Widening the Job Search
Oct. 11th, 2006 06:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebRemember when Homer Simpson went to buy a present and there was a conversation something like this:
Shopkeeper - I have a monkey's fist.
Homer - That's good!
Shopkeeper - But it's cursed.
Homer - That's bad.
Shopkeeper - But it comes with a free slushy!
Homer - That's good!
Shopkeeper - But the slushy is full of [multi-syllabic chemical name].
Homer - ?
Shopkeeper - That's bad.
Then when Homer gave Bart the present:
Grandpa - It's evil! EEEVil, I tell you!
someone - Grandpa, you say that about all the presents.
Grandpa - I just want attention.
That's what I was thinking about as I wrote the following entry, which is not at all amusing.
This morning I was late. And I waited 19 minutes for a bus scheduled to come every seven to ten minutes. And it was raining. Not pouring down hard enough to be soaking, but already voluminous enough that parts of campus were flooded and that adventurous puddle-avoidance behavior was required. And I wasn't feeling adventurous. And it was windy enough to blow umbrellas inside out. I arrived at work in a bad mood.
That's bad.
But the work flowed much better than I expected. That's good.
But the office was refrigerated as usual. Not good when you're still trying to get dry.
But then we had our underling pizza lunch. The bigwigs are at a retreat, so someone collected money from the rest of us and got pizza. That's good.
But it came 30 minutes late. That was bad for the person who had to miss it, but it was still good to me. I felt inexplicably in a better mood after that. Even my feet which were hurting as if I'd been on a long hike the previous day were feeling better. Very weird.
Later that afternoon my boss dropped by. "I thought you were supposed to be in Boerne (sp? pronounced Bernie)." They left at 1:30. He said he was pleasantly surprised that I had already finished the task he had given me. I said he should check for the accuracy before he made a judgment about how pleasant the surprise was.
I had thought I was painfully slow because I was being excruciatingly careful. And yet I was still surprisingly fast. The sad truth is that I am now probably above average at clerical work. Do you have a pile of mind-numbing work that needs to be done? Then I'm your man. Because I dislike it so much, I am always on the lookout for ways to speed it up.
Well, maybe not any such task. I'm not sure I would be above average at slicing powerpoint slides into puzzle pieces with an exacto blade. Yikes.
I did a little research about retirement policies. In order to retire from my employer I need to have done several things which I have already done plus two other things. 1) I have to satisfy the law of 80, meaning years of experience plus years on the planet = 80. Given my current experience, I can already retire at age 61, even if I quit now. 2) My last employment has to be with my employer.
Thus, my main job hunting strategy has been to look for a different job with my current employer.
Another thing I could do is work at another employer that uses the same retirement system (any state educational employer). Then I could still retire at 52, but it would be with much more expensive medical plans. However, if I then found another job with my current employer, it would be as if I'd never left. Except that in spite of everything, my current employer appears to be the highest-paying educational employer around here.
Another thing I could do is get a state job, and then transfer my time from their retirement system to my current retirement system. But I don't know if I'd still get the good medical plan, and I can't imagine finding a fun state job.
Another thing I could do is get such a high-paying job that I can still retire at 52 by paying for my own retirement until my current system kicks in.
So I've been looking at job openings all over the place: My employer. The local community college. Two state colleges with terrible commutes. The local big school district. Some private school employment agency. But none of them had any jobs that look any fun. Yep, the new job has to be fun and I'm not settling for one of those $22,000 per year jobs anymore no matter how fun it sounds; it needs to be at least near my current level of responsibility.
What's fun? Any job working with interesting academic content. By interesting I mean liberal arts, natural sciences, education, social work, or possibly others. Possible jobs include working on distance learning programs, assisting a faculty editor for an academic journal (although these are generally half-time positions), and other things I can't think of. Not people jobs (academic advising, heading student affairs departments). Not other boring detail-oriented jobs (database administration, research). Well, maybe some kinds of research would be okay.
