The US Healthcare System Strikes Again

 Recently, Scott and I attempted to be savvy consumers.  His employer (a local public school district) had replaced their previous PPO health plan with one that was somehow covering fewer healthcare expenses while not becoming any cheaper.  So when open enrollment season came around, we decided to investigate the health insurance plans that my employer (another local public school district) offered.  After comparing the two of them, we decided to give one of the PPOs my employer offers a try.  Scott cancelled his health insurance during open enrollment, and I enrolled in my health insurance.  So far, so good, right?

Not quite.  I had thought that it was fairly standard for health plans that people enroll in during open season to begin coverage on January 1.  For reasons I cannot fathom, coverage under our new plan does not begin until January 14.  Meanwhile, Scott's health insurance coverage ends on January 1, leaving us with a small--but potentially financially ruinous--gap in coverage should one of us, say, develop appendicitis or get into a car accident.

Fortunately, (a) because of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), we are able to qualify for private health insurance even though I have a preexisting health condition that probably would have disqualified me previously, and (b) I discovered this impending gap in coverage before December 15.  I can't speak for all the state insurance market places, but in at least both Maryland and Virginia, you have to enroll by the 15th of one month to be covered for the first of the next month.  I knew this because this is not our first experience with buying coverage.  We were briefly on Affordable Care Act insurance plans in 2017 when we both lost our jobs and in 2019 when I was in grad school 2.0 and Scott changed jobs, triggering a gap in coverage.  

Unfortunately, it's still very expensive.  We are sinking over $600 into what appears to be a pretty crummy plan just to avoid dire financial consequences if we happen to be unlucky in the first two weeks of January.  I'm feeling particularly annoyed because I remember (some years ago and in Maryland) paying a comparable amount and getting better coverage.  I don't know whether to blame the state of Virginia or just inflation for the shoddiness of the coverage.

This has made me wish--and definitely not for the first time--that the US could just come to grips with the fact that everyone needs healthcare at some point or another and view it as a basic human right.  This idea that people will be covered through their jobs has been disastrous, what with layoffs, employers that purposely give their workers less than full-time hours to avoid paying benefits, and these sorts of awkward transitional periods like what Scott and I are experiencing now.  What's scary is that he and I were pretty much ideally suited to not have a break in coverage, what with both of us being full-time employees in public sector jobs, but yet, here we are.  I shudder to think how precarious health insurance coverage is for other people who don't have as stable of jobs, particularly those people who don't have the money to purchase private health insurance during coverage gaps.

As for us, we are going to try very hard to stay healthy and uninjured during the first two weeks in January.  We've even gone so far as to reschedule medical appointments that were originally in early January.  Ironically enough, this is $600 that I hope will just be money down the drain and not be used, and I'm hoping that the insurance we get on January 14 is amazing enough to justify all this annoyance and expense.

Wrapping Up The Year Of Plague And Pestilence

 So...I may be writing this prematurely.  My school district is on spring break, but after that, I still have the last part of April, all of May, and the first few weeks of June to get through.  But because I'm rushing toward the ultimate prize of summer break, I'm going to count this time as "wrapping up the year."

In some ways, it's been a great year.  After the disappointment of so many sub-part speech-language pathologist jobs, it was a relief to become a salaried employee again, with a union that secured a raise for us, no less.  Working in the schools can be overwhelming, and my experience was not without its problems, but on the whole, I've enjoyed it more than I thought I might.  As an interesting bonus, a lot of the kids in my school come from Spanish-speaking homes, so I've gotten a chance to speak Spanish on a regular basis again.

What hasn't been great has been the near constant rotation of illnesses and ailments I've had.

To be fair, the first major health problem of the school year was a severe allergic reaction that left an extremely nasty rash on my torso (I still have splotches on my skin months later!).  I can't blame the allergic reaction on the kids or the crowded conditions at my school, but it does contribute to my perception that I've spent about half the year recovering from something.

Other than that, though, I'm completely blaming the kids (they produce so much snot!) and the conditions in my building.  After my rash started to subside, I caught two colds in quick succession.  I was feeling cocky after spending January mostly healthy, and then got hit with Covid in February.  I spent the first part of March healthy, only to catch something that rapidly developed into bronchitis.  Only now, during my spring break, can I say I feel completely recovered from that.  At this point, having exhausted most of my sick leave for the year, I'm wondering if we're far enough into spring that I'm relatively safe from any more illnesses.

I'm also wondering in horror if every year will be like this one.  I've gotten conflicting messaging on that point.  My doctor said this was a particularly rough year for everyone as far as respiratory viruses were concerned.  A long-time teacher at my school echoed this sentiment, saying that she had gotten sick so many times this year that it felt like it was her first year of teaching again.  On the other hand, one of the administrators told me she thought there was something unhealthy about our building, and that when she was still teaching, she used to get bronchitis twice a year(!).  

So, wish me luck.  When I go back to work on Monday, feeling rejuvenated from a week off, I'd like nothing better than to experience a spate of good health stretching until at least the end of the year so I can comfortably wrap up the considerable amount of work I have to get done.  And I'm hoping I can continue to refer to this year as the year of plague and pestilence, rather than calling it just another school year.

