Even when I'm at my worst
Feeling as if I've been cursed.
Bitter cold within.
Days Go By - Dirty Vegas
I, of all people, know how life can change within an instant. I thought I took my dream job back in May. Pulled up stakes and moved the man and the cats to New Jersey. It's amazing, I can see the Freedom Tower from my desk that sits in a hallway. It's not the desk situation, although that's shitty. It wasn't that I took a pay cut from Penn State (~$5000 a year). It wasn't that no one seemed to know I was coming or that anyone really cared that I was here.
It's that it took me two months to get a computer and a telephone to do my job. It's that I am not introduced as Dr. Helen Hull-Sanders, Entomologist, Ecologist, Scientist. It's Helen the Bug Lady. I worked MY ASS off for that fucking degree. It's mine. It's that each time I meet with my "boss" he either says, "Well, we only have a year on the DHS contract" (I was told that we actually have three years) or more recently that DHS is going to pull the funding completely.
I'm truly angry. I don't have lab space to perform experiments, but yet I'm expected to design the experiments and write progress reports for DHS that don't matter. I go home early every day because I am bored shitless. I brought to them the information about Farm Bill so that maybe I could keep my job beyond the three years (that I don't have) and not once has anyone listened to anything I have to say about the fucking Farm Bill.
This week I submitted four applications for jobs that begin Fall 2016. I have been here 10 weeks and already I'm looking for a new job. But you know, if I don't, I'll be fucked again. The Interim Chair of the department said that he could see me on the faculty here in the future. Except that they don't really have a biology department and well, they don't need an entomologist. I did point out that I'm actually and Evolutionary Ecologist - oh, yeah. They do want to offer an Evolution course. So I could be hired as an adjunct.
No one who is hired as an adjunct ever gets out of that rut. You have to teach so many courses just to stay alive that research goes right down the drain.
When we were still on Cape and I was working for Starbucks, I could not even begin to fathom what other career I could have. Looking at tables and other woodwork on Etsy, I realized that I could make tables. If I took some woodworking classes, I could make or refinish tables and other furniture and sell it for outrageous prices.
Ping is talking about taking courses in Bioinformatics. I don't want to take any more courses. I'm done with higher education. I'm educated and in debt up to my eyeballs. I just want to matter.
Bitter cold within.
Days Go By - Dirty Vegas
I, of all people, know how life can change within an instant. I thought I took my dream job back in May. Pulled up stakes and moved the man and the cats to New Jersey. It's amazing, I can see the Freedom Tower from my desk that sits in a hallway. It's not the desk situation, although that's shitty. It wasn't that I took a pay cut from Penn State (~$5000 a year). It wasn't that no one seemed to know I was coming or that anyone really cared that I was here.
It's that it took me two months to get a computer and a telephone to do my job. It's that I am not introduced as Dr. Helen Hull-Sanders, Entomologist, Ecologist, Scientist. It's Helen the Bug Lady. I worked MY ASS off for that fucking degree. It's mine. It's that each time I meet with my "boss" he either says, "Well, we only have a year on the DHS contract" (I was told that we actually have three years) or more recently that DHS is going to pull the funding completely.
I'm truly angry. I don't have lab space to perform experiments, but yet I'm expected to design the experiments and write progress reports for DHS that don't matter. I go home early every day because I am bored shitless. I brought to them the information about Farm Bill so that maybe I could keep my job beyond the three years (that I don't have) and not once has anyone listened to anything I have to say about the fucking Farm Bill.
This week I submitted four applications for jobs that begin Fall 2016. I have been here 10 weeks and already I'm looking for a new job. But you know, if I don't, I'll be fucked again. The Interim Chair of the department said that he could see me on the faculty here in the future. Except that they don't really have a biology department and well, they don't need an entomologist. I did point out that I'm actually and Evolutionary Ecologist - oh, yeah. They do want to offer an Evolution course. So I could be hired as an adjunct.
No one who is hired as an adjunct ever gets out of that rut. You have to teach so many courses just to stay alive that research goes right down the drain.
When we were still on Cape and I was working for Starbucks, I could not even begin to fathom what other career I could have. Looking at tables and other woodwork on Etsy, I realized that I could make tables. If I took some woodworking classes, I could make or refinish tables and other furniture and sell it for outrageous prices.
Ping is talking about taking courses in Bioinformatics. I don't want to take any more courses. I'm done with higher education. I'm educated and in debt up to my eyeballs. I just want to matter.