March is going to be an interesting month. More immediately, this week is going to be an interesting week. Tomorrow I have my annual review at work, which is a big factor in my being reappointed for next year; Tuesday we have a doctor’s appointment/consultation at a new clinic; at some point later in the week, on a date to be determined, we will have a consultation with a mortgage broker to set the wheels of our house hunt in motion. Work, reproductive health, and a mortgage for our first house all in one week. No pressure.

I tend to have just a little bit of Lisa Simpson in me, and it’s not that we’re both vegetarian, book-reading, grammar-nerding, jazz-loving baritone saxophonists. While I wouldn’t describe myself as a typical overachiever (I think to bear that label a person has to try hard to achieve, which I haven’t often done), I am most certainly a typical nerd. Success in school always came easily to me; I am good at taking tests and have a great memory for facts and information. In school, this served me well. Today, I have carried it over to a love of even the silliest online quizzes (“How much do YOU know about art history?!” asks the incredulous-seeming quiz full of questions even my dog could answer correctly). I even enjoy filling out paperwork. Neatly writing my personal information into dozens of pages of forms, perfectly answering each question with concise and correct information? Why yes, I will, thank you.

So I assemble my annual review materials with a sort of weird enjoyment: that PDF, so many, many pages long, filled with all the evidence of my successful teaching in the past calendar year (syllabi, assignments, grade distributions, student evaluations, a CV, and a philosophy of teaching) is both a giant pain and a pleasure. I happily fill out all the overly detailed, intrusively personal medical forms, giving honest and specific assessments of how many ounces per week I consume of caffeinated regular soda, caffeinated diet soda, decaffeinated soda, wine, beer, liquor, caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and so on. (I will refrain from discussing some of their other questions; you’re welcome). I look forward to printing off and organizing a sheaf of financial paperwork that will reveal to the carefully trained eye all too much about my income, debt, and spending.

Perhaps if all of my forms are filled out properly — if all the questions are answered to everyone’s satisfaction — I will be deemed worthy of the life I want. I’ll keep my job; buy a house; have a baby. Look, I have very neat handwriting and I’m sure I have some color-coded sticky tabs I can use, if you think that would help.