Valentines Day Was A Wash, Figuratively And Literally

 This Valentines Day may not rank as one of our best of all time.  Scott and I are still recovering from Covid, though we both went back to work this week.  We gave up on the idea of eating in a restaurant on Valentines Day years ago, but we often look forward to buying some treats at the supermarket and having a simple meal of "special occasion" foods at home.  This year, we're both still struggling from a loss of appetite and an inability to eat much at a time.  This has been a particularly baffling symptom to me, since my life generally revolves around food and I spend and inordinate amount of time planning what I'm going to eat.  Suffice to say, we are ordering a Peruvian chicken dinner tonight, a very nice meal to be sure, but not one either of us thinks of as an occasion meal.  I guess the good news is that by the time we recover, the Valentines crowds will have cleared out of the restaurants and we can eat wherever we want.

As for the literal part of today being a wash, the last kids I worked with today were kindergarteners.  One of them had some glittery slime, which she had gotten from her teacher, allegedly for being good.  I spent much of the session trying to get her to put it away and keep it put away.  When it was time to take her to dismissal, I noticed that her shoes were untied and decided to tie them for her.  In a clear example of no good deed going unpunished, she took that opportunity to smear her slime on my back.  Needless to say, I was not pleased.  I was hoping it would peel right off, but of course it didn't.  The website I consulted about this predicament helpfully mentioned that glue is one of the ingredients in slime, which makes it particularly hard to get out of clothing.  (This website also framed this problem as one of getting slime out of kids' clothing, probably supposing that adults are too dignified to end up with slime on their clothing).  Anyway, slime removal has been my major project this evening--very romantic and sophisticated, I know.  I've had early encouraging results from soaking the slimed area in white vinegar.  I'm hoping for an ultimate triumph to this wash of a day when the shirt comes out of the laundry.

Large Produce Purchases Are What Happen When You're Busy Making Other Plans

 Hmm.  Well, I know I hadn't posted in a while, but I didn't remember how long it had been!  In a nutshell, life has kept me busy.  I did ultimately start working again, but, having anticipated that it might not be a good long-term fit, kept some other application processes going.  Between my current job, interviews for other jobs, and paperwork associated with other opportunities, I've had a pretty full schedule.

This isn't to say that things have been all bad!  For one thing, I finally have a job offer I feel optimistic about.  Also...a couple weeks ago, a 5-pound box of mushrooms came into my life.

There is a mushroom vendor at our farmers market.  They sell a lot of small containers of fresh, pristine looking mushrooms.  I buy them sometimes, but mushrooms are somewhat expensive compared to some other foods, so I've never really gone all out on my purchases.  But!  They sometimes sell a 5-pound box of mushroom "seconds".  The first time I saw one of these at their stand, I was intrigued, but told myself that I didn't have the time or the plan to deal with quite so many mushrooms at once.  After we left, of course, I immediate regretted not having gotten it.  Then, the next time I saw one of these boxes, I had arrived about a minute too late, and someone else was buying it.  So, when I saw it again a couple weeks ago, I jumped to buy it and declared the next week "mushroom week."  

Getting through all of the mushrooms was a fun challenge, but a challenge all the same.  I love mushrooms and will happily eat them for several meals a day, but I'm not sure Scott is quite as enthusiastic about them.  I finally got to try a recipe for dry rub mushrooms, which was interesting, but I might not try again.  I also got to make a tart absolutely laden with mushrooms, and more than one egg dish with mushrooms.

There will almost certainly be a next time for this mushroom venture, although I've promised Scott that I won't do it immediately.  Next time, I will make a mushroom stew recipe that my dad and I both found in the NY Times and marked for future reference.  Also, next time, I'll know that oyster mushrooms keep much better in the fridge than pioppino mushrooms and plan my order of consumption accordingly.

In the meantime, though, there is a large box of mangos I bought last week from an Indian grocery store to enjoy.

The Hard Truth About Changing Careers

 tl;dr:  There is no guarantee of success in changing careers (or anything else, really) even when you are trying to make well reasoned, responsible choices.  Your miserable experience going back to school will not necessarily be inversely proportional to the job you eventually get.

I started seriously thinking about changing careers when we were working in Kazakhstan.  I knew pretty quickly that our employment situation over there was not going to be satisfactory for the long haul and started applying to jobs in the US pretty early on.  I applied to dozens of jobs, but got very little response from employers, which made me think that I might need to change directions.  A few months ago, I came across a Google Doc I made at the time, which laid out information I found about various career paths that interested me.  I decided that if I were to make a change, I would explore speech-language pathology.  Everything I read suggested significant job growth in the field and decent salaries.  I also thought it dovetailed nicely with my language background.

I eventually did get one of the jobs I applied to while I was still in Kazakhstan, so temporarily shelved plans to try to change careers.  However, my new job offered tuition remission, so I thought maybe it would be a good idea to take some prerequisites to a speech-language pathology graduate program.  My idea was that if I ever needed to change careers, any course I completed for free would be to my advantage.  The university made it very easy for me; they had just started an evening program geared toward non-traditional students who wanted to take those courses.

