The Pink Lady Gets a Wake Up Call
A Diary, Journal, Blog, Book by a Wife, Sister, Pet Parent, Music Enthusiast About Her Invisible Disease & Daily Life
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I get to navigate through a whole new experience. I tread lightly because I really don't know where this is going to take me.
I've always cheered for the home team or underdog. It's just part of my nature. I found my calling in the field of Education, just after my sophomore year in high school. I delved and dug. I asked Veteran Teachers. I asked Academic Advisers. Everything just seemed to fall into place and point me in the direction of teaching high school English.
Folks already in the field told me that their profession was anything but easy. They warned of late nights grading and weekends spent in the school building making copies and writing lesson plans. God forbid the evenings of writing sub plans with Kleenex in one hand and a pen in the other. It really is easier to suffer through work with the flu than writing Sub-Plans- no lie.
All mentors conceded to "...tenure status being the saving grace in the stress of high school teaching, plus keep your Union Dues current.” That was in 1994.
I graduated college with a double major in Extended-English and Secondary Education. Somehow my first "real" job was in 1998, teaching Kindergarten... talk about runny noses and sticky hands. This lasted for five years. Note, this assignment was not high school, nor English Specific. However, it was a nice introduction to the field and I am forever grateful. Those kids taught me a lot!
By 2003, I was ready for the student loans to pay off -so to speak. It's now 2016, half way through the academic calendar and I am still fulfilling my calling. Shakespeare, Poe, Prepositions, Diagramming Sentences, College Application Essays, Harper Lee... sigh, thump of my heart, breathe. Yet, I fear that it may be time to stop. Gasp! Nooooooooooo!
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About the Book
In 2016, author Nicki Ells is fulfilling her calling. She’s teaching English at a public high school. But halfway through the academic year, Ells feels a change within herself, a change in her body that signals something is wrong.
In The Pink Lady Gets a Wake Up Call, she tells her story through a series of previously published blog posts, some of which are pure academia, some conjecture, and some are just whimsical as Ells takes a break from worrisome thinking and fighting with her body.
Beginning in 2016, she shares her thoughts on a variety of topics including the education system, the health system, her trials, and her tribulations. Ells also reveals the research she conducted about her disease and how it all works and doesn’t work, and she talks about support groups and the pharmaceutical game.
This memoir chronicles the journey of this public-school, creative writing teacher as she takes an in-class, daily activity of teaching teens and turns it into a personal log of symptoms and experiences. Ells narrates how the pain, inability to cope, and misdiagnosis’, which skewed any normalcy, were now in charge.
About the Author
Nicki Ells earned a Double-Major Bachelor Of Arts and Sciences in Extended-English/Language Arts Secondary Education, from Northern Arizona University in 1995. Ells has since earned a Master in the Art of Teaching Degree with an emphasis of Educational Psychology, from Marygrove University in 2005. Up until 2016, She was actively engaged in learning the ins and outs of incorporating new Technological skills into the ever-changing curriculum. Her ability to work closely with her students made being the Academic Advisor of clubs and activities sponsored by the different schools where she was employed, encouraging and insightful. Her twenty-plus year career was absolutely her “lifestyle”. She now spends her days doing what she is able to, in the game most call “Life”. Ells is a wife, sister, daughter, pet parent, and music enthusiast.