Tag: decisions

In which I make a decision

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

…so, apparently I like my job?

I had a Moment this weekend, or perhaps a series of Moments, where a math job opened up at the boy’s school and I jumped on it faster than I’ve ever jumped on a job opportunity in my life. And then, once the cover letter was written and the resume was updated and everything was filled out and sent off, I immediately regretted it.

And that was … kinda weird? You’re telling me, brain, that I offer you a job with small class sizes and damn near universally kids who want to learn and whose parents are invested in their education and you … don’t want it? You’re supposed to kill people to get that job. I’ve been in the trenches for over two decades at this point! I deserve a job that no one would ever refer to using the word “trenches,” God damn it!

Now, because it’s my kid’s school, it’s kind of a weird situation, because in the “who do you know who works here” section on the application, I had to write “basically everyone,” because dude has been at this school since he was larval and that’s kind of what happens. And I emailed one person at the school and gave him a heads-up that I’d put in the application, because technically I used to be his boss and I thought it was at least a little possible that someone might go ask him about that if they put together that we were at the same school at the same time. And I very specifically did not tell two of the three people I put down as references, because no one ever calls references first and if I’m not taking the job I don’t need the drama at work about whether I’m leaving.

Anyway, yeah, several days in the row of anxiety, and do I really want this, and reminding myself that I really haven’t had a lot to complain about this year, and then the person I sent all the documentation in to emailed me back and she asked “are you sure about this,” because, in her words, their pay was “woefully” lower than what I’m currently making.

So, of course, I emailed her back and asked how woeful is woeful, because that word doesn’t really suggest a number to me if I’m being honest, and Glassdoor was being really unhelpful, and she got back to me.

Twenty five thousand dollar pay cut.

So, uh, yeah, I’m staying at my current school next year. That was a fun few days, though.

Pros & Cons

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

It’s gonna be a raise. Possibly as much as $10K.

I actually make plenty of money right now, and I’m getting so much extra on class coverage
that “you’ll get a big raise!” isn’t the motivator you might think it is.

It’ll be a less chaotic environment.

Maybe. And the building is old, and the classroom has no exterior windows, and there’s
not enough whiteboard space, and you had that technology in your room in 2007.

You get to teach honors classes.

I have to leave my current kids, who I really like.
The commute’s gonna suck.

It’s literally a ten minute difference each way.

… right, at 7:30 in the morning.

You’ll get home earlier, and you really only have to get up an hour earlier.

Dude you can barely drag your ass out of bed in the winter now.
You get to keep taking your kid to school every day. You love that and you know it.

…okay, you have a point there, but it’s a small one.

That’s what she said.

Shut up. Are you really willing to be the last teacher standing?

Are you willing to be the reason four or five other teachers leave?
Because if you jump a whole bunch of people are going to jump.

That is not my fault. They’re grown-ups and make their own decisions.

Look me in the eye and say that like you mean it.

Shut up.

There’s also the St. Mary’s kid to worry about. You gonna fuck up her semester?

Again, I’m not convinced that’s my fault, and I’m sure St. Mary’s has encountered this before.

Two weeks of conversations about how you’re leaving.
Because you know it’s gonna get out. You can’t do this in secret.

How many summers in a row have you tried to get out of this district and failed?
You can’t count on switching this summer. Everybody will be looking to go.
What happens if some parent decides to get litigious about the fact that their kids’ IEPs
aren’t being followed? You psyched about getting sued?

New District is probably laced with Republicans.

I note that you’ve changed the subject.
You’re teaching Math. Dude, you taught at a Catholic school for three years and got along.
You can handle this. Just teach Math. What if they actually do close the school mid-year?
They’re gonna reassign you someplace. You up to that?

I don’t have an answer for that one either.

That sounds like “leave” is winning.
Also, you’re already nearly out of sick days because Covid. Moving hits reset on that.

That’s not a good reason. If we’re gonna use that we may as well
point out that we’re a lock for Teacher of the Year this year.

Okay. You get some meaningless resume-padding. Everybody who sticks around gets that eventually.

Three times? In three different jobs in two different buildings?
You stand a chance for district TOTY this year.

And then you’ll leave anyway. Kinda rude, bruh.

Don’t say “bruh.” You’re 46.

Right. And you’ve done your time. You don’t owe anyone anything.

There’s no guarantee this school will be better. Not really.

There’s no guarantee of ANYTHING.

Shut up, Epicurus.

You enjoyed that reference a little bit too much.

I am LITERALLY a pedant.

What’s the best reason to stay?

The kids.

There will always be more kids. You can’t leave teaching without disappointing someone.
Shit, they use that against you. “The kids!” is how they know they can fuck teachers over
endlessly and keep getting away with it. Because they know we put up with it.

