Employment stress

Posted on April 15th, 2003 by Sacha Chua

My mom and I had a somewhat stressful discussion about the vagueness
of my employment. To wit: I know that I am going to teach, but I
don’t know under what terms or even how much I’ll earn. (Whoever goes
into teaching for the money is nuts, but it would help to know how
much rent I can afford!)

I guess what stresses me out is the fact that at 10:37 PM in the
evening, I can’t do anything to improve the situation, and all these
questions are making my department seem so bad. The CS department is
really nice (although a bit disorganized), although yes, I’m somewhat
peeved that they can’t really bend the rules for me. <wry grin>
Case in point: after bugging the finance department for a little over
a month, I’ve just recently been told that faculty housing is going to
be nearly impossible for me to get because I already have housing in
Manila. Makes sense. In fact, I felt somewhat guilty about having
stayed in the dorm for so long, taking up a slot that may have let
someone from the provinces study in Ateneo instead. The main thing
that stresses me out, however, is the possibly firm stance my parents
might have on the necessity of on-campus housing.

My mom seems to be softening a bit – she was offering to help me
search for an apartment or a ‘bedspacing’ arrangement. However, this
didn’t prevent her from checking with another school that was looking
for teachers (an IT school – I want to teach computer science, not
information technology!), which of course completely freaked me out.
I spent the next half hour having a nice good cry with my kitten. I
really, really want to teach in Ateneo because I’m more used to the
school culture and I’ll have a better chance of being allowed enough
latitude to experiment and possibly make a difference. I _hope_ my
parents won’t make me choose another school, but if they express
strong disapproval…

Another source of stress is the vagueness of the terms of my
employment – aforementioned lack of information about such basic
things as salary and job expectations. From the way things have been
going around the department, I’d probably do more than your typical
fresh-grad teacher. Me? Typical? But how does one consider these
atypical things, then? I already do the work gratis, but it would
be… somewhat nice to be appreciated, or… at least meet someone
else who is as into these things as I am.

Maybe I should just set my sights on the Most Outstanding Junior
Teacher award. I’ll need a lot of luck and practice to get that.

My mom basically thinks that they’re taking me for granted. I’m
supposed to be the best in the Philippines, but there’s a very, very
fine line between asserting that I deserve more than this… and being
completely annoying and arrogant.

All I really want to do is teach. And learn. And have fun. And help
other people learn and have fun. Not necessarily in that order.

Mental note: Be much more assertive.

How assertive can I get, anyway? <wry grin> I can’t very well
threaten not to teach in Ateneo, because everyone knows I really want
to do so. I guess the better approach would be, “Wouldn’t that be the
professional thing to do?”

Or something like that.

<sigh>

Update: Okay, now that I’ve gotten my employment jitters out of
the way, I can concentrate on preparing for class. =) I really, really
love our school.

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Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/696

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