As some of you may already know, my primary source of income is teaching. My secondary source of income is Machinima, which should tell you how much I make being a teacher (not much). Right now, I teach writing at [unnamed college] for a meager salary. That is to say, I do not get a salary, I get a recurring contract to receive money for teaching the classes they let me teach. I have to renew this contract every two months, provided they still have classes for me to teach at that time. So, I get X amount of dollars per class and X dollars an hour for tutoring. Normally, they let me know what classes I am teaching at least two months in advance. However, today I was notified that the class I was scheduled to teach in the spring quarter has been cancelled due to lack of student enrollment. Spring quarter starts in about a week. Now I have about 10 days to look for some other job IMMEDIATELY or else I will not be able to pay my bills. This, my friends, is bullshit. I am calling bullshit on this bullshit. I already knew I needed to find a job for summer as I had no classes to teach during that time. And I was totally relying on that spring class to give me the time to find that summer job. What the hell am I supposed to do now? I've basically been told that I will not have an income at my job until August. What kind of job is that? I've done nothing wrong, but I'm being penalized FIVE MONTHS of work and pay that I was hoping I would get (even though I knew May, June, and July were longshots already). So, what, I'm supposed to go get a job at the local Red Lobster or whatever until they decide I can work again? Fuck that shit. But I have to do it, because they said so. I don't mind working for a living, but I DO mind putting up with ridiculous bullshit from my employers, and especially ridiculous bullshit that endangers my ability to pay the bills. Paying the bills is literally the only reason I work in the first place, so if working no longer serves that function, then why am I keeping this job? It's crazy. Now, I have a B.A. in English, so in theory I could find a perfectly suitable, well-paying job in almost any field. EXCEPT I ACTUALLY CAN'T because every single job I've seen postings for require 1-5 years of work experience. Well, how the hell am I supposed to build work experience if I can't get hired without already having work experience? Again, ridiculous bullshit. Almost nothing about the way we work and conduct our business makes logical sense. Everything has some stupid catch-22 built into it. On top of that, I live in Valdosta, Ga. Do you know what we have here in Valdosta in terms of jobs? NOTHING. The majority of jobs that I qualify for with my English degree (various types of writing, editing, paralegal, law, etc) we don't even have here, or if we do, the turn-over rate is SO LOW that you'd literally have to wait for someone to die to get any non-service based job. Not only that, but applications for employment are redundant and pointless. They piss me off with great efficiency. I have a resume, but apparently that's not good enough. You need to provide your work history on the FORM as well as on the resume. You need to provide your education on the FORM as well as on the resume. Almost every question I have to fill out is already answered on my resume. Just let me up load that shit and call it a day. After taking two hours to fill out three applications (the first indicator that you're doing it wrong), I simply began writing "See Resume" on many of the redundant questions. I'm sure they'll see that as laziness or some such crap, but in reality its efficiency. I hate doing things twice. Well, I think I'm done pissing and moaning about how I basically lost my job without actually losing my job. This is going to be the worst spring break ever. Peace! |
Home > Machinima News >