Okay, what’s the best reason to leave? Money?

The sneer is unbecoming. And the best reason to leave is your sanity.

It’s not that bad.

How long is that going to last? Do you really want to see what February is like,
after three more months of being short teachers?
We had eighteen people out on Friday. Imagine that being every day.

Friday was kinda fun, actually.

Downtown is not going to start emptying out every day to fill positions
at your school and you know it. They’ll close you first, and then you end up with NO control.

I hate that you’re probably right.

Can you find a SINGLE ADULT who will tell you they think you need to stay?

I haven’t yet, no. Including other teachers. Including co-workers. Including my wife.
Fuck. Are you winning? You’re winning, aren’t you?

The only real reasons you don’t want to go are that you don’t want to disappoint
your kids and you don’t want to have to tell everyone you’re leaving.

These are not minor reasons!

Half of them are literally cowardice.

Shut up.

I’m right and you know it.

You’re right and I hate it.

If you can look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t think this is going to
get worse, you can stay.

It might not.

I said if you can look me in the eye and tell me you don’t think this is going to get worse.

You’re a computer screen. You don’t have eyes.

Ah, yes, dodge the obvious point and retreat into humor.

… I need to go take a shower. It’s 2:15. I should be dressed by now.

That’s what I thought.

And now it’s go time

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Welp. There’s a job offer on the table.

There are still issues to be discussed– salary, most importantly– but there’s an offer on the table. I went over to the school Monday and had an in-person interview and looked around the building and saw the classroom and everything. My interview was very honest– I told the principal that I was a giant flaming liberal with a BLM flag and a Pride flag in his classroom and asked if she thought that was going to be a problem (although, for the record, I don’t plan on hanging either flag in the new room, at least not the first year) and I also made it clear that if I got an offer I was going to ask for 24 hours to think about it and then I was going to have probably the hardest night of my life while I thought about it. I also said that if I decided to stay that it was going to just be through the end of the year, and that there was no way I was returning to my district this fall– and that shit is one hundred percent the fucking truth. I know I’ve said that before but this is it. I’m done with this district, either in the next few weeks or at the end of the year, but there will be no 2023-24 school year with these people, period.

Right now I’m leaning toward not going, because I’m an idiot. But the number after the dollar sign will have an effect on that.

I think I’m actually going to ask to wait until Monday to make the decision, too, because … well, it’s 7:30 on Wednesday night and I just got the email, so I’ll call them back tomorrow, and 24 hours would give me until Friday, and … well, it’s Friday. They don’t need to know on Friday. They can wait until Monday.

Expect me to talk about nothing but this for the next few days.

Lights!

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

This is as exciting as my day got– picking out the lighting for the bathroom remodel. That’s what they look like; bask in its room-lighty glory. Or not; we didn’t exactly go super-complicated on this particular decision. I suppose we also picked out a bathroom exhaust fan, but seeing as how the entire decision-making process for that was to authorize whatever our contractor had already suggested, and I couldn’t pick the one we chose out of a lineup if my life depended on it, it didn’t count for much.

My criteria for the lights: 1) brushed nickel, to match everything else in the room; 2) smoked glass so that I’m not staring at bare lightbulbs, and 3) facing downwards to make the bulbs easier to change. My wife argued with none of these determinations and I more or less went “Okay, whatever you want” beyond that. I think we’ve been surprising the people at these places with how quickly and easily we’ve been able to make decisions throughout this process, although I did horrify the saleslady at the fixtures place a couple of weeks ago by abruptly snarling at my wife about something or another; Bek knew exactly what I was doing and laughed about it, but the saleslady clearly thought I had decided to die on the hill of refusing to have oval-shaped pulls on the vanity or whatever it was that I’d complained about, and you could see her bracing herself to be an unwitting bystander in Marital Drama.

I suspect these people probably have a touch of PTSD, and I don’t blame them for it; we probably ought to just get along in public and not make jokes. I will do better in the future.

There’s not much more to report here, really; I planned for the first couple of days of summer break to be low-activity and I’ve successfully achieved that. Tomorrow we are heading to Illinois to finally meet my new nephew, so expect a hotel window picture tomorrow evening and maybe some baby pictures if my brother and sister-in-law will allow it. Maybe I’ll just put my hand over his face and post that; we’ll see. We’ll stay overnight– the boy is psyched about staying in a hotel for the first time in forever– and be back Sunday, and then Monday morning I start actually Preparing for Things. We’ll see how well I do.

In which I ask the interwebs for financial advice

On By Luther M. SilerIn life6 Comments

… and, okay, ultimately I’m probably gonna listen to my wife on this more than y’all, but it’s not like I’m overflowing with other subjects to discuss today.

