Possible New Job

Looks like I might have a chance to work for a local tutoring company contracted with the Albuquerque Public School district.  If I can actually get assignments, it’s $30 an hour or so, up to $43 for multiple students.  That will beat the pants off of $9/hr to schlep boxes at the UPS Store.

A thanks to the Sooz for the tip on the job.

Well…

I got very little work done on the dissertation today, but the house is clean.  Job interview tomorrow…

Happy Veteran’s Day

For all of you out there who thought putting on a uniform was something you should do, or that it would be fun, or that it would pay for college…

I thank you all.

Shoot straight, come home.

Job Interview Today

Went for another job interview, this one much, much more modest than the last.  It went…okay.  I didn’t really get a read off of the owner on how it was going, which is usually a bad sign.

Look slike I didn’t get it.  Haven’t heard back.

I’m done for the week…

Shooting at my Former Post; UPDATED

Just happened to turn on the TV and found out there was a mass shooting at my former post of Fort Hood.  31 injured, 12 dead — shot down by at least one soldier (in custody.)  There are another two suspects being questioned.  The FBI has already said there is no terrorism nexus, but it’s the Feeb…I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a Fort Dix scenario.

More likely, though, it’s simply a few people cracked under seven years of high operations tempo and stress.

UPDATE:  …and i was right.  It was a frakkin’ officer! that went nutty over the deployment to Iraq.   Shocka!  Major Malik Nadal Hasan…

Huh…Interesting; Just Kidding!

Well, I’ve gotten a call back for an interview with the Sandia National Labs folks about the historian position over there.  It’s a six-month contract that could be real money, if things go well.

Thursday afternoon…fingers crossed.

Just got a call — the interview is off.  Psych!

Flamethrower!

Went in today to talk to the academic review committee evaluating the various programs at the University of New Mexico.  I was glad to hear from them that there were similar concerns to mine, but I declined to attend the open meeting; graduate students have a tendency to blab and I didn’t need to be fighting the department this close to the end of my studies.

However, I was not easy on the department, but fair, I think.  There’s a real concern with the lack of financial and academic support for students not in the trendy victims’ studies fields (gender, race, environment) or in the Latin America program.  Getting a GA or TA position in the department is nigh impossible for an in-state student, as they use the positions as lures for the out of state students, and there are a host of administrative blocks to getting these positions.  The downside is that they are graduating a host of PhDs and MAs that do not have teaching experience!

Also, the department has been hemorrhaging professors for the last three years, stripping our once fine medieval department,  and our European department of their people.  The European and American departments are now dominated by gender historians…instead of a variety of specialists.  (We have one science & technology people.)  The new professors are decidedly unenthusiastic about their duties outside of the classroom, and most have very limited knowledge outside of their specialties.  Not good.

I’m hoping they use the information to improve the department, but it will most likely be too late to benefit me.

Sigh…

Well, as I expected, my dissertation proposal requires some serious reworking (read…I gotta toss it out.)  I agree with the committee chair that this is necessary, but my life has been working hard to distract or derail me from my appointed task of getting this friggin’ degree done.

I’ve been laid off twice in the last year, down with the H1N1 for last two weeks, and had a particularly unpleasant afternoon, and I’ve been losing steam on this project due to the usual plethora of life issues, including the need to find part-time work to supplement out recession-ravaged bank account.

In other words…I’m whining.  But I’ll be better tomorrow.