Today, I had one of the more surreal experiences of my life. One of my jobs with the newspaper is to write about the school system where I work. This means that I spend a lot of time in schools, doing interviews, taking photos, and just generally hanging around until someone asks me to leave. One of the schools was kind enough to ask me to speak at their Career Day since the students see me a lot and might want to know what it is that I do. This is what the nice school counselor told me. I kind of wanted to ask if he was kidding, but I refrained. I also kind of agreed to be the "keynote speaker" (Their words, NOT mine!) which meant that I talked to the entire student body of about 300 students to kick off their day of hearing from a wide variety of professionals, all of whom would have been immenently more qualified to be the keynote speaker than I am. Nevertheless, this morning at 9 a.m., I drove up to the school after a car ride rehearsing my speech and drinking LOTS of coffee, to see this sign.

And I almost drove up onto the curb. On the one hand, the sign cracks me up, because it sounds like Haley Wachdorf and The Career Day Presenters are some kind of lounge act coming to perform big band hits for the student body. "We'll be here all week. Try the veal!" On the other hand, my 25th birthday is looming up in a couple of days, and for some reason, seeing my name on the sign as some kind of role model, i.e. Legitimate Adult, really freaked me out. Who am I to tell these kids anything? I still remember being in sixth grade. It was sobering. The surprising thing was that the students actually seemed interested in what I had to say, and it wasn't nearly the train wreck that I had envisioned, once I got over wanting to throw up from fear.
For your purposes, you should try to imagine me trying to inspire 300 students to greater heights of academic achievement. Don't you just wish there was a video? We could sell it in the comedy section of our local video stores. Alas. At least I can say I have had my 15 minutes of fame. And it was more than enough for me.