Category Archives: jobstuff

Na na why don’t you get a job?

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Update on the job front:

Both interviews yesterday went very well. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like interviews. I hate them, in fact. So it was unusual for me to come out of not one but two interviews feeling confident.

The only appealing thing about job #1 is that it has benefits. Health insurance would be so nice. However, R warned me that it would probably be a mistake to take a job in my field that is “beneath” me.

“It smacks of desperation, and no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to get rid of it.”

“But I am desperate,” I joked.

No, seriously, it does make some sense.

I got a call from the HR director at the school district, job #2, telling me that I did a very good job and that the committee was still making their decision. He also said that they were going to be doing some background checking. This makes me nervous for several reasons:

1. I did not provide them with references. They didn’t ask.
2. I did not have to fill out an application.
3. The school district is in the same community as the evil non-profit agency that fired me back in 2001. I DO NOT want them speaking to the director of said agency.

eep.

Also, I have an interview scheduled for a long-term sub job in another school district next Monday. They called today, apparently just from going through their application files. Yay!

I also applied for another long-term sub job in a rural district where–get this–the superintendent of schools is from my hometown! (Well, sort of. A neighboring community that pulled into the same school district.) He taught at my school for a number of years, and I’m pretty sure I had a relative of his for social studies. Also, my grandfather was president of the school board when he was hired. Small world, eh? I sent the letter and resume directly to him and mentioned my town in the letter. Whee!

What a day

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Lots to say about the weekend, but first I need to talk about my day. I decided to be bold and make a follow-up call on a resume I sent last week, regarding a job I am highly qualified for. The director of personnel said they’d already selected some people for interviews and my name didn’t ring a bell, but asked me to fill him in on my background. I did, and as I suspected, my combined background in journalism/PR AND education was intriguing. He said he’d give my resume another look.

And lo, I now have an interview for tomorrow evening. A 9-person committee interview, which sort of frightens me…

So here’s the thing. My class tomorrow normally runs from 4:30 to 5:45. I need to be at this interview at 6:15. In any event, I would have to cut the class short. (I’m talking like in half. I would *need* a solid 45 minutes to get from one place to the other.) So do I cut the class short, or cancel it outright?

I also got a call about an aide position that I applied for, which I am also interviewing for tomorrow. I’m freaking out a little bit.

Back to school again

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Second class went reasonably well…there were a few stumbling moments, one or two moments of “attitude” from the students, but once we got rolling, it seemed to be fine.

I had assigned the first chapter, an introduction, for reading. There really wasn’t a whole lot to it. Why is writing important? How do we learn to write? Blah blah blah. But the minute I got there, I got complaints of “I didn’t understand the reading.” “There was too much.” Not sure what to do about this.

I went through and highlighted some of the main points for them. We talked about different types of writing. Tone. Style. Genre.

As an activity, I handed out a bunch of pieces of writing, all of them by me. I had them get into groups and try to determine who the piece’s intended audience was, what the purpose of the piece was, and what the author’s tone was. I think they at least somewhat enjoyed that…

I was walking by the classroom before class stared, and I think I overheard one of them saying that he was upset to have a first-time teacher. I try not to take these things personally.

Next week, we start doing some writing.

On the way out, I heard one of the students ask one of the others “How many English classes do we have to take?”

Yes, I’m teaching a “required” course. Which means they just *love* me. I said “I take it you don’t like English?”

He said, “It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s that I don’t understand it, and it’s really hard for me.”

Ahhh….my challenge of the semester.

I didn’t feel so bad about the attitude I’d gotten when R told me about his first class. Now, he has grad students…which one would think is a completely different world than undergrads at a community college, right?

He did an icebreaker activity with them, and asked them to tell him something about themselves that they wanted him to know.

One of them said “I hate icebreakers.”

😛

Head of the class

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I walked into my classroom yesterday at about 10 minutes before class time. Over half of the students were already sitting there waiting for me.

I wondered what they thought. Did I look like one of them?

I said hello, smiled, and put my things down. I’ve never felt quite so on display before. The students weren’t talking. They weren’t reading. They weren’t doing anything. They were just sitting there. Looking at me.

I started to pull things out of my bag. The syllabus. The books.

I looked up and counted heads. My roster had 22 names on it. I had about 15 students in front of me. I looked at my watch. I wrote some stuff on the board. I looked at my watch again.

At about 5 minutes before class time, I opted to hand out the syllabus to the students who were already sitting there. A few more trickled in. I passed out index cards, which I asked them to write some identifying information on. And a few more trickled in. I got them caught up, passed out the necessary materials, and started talking.

I introduced myself, and once the words started coming out of my mouth, I was fine. I told them they could call me Erin, they could call me Ms. N, but “Just don’t call me Mrs. N, because I’m not married.”

They chuckled. Whew.

Talked about the books, went over the syllabus, talked a bit about what they were going to be expected to do.

“Any questions for me?”

Twenty-two blank stares.

“Okay then, I’ll let you go for today. Read chapter 1 and be ready to discuss it on Thursday.”

Whoosh! Mass exodus from the room. Yeah, I remember what that was like.

Now tomorrow, the REAL work begins. Wish me luck!

A question of relevancy

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I went to bed early last night and slept like a rock. That felt good…

I had my interview yesterday, which I think went quite well. The job is, um, unusual. If hired, I would be working for a local search engine company in their relevancy department. This would involve a number of different tasks…editing and proofreading titles and descriptions for websites, actually writing the titles and descriptions for the client, if they desire, writing a small amount of ad copy. But the biggest part of the job is reviewing sites for relevancy to the keywords they’ve selected.

