I still don't have a job. I counted and without adding the X amount of jobs I applied for through career builder, I have applied for almost 40 jobs in the past week. And still, NOTHING. How? HOW? So I decided that I'm going to start writing more cover letters. I REALLY hate cover letters because they're so time consuming but I feel that if I take my time to write one, it'll really make a difference to an employer especially if they don't ask for one.
I shouldn't be awake but I just kept tossing and turning. I feel completely useless because I still don't have a job. SO...since I signed up for volunteering with that literacy program, I'm going to start actually volunteering (JUAN, LET'S GO!). The program is really cool and it's kind of a way for me to get that teaching thing out of my system - I was going to be a teacher until I found out how little they get paid and then I was like "well...I need to..live and stuff...so...yeah.......no." And it might sound really bad but I don't know how else to say this: I don't care enough to pursue this degree and then settle for a small salary and the possibility of losing my job every single year. My cousin is a teacher and she loves it. She's always loved kids. She's a great teacher and is wonderful with children. She's been teaching at the same school for more than five years now? and every year, they "fire" her during the summer/when school ends and then "re-hire" her. This happens to a lot of teachers she works with and she has been fortunate enough to get her job back every fall. I couldn't handle that kind of stress and I know it happens all over the place because our economy is shit.
So before I lost my job, I convinced Juan to come and sign up for this volunteer program with this place in Chicago called Open Books. Basically, you can read to kids, be a "buddy" where you are assigned to a child and you gotta get them excited about reading because they tested low or are not doing so great in their reading classes, you can help kids with their writing and you can also work with teenagers and help them work on their resumes. The program also has field trips where the kids come to the building and you get to work with the group and do poetry games and other fun stuff like that.
My main motivation for becoming a teacher was because of how important I felt and still feel literacy is. As a kid, I loved reading and writing...this is mostly because I always scored very high on my reading and writing state tests and I always did well in those subjects in school. It just came naturally to me. But I had a lot of friends who did not like reading, who wrote horribly and didn't care because my teachers didn't care. So I guess I can still make a difference by working with these kids through Open Books and all I can do is try to get them excited about reading and writing. Even if I were to just help a dozen or so kids, that's a dozen or so kids that demand that their parents have more books around the house and that's a dozen or so kids that score higher in reading and writing when they take standardized state tests. And maybe, MAYBEEEEEEEEEEEEEE those kids could tell their friends "hey I read this book. READ IT." like I do with my friends...all of the time...Seriously. I convinced Juan to read Valley of the Dolls, okay? Come on.
I'm definitely going to start devoting my time to this program because it's not paying work but it's something that could keep me busy in the mean time I guess.