Mid life crisis - Part 3

Finally, an end is in sight. I just got a phone call offering me a job to teach high school Physics. This is at a small Catholic high school (some 350 +/- students and 28 faculty). The job could also entail coaching one of the sports teams (I am hoping for swimming since it was my passion back in the day...). I go in next week to sign my contract.

Now I just need to survive the summer. I have an angle on that but cannot say if it will work out or not, so the search continues.

Now if I can just fix my iMac, fix my IIsi, fix my two 950s, and fix that LCD, things will start to feel like something stable.

At least now I can keep a long standing promise to myself: the bottle of Moscatto D'Asti in the fridge for the last year and a half can finally be opened. The exact day will be the day I sign the contract.

And as light starts to spill over the horizon, I see the speedbumps and potholes in my path, once obscured by the darkness of the last 14 months.

That's great! You know, the physics teacher at my HS was one of the coolest teachers. I have a horrible memory for names, but he's one of the few I still remember, Jim Nazworthy. When I was there he was maintaining a lab of LC575 or LC580s with a Q900/950 running A/UX as a network server. Of course in those days we were all blown away by getting downloads over the shared ISDN line, which sure beat the 2400 to 9600bps modems we had at home... An other physics guy that ax0n and I know is an alpha geek type, with a good personality. Good personality makes difficult subjects much easier to absorb. For some reason most of the people I know involved int eh subject seem to be quite the story tellers and such. OP here included.

Part of it is all about having an epiphany, and how you have it. For my, the magical moment came sometime in my junior year while sitting in a Quantum class - every single time a teacher had said "just accept it for now, it will make sense later" finally happened. I cannot recall now what the exact thing was, but I stopped class (there were only three of us plus the prof) and I expalained how it was all so clear to me now (and I did not even start quoting from "I am the cheese" like I usually do when I say that phrase).

Everything I had learned up to that point finally made perfect sense and it all snapped into place. I also learned that my faith in teachers saying ' it will make sense later' was well placed, albeit ill-timed.

Anyways, I wrote a quick note about the experience and what triggered it in my class notes, which I still have. As I spend my summer preparing lesson plans, I will most likely come across it and refresh my memory.

I have been told by my grad school peers that I am quite a personality, so I hope this holds true. The big draw for me to the catholic school is that the discipline is much easier at this school and is dealt with expeditiously AND Physics is an elective, so kids will be there because they want to be in that class (usually), so the less-than-public-school-pay sits fine with me. This means that I can actually do content vice cop-work.

I am a lurker for the most part here in the 'fritter but decided to pop my head out and wish you luck for the future.

So, good luck with that physics job

Mak

So I finally got a summer job at a local company repairing and maintaining video games (even selling them to high-end customers looking for vintage arcade stuff). Cool enough, but marginal for my survival outlook in the short term. So my summer is set and I have a plan for the end (teaching).

But now some possibilities have popped up:

[1]I have discovered some opportunities with the US Post office, which I will pursue - I mean average 57k/yr to start and a pension if I stick with it, I can handle that!
[2]I have gotten a good lead with a company that does services the likes of which I did just 15 months ago and their needs are exactly what I can offer, meaning there may be a perfect match here. Having a good inside connection and the right contacts and background, I may be golden. So what I now have is a second option with a solid third under development.

I finally have some possibilities - I can stay the course, pack heat, or fly. Each has its perks and each has its drawbacks. I will pine later about these as things progress in each direction.

So back to the arcade job - it is cool because I am actually dealing with real arcade games in a shop that refurbs and maintains them. I just spent 2 days restoring a game with 3D interactive sensors and will finish it all up Monday. I have a lot to learn, and will get a lot out of this. I just wish it was viable for long term employment for me. It definetely has that somewhere as one guy has 30 years with this company and another 14 years. I could carve out my niche here if I were planning to be long term (which may lead to income growth), but the short of it is that this is not a cash-cow business like the ones I have been in in the past.

...something is in the way and it is tearing my life apart.

I will be off line indefinetely while I try to sort out my life.

...read on...