I liked my job and viewed these courses as a back-up option.  Then, in the summer of 2017, I was laid off.  I was rehired about three months later, but during the time I was laid off, I was able to get only a part-time job.  All of a sudden, my back-up option became the main option.  It was a hard decision to leave my job and go back to school, but my workplace continued to be unstable.  Had I stayed, I would have been laid off again a couple months later anyway.

Since I already had one masters degree, I thought I understood what grad school would be like a second time.  Wrong.  A graduate program with a clinical component turned out to be much more time-consuming and stressful than my previous program.  I won't get into this in detail here, but there were also aspects of my specific graduate program that were quite unpleasant.  Especially in the first year, I was stressed, had almost no time to myself, and found my health suffering.  I wanted so badly to drop out, but stayed, both out of fear that I wouldn't find another good job with my existing skill set and out of optimism that a degree in speech-language pathology would open doors to stable, well-paying work.

I graduated in May of 2020, right into the throes of the pandemic.  Since that time, I have had three jobs as a speech-language pathologist, along with some "breaks" in employment.  I completed my clinical fellowship year with a combination of starting at a small private practice and then becoming a contractor with a local school district.  After completing my clinical fellowship year and being awarded my certificate of clinical competence (CCC), I worked for a stint at a skilled nursing facility.  To be perfectly honest, none of these jobs have been the stable, well-paying, "good" jobs I was hoping to get.

There are almost too many problems to mention with the small private practice I started with.  The job as a contractor with the school district was arguably the best job out of the three, both in terms of pay and predictability.  But, there are downsides to being a contractor.  The school district was not able to guarantee my employment from year to year (I didn't get a firm offer of a second year until July).  Also, this two-tiered system of employing speech-language pathologists never sat well with me.  If I had the same responsibilities, stresses, and aggravations of a county employee, why wasn't I eligible for the same benefits?  The problems of being on the lower tier of a two-tiered system became very apparent when I had to make a big fuss to get my Covid vaccine along with the county employees.

When I took the job at the skilled nursing facility, I knew from reviews I read about the company that it wasn't going to be a dream job.  But I was interested in working with adults, and hoped that getting experience working with them in a not-so-great job might set me up to eventually get a better job.  For a while, it seemed okay.  Then I started hearing about how I wasn't meeting productivity standards.  I made changes to what I was doing, and while on my best days when everything worked out perfectly I got close, I never actually met the productivity standards my employer wanted.  Then, admissions plummeted and my hours plummeted.  It was not a salaried position, though the expectation was that I would work 30-40 hours per week.  I was getting so few hours that I left at the end of January, thinking that (a) I wasn't losing out on that much money by leaving, and (b) that it would be difficult to both work (even at a reduced number of hours) and conduct an intensive job search.  (I was right about that--I've had quite a few interviews since then, and interviewers almost invariably want to do them in the middle of the day.  Last week alone, I had three in-person interviews all at 11:00.  It's not exactly easy to fit work in around those midday obligations.)

Having lots of interviews should in theory be an encouraging sign, but being interviewed is not synonymous with getting a job, let alone a good job.  I'd say that in probably half the interviews I have, the employer never officially rejects me, even when they say they'll get back to me within a certain timeframe.  Also, a lot of these jobs just aren't that great and seem to be geared toward people who don't actually need money.  I went to a virtual hiring event for a local hospital system and was told that the only current speech-language pathologist opening they had was a PRN position (someone who works as needed, not on a regular basis).  This position would be mostly weekends.  Then, the interviewer told me they were looking for someone who was independent with swallow studies because they didn't want to have to do a lot of training for a PRN employee.  I get where they're coming from, but who are all these people who get a graduate degree in speech-language pathology, develop advanced competencies in swallowing, and then decide that instead of having a salary and benefits, they would like to work occasional weekends and get whatever money they can get?  I had a similar experience with a private practice recently.  This employer actually was courteous enough to send me an email rejection, but in this rejection sited that (a) she couldn't offer me consistent hours, and (b) she was looking for someone with significant experience in literacy testing.  Again, who becomes specialized in anything only to decide to work for scraps?

At this point, I feel like I didn't read the fine print when I decided to become a speech-language pathologist.  Only the problem is, I never knew there was fine print, and I still haven't seen what it says.  I can only infer from my experience that it exists somewhere.  Maybe the fine print says that speech-language pathology would have been a viable career path for me, except during a pandemic.  Maybe it says that I can have a well-paying job as a speech-language pathologist, but that I have to uproot myself and live in a different part of the country.  Or that I can work as a speech-language pathologist in the DC area, but will only ever get paid scraps.  Or, maybe in the worst case scenario, the fine print says there is something specific about me (my age, unusual educational path, personality...) that is preventing me from getting a good job as a speech-language pathologist.  I have very few useful lessons to share from this experience so far, only a cautionary tale about how the best laid plans don't always work out.

