Sabtu, 01 Oktober 2011

Cruel, Cruel Summer...

This post is not about the song recorded by the group Bananarama, for those of you old enough to remember that tune.  The Summer of 2011 has easily been the most difficult, frustrating, and exhausting summer of my life.  The months of June and July are the focal point of my discontent.  I can without hesitation relay that I am ecstatic that the calendar has now turned to the month of October. 

During the 13 months preceding June 2011, I was working with good people at the University of Texas, and lived so close to campus that I actually walked to work and took the campus shuttle buses home.  My job started too early in the morning each day to take the bus to work, but considering that I was spending ZERO on gasoline when the cost of gas was near $4.00 a gallon, I didn't complain at all about my morning commute.  I saved enough money during this time to leave my job at the end of May, having enough in the bank to pay my bills for June and July, when my lease ended.  There was also enough money to invest in the job search that would result in my return to teaching and coaching, with enough left over for moving expenses and my first 2 months of rent, at which point the checks from my new school district would kick in.  Not so fast....  After paying coaching association membership fees (which allow you to use access job postings online), driving to interviews all over the state (eleven I believe), and spending money on coaching clinic fees (allowing me to interview in person with multiple districts for jobs that were still vacant), I was shut out.  I completely understand the state of our economy, and am fully aware that I was not the only person who was unable to find a job in the education field this summer.  My problems are with the school districts that had me driving across the state during the summer, in my vehicle with no AC, getting 20 miles per gallon, in situations that: (1)  They called me in to interview just because they have a minimum number of candidates to interview before making a hire;  (2)  They focused on the fact that I had not taught a cetain subject or subjects for a while, when they clearly knew that BEFORE making me drive 3 or 4 hours, having already received my resume';  and (3)  They told me that they would call me and inform me of their hiring decision when it had been made, which did not happen in more than half of these cases.  Number 3 is the one that really burns me, although they all do.  Knowing the state of this economy, and then just having someone spend in the neighborhood of 100 dollars round-trip, and then... just... blowing them off...  Yeah.....
I reached the end of July scrambling for a place to stay, and scrambling to find some type of work.  It is very nice to have good friends and family, let me tell you.  My sister had agreed to let me stay with her and her kids if the need arose, which I gratefully did for close to three weeks.  A good friend of mine, learning of my summer, hired me to work at a job that he told me "wouldn't make me rich", but I was working within a week of speaking to him.  In the near future I will do a full blog post on my workplace, but for now I will just say that I work at a great venue with a lot of great people, and that the Texas Music Theater deserves a full post.  My heart goes out to everyone who is struggling financially, and I hope that this stagnant economy soon passes, just as this summer has...

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