interviewing – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

Almost titled this post “Friday brain dump,” which should show you where my head is right now. I have no idea whether anything in this post is going to be interesting to anyone who isn’t me but I need it out of my brain, so… yeah. Make yourself enjoy it.

I have… news? On the job front? I inquired about a position this afternoon and received a “let’s set up an interview as soon as possible” response within ten minutes, which seems pretty positive. I know the principal already and got along with him quite well, so it’s entirely possible that in his head this may be done and dusted already, but who knows.

I’m ambivalent about the job itself, though. I must get out of my building next year; that’s simply not optional. I would really really like to get out of my district, and a lot of the problems that I have with my current building are going to still going to be problems with the new school. And at the moment landing a position at this building would not cause me to stop looking in other districts. Which feels more than a little dishonest to me. Unfortunately, I’m not certain I actually care.

No word from District Four. I felt like I didn’t do well on the phone interview, but I also felt like the phone interview was kinda bullshit. I’ve talked with one other person who has interviewed with them and he felt the same way. That said, I know they did more than one phone interview and I also know that those interviews have to be shared with multiple other people before second calls go out– and since my interview alone was probably half an hour or forty minutes long, I suspect that I probably ought not to panic about the fact that I haven’t gotten a call back in a week. It’s a busy time of year, y’know? And it ain’t like there’s a lot of time pressure there for a job that doesn’t even start until August. So… we’ll see. I’ve got several generic “if you end up with openings” types of letters out and at least two applications for specific jobs that I haven’t heard back on. So, we’ll see what happens. I’m trying not to stress out about it, as I’ve probably said before; I would be really surprised if I knew anything at all before August. But, again, we’ll see.

Tomorrow’s field day. It’ll be inside because it’s supposed to rain for pretty much the entire day. But still field day. And then my twelfth and quite possibly toughest year of teaching is finished.

Bring it, goddammit.

So I’ve been sick since… Friday night? Saturday morning? Hell, I can barely even remember anymore. I’d tell you what was wrong but it doesn’t seem to be able to settle on anything, so take your pick: aches and pains, eye-popping migraine-style headaches, chills, sweats, intestinal/digestive stuff, sore throat, coughing, heart racing, out of breath, but like never more than two or three of those at the same time. I missed work at my other job Saturday night because it felt like my eyes were trying to leap out of my head and missed this morning just because of generalized suck. I have no sick days left and may be out tomorrow anyway. I don’t know what the hell’s going on but for once I’m going to actually make a doctor’s appointment; this shit has gone on long enough.

(My wife thinks, and I think I agree, that it’s entirely stress-related, and that I’ve been having mini panic attacks, thus the occasional out-of-breath moments. Which means that they’ll probably want to prescribe some sort of anti-anxiety medicine, which will take more time to kick in than there are days left in school. So… not gonna do that.)

I had a phone interview today. This should be a “Yay!” moment; I’m not expecting to secure a new job until fairly late in the summer, so even getting a phone call at this early stage is rather surprising. More surprising? It was with District Four. The interview was supposed to be on Friday afternoon initially and ended up getting rescheduled because some sort of hell broke loose at school; it was moved to today at 3:45. Which meant that I had to do a phone interview sick and in the “out of breath and heart hammering” stage of the illness. And in the fine tradition of District Four, it was standardized. The principal asked me several scripted questions involving hypothetical situations with kids who aren’t real, which makes the questions, at least for me, almost entirely unanswerable. I mean, hell, I said something, but… meh. The principal even had to inform me that he was unable to clarify or provide additional details on any of the questions, and at least once I could have used some clarification. Plus the whole thing was recorded and on speakerphone, adding that last little bit of alienation and distance to the conversation.

This is no fucking way to hire people, by the way. Watch; District Four is going to end up offering me a job after doing nothing right during the hiring process. I know nothing about this guy or his building; he knows nothing about me. Blech.

I’ve got another book review coming but I think this is all I can handle today. Maybe I’ll go to work tomorrow and maybe I won’t; we’ll see. I’d like my body back to normal now, please.