I had to complete a short test, reviewing four sites for relevancy to the keyword “books.” I had to comment on the relevancy, comment on the content of the titles and descriptions, and finally, write a pretend email to one of the clients explaining why or why not “books” would be a good keyword for them to use.

I feel like I saw a movie where someone had this type of a job. Does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about? It was a female character, and she had a conversation with a male character about occasionally having to review adult sites at work. Does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about? Please tell me I’m not going crazy!

I’ve decided to join in the 5 questions game, and I will be working on the questions posed to me by Annabel Lee. I hope to post them later today. Watch for them! (Check out her site…anyone using Poe as the theme of their blog is cool by me!)

And finally, I have a question for my faithful readers. Yesterday, I received an invitation to the wedding of a couple of good friends. The wedding is on October 9. I am thinking that I would like to ask R to accompany me…it seems too early to bring it up just yet, but I don’t want to wait too long…he’s a busy guy, and is likely to make plans if I don’t bring it up soon enough. RSVP date is September 18. What do you think?

How do I hate thee, job?

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Let me count the ways….

I’m not talking about my not-ready-for-full-time newspaper job. I’m talking about my piddly, hardly-worth-my-time tutoring job.

I put in my notice last week. I’ll be starting the teaching gig, and really, really don’t have time for it.

And besides…it’s awful.

When I first started, I was being scheduled between 8 and 12 hours a week, sometimes more. This ws overwhelming at times, but the money was…decent. As summer came, the hours started to creep backwards. This week, I have 7. And that’s high.

But it’s a darn good thing I only have 7, because I despise being there. I loathe it.

Some backstory…there are three distinct areas of instruction. Verbal (or “floor”), math, and one-on-one. When I first trained, I was only trained to be a floor teacher. This suited me just fine. I worked with older students (generally grade 5 and up) and didn’t have to go anywhere near math. I worked with anywhere from 2 to 4 students at a time, and it was good. I can’t say I *loved* it or anything, but it really wasn’t a bad job at all.

But then they started cutting hours.

And then they wanted to train me to do one-on-one instruction.

I said fine, maybe it would get me more hours. What I didn’t expect was that they would switch me to doing ONLY one-on-one. This means I’m working with younger kids, for starters. (There is a very good reason that my certification is in secondary ed. 6-year-olds and I do NOT get along well in an instructional setting. It makes me want to tear my hair out. I’m not good at it. I don’t know how to be effective teaching young children. And I’m not.)

And then there’s the hours. They would schedule me for shifts, and then cancel them. Send me home early. Ask me to stay later.

But this, this was the kicker…

In order to be a good little employee and help out, I rearranged my schedule so I could be available to take shifts on Wednesday mornings. I said, very specifically, that my availability was from 9 until NOON. Noon. Period. I have to get to my other job by 12:30 so that I can still get 4 hours in. I thought this was a more-than-generous gesture on my part.

Last week, there was a message left for me at home.

“We were just wondering if you’d be able to stay until 1 on Wednesday. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll just assume this is all right.

Um, you people know what happens when you assume, right?

So I called back to say that it was not, in fact, all right.

And THEN, this week, they actually scheduled me until 12:30. Again, I called and explained that I cannot stay until 12:30. Because my availability is only until NOON. Seriously. How hard is that to understand?

One more week. One more week. One more week…

And the kicker? I’ll make nearly twice as much money teaching ONE course at the community college. Two days a week (plus prep time, of course).

Nightmare day

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Okay, so anyone who knows me knows that I procrastinate. Always.

I arrive at work this morning with about 3 stories on my plate that I need to complete by tomorrow.

I learn that the Pope has named a new bishop for the diocese. This completely screws with my day.

Gaaaaaaaaaaah.

Things I need to do:

1. Finish stories I’ve been working on.
2. Do new bishop-related stories I’ve been assigned.
3. Find someplace to replace my tire and do a rear-wheel alignment.

This means that I should do more working and less blogging…

One less than beautiful day

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It’s raining. This is proof that God does not want Jen and me to go see “Taming of the Shrew” and meet Paul Todaro this evening.

But, as Jen pointed out, this is probably a good thing…at least for her…as she has only slept about 4 hours in the past 48. (or something) She compounded the lack of sleep yesterday by taking Benadryl for her allergies, and let’s just say that it’s been a LONG time since I’ve seen her quite so…loopy.

🙂

No news on the job front yet…although I noticed in yesterday’s job finder that the charter school that interviewed me and definitely should have notified me either way by now is looking for a principal. That can’t be a good sign…

I also sent a letter of interest to one of the schools where I subbed last spring, and spoke to the superintendent’s secretary on the phone. We shall see…

Additionally, I see that a private business college is looking for a full time English instructor. Assboy taught at this school. How hard can it be?

Freakin’ out

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I picked up my materials at the community college yesterday.

I have to plan a course. And write a syllabus.

I’m actually going to be teaching a college course.

Ohmygod. Who am I?

Do a little dance

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Exciting news–I got a part-time teaching gig at a community college! English 101.

This is very, very good, but I got the news in a strange way. Department secretary called, and talked to Jen. She talked very much as if I knew I had the job. Um, I didn’t. But there’s a mailbox set up for me, and I’m supposed to stop in next week to pick up materials. Woohoo!