Tag: careers

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Relevant

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories6 Comments

(10 minutes later)

I actually wasn’t going to comment on this initially, but something just hit me: there are a ton of sales jobs available in the area, and I’ve applied for none of them despite a suspicion that I might actually be pretty good at such work.  I just accidentally figured out why: after fifteen years of teaching and twelve years of NCLB, one thing I really want is a job where, as much as possible, my evaluation as an employee is based on what I do and not on what other people do.  Teachers are probably the best example of that, where just about all that matters to our evaluations now is how people who are not us and who we have no real control over do on tests that we can’t see beforehand and didn’t write.  But sales is not far behind– if somebody doesn’t have the money to buy something, chances are that person just isn’t gonna buy it, and talking them into buying it anyway is unethical as hell.  Sales is also a little too beholden to the vagaries of the economy than I’d prefer.  I hadn’t really made that connection prior to putting this video up, but that’s definitely part of my reticence here.

Oh for fuck’s sake

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I’m actually thinking about applying.

Screen Shot 2015-09-21 at 7.10.01 PM

Aaight

On By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

11539580_10153372300838926_158097258365957256_n(I said this on Twitter, but I should say it on WP too:  loving the rainbow banner, guys.  Meanwhile, not quite done having fun with this.)

Anyway.  Trying to use today to clean up a lot of little writing tasks that have been piling up lately; so far I’ve written up a fairly lengthy interview (details later) and done some promotional stuff for Skylights.  I need to go into work on Monday for about an hour and then my grant is put to bed and I actually get to start my summer break, which will be spent working on Starlight and Searching for Malumba and also job-hunting.  So July’s full already, especially when you factor in that I’ll be spending the entire 4th of July weekend in Indianapolis at InConJunction.  Book signings!  Free bookmarks!  Woo!

(Are you in Indianapolis, or nearby?  The con’s cheap, and it looks like a lot of fun.  Come see me!  Creator’s Alley, booth C9!  Please?  I’ll be so goddamn lonely.)

Speaking of putting grants to bed, I have two days to write my final report for the teacher grant that paid for last summer’s writing adventure.  It won’t be much different from my mid-year report, since I’m not actually teaching and therefore can’t report on how the grant affected my teaching.  Once that’s done, I start planning for the books.  My first priority on Monday is to get at least a thousand words done on Starlight; my second priority is to get another thousand words done on a BA story for Lightspeed Magazine’s open submissions period.

And play a lot of Bloodborne.

So that’s me, today.  What’s your Sunday looking like?

My Current Dilemma, in bullet point form

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work10 Comments
  • job-huntI do not want to teach any longer.
  • However, I want to be employed more than I want to not-teach.
  • However, if I have to teach, I would prefer to be outside my current district.
  • However, I tried this last summer and it didn’t exactly work out, and I think people can smell burnout on me regardless of how hard I try to conceal it.
  • However, I’m fully expecting my entire district to go bankrupt next year, and it’s probably better to take a salary hit now then have my paychecks start bouncing in April.
  • However, that might not happen.
  • However, it’s entirely possible that it won’t matter because I’ll have killed myself/others by the time April rolls around anyway.

It seems, given those facts, that I might look at jobs outside of education!

  • I am good at many things.
  • However, few of those things will be immediately apparent on a résumé, and “trust me, I can handle this” is hardly a winning schpiel at a job interview.
  • However, letters of recommendation are good!
  • However, I don’t especially relish the idea of telling my boss I’m going to do my best to bail on him this summer.
  • However, he’s not an idiot and he knows full well that it’s time for the rats to desert the ship, and he’s likely looking for a job himself.
  • However, every time I look for other jobs, I’m reminded that I don’t really have any sort of concrete idea of what else I might do, and jobs that my current skill-set clearly qualifies me for frequently don’t meet salary needs.
  • However, see above regarding salary needs, because again, making $IOU in April is a distinct possibility this year.
  • The word however is getting old, so we’ll point out here that I actually don’t know what the hell people do to find jobs nowadays.  Finding teaching jobs is pretty specific and simple, but when you’re in the situation I’m in (“I want at least $45K a year so that I can keep paying my bills, and don’t much care what I’m doing so long as it’s not teaching or illegal”) the actual search process can be kinda difficult.
  • LinkedIn appears to be useless, and their dedicated job search app worse than useless.  I searched for nonprofit jobs yesterday and received several screens of jobs at Taco Bell.  A search for education jobs suggested that I apply for a job as a surgeon for the Army Reserve.
  • You may recall that a manager at Taco Bell makes considerably more than South Bend will pay a teacher.

