Oh yeah...VICTORY!

Well. It's over. Done. Finito!

I got my life back as of 10:03 this morning. It took me just over 2 hours to take my test. I did not go the full 30 minutes for each exercise. I know me. I would overanalyze, think too much and mess up. So I went with my gut on each one, double checked my responses to make sure I had all of my criteria met and on to the next.

I thought I was going to pass out between exercise 2 and 3. I did not sleep well at all last night. I think I got about 4 hours of sleep and it was broken. I just couldn't relax. So I got up with a sore throat, a headache and hardly any sleep. Not exactly ideal conditions to take the biggest test of your life! But I powered on and I think I did okay. At the worst maybe a 2 on any of them but really I think I did alright. I'm so glad we practiced exercise 3 (Emergent Literacy) and exercise 5 (Visual Text) so much because I think I kicked some behind on those two. Here's hoping I'm right!! The AC chats were the very best thing I ever participated in, seriously. I would have been LOST without those.

You have to shut off EVERYTHING when you get there and are only allowed to have your ID and your locker key in the room. When I left, feeling tremendous relief and disbelief that it was finally over, I had two voicemails from school. One saying they needed me to come in because no one took the job. Um, not happening. The 2nd one said "oh we figured out what all of those letters mean and realize you can't come in, nevermind". I wouldn't have anyway! Not my issue that a sub cancelled last minute. And it's  not like you can just go "oh nevermind National Board, I'll put you off another day or week". Um, no.

SO glad to be done with this. I want my life back. It's been amazing, frustrating, invigorating, thought provoking and tiring all at once. I know that once school resumes for fall I will be much better off having done this -- because everything I learned will come with me. Everything I'm too tired to process right now will come back to me and I will be a better teacher because of it. But for now....it is rest. Rest and wait. Wait a loooooong time for score results. Honestly after today I'm sure I won't think about it much before October. I'm so ready to just have it behind me.