back out

Brownies and good talk with Jo. She gave me good advice actually! She is very comforting and wise!!! On all fronts!

She told me about realizing her parents were not going to give her what she wanted/needed from them: the dynamic being that they come and tell her all their crap, and when she expects them to follow her internal process, they get mad. but she is supposed to pay attention to their thing and know everything going on with them. So the trick being: if there is something you want from your relationship with them, you ahve to ask for it, or resign yourself to not getting it. Or something. Figuring out what is it that makes you want to have the relationship at all with them? For me I came up instantly with, i want them to be good grandparents to Moomin and be intimate with him. That is true and happening. Rook's parents nice, and put a chunk of money into his college fund, but don't have a lot of energy or inclination to be super-involved.

On the other hand I also think I wish for my parents to grok and approve of me, and that will never happen, so I need to recognize that and figure out how to come to terms with it. (and I mean beyond any simplistic "oh, fuck it, I give up, why try!" reaction, which i don't actually have)

I also looked at the Barkely and Staffnord comp lit pages again. And Staffnord would (again, i conclude) be a huge No Way Jose as they are hard-asses about having to take a bazillion classes at once. Barkeley is easier about that, but _expects_ it to take 7 years. (FUCK!) (on the other hand probably a bunch of my classes would count for it). But then I just think about wrenching my mind into whatever track the classes woudl be, instead of doing my own writerly thing and getting my stuff published. And then the PhD just languishing on the vine anyway as I'd be still marginally employed doing god knows what, since it's not like peachy academic jobs in the Bay Area within commute distance are there for the taking.

I conclude maybe applying for grants and stuff would be better. And working more. If I keep making my paltry 5-10K a year working for McCoot or some similar job, and plus Moomin after 1 year won't be in expensive school anymore, that is a huge wad more of money we can be saving or something. And if I just do things like Not Buy New Computers and a Car and things like that, that will also help. If, post-M.A., I then am able to jack my part-time earnings up to 20K a year, that will be not so horrible.

If I had kept the dot com job I would probably have a 2nd kid by now and a nanny. Is this true? But now I'm so, so, so thinking not. Will rethink after M.A. obtained, but then I will be 37.

Again... if I throw over all these vague plans and try to get full time work: I could make 40-45 K a year as a secretary, with fab benefits, but be more than miserable. I've done it before.... I could make maybe that much clawing my way back into tech support or being a sort of junior programmer, but my tech skills all around are completely out of date. I barely remember perl and would have to start all over (though I do retain the basic knowledge of it all and understand things like how to unwind someone else's crazy spaghetti code and fix it.) But better programmers than me are a dime a dozen out here. And it wouldn't get me any closer to any of my long term career goals. It would actively move me further away.

What about high school or jr. high teaching? I wonder. A private high school might be ideal. I liked working at the Lobe School in Chicago. The kids were smart, the other teachers often smart and motivated, the rewards for having quirky initiative high. Drawback: might need horrible, crappy, education degree? not sure!

I worry that teaching at comm. colleges will mean night classes -- I only just thought of this today.

I'm mostly just a little freaked at the thought that possibly I'll never have that full time secure career where everyone's just like "okay, we respect what you're doing and you're fulfilling our expectations adequately." maybe that's just never going to happen. Steph, i know you know what i mean here. well a lot of you do, really.

Meanwhile, I re-twinged my back and can't move my leg very well in front of my body -- it still doesn't feel that bad and I think it will be better tomorrow. I did some imprudent lifting and bending today and will not do that tomorrow... and will take advil steadily... phase 2 of fixing my back has begun... today was a yellowish-green alert. I shall not let the situation move to "orange alert".

Comments

[Jo]

But why settle for a life you don't want? Why is that better? Are there good reasons to compromise?

[Iris]

There's something about the thought of a secure career that gives me a screaming inside feeling. I have just talked my daughter out of ever having an office job again.Private tutoring in your own home is very well paid here but we do have a ridiculous number of crucial school exams for everyone to pass.

[bri]

Take it from one in the trenches of the private sector: it is soul-sucking, degrading, and wrong. Very few people "get it".

In happier news, I took the CBEST recently -- an inexpensive (and incredibly easy) test that's the first step on the road to certification as a woefully underpaid teacher within the jails of CA's educ. system.

Yet, something tells me I'll love teaching; I'll let you know how things progress and of course I'll answer any questions if you have them. Hopefully I'll be the fun teacher that everybody looks forward to rather than the boring one everybody hates after lunch. (Am leaning toward grade or high school at the moment.)

Thanks for your suggestions about getting marginal temp jobs a while back. I got lucky, I guess. High-paying temp job for a couple months, hopefully for enough cash that I can pursue educational certification more.

[badgerbag]

I took the CBEST too -- what a meaningless load of crap it is. the thought of someone struggling to pass it and yet wanting to teach makes me shudder. you basically have to be able to read on the level of about 3rd grade, and be able to count your own toes and fingers.

or maybe i'm just cranky ...

[Prentiss Riddle]

I get the impression from friends who've done it that private schools don't want education degrees, they want teaching experience and a master's (at least) in the subject you'll be teaching. They can be a haven for failed academics, meaning you always thought you'd have tenure teaching snotty-nosed college kids but instead you have iffy job security teaching snotty-nosed adolescents.

Actually I know some people who've had private school teaching jobs and loved it. Some private schools have more stringent admission requirements than a lot of colleges. There was a famous history prof at UT who failed to get tenure because he put too much energy into teaching (in Plan II, no less) who then found refuge for a number of years at a prep school in Houston and liked to brag that the students there compared favorably with the honors kids at UT. He kept publishing and ended up a full professor at Rice, happy ending, la la la.

But what am I telling you all this for? Weren't your youthful techie adventures all at a prep school somewhere? Heck, you can probably make that the cornerstone of your resume! The more salient question is, will you be able to teach high school lit without covering the sort of material that would inspire the parents to come with torches and hang you from the nearest tree?

[bri]

When I took it I was led to believe (yes, I'll admit that I bought a study book) that the sections would be harder than they were.

Kind of an unwelcome surprise to find out that the test has probably been dumbed down even further -- there were almost no algebra questions at all, and certainly nothing involving exponents or roots.

Kinda typical for me -- I was the class clown in the back who had scraped together only a couple pencils (without erasers) that morning.

[Prentiss Riddle]

Regarding the dynamic with parents: at what age is it appropriate to start sharing your own psychodrama with your kids? And once you start, how do you know where to stop?

Everybody says you need to start talking honestly (ha!) to your kids about sex and drugs and stuff when they're little so they'll be comfortable talking to you when things start getting hairy (so to speak :-) ) in their own lives. I've done that with my girls, now 6 and 9, although I find it easier to talk about where babies come from than why it's fun to put them there. (That's the modern version of the birds and the bees: name and diagram all the anatomical parts but leave it to MTV and pr0n-R-us.com to explain what they're good for aside from the business of reproduction.)

Sex and drugs aside, I wonder when it's appropriate to talk about other kinds of secrets -- family secrets, personal secrets. If great-grandma ran off with the next-door neighbor and great-grandpa shot her, do you start bringing that up in casual conversation while the kids are in the crib? Or sit them down and talk about it the day they turn 18? Or wait for them to ask?

And then what about your own demons? At what age can you air your angst without unnecessarily burdening the kids, and then how do you draw the line between being genuine and being a needy pain in the ass?