So like a lot of you (so many people are checking their bank balances online that the apps are crashing) we got our stimulus money today. Twelve hunnert for me, twelve hunnert for my wife, and another five hunnert for the boy. My wife and I mostly keep our finances separate; we divide up the bills, so, like, I pay the mortgage but she buys the groceries and pays for utilities, and any bills that are ours, like cars or student loans, are our own personal responsibility. The boy’s chunk of the money will probably end up going toward tuition.

We are not among the people who need this money. It’s nice; I’m never going to turn down cash, but we do not need it. We both have jobs that provide us with sufficient funds for our lifestyle and furthermore we are in a position where our jobs are at least less likely to go away because of the pandemic– she works in the health care sector, broadly speaking, and while disaster-related teacher layoffs are always a possibility I have enough seniority at this point that I’m highly unlikely to be affected by them, and they won’t happen until this fall at any rate. I may not like my job once everything shakes out, but there’s not a huge possibility of losing it.

(He said, casually knocking on wood afterward.)

So the question becomes what to do with it, and … well, like I said, I don’t have lots else to talk about at the moment. So:

  • OPTION ONE: SAVE IT. Probably the most obvious choice; the merits of saving money don’t even really need to be explained. Things are okay now; they may not stay that way, even if I think it’s probably likely that they will. Somebody could get sick; something could happen with one of the cars or the house, shit happens. Especially in the last couple of years.
  • OPTION TWO: PAY OFF CREDIT CARD. My overall credit card indebtedness has gone down enormously recently; I only have one card with a balance right now and $1200 would pay off a sizable fraction of it, but not finish it off. Yet. That said, the monthly bill for the card isn’t that high, and I’ve been paying twice that amount every month. It’s gonna go away (again, assuming no financial disasters) soon enough even if I don’t put this big chunk into it.
  • OPTION THREE: SAVE HALF, PAY OFF HALF. Probably the most reasonable option unless I decide to prioritize saving.
  • OPTION FOUR: BUY MORE BOOKS AND DICE. You can never have enough books and dice. This one is probably not the smartest idea, but would be the most fun.
  • OPTION FIVE: DONATE IT TO SOMEONE. The most socially responsible option since, again, I don’t need the money, but I think a certain amount of financial selfishness is warranted right now for the exact same reasons one might give to save the money. We’re not so well off that this money is nothing— it’s still definitely a good chunk of change– it’s just not immediately necessary for anything.

So, whaddya think? How much should I be tilting toward paranoia and safety right now? Or, alternatively, what are you doing with your $1200?

12:56 PM, Wednesday April 15: 610,774 confirmed infections (and over two million worldwide); 26,119 Americans dead.

In which there is an unexpected development

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

I have recently come across an Employment Opportunity that is worth thinking about and investigating. Don’t get too excited; I haven’t even decided to apply, much less done so and been called for an interview or anything like that. Nor do I know how much it would pay. But for now, just trust me that it’s an Employment Opportunity and leave it at that.

At any rate, I’m bringing it up because my first thought upon discovering of its existence was I’m not sure I want to leave teaching right now. And, more broadly, I’m not certain I want to leave teaching again.

Which is … not the direction I thought my life was heading a few months ago. One of the numerous problems with being a teacher, of course, is the limited window one has to find a new job if one wishes to 1) stop teaching without 2) abandoning one’s current students. And I am finding that I am far enough into the year and I like my kids enough (most of ’em, at least) that the notion of ending the school year early even for a much more lucrative job gives me quite a bit of pause. The most amazing thing is that I’m not currently planning on a mad scramble for a new job this summer. For the first time in forever I feel like if I ended up in the same job next year that I have this year I’d be okay with that. And that surprises the hell out of me, especially since I mostly teach 8th graders who are all going to be gone next year anyway whether I like it or not. One way or another I’m highly unlikely to be in these kids’ lives for more than about seven more months; is it really that big of a deal if I were to leave in, say, January rather than June?

Apparently it is.

I’m going to look into this job anyway, because there’s no harm in looking into it; it’s not like I’m committing to anything by putting in an application, and they may not be interested in me or it may turn out that the job doesn’t pay enough or really any number of things. But it’s odd to realize that I’m back in the position where “Yes, please, now, please” wouldn’t be my immediate reaction to escaping the classroom again, especially since ending up where I have was at least a bit of a last resort anyway.

God help me, I may actually be enjoying my job again. Weird, innit?

Some book musings

On By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

I’m basically done with the “break” part of my break; I have the weekend and then I’m back to work on Monday. Usually by this point at the break I’m climbing the walls and chewing on my extremities; for the most part, other than yesterday’s post, I’ve managed to avoid going slowly crazy. I’ve gotten a fair amount of stuff done over the break. What I haven’t done is any of Luther’s stuff. It’s all been Clark Kent nonsense over here for the last couple of weeks.

