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More Test Scoring
Aug. 6th, 2004 12:00 pmI'm changing my mind about scoring teacher certification tests. Fortunately, I wrote down my reasons for wanting to quit. Normally reviewing reasons like these is enough to remind me that something was a good decision (such as not going out with an old boyfriend or not running after an old career ideas). However, in this case, my reasons aren't looking so great.
1) I felt my math skills were not up to par. Well, my math could definitely be better, but I was, in fact, able to do the job before. Also my colleagues poo-pood this notion when I told them. Also I'm remembering to bring my calculus and statistics books with me most of the time, so I can look up anything I don't remember. Like all those pesky formulas.
2) I felt I was too busy and needed to cut some activities out of my life. Well, it's true I'm too busy. The latest evidence of that is that results from my latest blood test show that I have plenty of thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism runs in my family and will hit me sooner or later), which means the reason I'm tired much of the time is from not sleeping enough.
But it's hard to see that cutting out this activity would help much. In fact, I look forward to days when I'm scoring because I get to get up late (it starts later than my day job and is a very quick commute) and I don't have to make my lunch. Even if I go to my day job afterwards, I still get all the free time on the bus to read during, so I do actually have more free time.
That's not quite the right comparison, though, because this is happening during vacation time. What I really should be doing is comparing this to what I would normally be doing on vacation. I'm not sure what that would be, though. I did go to the South by Southwest movie festival this past spring, but I learned that I don't really need to take the whole day off to see most of the movies--just taking the afternoons off would be fine. And because I just started getting three extra days of vacation last year, I can still score lots of tests and do SXSW and still go on vacations.
3) The pay wasn't increasing as fast as at my day job. Basically I only make about $60 per day most of the time. One plan was to figure out a better way to cash in my vacation time, but I haven't done that yet. So in the meantime, this makes more money than, say, sleeping in. Since we are finishing up more quickly than in the olden days, and since I have a car again, I could just go back to work. So that makes the earnings-per-vacation-hour better than when I didn't quite have time to go back to work. And although $60 per day doesn't sound like much, the money could add up to enough to pay off my house a year sooner.
I also like the way it helps my resume say that I am still interested in academic matters. And at my first day back, I finally got someone to teach me how to use the graphing calculators they lend us. Oh, yes, they are as cool as I always hoped. I never had to recenter the graph or anything either; it always showed the relevant part of the graph.
Quote of the Day: Little-Kid Weight-Loss Program: "Eat everything you want. Run everywhere you go." (I heard this from Richard Fowler; don't know who said it first.)
1) I felt my math skills were not up to par. Well, my math could definitely be better, but I was, in fact, able to do the job before. Also my colleagues poo-pood this notion when I told them. Also I'm remembering to bring my calculus and statistics books with me most of the time, so I can look up anything I don't remember. Like all those pesky formulas.
2) I felt I was too busy and needed to cut some activities out of my life. Well, it's true I'm too busy. The latest evidence of that is that results from my latest blood test show that I have plenty of thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism runs in my family and will hit me sooner or later), which means the reason I'm tired much of the time is from not sleeping enough.
But it's hard to see that cutting out this activity would help much. In fact, I look forward to days when I'm scoring because I get to get up late (it starts later than my day job and is a very quick commute) and I don't have to make my lunch. Even if I go to my day job afterwards, I still get all the free time on the bus to read during, so I do actually have more free time.
That's not quite the right comparison, though, because this is happening during vacation time. What I really should be doing is comparing this to what I would normally be doing on vacation. I'm not sure what that would be, though. I did go to the South by Southwest movie festival this past spring, but I learned that I don't really need to take the whole day off to see most of the movies--just taking the afternoons off would be fine. And because I just started getting three extra days of vacation last year, I can still score lots of tests and do SXSW and still go on vacations.
3) The pay wasn't increasing as fast as at my day job. Basically I only make about $60 per day most of the time. One plan was to figure out a better way to cash in my vacation time, but I haven't done that yet. So in the meantime, this makes more money than, say, sleeping in. Since we are finishing up more quickly than in the olden days, and since I have a car again, I could just go back to work. So that makes the earnings-per-vacation-hour better than when I didn't quite have time to go back to work. And although $60 per day doesn't sound like much, the money could add up to enough to pay off my house a year sooner.
I also like the way it helps my resume say that I am still interested in academic matters. And at my first day back, I finally got someone to teach me how to use the graphing calculators they lend us. Oh, yes, they are as cool as I always hoped. I never had to recenter the graph or anything either; it always showed the relevant part of the graph.
Quote of the Day: Little-Kid Weight-Loss Program: "Eat everything you want. Run everywhere you go." (I heard this from Richard Fowler; don't know who said it first.)