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Below is a very humorous anecdote about the actual timeline of many candidates. Hopefully, we will plan better than this! (This was obviously written when the portfolio was due April 15.)

1. Sit down over the summer break and plan when entries will be written, when taping will be done, and when editing will be finished. Allow at least a week at the end just to pack the box.

2. In late January, revise the schedule that you haven't exactly followed. Plan to be finished by April 1st.

3. By mid-February, begin to panic. At first, the symptoms are mild...spending inordinate hours reading the message boards, drinking on Fridays with other candidates just to commiserate, ignoring the students' papers piling up on your desk.

4. Sometime in March, spring break arrives. You spend the entire week in your pajamas while the rest of the world plays outside in the beautiful weather. Start a major household renovation during this week and wash every piece of china in your house.

5. Panic more seriously in late March when you still have no video that makes you happy, only two entries are written, and your kids ask you daily, when is that national board thing going to be over?

6. Spend some time the first of April trying to recall your own children's names, apologizing to your principal because you screamed at her when she asked you to serve on a committee, and finally do your laundry--you can NOT keep buying new underwear on the way home forever. Contemplate more "perfect" lessons to tape.

7. By the end of the first week in April, call all your friends (by now, mostly ex-friends) to ask them to come over the read your stuff...4:00 a.m. is the best time to make the call. Make ONE MORE videotape. Find another online worksheet you can copy so you can keep your class busy while you work on National Boards. And call UPS to see when the last possible moment is that you can mail the box.

8. Spend most of the night of the 14th in Kinko's. Call the airlines to see if you can still get on a plane to New Jersey to deliver the box in person if you miss the shipping deadline. Pack and unpack the box six times.

9. At the last possible moment, make a mad dash to the 24-hour shipping place. As soon as you get home and finish crying, take a nice long hot shower; you haven't had one in three days, you know.

10. On the 15th when the box is finally in the mail, drink mass quantities of whatever makes you feel the worst the next day along with others who just sent their boxes (people who are not NB candidates can no longer communicate with you). Talk trash about the one candidate who mailed hers a week early.

11. Spend the 16th in some catatonic state that you'll never remember except for the 27 times you logged onto the Fed Ex site to track your package.

12. On the 17th, get reacquainted with the world. Is that man your HUSBAND?? And whose kids are these? Do you remember the names of the other teachers in your hall??? And who is going to grade all these papers???

13. On the 18th, start the panic for the assessment center...it's only two months away and this time, you're going to be PREPARED IN ADVANCE! (http://www.teacherweb.com/FL/StonemanDouglasHS/FloridaNBPTS-WLOE/printap6.stm)