I really loathe the adage “Those who can’t do, teach.”  I can do.  What I’m not sure about is convincing people to hire me for jobs that I’m not immediately and obviously going to be a good fit for.  I have to get my foot in the door, and I just don’t know that my résumé is going to do that– and that’s after the important “what the hell am I even applying for?” step happens.

Ugh.

Buy some fuggin’ books.  Once I’m independently wealthy I ain’t gotta worry about this nonsense no mo’.  🙂

WARNING: whiny

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

calm-whining-toddler-800X800Do you think this kid’s parents know he’s a meme now?  Do you think they’re upset about it, or do they think it’s awesome?  And do you think he’s old enough by now to have an opinion on it?

The following things are all true, if vaguely contradictory:

  • I really miss my old school;
  • I have no real desire to return to teaching there;
  • I have no particular desire to return to teaching at all at the moment;
  • I nearly changed something somewhere where I referred to myself as a “teacher” and then didn’t do it because the thought made me really sad.

I like my job in a concrete sense– in that, when I am at work, I am generally happy and I enjoy the people I work with and the work itself is in my wheelhouse and not generally unpleasant to perform.  I don’t like that I’ve been there for several months now and I still don’t know what to say when people ask me what I do for a living, and I’m still prone to simply lying and saying I’m a teacher.  I don’t want to teach, but I really don’t want to not be a teacher.  Which is… kinda weird, y’know?

It’s going to be really interesting to see what four days in Nashville edutopia later this week is going to do for my feelings about the future.  If this can’t get my head back on straight, I’m not sure what can.  We’ll see how it goes.

Fuggit

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching16 Comments

Today, so far, has been the day I was worried most of the summer was going to turn into– hours and hours of pointless web surfing and bullshit combined with a complete lack of accomplishment by any metric whatsoever and a mild bout of depression.  I caught myself thinking about returning to my previous school on the way home from taking the boy to day care this morning and by the time I got back to my house I was halfway to a fucking panic attack.

I do not want to teach any more.  Regardless of where I end up, this must be my last year in this profession.  It’s killing me.

I’m going to sit here on the couch with my laptop and uselessly get pissed off at the world until my wife and son get home now.

Face to face job interview tomorrow…

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

…on less than 24 hours notice, so you KNOW it’s District Four. Which means I need to buy a suit. Tonight.

You can probably imagine that “buy a suit” is totally my favorite thing to do.

Totally.

In which this is really actually true

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

I’m, like, fifty followers away from the big 3K.  REPOST ABUNDANTLY.

I received a thank you note today– from a parent of one of my students, mind you– that started with the sentence “Thank you for being a cynical, sarcastic, grumpy asshole.”  And, like, it meant thank you, and not weird reverse-psychology I’m using thank you to mean I hate you nonsense.

What can I say; some of them get me.

Today was Field Day; it went just fine, as these things tend to do, except it had rather less Field than I might have liked due to torrential rains at the beginning of the day (when all of the outdoor stuff would have been set up) and at the end of the day as well.  In between, though, it was beautiful outside.  Unlike last year, as you’ve seen in the post below this one, I managed to remember to get a picture of the last bus as it pulled away from the building. So, yay: achievement unlocked.  I also found out today that there’s at least one other school wanting a phone interview.  And another actual interview Friday.  So double-yay.

Goals for this summer:

  • Get BA 8, currently untitled, written.  I’m about 3600 words in.
  • Get Skylights online.  This will require talking to my artist tomorrow.  And, uh, the revisions.  Damn revisions!
  • Finish the bathroom.  Soon.
  • Get my comic books categorized and, hopefully, sold.
  • Go through the four enormous crates of vintage 1980s toys that my mother unleashed on me last weekend and figure out what to do with them.  Yes, that’s a big enough task that it counts as a summer goal.
  • Oh, and, uh, get a new job.

I still technically have one more day at work; the teacher record day is tomorrow, but literally everything is done and if I wanted to I could check out of the building five minutes after walking into it tomorrow.  I’m not going to, but I could.

For right now, though?  Bed.  Early.  I didn’t sleep well at all last night– not, like, end-of-year related, I just couldn’t sleep– but I intend to make up for it tonight.

(Random late addition: the lack of an apostrophe in the title of this YouTube video is annoying me enough that I may actually change the video.  Something is wrong with me.)