My first priority in 2019 has to be to decide what to do with Skylights. I have so many half-written drafts of the sequel, under more than one title, that it’s frankly kind of ridiculous. That may or may not be the cover. It may or may not be the title. And once I have the sequel written I have to decide if I’m doing a second edition of the first book. A second edition wouldn’t be too different, but the first book already mentions things that didn’t happen in 2018 (because 2018 was, comfortably, The Future when I wrote it) and the events of the book are at this point far too close to Now for comfort. If nothing else, I need to remove specific dates, and probably rewrite the prologue to give the story some breathing room. I don’t think I can tie the events of the story so close to something that happened in 1984, for example; it just makes Gabe too old.

(20-minute break while I research the FAFSA and explain how taxes work for a former student; I avoid using the phrase “this would be easier if I adopted you.”)

Anyway, point is I gotta figure this shit out. And I probably should have reformatted some of my books to get them away from CreateSpace and over to Ingram over the break. And maybe done a new banner, since the one vertical banner I have is Skylights-focused. I should probably have one for at least one more of my books.

Point is, I didn’t spend as much time being Luther over the last couple of weeks as maybe I should have. And now I need to figure some stuff out over the next couple of days. This week shouldn’t be too hard (he said,) so I should have some brainspace left to get things done when I get home from work. And who knows? The next couple of days might be hugely productive.

Just, like I said, I’ve got some decisions to make, and a weight to get off my back.

What have you been putting off lately?

So, my car

On By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

Screen Shot 2017-05-25 at 5.02.01 PMI done fucked up today, I think.

My current car is a 2001 Ford Escape with nearly a hundred and seventy thousand miles on it.  The fabric on the driver’s side door is mostly peeled off, there are big patches of rust inside all the doors, and there’s a big crack in the rear bumper.  The radio intermittently decides it needs to take a rest and won’t turn back on for anywhere from a few seconds to a day.  It leaks oil from a leak so deep in the engine that repairing it is an absurdity.  And its gas mileage… well, leaves something to be desired.

That said: it turns on when I need it to turn on and it gets me where I want to go, and while it’s loud as hell at speed it’s not an uncomfortable ride by any means.  It’s just that at 170K it is only a matter of time until something breaks that will be pointless to repair.  To get ahead of myself a bit, I was offered $1200 for it as a trade today and I think it was probably a pretty generous offer, all told.

The boy has named the car Joey Car Kristofferson.  I will very much miss having a car named Joey Car Kristofferson, to the point where I will probably insist that its replacement be named Joey Car Kristofferson II.  (My wife’s car, incidentally, is called Lisa Car James.  Don’t ask where the boy got the names.  No one knows.)

So anyway, I took that car up there for a test drive earlier today.  It’s a 2016 Kia Soul in the + trim level, with 28,000 miles on it.  It’s immaculately clean and seems to run beautifully.  It’s small– trunk space, in particular, is kind of a joke– but it fits my main need in a vehicle, which is that it rides high enough that I climb into the seat and slide out, rather than the other way around.  I refuse to struggle to get out of my car, which means I’ll never own a sedan again.  I’ve started to seriously hate them.  I test drove a brand-new Ford Escape a few months ago, and loved it, but financially I think it’s a better idea to go for a lightly used vehicle right now rather than a new one.  Unless I lease, which I might choose to do but <insert every website and argument about leasing ever> and my brain isn’t set up for that right now.

It’s just under fifteen thousand bucks, that car, and with the financing I’d expect to get I’d probably be making payments of just over $200 a month.  Which is in the neighborhood where I’m thinking Yeah, I can swing that rather than I can afford that.  To my mind, that’s a real difference; you can swing a new purchase if you can come up with some ways to cut costs that would absorb a lot of the new bill and figure you’ll be okay.  You can afford something if you don’t have to think at all about what you’ll do to pay for it.  For example, I can afford to spend $25-50 pretty much whenever I want so long as I don’t, like, do it every day.  But if I want to buy a new shirt or something?  I don’t have to think about that.  A car payment means I’m thinking things like well, I do eat out way too often anyway and I’m spending too much fucking money on comic books every week while I’m considering what it would do to my budget.  And the down payment would have to come out of our mutual savings, which my wife will likely have something to say about.  We did just drop three and a half grand on a new bed, after all.

I’m not sure I have a point here, and I don’t know if I’m asking for advice or just talking.  I just need to decide how quickly I think I need a new car, and whether I should buy a new one before I need a new one.

Go buy some of my books and make this easier, dammit.  🙂