What do you do?

Picasso_sl said:

Important to remember they only work 180 days a year too

Click to expand...

That's the number of calendar days in a semester (roughly). Teachers work quite a few more days than that.

I think ours with 2 or 3 before and after children, so 210 maybe?

210-220 is probably a more realistic number, with weekends during the semester committed to grading and faculty responsibilities. There are what, ~250 work days in a full calendar year? Teachers do get some time off in the summer, but the amount is a little bit exaggerated.

They had an update on the teacher over the weekend. I only read the headline but the teacher said they were late because they were having breakfast. I don't know if they were on breakfast duty at school or just felt like eating.

I can't imagine a progressive punishment. I've never heard of that. I can imagine the boss asking you what your problem was after a few times and then saying one more time and then you're gone.

Might have gone a little overboard with my interview prep. I just started going through common behavioral questions and writing out answers. I've got to go back and give myself some more concise bullets so I don't get lost and it doesn't sound like i'm just reading. Also watched several company presentations, read up on some linkedin profiles, and did some social media research on my interviewer. Probably not much else I can do.

I keep waffling between feeling very confident and prepared, and totally lost.

Well I already got one call back from the one single company I applied for.

I don't know how to do this considering I'm working full-time and used a bunch of time off for the baby.

Edit: Whoops meant this for the comp sci thread

Take PTO. I rearranged my telework day this week to accommodate my interview tomorrow. No one has to know that's why you're doing it.

Had my interview. I'm ambivalent, at least partially because every time I feel really positive about an outcome I'm dead wrong and failed the test / don't get funded / didn't get the job.

I had an answer ready for everything, but some of them still threw me a little bit. There was a lot fewer questions than I expected, and only one hypothetical.

Should know in a couple of days. I was told screener results don't take very long, and the recruiter already responded to a thank you note. I've just got to cross my fingers that I didn't fuck it up.

That's the teacher's union, not tenure. Tenure is a really rare thing in public education. College is different, and tenure serves a specific, important function: it removes the threat to the career of a professor who is teaching concepts or ideas that are socially or politically unpopular. It makes it okay to express concepts that push the boundaries of a given field. Without tenure, questioning the findings of a time honored textbook might jeopardize your career if the dean happens to be that book's author. While it can also protect some bad apples, the concept of tenure in college is pretty vital.

Teacher's unions in high school are a bit different, and it's really more a matter of A: red tape making it difficult, and B: administrations who lack the backbone to take action. Frankly, most admins don't give a shit if a teacher is yelling at students. They probably got yelled at as kids, and assume it's good for them. There's a LOT of "I went through it, so now you're going through it too" at every level. It's what takes good, ambitious, student-driven teachers and beats all of the optimism out of them.

mkopec_sl said:

Dont get me wrong bro, I dont care if they yell at kids too. But yelling to make 1st graders cry does not set a good precedent for further education.

Click to expand...

I totally agree. I'm not defending that kind of behavior. It's incredibly bad teaching. I'm just highlighting that most administrations are more concerned with having ANYONE in the classroom because it's so hard to find someone else to fill that role. Between the need for teachers and the red tape of firing a union member, they end up getting a lot of slack. That's still not tenure though, which is a different concept altogether and one that I happen to think is important.

Had a chat with a recruiter for another company this morning. It's not the one I interviewed for and really want, but it's a spot on fit for my background and experience. The recruiter did everything short of offer me a handjob. She tried to schedule me for a phone interview tomorrow, but I requested next week instead. I don't want to spoil a long weekend.

As a backup plan if the other thing doesn't work out, it's a pretty good opportunity. Likely a 30-40% bump, and probably full-time telework since the team is spread around the country already. Some travel, but with an option to move out to Denver if we wanted to take it.

recruiters are killing me.

I put my resume up on Monster and I'm getting at least 20 calls per day and as many emails. Most of them I think are for multiples of the same job listings, so it's nuts.

Graduated 9 months ago and am just wrapping up my first field season as a freshwater field biologist. It's crazy fun and adventurous. This summer I was paid to backpack into alpine lakes to do surveys with gill nets/rod and reel, I electrofished rivers and streams and handled thousands of fish, once got shut down by a mountain lion that was in some bushes near a stream we were shocking and wouldn't move, and came within a few yards of a dozen or so moose while in the field.

The shitty part of it is that only having a Bachelors means you move around alot from job to job and finding a permanent gig means either getting a Masters or bouncing around for three or four years until something sticks. I'm too old for that shit though. I've got a month to find my next port of call and am thinking about doing fishing boats in Oregon or Alaska. It's good money but you have no life while you're working. Starting to wonder if I shoulda just got a degree in engineering or GIS instead.

Couple of pics from work. Can't beat the scenery.

Sounds like you're getting to do a job you love. There's a lot riding on that.

True dat homie. It's been the best summer I've ever had and it's not even close.

Is a fisheries degree like a wildlife degree in that you compete with people willing to do the job for free (IE volunteers) when you have a bachelors degree? A lot of field work in wildlife winds up being sucked up by part time volunteers because it's "cool" and supervised by someone with a masters degree.

Borzak_sl said:

Is a fisheries degree like a wildlife degree in that you compete with people willing to do the job for free (IE volunteers) when you have a bachelors degree? A lot of field work in wildlife winds up being sucked up by part time volunteers because it's "cool" and supervised by someone with a masters degree.

Click to expand...

Eh, kinda. Most positions and jobs are temporary, i.e. - no benefits and can't work for more than five consecutive months, but I've never heard of any unpaid volunteers or people getting hired that aren't at least enrolled in a related program. They're not going to hire some local lumberjack that just happens to have a passion for fishing. But my experience is in anadromous fisheries which is probably the most well-funded and most competitive among freshwater fisheries, it might be different elsewhere. Bonneville Power Authority shells out tens of millions of dollars every year that goes directly into conservation for mitigation from all the dams they've put up in the Pacific Northwest. I could probably go back to Texas and score a job fairly easily but I really have no interest in warm water fisheries.

I got pretty lucky because my BS is just in general Biology with a pre-med focus but I was accepted into an REU program a couple summers ago in Montana and got some electrofishing experience. Three summers working up here and I've yet to meet a single person from Texas or even the South, so I feel pretty lucky to have made the jump up here. Tentatively my plan is to kick around the coast over the winter and hopefully work fishing boats as a biological observer and then come back to Idaho next year as a crew lead. Once I have that on my resume then scoring a full time gig should be a lot easier. If not, then I can always go back to North Texas and do a Masters.