Law School on the Municipal Dime

September 5, 2008 in How to Get a Job, Personal Reflection
Tags: best, building, burnout, company, connections, degree, easy, famed, fired, for, frugal, highly, infamous, job, kentucky, law, male, network, offender, on, pay, paying, photography, presidency, programs, qualified, satisfied, school, sex, single, sometimes, states, student, study, sweet, taxpayers, tenure, track, union, united, way, work

I’m seriously considering law school. Not because I want to become a lawyer — Ambrose Pierce defined a lawyer as one skilled in the circumvention of the law, and I’d like to keep my soul intact — but more because I find fascinating the balance between tedious paperwork and long-winded decisions founded on purely hypothetical arguments. In other words, I’d like getting a law degree because I’d like the process.

At first, I wasn’t sure how I’m going to pay for it. Student loans are a racket, especially for law school, and the local law school doesn’t have much in the way of scholarships and grants. There are 83 units; each costs $750; the costs continue to increase every year.

Then it hit me: Teach.

Teaching is perfect for some future law student eyeing the five-year law program at the local school. The best part speaks for itself: teaching brings automatic pay raises typically after every 15 graduate units, typically up to a maximum of 60 units or higher. Further reasoning follows:

After just two years, when a teacher gets established and gets a routine going in the classroom, there needn’t be very much prep time spent outside the normal work day. After the same, concurrent two years of at least adequate service, that same teacher becomes tenured — you’d have to have sex with a student to get fired after that, and sometimes not even then.

After tenure and routine set in, more time is available in the weeknights and summers for law classes from that special five-year program. Even before tenure, all summers are wide open for the sake of teaching or taking summer school and, after taking these few units, teachers get yet another automatic pay raise. It’s a lucrative cycle for a young, frugal, single male with custody of zero children. The pay raises won’t completely cover law school, but they’ll make a sizeable dent.

I’m set to snag a position as soon as I’d want, mostly because my school photography company sends me to schools four days a week. On its dime, I can very easily start making connections throughout the better part of three counties, spreading the word with a well-placed business card — one highly qualified social science intern is all too ready for hire.

It’ll be hit and miss, mostly miss. I don’t mind — I need just one hit, one home run, and I’m perfectly satisfied to stick around my company until I make that fluke. Then, I’m set to re-enter the preliminary stage of a profession famed for militant unions and infamous for high burnout.

And why not? I’m not all that tired of teaching. After a year of training in front of a classroom and just as long theoretically learning about teaching as a credential student, I had only just begun to start. I would have continued it, too, if it hadn’t been for my meddling hubris.

I have all the time I need, and I’m in just the right position to make just the right move. My CSET scores are still good for a few more years, and, chances are, my existing units will more-or-less transfer. From here, it’s a matter of timing.

If nothing else, yet one more route to fame, fortune and the presidency of these United States just uncovered itself. Sweet.

Power-Sized Morale Boost from Jamba Juice

August 29, 2008 in The Way It Were
Tags: boost, card, employment, gift, good, inbox, jamba, job, juice, management, morale, razzmatazz, tips

It’s funny how much the stupid little things matter.

For four straight days, work sucked. I was worried, tired and at least a little stressed. Am I just new, or am I genuinely developing a reputation as a bit of a screwup? Maybe I should go back to substitute teaching — I know how to do that. I wasn’t sure I was cut out for this job, or that I enjoyed it.

That was before I found a $5 Jamba Juice gift card in my box. All wounds healed, by a stupid little gift card. How laughably easily I’m motivated will be something I’ll think about later, while I gulp down my power-sized Razzmatazz and its equally complimentary femme boost.

Immunity boost, I mean. Immunity boost.

Bokononist Responsibilities

August 28, 2008 in Personal Reflection
Tags: adulthood, bleed, bokononism, choice, deserted, duckets, fake, farkwarks, hate, internally, it, job, like, make, membership, merry, need, outside, photog, renounce, roads, until, work, zarking

Today was my first bad week of adulthood. That is what we’re calling 21 years old, right? Adulthood?

To provide the slightest sample, it was relatively early in the work day today that I didn’t mark down a staff member at a school her complimentary photo package, as is customary. It’s a relatively minor error, for which there is a form provided. Asking for what we call a variance report, I hear, coming from the mouth of a coworker who has no seniority over myself:

You’ve already messed up?

Well, yes. I admitted to it out loud before anyone present called me on it. Your condescending tone of voice is not appreciated, you fictional expletive.

I chose not to say that, instead smiling and laughing along with her. Even as I joined in with her cacophony, I recognized her laugh as the thinly veiled horse laugh of belittling — three short, barking guffaws. Our supervisor was present. Out of fairness, I hesitate to characterize her motivations.

I’m sure, though, that she really doesn’t like me, and my Bokononism-motivated turn of the cheek doesn’t save me from very much disliking her, and I’m one of those guys who tends to be pretty chipper. It isn’t that hard.

All it takes is to accept the unquestionably outrageous lie that feelings are always a choice, and that one is always in complete control of one’s actions. I figured that if I could swallow that whopper, I could believe just about anything — particularly the tautologies involving honesty and best policy, how one is always personally accountable for one’s actions and that thing about turning the other cheek.

Accepting all of the above, or at least at the appearance of them, keeps me a merry sort of fellow. Outside work, it bleeds over — I don’t want to help set up the band room, but I help out, anyway. Inside work, I feel like I bleed internally — I don’t want to put up with that condescending jerk from the office, but I do, anyway.

More specifically, as far as the office knows, I don’t mind waking up at o’-dark-hundred — true, because I like deserted roads; I get along pretty well with even all the staff — false, because more than a few don’t disguise what seems to be their hate of me; I like working as much as possible — true, because I need the duckets; only infrequently have I the urge to shove timesheets down the collective throats of two or three specific photogs —  very, very false.

It’s only just barely that I put up with that whole responsibility gig that comes with coming of age, because it means I have to accept secondary and tertiary responsibilities, too. If I have to put up with one more of these zarking farkwarks, though, they’ll be the straw that broke the camel’s back — I might just renounce my membership from adulthood.

If only I didn’t need those duckets.