Job Search Update
Okay, I realize that it's been a while since I posted, but I honestly have an excuse...I've been in the US and didn't have much interest in internet connectivity. Primarily, my trip was to visit family and to have a short reunion with my wife and son (both of whom I hadn't seen for two months), but I also had to spend some time trying to find a job.
Towards this latter goal, I did a fair amount of traveling while I was back. I made separate driving trips to Trenton, where I had been offered a job by Thomas Edison State College, and Philadelphia, where I am a finalist for a tenure track position at Drexel University. I would have loved to have been able to facilitate both meetings in one trip, since these two cities are only about 45 minutes apart, but unfortunately, I didn't even know that Drexel was inviting me to come to campus for an interview until the morning I was leaving for Trenton...that doesn't leave much time to actually arrange any meetings.
The job at Thomas Edison was very appealing...a major step up in pay and responsibility, with supervisory oversight of five people, but it would have put me on a managerial career track, which is not really what I want to do. In fact, what I really want to do is teach. This is one reason why I turned down the Edison job, and am patiently waiting to hear back from Drexel, which would be a great opportunity. The other, and more major, reason why I turned down the Edison job was because my wife had a bit of a meltdown about living in the Trenton area (some of which is beautiful by the way). As a very good friend said to me, no job will ever be as rewarding as my wife...truer words were never spoken, and so I turned the job down.
My wife, on the other hand, wouldn't be happy about living in Philadelphia, but then again, she wouldn't be happy about living anywhere if it weren't within 30 minutes of her folks. Needless to say (but being said anyway) this greatly restricts the job opportunities that I have open to me.
I've also been offered a job at a school division local to where my wife wants to live. They are offering me a position as an assessment specialist, which really only deals with the evaluative elements of assessment, not the testing aspects. Without being too boring (and hopefully, I haven't already fallen into this and bored any perspective readers to tears), this job is acceptable, but it is not the best suited for my future goals. I would primarily be completing evaluations of school division programs (and lord knows there are more of those going on than anyone wants to admit) to judge their effectiveness against stated objectives and goals. This is interesting, however, I have an equivalent interest in the actual classroom applications of assessment (for example, how to design tasks to truly measure what should be measured), and this job wouldn't offer me the opportunity to look at those too closely.
So, what this all comes down to is that I'll hold out until I hear from Drexel, which is my first choice, but if that job isn't offered to me, then I will accept the school division job and work towards a higher ed teaching position from there. I hate to say it, but the school division job would be just that...a JOB...not a career.
Once a decision has been reached, I'm sure I'll be blogging about it...if for no other reason than to bitch about how things turned out (hopefully, said bitching won't be necessary since things will have worked out the way I wanted them to)
Okay, I realize that it's been a while since I posted, but I honestly have an excuse...I've been in the US and didn't have much interest in internet connectivity. Primarily, my trip was to visit family and to have a short reunion with my wife and son (both of whom I hadn't seen for two months), but I also had to spend some time trying to find a job.
Towards this latter goal, I did a fair amount of traveling while I was back. I made separate driving trips to Trenton, where I had been offered a job by Thomas Edison State College, and Philadelphia, where I am a finalist for a tenure track position at Drexel University. I would have loved to have been able to facilitate both meetings in one trip, since these two cities are only about 45 minutes apart, but unfortunately, I didn't even know that Drexel was inviting me to come to campus for an interview until the morning I was leaving for Trenton...that doesn't leave much time to actually arrange any meetings.
The job at Thomas Edison was very appealing...a major step up in pay and responsibility, with supervisory oversight of five people, but it would have put me on a managerial career track, which is not really what I want to do. In fact, what I really want to do is teach. This is one reason why I turned down the Edison job, and am patiently waiting to hear back from Drexel, which would be a great opportunity. The other, and more major, reason why I turned down the Edison job was because my wife had a bit of a meltdown about living in the Trenton area (some of which is beautiful by the way). As a very good friend said to me, no job will ever be as rewarding as my wife...truer words were never spoken, and so I turned the job down.
My wife, on the other hand, wouldn't be happy about living in Philadelphia, but then again, she wouldn't be happy about living anywhere if it weren't within 30 minutes of her folks. Needless to say (but being said anyway) this greatly restricts the job opportunities that I have open to me.
I've also been offered a job at a school division local to where my wife wants to live. They are offering me a position as an assessment specialist, which really only deals with the evaluative elements of assessment, not the testing aspects. Without being too boring (and hopefully, I haven't already fallen into this and bored any perspective readers to tears), this job is acceptable, but it is not the best suited for my future goals. I would primarily be completing evaluations of school division programs (and lord knows there are more of those going on than anyone wants to admit) to judge their effectiveness against stated objectives and goals. This is interesting, however, I have an equivalent interest in the actual classroom applications of assessment (for example, how to design tasks to truly measure what should be measured), and this job wouldn't offer me the opportunity to look at those too closely.
So, what this all comes down to is that I'll hold out until I hear from Drexel, which is my first choice, but if that job isn't offered to me, then I will accept the school division job and work towards a higher ed teaching position from there. I hate to say it, but the school division job would be just that...a JOB...not a career.
Once a decision has been reached, I'm sure I'll be blogging about it...if for no other reason than to bitch about how things turned out (hopefully, said bitching won't be necessary since things will have worked out the way I wanted them to)
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