Yesterday was my Birthday. Unfortunately it was a less than glorious day because I had to teach all afternoon/evening and I had my lesson sign-up that morning starting at 7:00. Lesson sign-up day is super stressful for me. Trying to work around everyone’s schedules and trying to be fair as I input the times on a first-come-first-serve basis… and then agonizing over the families who I can tell have clearly forgotten that it was sign-up day.
I had something happen that’s never happened before: I was left with more students needing slots than I had slots for! It was awful! I was so careful to double check my numbers before accepting new students over the summer and I had everything down to an exact number. Then, out of the blue I had 2 families that had previously told me they would take during school times (homeschooled families) switch and say they would now like after school times. Normally that’s not a problem, but this time I knew it would be extremely tight…
In the end I did have one student decide to stop taking (but I’m not entirely sure that’s because of the slots… I think she was on the fence to begin with) and I had another family put their 2 kids together on a rotating slot instead of having their own slots. And I’m just waiting to hear back from one last family, so we’ll see if I’m able to find them a time that works. I slept terribly the night before b/c I was stressed about it and then my stress level just kept going up as the morning progressed.
But it’s done now and it looks like everything will actually work out. 🙂
On a happy note though, I did get a free coffee from Caribou b/c it was my birthday, so that was delightful. And we still had all sorts of goodies left over from the day before… and my AWESOME SURPRISE PARTY!!!! But more on that tomorrow. 😉
That scheduling stress would put me on edge too! I’m glad it seems to have worked out. Happy Birthday!
And every year when I read about your sign-up I’m close to tears because I don’t have the number of students I wish I did. Maybe next year, after I get established will be different. But I’m very happy for you, because you are doing what you love and you get to be home with your kids and do it! Right now I’m still sitting at 6 students, 4 of which pay. I haven’t met two of them – they come tomorrow for the first time.