  

The Huge Red Flag And The Job Interview That Wasn't

 It was a chilly, rainy day.  Our heroine, who lives in Virginia, had a job interview scheduled for 11 in Maryland.  Such a commute is not uncommon in her area, but neither is it fast; our heroine had budgeted a little over an hour to account for a Metro ride, a bus or Uber ride, and a buffer to ensure she would not arrive late for such a momentous occasion.

Our heroine prepared extensively for the interview.  She consulted train and bus schedules to ensure that she left home on time.  She prepared herself a large breakfast, so as not to be "hangry" during the interview or on the lengthy trip back home.  She moved the contents of her everyday purse into her professional purse, and then proceeded to double- and triple-check to ensure that she had both her phone and her SmarTrip card.  She donned an appropriate outfit, which is unlike the outfits she would wear were it not for the interview.  Fearing the rainy day frizzies, she even attempted to style her hair.

Our heroine donned her coat, grabbed her umbrella, and braved the rain to walk to the closest Metro station.  She paid her fare at the gate and went to the platform to wait for her train.  She happened to pull her phone from her purse, only to find that she had only moments before received a text message from her interviewer.

Prior to scheduling the interview, the interviewer had inquired as to where our heroine resided and questioned her as to whether she would be willing to make that commute on a daily basis.  Nonetheless, her text message informed our heroine that "something" (unspecified) had come up, and that she would have to move the interview to noon.  And she sent that message after our heroine had already left home for the interview.

As it happens, our heroine has an extensive work history, with multiple jobs.  One lesson she has learned is that employers reserve their best behavior for job applicants they would like to hire.  In other words, however you are treated as an applicant, you should anticipate worse treatment as an employee.  Our heroine, being utterly dismayed by the complete lack of respect for her time, and horrified by the prospect of how she might be treated as an employee, withdrew her application at once.  One red flag seen; one bullet dodged.

The Salary Question

 One thing I've learned from my relatively short time working as a speech-language pathologist is that compensation is all over the place.  Sure, there are average salaries you can look up, but they can be misleading.  One problem is the different types of compensation structures, full employee vs. independent contractor, salaried vs. hourly.  All of these structures come with their own fine print attached.

For much of last year, I worked as a contractor in a local school district, but was compensated as a full employee by the company that hired me.  So, in essence, I was taxed as a full employee (independent contractors pay a much higher rate of taxes) and had access to benefits (but not the stellar benefits offered to employees of the school district).  I was paid an hourly wage for 7.5 hours out of the day.  The catch was that I did not get paid for days when school was not in session, including breaks and snow days.  I was offered the chance to renew my contract, but knew that I didn't want to be a contractor forever, and decided to hit the job market again.  When I interviewed, and people asked about my salary expectations, I told them what I was making as a contractor.  What I didn't fully realize was that the company I worked for paid me a somewhat higher hourly wage to make up for all the times during the year that I wouldn't get paid.  (Note to any new SLPs reading this: Some contractors will not be as generous, and will just expect you to either subsist on ramen noodles or get a second job for when school isn't in session).

I learned the error of my ways when I was interviewing for my current position.  I had actually had preliminary conversations with them some weeks prior and then they stopped contacting me.  Someone in HR let it slip that the reason they hadn't followed up was that my previous hourly wage was more than they were willing to pay me.  As it happened, while I would have preferred not to take a pay cut, I was still interested in the position because of the sort experience I stood to gain.  So it worked out, but it made me wonder if I had inadvertently priced myself out of other opportunities I had interviewed for.

My preference is for employers to just say what they're willing to pay, either in the job ad or in the early stages of the interview.  But at least in my field, a lot of them don't, and a lot of them ask about salary expectations and press hard for a number.  In spite of the generous free socks offered by my current employer, I'm applying for other jobs again.  I spoke to a recruiter for a job I am very interested in today, and, of course, the question of compensation expectations came up.  I started by giving the usual answer about how I liked to consider the full compensation package, but then turned the tables on her and said, "May I ask what is budgeted for this position?"  Not only was she able to give me a very specific range, I learned how they decide what to pay their employees (completely based on years of experience, in this case).  I'm glad I asked because (a) I didn't price myself out of the opportunity, (b) I won't be surprised at the figure if I go forward in the interview process, and (c) I know now how they decide on compensation.  Now that I've cleared that hurdle, I just have to hope for luck as I (hopefully) move forward in the interview process...

Not To Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth, But...

 Ever had a really hard time feeling grateful for something?  If so, you're not alone!

Recently, at work, we had a video call with one of the higher-ups in the company.  It was this higher-up talking to (I think) all the facilities under her leadership.  In the course of this call, this person revealed that (for reasons that may become very clear in a moment), they were having trouble retaining employees, and that they wanted to express their thanks and appreciation to all of us.  As a gesture of appreciation, they were giving us a small gift meant to signify the company "taking a step in the right direction"...

They had gotten a pair of crazy socks for each of us.

To be specific, we had our choice of either an argyle or a striped pattern in bright colors that some people might say clashed with each other.  The company name was prominently interspersed with the pattern.  The socks are of a dress sock weight, with a distinctly casual look.  Which I'm realizing as I write might be unfair to the entire concept of "casual."

So far, only one of my coworkers has claimed a pair.  The rest of them are creating clutter in our shared office.

