A New Job

I'm pleased to announce that I am employed again. Though after learning that my mother doesn't have anyone to go to Ireland with her in September, I'm regretting this a little bit. I would have liked to have gone back to Ireland. In any event, I suppose being gainfully employed again is a good thing. Why I work? I work to earn money in order to travel to interesting places. Without a job, all that travel would eventually catch up to me and I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. So in that sense, having a job is good I suppose.

I am not a science teacher and I've never played on on stage, but I am still working on that (on being a science teacher, not playing one). In the interim, I've signed on to a job with EBS Healthcare. It's a nationally recognized leader in education based and pediatric services in the areas of speech therapy, PT, OT, and other disciplines. This is contract work, meaning that I'm paid hourly and hired directly by the company to work within a certain public school system...in this case, the public school in question is Boston Public. Who knows, I might actually like contract work better than the direct-hire positions I've held over the past nine years. While I'm doing that, I will be trying to complete my program in science education. I recently decided to finish up my formal application to that program, now that I'm most of the way through it. In the meantime, I'm also awaiting my test scores on the MTEL. If I pass, I will basically meet the preliminary certification requirements to teach middle school science. If I don't pass...well, then, I won't meet those requirements and I've got to take the thing again.

The neat thing about taking the contract position is that it would afford me opportunities, should I choose, to work in the summer. That may not sound all that exciting, until you realize that they will subsidize your housing and pay to relocate you to almost anywhere in the country. Some companies like this also offer overseas opportunities. At this point, I am still calling Boston my permanent home. However, the ideal situation would be to work during the year as a science teacher in the Boston area...then during the summer (maybe not every summer), jet off somewhere - living and working in that city as a speech pathologist for part of the summer. Since I like to travel during the summer anyway, this would be a great opportunity to actually live in different places for a month or two - and from there perhaps explore areas outside of it.

When I closed the door on East Haven and Connecticut a couple of years ago, the opportunities I found after moving to Boston were tremendous and it remains one of the best decisions I've ever made. Similarly, when the doors in the Somerville schools were slammed in my face, they ended up opening brand new doors for me and a nation, if not a world of possibilities.