I don't really want a crappy commute, though. We'll see what happens.
Shopkeeper - I have a monkey's fist.
Homer - That's good!
Shopkeeper - But it's cursed.
Homer - That's bad.
Shopkeeper - But it comes with a free slushy!
Homer - That's good!
Shopkeeper - But the slushy is full of [multi-syllabic chemical name].
Homer - ?
Shopkeeper - That's bad.
Then when Homer gave Bart the present:
Grandpa - It's evil! EEEVil, I tell you!
someone - Grandpa, you say that about all the presents.
Grandpa - I just want attention.
That's what I was thinking about as I wrote the following entry, which is not at all amusing.
This morning I was late. And I waited 19 minutes for a bus scheduled to come every seven to ten minutes. And it was raining. Not pouring down hard enough to be soaking, but already voluminous enough that parts of campus were flooded and that adventurous puddle-avoidance behavior was required. And I wasn't feeling adventurous. And it was windy enough to blow umbrellas inside out. I arrived at work in a bad mood.
That's bad.
But the work flowed much better than I expected. That's good.
But the office was refrigerated as usual. Not good when you're still trying to get dry.
But then we had our underling pizza lunch. The bigwigs are at a retreat, so someone collected money from the rest of us and got pizza. That's good.
But it came 30 minutes late. That was bad for the person who had to miss it, but it was still good to me. I felt inexplicably in a better mood after that. Even my feet which were hurting as if I'd been on a long hike the previous day were feeling better. Very weird.
Later that afternoon my boss dropped by. "I thought you were supposed to be in Boerne (sp? pronounced Bernie)." They left at 1:30. He said he was pleasantly surprised that I had already finished the task he had given me. I said he should check for the accuracy before he made a judgment about how pleasant the surprise was.
I had thought I was painfully slow because I was being excruciatingly careful. And yet I was still surprisingly fast. The sad truth is that I am now probably above average at clerical work. Do you have a pile of mind-numbing work that needs to be done? Then I'm your man. Because I dislike it so much, I am always on the lookout for ways to speed it up.
Well, maybe not any such task. I'm not sure I would be above average at slicing powerpoint slides into puzzle pieces with an exacto blade. Yikes.
I did a little research about retirement policies. In order to retire from my employer I need to have done several things which I have already done plus two other things. 1) I have to satisfy the law of 80, meaning years of experience plus years on the planet = 80. Given my current experience, I can already retire at age 61, even if I quit now. 2) My last employment has to be with my employer.
Thus, my main job hunting strategy has been to look for a different job with my current employer.
Another thing I could do is work at another employer that uses the same retirement system (any state educational employer). Then I could still retire at 52, but it would be with much more expensive medical plans. However, if I then found another job with my current employer, it would be as if I'd never left. Except that in spite of everything, my current employer appears to be the highest-paying educational employer around here.
Another thing I could do is get a state job, and then transfer my time from their retirement system to my current retirement system. But I don't know if I'd still get the good medical plan, and I can't imagine finding a fun state job.
Another thing I could do is get such a high-paying job that I can still retire at 52 by paying for my own retirement until my current system kicks in.
So I've been looking at job openings all over the place: My employer. The local community college. Two state colleges with terrible commutes. The local big school district. Some private school employment agency. But none of them had any jobs that look any fun. Yep, the new job has to be fun and I'm not settling for one of those $22,000 per year jobs anymore no matter how fun it sounds; it needs to be at least near my current level of responsibility.
What's fun? Any job working with interesting academic content. By interesting I mean liberal arts, natural sciences, education, social work, or possibly others. Possible jobs include working on distance learning programs, assisting a faculty editor for an academic journal (although these are generally half-time positions), and other things I can't think of. Not people jobs (academic advising, heading student affairs departments). Not other boring detail-oriented jobs (database administration, research). Well, maybe some kinds of research would be okay.
I don't really want a crappy commute, though. We'll see what happens.
Another possibility
on 2006-10-12 02:56 pm (UTC)-sally