The higher-up in question assured us at the time that the company wasn't thanking us with socks.  But honestly, the fact that she felt the need to clarify that point makes me think that that is exactly what they are doing.

There are far worse problems to have, of course.  I am grateful to have a job.  But truthfully, I would have gladly taken whatever minimal cash value those socks had over the socks themselves.  Really, when you think about what employees would like at work, I don't think crazy socks make the list for many people.  More money and more time off are probably the most popular perks for everyone.  But mentorship, training, and educational opportunities are also welcome, and not all of those have to cost much money or time.  When all else fails, food is probably a more popular perk than socks.

Starting a new career during the pandemic has been an interesting journey.  I've been fortunate to find work, but none of the jobs I've had since graduating from Grad School 2.0 have been a dream job, to say the least.  As a result, I always have a wish list of things I'd like to have in a job in an ideal world, as well as ideas of how to make the next job incrementally better than the current job.  Short of a dream job, maybe I could shoot for moving up from free socks to free t-shirts.

A Lot Of Birds In The Bush

 I'll start with the happy news/milestones portion of this post first.  In late July, I received my certificate of clinical competence (CCC) in speech-language pathology from the American Speech and Hearing Association!  This certificate is a culmination of completing my master's degree, passing a national Praxis exam, and completing a clinical fellowship year.  It is also a requirement for many jobs in the field. It was a long process, fraught with uncertainty, and I was relieved to be done.

I have been on the job market since the school year ended in June. I decided not to renew my contract with the local school district for a number of reasons.  In a nutshell, I felt like I was getting all the stress of working in the schools (high caseloads, etc.) without certain benefits like timely contract renewals, paid time off, and a solid retirement plan.  Also, I had decided in grad school that I really wanted to work with adults.  Graduating into the pandemic as I did, I wasn't able to be too choosy about my first jobs. And it turned out that I did enjoy working with children. But I wanted to see if I could work with adults, and I definitely didn't want to decide my first year out of grad school that a contract position with poor benefits was the best I could do.

I didn't get much interest from employers until I received my CCC, but once I did, I've received more attention from employers than I ever have in my life.  This includes jobs in which I would be working primarily or exclusively with adults. But, moving this interest from a bird in the bush to a bird in the hand has proven challenging. To be fair, I received one offer which I turned down due to a combination of a long commute and their HR rep being shady. But other than that, I have lots of potential opportunities in various stages, from trying to schedule initial phone calls to waiting to hear back from interviews. There are a couple of instances in which in theory I might still hear back, but really I think I'm being ghosted. 

It all makes for an emotional roller coaster, as well as a lot of time spent on things that likely won't pan out.  Interviews take time and energy even when they don't result in an offer.  It has led to a lot of introspection about what I really want.  At first, I was applying exclusively to jobs in which I would work with adults, but I've been wondering lately how much I really want to deal with (low pay, bad commute, odd schedule, etc.) to achieve that.  And if I put in my time at less-than-choice positions, would it even eventually translate to a better job working with adults?  Would a comfortable, stable pediatric position better?  There is part of me that wants to work toward goals I set for myself, but another part of me that just wants to settle on a job and get into a routine that involves earning income again.  An interesting additional twist to all this is that I am in the middle of a multi-step interview process for a job unrelated to speech-language pathology.  No guarantees of course, but it raises the potential question of whether I would be willing to abandon a field I put so much work into if the opportunity arose.

I keep telling myself that there are at least opportunities for speech-language pathologist, and my current level of engagement with potential employers is in stark contrast to what happened when I was looking for work after a layoff several years ago.  So, I feel like I'll be working again eventually one way or another.  I hope to write about my bird in the hand soon.

I Live A Life Of Unparalleled Glamour

 I got to talk about skunk farts today at work.  

My job takes glamour to a whole new level!

How To Be A Kind Employer

After having graduated with my MS in speech-language pathology in May, I'm still looking for work, and it's making me grumpy.  For the uninitiated, the way it works in this field is that new graduates have to do a clinical fellowship year (often abbreviated as CFY or just CF) in order to get their certificate of clinical competence (CCC).  The CCC is what makes you fully licensed.  The clinical fellowship year is essentially a year (well, a minimum of 36 weeks and I think 1260 hours) of supervised practice.  You get paid for this, although the pay is often substantially less than what fully licensed speech-language pathologists receive.

The need to do a clinical fellowship year seems to create a bottleneck, at least in some parts of the country.  The impressions I've gotten from this job search are that (a) some employers will not consider you at all without your CCC, and (b) the ones who will may be in parts of the country where the shortage of speech-language pathologists is more acute (which may or may not be the areas of the country where you want to live).

I tend to forget between job searches how aggravating the process can be and how obnoxious some employers can be.  So, for employers who want to be kind to job-seekers, I've compiled the following tips:

1.  If you interview an applicant and decide not to hire them, you should reject them in a timely fashion.  (Looking at you, skilled nursing facility that interviewed me in late May, and you, school district that interviewed me in early July).  This really should be a matter of common courtesy.  Sometimes people really get their hopes up for jobs they interviewed for, and if they get that far in the process, they deserve an answer one way or another.

