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New Year...
Jan. 1st, 2012 10:46 pmI posted my thoughts on the new year from a writing PoV on my other blog: http://lurkingmusings.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/a-glass-half-empty-year/. However, there is still a lot of stuff to say here which is not appropriate for that medium...
I don't think the last year has been a bad one, when everything is added together. I enjoyed almost 6 months of gainful employment at a very good college at the start of the year and that helped me to significanty clear debts. However, on the flip side, there is still one debt left hanging which is now starting to bite back, despite me thinking that the arrangements I had made to keep it ticking over until I could afford to pay it off were fine and in place. Apparently not, just before Christmas I got a phone call telling me that that arrangement has not been OK for at least 3 months and that I now owe arrears... well, thank you for telling me in a timely manner you moron of a bank. So, we have made some token payments to extend the period before they start calling in collection agencies and are currently going through the complaint procedure due to the incompetence both myself and Sarah have noted throughout this process (seriously, Sarah had to go all ITIL on their arses and cited several ways in which they had breached best practise, ethical management and possibly the law). So far the complaint procedure is not bearing fruit (the old deny responsibility blind, despite the call centre staff claiming responsibility at the time...) but we are taking it all the way to the FSO if necessary.
Regardless of how this ends up, it means that I definitely need to find a long term, full time job very very soon. Since January is one of the months regarded as a prime recruiting period for schools, this means checking the council job sites and all the other job sites at least once a day this month until one of them posts an advert for a full time science teacher within reasonable travel distance which I apply for and then get... There's another big push after easter as well so same applies for that period. Of course, based on the number of adverts in the previous 'busy recruitment time' for schools (usually October, when all the NQTs who can't hack it do a runner...), I am not holding out much hope. So far the job sites seem infested with nothing but agency ads and I am already registered with enough agencies, thank you very much, none of which have managed to find me anything. I have some other avenues of attack too, however. I have an application in with the Manchester NQT pool which I believe gets a lot of traffic in January as well. I am also working to impress the staff at Trafford college who I am working with 2 hours a week. With luck, they may get something longer term sometime soon. I had some hope that they would not be able to find someone to replace their missing chemistry teacher for this coming term as I was told that, if this happened, the biology teacher would do the chemistry teacher's classes and I would do some of her biology classes and therefore get more hours but I've heard nothing so I assume they hired someone.
Am looking forward to teaching all about the brain in this coming term, however...
'Find a job' is not really a resolution, by the way. It is an intent. I don't do resolutions.
However, I suppose something which may be construed as something a bit like a resolution might be my intent to run Waypoint next year. Still looking at a September date, still needing to rewrite the rules and update the background... however, what I may do is book a site and a date and then work towards that, hopefully picking up players and crew (who know they can make that date) on the way...
Yesterday's New Year party was a wonderful event with much talking, drinking and excessive consumption of food. All kudos to Katy and Vince for their hospitality. Fun was had by all and I managed to catch up with some people who we would like to see mroe of. In the course of this event, it became clear that my name challenge (http://areteus.livejournal.com/233677.html) was too difficult for everyone there. For obvious reasons this pleases me as it means the method I use is fairly good at hiding the true name underneath the made up ones :) However, I will post the answers to this quiz tomorrow sometime. Feel free to have another go at it until then... I probably won't get round to it until late afternoon/early evening so plenty of time to post some comments.
I don't think the last year has been a bad one, when everything is added together. I enjoyed almost 6 months of gainful employment at a very good college at the start of the year and that helped me to significanty clear debts. However, on the flip side, there is still one debt left hanging which is now starting to bite back, despite me thinking that the arrangements I had made to keep it ticking over until I could afford to pay it off were fine and in place. Apparently not, just before Christmas I got a phone call telling me that that arrangement has not been OK for at least 3 months and that I now owe arrears... well, thank you for telling me in a timely manner you moron of a bank. So, we have made some token payments to extend the period before they start calling in collection agencies and are currently going through the complaint procedure due to the incompetence both myself and Sarah have noted throughout this process (seriously, Sarah had to go all ITIL on their arses and cited several ways in which they had breached best practise, ethical management and possibly the law). So far the complaint procedure is not bearing fruit (the old deny responsibility blind, despite the call centre staff claiming responsibility at the time...) but we are taking it all the way to the FSO if necessary.
Regardless of how this ends up, it means that I definitely need to find a long term, full time job very very soon. Since January is one of the months regarded as a prime recruiting period for schools, this means checking the council job sites and all the other job sites at least once a day this month until one of them posts an advert for a full time science teacher within reasonable travel distance which I apply for and then get... There's another big push after easter as well so same applies for that period. Of course, based on the number of adverts in the previous 'busy recruitment time' for schools (usually October, when all the NQTs who can't hack it do a runner...), I am not holding out much hope. So far the job sites seem infested with nothing but agency ads and I am already registered with enough agencies, thank you very much, none of which have managed to find me anything. I have some other avenues of attack too, however. I have an application in with the Manchester NQT pool which I believe gets a lot of traffic in January as well. I am also working to impress the staff at Trafford college who I am working with 2 hours a week. With luck, they may get something longer term sometime soon. I had some hope that they would not be able to find someone to replace their missing chemistry teacher for this coming term as I was told that, if this happened, the biology teacher would do the chemistry teacher's classes and I would do some of her biology classes and therefore get more hours but I've heard nothing so I assume they hired someone.
Am looking forward to teaching all about the brain in this coming term, however...
'Find a job' is not really a resolution, by the way. It is an intent. I don't do resolutions.
However, I suppose something which may be construed as something a bit like a resolution might be my intent to run Waypoint next year. Still looking at a September date, still needing to rewrite the rules and update the background... however, what I may do is book a site and a date and then work towards that, hopefully picking up players and crew (who know they can make that date) on the way...
Yesterday's New Year party was a wonderful event with much talking, drinking and excessive consumption of food. All kudos to Katy and Vince for their hospitality. Fun was had by all and I managed to catch up with some people who we would like to see mroe of. In the course of this event, it became clear that my name challenge (http://areteus.livejournal.com/233677.html) was too difficult for everyone there. For obvious reasons this pleases me as it means the method I use is fairly good at hiding the true name underneath the made up ones :) However, I will post the answers to this quiz tomorrow sometime. Feel free to have another go at it until then... I probably won't get round to it until late afternoon/early evening so plenty of time to post some comments.
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