I don't yet know what I'll be expected to teach (as in specific lessons), what my co-workers will be like, what kinds of kids I'll have. At this point I don't even know how I'll feel about the school lunches, even though I have an idea of what'll be in them. (Fortunately I can bring my own lunch if I want, as long as it's home-cooked and deemed "healthy" by Japanese people.)

I'd just like to know, already. I'll be less stressed once I know.

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