Bonus points for kindness if you can also officially reject the applicants who don't make it to the interview process.  This doesn't have to be a personalized rejection letter; even a form letter to let people know they are not under consideration suffices here.  I recently applied for a long-shot dream job, and they rejected me within days.  Sure, it's a bummer to receive a rejection letter, but it's better than going for weeks feeling like you have a chance if you don't.  Honestly, I don't know if this is the effect this particular employer was going for, but the fact that they bothered to let me know they weren't interested makes me hope even more that I might get to work for them someday in the future.

2.  If the applicant's resume makes it clear that they are lacking something you require, don't waste their time by interviewing them.  (Looking at you again, school district that interviewed me in early July).  A recruiting company arranged this interview with a school district for me; had I been hired, I would have worked as a contractor for the district.  I wasn't upset that the school district didn't give me an immediate answer because my interviewer told me it might take 1-2 weeks, and I wanted to investigate other opportunities anyway.  Well, more than 3 weeks passed and I received an offer (which I'll get to shortly) from someone else, so I wanted to see if this school district had made a decision one way or another.  I got in touch with my recruiter.  He hadn't gotten an actual yes or no, so he did some digging for me.  It turned out the district was making offers to some applicants, but they were all people who already had their CCC.  It was obvious from my resume that I'm a new grad looking for a clinical fellowship position.  Frankly, the hour I spent interviewing with this district is an hour I wish I could get back.

3.  If you are interested in hiring someone, don't lowball them.  (Looking at you, private practice that made me a really crummy offer after two rounds of interviews!).  I get it--not everyone is going to get the salary of a professional athlete.  However, it's not that difficult in this day and age to do some research and get an idea of what is standard in your industry.  There are certain circumstances that might make someone accept a lower salary, like if the employer has a lot of cache, or if it is located in an area with a low cost of living.  However...

If it is a salaried position, there should be a compelling reason for it being substantially lower than industry standards.

If it is an hourly position, but the number of hours per week are not guaranteed, the hourly wage should be higher to account for that.

If the position requires travel and the company is not paying travel expenses, the hourly wage should be higher to account for that.

If the position is in an area with a high cost of living, the hourly wage should be higher to account for it.

If the benefits are terrible, then--you guessed it--the hourly wage should be higher to make up for that.

AND...if an applicant does accept your lowball offer out of desperation, don't be surprised or offended when they move on.    Know how you like having a roof over your head and food on the table?  Yeah.  That's what we all want.  A possible red flag for this happened during my first round of interviews with this company when one of the interviewers asked me if I planned to stay in the area for the long term or if I was just looking for a stepping stone.  At the time, I took it to mean that some new grads left after a year because they wanted to live somewhere else, but now I think the lousy compensation is really what drove their decisions to move on.

I'll cap my rant at this for now.  And if anyone wants to hire a middle aged grumpy clinical fellow, you know where to find me.

Things That Will Make Next Week Easier

One week of graduate school is down!  Yay!  I'm not going to count how many weeks are left in a five-semester program.

Just like every new experience, the first week seemed pretty rough.  There are a lot of new skills I'll need to acquire.  There is a lot of class work to do.  And because of the nature of this program, I'll have responsibilities in the onsite clinic. 

It has also been somewhat rough emotionally.  I'm thrilled to have such a good opportunity to break into another field, but I'm also in my late thirties and have been working for years.  Leaving the workforce for two years to do something new is scary. I've thought a few times that it would have been nice if I had thought I could have the sort of life I wanted without retraining, if I had felt like I had a secure future at the job I just left.

But!  I have at least two reasons why this week will almost have to be easier than last week, and that is something to celebrate.

1.  I broke down and bought a tablet.  When I was working full-time and taking night classes, I carried an ancient--but fairly lightweight--laptop with me.  Its battery didn't stay charged for long, but hey, I didn't need it to because I had one class per day.  With much longer class days, I spent last week toting my newer--but extremely heavy--laptop with me.  I could tell after about the first day that two years of lugging that thing along with my lunch and even one of my textbooks every day was going to do serious damage to my back and shoulders.  I had been curious about tablets for years but had never purchased one because I wasn't sure I would use one enough to justify the cost.  After a few days of agonizing over how much money I had already spent on textbooks, I decided to bite the bullet and order a tablet.  It arrived today, and so far, I'm very pleased with it.  I think there will be occasions when I have to drag the laptop to campus with me, but those will be few and far between, and will likely remind me to appreciate my tablet.

2.  Metro will be restored to its usual level of functionality tomorrow.  Two metro stations that lie between me and my campus have been closed since late July(!).  I've been fortunate that this particular phase in Metro's improvement plan didn't inconvenience me much until last week, but I will say that I found it quite inconvenient over a short span of time.  I'm lucky in that I have a commuter train option where I live.  However, the trains don't run frequently on the line closest to me.  Twice last week I found myself running for the train because I knew I would have a long wait for the next one (or in one case, it was the last train of the evening).  I am not a graceful runner, and I had that abovementioned laptop on my back.  I won't miss the joint pain that resulted.

