Monday, November 26, 2007

i hate job searching....

... but i'm doing it. actually, i had started about a month ago (not sure if i mentioned this already). i found 4 schools that i was interested in and i sent them my resume and a cover letter. one of them told me straight away that they did not have any openings for the 2008 school year. two of them i never heard from at all. and one of them called my current employer, who was a little surprised to say the least. and so was i when they asked me about it. i tried to explain it away, blah blah blah, i want to eventually work in a school, more time with kids, some schools don't start until september (which is actually true, but almost all of them start in february - they do southern hemisphere school schedule here).

i mean who does that? calls your current employer for a reference? i thought there was sort of an unspoken thing about that.... but clearly not. so i sent an e-mail to them and to the other two schools i hadn't heard from saying my current employer will not give a reference until we agree on an end date for my contract (until i give my notice, which i hadn't done at that point) but here are two other people you CAN contact IN COSTA RICA.

after that i heard nothing. and things got a little crazy here. i had lots of stuff going on, i had my spanish exam (nivel inicial - which i won't get the results from for about 10 weeks), i was trying to resist the urge to strangle the panamanian in his sleep (he is possibly the most inconsiderate person i have ever met), etc., etc.

well, i finally decided i needed to get serious about the finding a job thing (man, i hate looking for jobs. and apartments for that matter, which i'll have to do soon as i find a job). so i found some more schools that i liked and i sent out my resumes and cover letters again. i decided to send another e-mail to the eager school, saying i've actually put in my notice and my school will now provide a reference, i'm still interested.

well two days later i get a call for an interview! so last friday i had an interview, which i think went pretty well. i spoke with the primary school principal and she had a couple of openings she was trying to fill. she thought i could teach 5th grade science because i had a bachelors of science (i tried to dissuade her on this idea as best i could - computers does not equal science. but i would do it if it was all they offered me.) but the other thing she had, which i told her i was most interested in, was 3rd or 4th grade language arts.

so she said i would have to come in and do some sort of test early this week (hopefully this is kind of like "are you smarter than a primary school student?" kind of stuff and not too much about teaching theory) so i'm still waiting for that call. and she will have made her decisions by the end of this week. which is great to know, but now i've been waiting all morning for my phone to ring to set up the time to do this test thing!

so fingers crossed everyone, this is a great school that i would love to work at!!!