Name:Aine Whelan
Age:29
Birthplace:Cork, Ireland by way of Crum Lynne, PA.
Employment:School Teacher. Guess what grade.
Personality:It wouldn't be out of line to suggest that Aine hasn't had a bad day or if she had she's a little too good at pretending otherwise. Nothing really seems to get her down, not even when she got broken up with on what she thought was a six month anniversary dinner - never mind the fact that it had been a year and a half and she only said six months because she didn't want her partner to feel bad for forgetting. Sure, she felt bad, but it was nothing that some Phish Food and a marathon of Grey's Anatomy couldn't fix. The most annoyed, Aine ever seems to get is when people don't pronounce her name correctly - though she smiles (albeit with a little twitch) and tells them to "just call me Anya..or Anne." It's not that Aine tends to bottle things up it's that she does, knowing that a smile and bubbly attitude can only get her so far and knowing it's not exactly the healthiest approach to things. After years of it, though, she's gotten good at making sure only the most perceptible are able to see through the smile and bright eyes.
Of course, Aine isn't just all fake smiles and overbearing positivity. She's a people person and a people pleaser though she has enough self respect to not just be a doormat who says yes to everything someone asks of her. Her sense of humor, in her own words, is unique which is a funny way of saying she has a tendency to laugh at her own comments and references even if no one else understands them; her highlight was a delightfully humorous Mark Twain reference when discussing King Arthur but no one in the room knew what 'A Connecticut Yankee' even was. Still, for all her...eccentricities, Aine is a teacher that genuinely tries and wants every student to succeed which is why for two years in a row she's gotten Teacher of the Year for her school district. She brought one of the trophies with her. It makes her feel nice.
Backstory:Aine likes to say she's from Cork, Ireland but she's technically from Crum Lynne, Pennsylvania though grew up largely in Philadelphia. She got asked many times by students if she was born and raised in west Philadelphia and at first her answer was "No, Crum Lynne isn't technically in Philadelphia" until she was informed what the question was referring to. Raised Catholic, Aine went to Sunday school well into her teenage years which led to her reputation as 'the church girl' among her peers. Like any self respecting Catholic, she had a crisis of faith and eventually came to terms with religion. She's not religious but she goes to church every now and then...typically on the Sundays where they have a church cookout after the fact. She brings her homemade baked macaroni and cheese or spinach dip. It's a huge hit.
Ms. Whelan, as her students know her as, didn't always want to be a teacher. As a child she thought she'd be a pilot like Amelia Earhart and then there was a period where she thought being a librarian would be fun. In a way she kind of got the best of both worlds. She gets to teach about history (and other subjects) and the school has a library that she sometimes spends her lunch period at so she can avoid Mrs. Sloane's constant passive aggressive comments about Aine's dress looking "like mildewed old drapes dipped in lemon colored paint." What a witch with a b! Aine sort of fell into teaching thanks to being a tutor in high school and helping a failing student she may or may not have had a crush on pass thanks to her innovative technique of tutoring like a game with tangible rewards. She didn't have the courage to ask them on a date after the fact but it's okay, they probably would've said no anyway.
While she doesn't treat teaching like its a game, she does believe in the power of positive reinforcement to the point of never blaming a student for doing poorly on a quiz or test. If someone does fail, she wants to help them but she never says it's their fault. Her fellow teachers who have tenure and a less optimistic view say she's being naïve. That may be so but at least at the end of semester Christmas party she gets the most gifts from her students and that has to count for something.
What brought her to Michigan is her private information but if you ask her nicely she just might tell.
Miscellaneous:She keeps ziploc baggies of snacks with her ranging from teddy grahams to pretzel sticks to rye chips and trail mix. She likes snacks, they help her on the job and she hates coffee so energy has to be kept up somehow. At least half her wardrobe is custom made dresses that look like mildewed old drapes dipped in lemon colored paint. Just don't tell her that, obviously.
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