Wishing everyone a great week, even better than last week!

Deciding To Change Careers

People who have been reading my blog for a while know part of this story already.  I have a master's degree in Arabic and have been using that skill professionally for years.  A couple years ago, when I started a job that offered tuition remission, I started taking undergraduate-level courses in speech-language pathology with the idea of one day--if I chose to--pursing a master's degree and changing careers.  I then decided to apply to graduate programs last winter, and I'll start classes a week from today.  With a five-semester program plus a clinical fellowship year ahead of me, it almost seems premature to write about changing careers now.  But I'll do it anyway because (a) it's the biggest thing going on in my life right now, and (b) I haven't told the whole story of why I chose to do this and how I chose speech-language pathology in particular. 

I love Arabic, and I'll always be glad I studied it.  It was one of my majors as an undergraduate, and I went on for the master's because I wanted to improve my skills and I had some very good funding and travel opportunities.  One thing that I didn't really understand when I was younger, though, was the overall job distribution in the field.  At least in the US, Arabic jobs skew very heavily toward security.  I don't believe that there is anything wrong with working in security if that's what you want, but I'm also very aware of why people might not want that sort of job for their entire career (or at all, in some cases).  There are jobs in education, but particularly for people without a Ph.D., they are often adjunct positions, which pay very little and offer no security.  Then there are the miscellaneous jobs in research, human rights, etc.  You might get one of those, but competition might be stiff, and you probably shouldn't plan your career trajectory around getting one.  Plus, funding for those positions is likely to be unstable, which can also make your job unstable.  Some people also work as freelance translators.  This is something I've never tried, but I wonder about the long-term stability of that sort of work, too, especially with the advances in machine translation.

Fast-forwarding a good number of years after actually receiving my degree, I was teaching Arabic in Kazakhstan.  I loved teaching, but found many aspects of the specific job (and its location) to be problematic.  I applied to dozens of jobs back in the US while I was out there.  Most of the time, I heard nothing back, even a formal rejection.  I started to think that I might need to retrain if I wanted to move back to the US, and started researching which job fields were expected to grow.  For some reason, speech-language pathology had never occurred to me, but when I came upon it in my research, it occurred to me that it would combine my interests in language and health.  I decided that if I ever retrained, it would be for that.

I was wondering how soon to give up on my job search and start retraining once we returned to the US, but at the point when I started seriously thinking about that, one of those jobs I applied to while I was in Kazakhstan panned out!  It was a job I valued greatly, but there was a distinct air of instability the entire time I was there.  In fact, I was laid off from it and later rehired.  This job provided me with tuition remission, and I had been taking classes with the idea of having the option to pursue a master's in speech-language pathology at some point.  The layoff convinced me that I needed to pursue the master's sooner rather than later.  Even when I was rehired, funding for my position was only (somewhat) guaranteed until April.  It ultimately lasted longer (I left on my own accord on Friday), but the uncertainty helped propel me through the process of grad school applications last winter.

It's difficult not to have mixed feelings about all of this.  It was hard work to take classes while working full time, and I'm now looking at a couple of years out of the workforce.  Plus, career is part of my identity, and Arabic has been the backbone of my career for a long time.  I wish I could have found a stable job that was a good fit for me with my Arabic skills.  On the other hand, even though starting over in my late thirties feels daunting, I am very excited about speech-language pathology.  I also realized as I left my office for the last time on Friday what a source of anxiety my job's instability had become for me.  I was sad to leave the job, but happy to leave behind the worries that came with it.  There is never a guaranteed "happily ever after" in anything in life, including career changes, but I'm optimistic that I've chosen the right decision for myself and that it will bring the stability I crave at this point in my life.

In Which I Struggle NOT To Tell The Truth

I'll get the good news out of the way first:  I'm employed full-time again!  The employer which laid me off in June asked me to return, so I'm back at the same place!  I'm just hoping not to repeat the layoff experience again in a few months!

Since there was about three months between receiving my layoff notice and returning to my office, I have some thoughts on the job-search process.  Chief among those right now is that interviews are the pits.  Of course, when you're looking for work, you want to have them.  But really, they're bad on both sides.  If you're the one being interviewed, you're going to feel anxious and awkward, and then you're going to second guess everything you said as soon as the interview is done.  If you're doing the interviewing, you're trying desperately to fill a position with someone both competent and tolerable, and you have very limited means of determining whether your applicants are either of those.

Unfortunately, the very limited means of trying to learn about an applicant often mean asking questions that are nearly impossible for the applicant to answer truthfully.

I'm going to purposely leave out a lot of details here, but I had an interview for a position for which I felt qualified, but was different in many ways from other positions I had had.  I was surprised when I was contacted for an interview.  During the interview, one person asked me how this position fit into my career goals.  An honest response would have been something like this:

"I applied for this position shortly after being laid off with no warning.  At that time, my goal of having income and benefits overrode any loftier career goals I might have had.  As a plus, this position seemed like it might be pleasant, and the office is close enough to where I take evening classes that work shouldn't interfere too much with my studies.  Otherwise, though, this position has very little to do with my current career field, and probably even less to do with my planned future career."

