apoc.famine's Journal: Token Journal Entry

Since it's been quite some time since I posted anything at all, I figured I'd make a token journal entry. So here it is:

The recent history of my life, part 12:

I got laid off in January, after 2.5 years of slavery at a shitty company, programming and doing dba work, on 15 minute "holy shit, someone fix this or I'll be fired" deadlines. Our parent company, (rhyme-rhedia, in scooby-speak, and which I'm not allowed to say anything bad about since I signed their damn severance papers) had had us on a salary and equipment freeze for 2 years, and had pruned benefits to just about nothing. As most tech depts are, we were understaffed and underfunded, and desperately needed some major hardware upgrades.

But not only were they too broke to give us what we needed, they couldn't even pay everyone the promised company-wide raise after 2 years of suffering. The solution? Lay off a bunch of the company, myself included, and give the remaining people the long-promised raise. (benefits still non-existent)

It took me a few months after I was laid off to learn this, but as far as I can tell, nobody was willing to have the "sorry pal" talk with me. Apparently my direct supervisors thought I was too valuable to let go in their "we need to get rid of 5% of the company" random victim selection, and they (our parent company) had to call in some people from nyc (the parent company hq) to actually lay me off. My boss didn't work that day in protest.

So I feel good, knowing that nobody at our location was willing to sack me, although it does nothing to fix my unemployment issues. And with the average unemployment length in the US tech sector around 9-10 months, I'm not looking at a rosy future.

Well, I wasn't. After 50-60 applications, all but 4 going into a black hole and disappearing forever, I've decided to call off my job search. I've applied to a few local schools to go back for a Masters in Education, and in the fall, I should start on the road to becoming a teacher.

It's not a real stretch for me - I majored in astrophysics, and while doing that, TAed physics and astronomy labs, and senior year I taught my own freshman physics lab. I've pretty much been teaching most of my life, so it wasn't a hard decision. The fact that I saw mainly teaching and nursing jobs listed during my 6 month job search didn't hurt either.

So Yaaaay! I'm going back to school. Granted I may be a poor grad student moving back with my parents and living off their crappy dialup, (out in the sticks) but I think I can survive for a few years. At least I hope I can....