Tag: work

In which it happened again

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, life3 Comments

Logically, I was last at work just a couple of months ago, so it has to be true that I know how to exist in a world where I do not have access to a three-hour afternoon nap every single day whether I want one or not. I just don’t remember how that’s supposed to work, and I spend what feels like a huge percentage of my mental effort every day avoiding taking a nap. I succumbed today– the boy had a few of his friends over to play D&D, and I positioned myself where I wasn’t in their way but I would potentially hear if there were issues that might benefit from fatherly intervention– and apparently staying awake for that was all I was capable of today.

I have what I refer to as the “danger spot” on the sectional in the living room, but my stationary chairs in the library rarely betray me. That was not the case today, unfortunately.

So 5:30 to 8:00 just sorta vanished, and now I’m sitting here trying to remember if I had anything I needed or wanted to do this evening, and I don’t think there was, but … damn.

Forgive me a piece of drive-by literary criticism, but I’m rereading The Eye of the World again, with the end goal of eventually finally fucking finishing The Wheel of Time, and I don’t think it’s ever quite hit me just how comprehensive a rip-off the first fifteen chapters or so are of the Hobbiton-to-Bree portion of The Fellowship of the Ring, to the point where I halfway feel like Jordan had a copy of the book sitting next to him while he was writing to make sure he hit all the important bits. I’m still half-asleep and don’t really want to go point-by-point, but Christ, the number of commonalities are nuts.

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.

In which it never ends

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I’m either getting sick again— which, Christ, please, fucking no– or my medication got directly on top of me after today’s shot, and one way or another I had more ledge-talking-off-talks going on at the end of the day and apparently I’ve become the staff emotional support teacher this year?

It genuinely wasn’t that bad of a week for me, but holy hell am I shot emotionally right now, mostly because of all the heavy lifting I’ve had to do on behalf of other people. I want to play video games for an hour but it’s also 8:33 right now, which makes me twenty-seven minutes away from being able to go to bed without feeling bad about myself, and if I start the process now…

I’m OK

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching, Work1 Comment

My last post, or perhaps a combination of the last several, appears to have unintentionally set several of you to worrying about me. I’m fine, I promise, or at least I’m as close to fine as I’ve been at any other point during the last few years. I’m “fine” by post-2016 standards, whatever that means.

And, honestly, there was no good reason to be secretive about what I needed luck for other than pure superstition, so: despite having made the decision to stay at my current school back in early June, now that we’ve got a principal and assistant principal named, along with a couple of articles in the local paper about recent school board meetings, I have become fully convinced that the district has entirely given up on our school and that we are being set up to continue to fail. I do not know my new principal very well but what I have witnessed thus far has not been good, and while I haven’t even met the new AP yet he has “pushover” tattooed on his forehead. We have a new dean of students as well. None of the three have any experience in their jobs. Our principal has never been a principal and has never been a middle school administrator at all; our new AP has never been an administrator, and our new Dean has not only never held that job she’s never worked in a middle school.

Oh, and I found out that literally two 8th graders passed the math ILEARN. Two. One point five percent. I don’t know which two. I suspect I can guess on at least one of them, but I don’t have names yet. So, I dunno, probably I suck at my job or something.

Anyway. Long story short, based on all that, despite my promise in May, I’ve applied for a few jobs at another district and if I get a chance I’m splitting.. One particular school has four jobs open and I’m qualified for three of them. I formally applied for two of the three (I really don’t want to be a Language Arts teacher despite technically being certified for it) and sent the principal an email with my resume attached as well. I was hoping, what with school starting in 2 1/2 weeks, that I’d hear from the principal yesterday or today; that has not happened.

I can think of a hundred thousand reasons why no one has called me yet; I am, nonetheless, assuming that I am blacklisted for some reason. At this point I have been applying for jobs since March and have not received a single call-back from anything other than a couple of purely lateral moves within the same organization. It’s not like these folks have access to my current test scores or anything, but … fuck, people, school starts August 17. I’m perfectly fucking willing and ready to move over to your building. What the fuck are you waiting for?

Hm. This post may not have done quite the job I wanted in reassuring people that I’m all right.

Oh, okay, this again

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I have said this so many times that even I am bored with it, so feel free to ignore this post as you see fit: my inability to “relax” amazes me, and the surest way to guarantee that I’m going to be in a shitty mood is to put me in a situation where I’m not “getting anything done.” I did basically nothing over the last couple of days other than marinate in front of Twitter and fall into bleak fucking despair at the fact that literally everything gets worse every single day.