Obviously, there was no part of this I could have shared with my interviewers.

I don't even remember how I answered the question, but I doubt I was either convincing or credible.  They say practice makes perfect, though, so for any future interviews for positions that are not obvious career fits for me, I'll have to be sure to get my lies straight ahead of time.

Remote Work Mysteries

I've recently started a part-time job, working remotely for an employer in another state.  Most of the other employees work onsite.  I'd never really thought about this, but when you work in the same space as other people, you share a lot of experiences with them, good and bad.  You see colleagues and bosses come and go, you partake in office parties, you complain together about the flickering light in the conference room.  Sometimes, you even get a group layoff experience!  When you work remotely, you don't have these same points of reference.  Messages were circulating recently about a goodbye party for departing colleagues; I never met any of them in person, and I didn't get to eat any of the food.

But the weirdest thing is that in the few weeks I've been doing this job, there have already been two(!) emails about the restrooms.  I don't recall receiving any emails about the restrooms at my previous job, which I held for over a year before being laid off, so two messages in a just a few weeks seems noteworthy somehow.

The first message was to advise us that only employees and authorized visitors were allowed to use the restrooms.  Evidently, random people from the parking lot had been trying to come inside the building to use the restrooms.  (Why?  Are the restrooms in this building really nice, or are they just the only restrooms around for miles?  I need details!).  All of us employees were supposed to somehow fend these people off, and if they persisted, we were supposed to notify the sender of this email so he could deal with them.  (How?  I'm picturing parking lot fist fights that I'll never actually get to see.)

The second message mentioned that the restrooms had been left in "disarray," and that if we needed further clarification on what that meant, we should stop by the sender's office to ask.  I'm so curious about this email, but yet, so glad I don't know what the sender was talking about.  The "disarray" must have been pretty bad to warrant any sort of mention, and the fact that the sender would only elaborate on it in person makes me think it was fairly lurid.

But, since I can neither visit these restrooms nor stop by anyone's office for clarification, the exact nature of the "disarray" will forever remain a mystery to me.

A blurry photo of my distinguished office mate, Laila.

Layoff Lessons

I was laid off in late June, along with a large number of colleagues.  It came as a complete surprise to me, and, I believe, everyone else at my place of work.  I would give serious props to the powers that be for carrying off such a surprise, except that I think planned surprises should always be pleasant.  If you're going to ruin someone's day (and possibly the weeks to come), it's just good manners to throw a few clues their way beforehand.

I didn't feel like writing about this until now, which was a struggle, since it was really the major event of my summer.  But I have a part-time job now, and circumstances seem a little brighter, so I thought I'd share my layoff lessons.  This was my first layoff, and I keep thinking it will officially grant me adult status or something.

• The first couple of weeks will be taken up writing awkward emails.  I have been truly touched by the number of people who have helped me during this time.  Every single person I've told about my layoff has been sympathetic.  Many friends and colleagues have investigated leads and put in good words for me, and I have been very grateful.  One way in which people have helped has been to give me people to contact about various leads.  So, for the first couple of weeks, I wrote a lot of very awkward emails that I feared came off something like this:  "Hi, You barely know me (or don't know me at all), but how would you like to review my resume/keep me in mind if a job opens up/hire me for a consultancy down the line?"  But, having written a good number of these emails, I believe it is absolutely worth doing.  Everyone I have contacted has been very kind.  One of these emails even led to my current part-time job!
• Annoyances at home will become more annoying.  Unless you are financially secure enough to take a vacation with no income, you will suddenly be spending a lot of time at home.  Irritations that were once the domain of evenings and weekends will become the bane of your existence all day every day.  Our broken toilet reached nearly apocalyptic proportions in my mind by the time it was fixed.  Even more disturbingly, it was starting to seem like a metaphor for my life.
• You can never completely prepare yourself for how you'll feel.  Even though the timing of my layoff was surprising, my job never seemed super stable.  At some point, I decided that I was going to stay there as long as I could anyway, and that if I lost my job, I would deal with it then.  But giving myself that pep talk ahead of time didn't spare me from feeling sad and disoriented in the aftermath.
• Always have a plan for the next thing.  My job had some built-in instability that not every job has.  But I'm not sure how many truly stable jobs there are anymore.  I had decided while I was still working to explore some new career options, and I've written some about the evening classes I've been taking.  I am so glad now that I started taking those classes because in the short term, they've given me something concrete to focus on, and in the long term, they're part of a plan to hopefully have more professional stability.  But it was key that I started those classes while I was still working because I think it would have been much harder to switch focus and come up with a plan right after being laid off.
• People can help you, but nobody can make it "all better" for you.  My first instinct, upon opening my layoff letter, was to start crying on the nearest person's shoulder.  I think this would have seriously unnerved the person who was sitting closest to me at the time, so it's a good thing I didn't.  But I realized later that what I really wanted was for someone to make everything better for me, but that nobody could.  It's great to reach out to people for help (and to help your fellow laid off colleagues if you can), but in the end you have to make sure you keep moving forward and don't get too caught up in shock or sadness.

Wishing everyone stability in jobs they like!