Today, I have done the following:

  • Successfully sold the 3D printer
  • Deposited a bunch of change at the bank
  • Contested the $100 bill I got from a lab for a Covid test; those motherfuckers had better go talk to my fucking insurance because there’s no universe where they’re getting $100 from me for a test that I had no choice in taking
  • Paid my car registration and remembered to put the receipt in my car, and did it early enough that I probably won’t even get pulled over and need the receipt
  • Mowed the fucking lawn
  • Murdered weeds
  • Went swimming (this counts!)
  • Went to the comic shop and engaged in capitalism
  • Bought my wife a present
  • Some light cleaning and organization

And I am in a much better mood than I have been for several days now, simply by virtue of having kept busy today. I mean, if I get stupid and start paying attention to the news again I’m sure I’ll go right back to being fucked, but at least I feel like I did something today. And my wife is about to leave town for a week, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be busy for the next several days. Maybe I’ll even write a compelling blog post sometime between now and then! The possibilities are endless.

More sudden realizations

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work2 Comments

Everybody’s all excited about working remotely right now, and while I’ve temporarily hit pause on the job search for another couple of weeks, the large majority of the positions I applied to were remote jobs. Some were in easily-reached locations like Indianapolis and Chicago, where if there were occasional days I needed to be in the office it wouldn’t represent a massive hardship, but the rest of those could be, well, anywhere. I didn’t apply to anything literally outside the country but I pretty much spanned the full width of it in those first few weeks.

So far I’ve been called for zero (0) interviews, which is … a little discouraging! One site let me know a human being had looked at my profile a couple of times, and I had somewhat high hopes for that, and LinkedIn has connected me to a couple of headhunter types who sent me messages about stuff I was either wildly unqualified for in one case or not interested in in another, but there have been no callbacks for anything. And it literally just hit me today: the disadvantage to the job searcher who is looking for remote work is that every remote job is a de facto nationwide search. I still have vestiges of that former honors kid’s confidence, right, that I’m good at a lot of things, better than most people, and that therefore I should just naturally float to the top of any applicant pool. But when you’re getting 5-600 applicants for a job (and I’ve seen jobs with way more than that) and they could come from anywhere? I have really nothing that’s going to stand out against that type of a search. Sure, I’m good, and I’ll be good at whatever job I happen to be applying for, but what I’m not is especially unique. There’s lots of middle-aged white dudes with a couple of Master’s degrees and an award or two. And even if I want to be super arrogant and say that I’m more qualified for Position X than 90% of humanity (or even if that’s an accurate assessment of my abilities!) when you’re looking at the entire country as your potential applicant pool that 10% is a lot of Goddamned people.

I may need to shift my focus here a bit, is what I’m saying. There’s no reason not to apply for these jobs, but I can’t count on finding something just by throwing a lot of CVs at remote jobs, and I may want someone with a little more experience in this to look at my résumé. I have a job this fall regardless, but I don’t want it, and it would be better for everyone involved if I was able to get something else. But I need to find a way to tighten up the pool of folk I’m competing with for these jobs, or I need to find a way to stand out against the big searches, or preferably both. I think I’m going to turn my personal website back on and see if that helps; maybe I’ll work on it tonight in between Elden Ring, grading, and planning for next week. Ten school days to Spring Break. I can do this.

So much for that

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Less than 24 hours elapsed between me telling the Internet that I Had a Plan for next year and that plan falling completely apart. You may consider any optimism expressed in yesterday’s post to be fully null and void. This has been another week of no prep periods; our science teacher has been out all week and I’ve picked up her 7th and 8th hours every day this week, a feat I will not be repeating tomorrow as this has meant that I’ve had to spend three periods a day for most of a week with certain of my lovelies and I have had more than enough of them for a little while. Two more weeks until Spring Break. I can do this.

(stares)

(eats dinner)

(returns, stares)

I clearly need to start reading books faster or reviewing music or something, because I have been shit for useful content around here lately. I was expecting Elden Ring to eat my life and so far that has performed entirely according to expectations, but the fact that I’m sitting here racking my brain and I can’t even come up with a vaguely entertaining story to tell about the last few days is kind of telling. “Tired” is like 90% of my personality nowadays apparently; the rest is comic books, video games and toys.

Okay, that’s a plan

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work1 Comment

I think– I think— I may have a plan for next year that improves my current job situation in certain ways without upending every single thing I’m trying to do with my life. Some dominos have to fall into place– namely, getting hired for a couple of things– but I have reason to believe my chances for said things are at least higher than average and therefore I ought to be okay, and at any rate I’m going to find out pretty soon, which is better than every other job opportunity I have going right now. If this doesn’t pan out, I go back to full-scale job hunting over Spring Break. Let’s hope.

…and I’ve been sitting here staring at the screen for twenty minutes, so apparently that’s all I’ve got for today? I mean, it’s a plan. That’s something, right?