and the job search begins

Just to keep everyone informed, I have a phone interview with a private practice out in San Francisco in about 9 minutes, so this is going to be brief.

Anyway, I 'graduated' last Saturday.  I'm not officially finished, but I working on it.  I just sent off the rough draft of my results section to my advisor today, so I'll get his edits back in the late morning and then keep on trucking through.

In other news, there's not that much happening here in Kalamazoo.  Most of my friends have gone home, or to their new lives as speech-language pathologists.  I'm still doing the school thing.  Well, the thesis thing - it's a little different.

So, I will let you all know how my interview goes (t minus 6 minutes and counting). I've already outlined answers to questions I think she'll ask (one of the beauties of phone interviews - the interviewer cannot see you - I could interview in my underwear - I'm not going to, don't worry).  So, you know.  Anyway, I'm going to go get a glass of water and prepare to sell myself.

Another Day

I wrote this at Waterstreet when the internet was down - so it's copied and pasted in from word.

so, I’m at waterstreet, on this rainy Saturday.  I’m listening to a conversation by a literal knitting circle (5 women sitting around in a near circle form, knitting and talking – oh, I suppose one of them is crocheting).  Anyway, they were discussing a movie called, Idiocracy.  From their conversation I gathered that the basic premise of the film is that due to the phenomena that more intelligent people have fewer children than “less” intelligent people eventually the world will be filled with morons …  essentially the evolution of intelligence to a less intelligent average than today.  Interesting.  And I don’t demean them for having the conversation, and the film (I’m guessing) is satirical, however, it ignores the fact that there are multiple intelligences.  There is a book smart, street smart, outdoors-y smart, political smart, horticultural-y smart, animal smart – this list could go on and on.  I consider myself book smart – I’ve got a college degree, I’m fairly well read, I’ve traveled a little bit.  So, for the purposes of this argument let’s say that I’m one of the intelligent ones that doesn’t have enough kids and so mankind becomes dumb because I didn’t have lots of kids.  Well, I hate to burst their bubble, but I cannot survive today without the “unintelligent masses” right now.  They have an intelligence that goes behind the scenes.  They would be more equipped to survive without me than I without them – I could not work a press to make the car that I drive everyday, I could not operate the assembly line that gets my food to me.  Heck, I couldn’t even drive the truck to get the gas to the gas station so I could put gas in my car.  I can read books and help people become better communicators and swallow better.  Not incredibly amazing, or useful without the under pinnings of culture that we often take for granted.

anyway, enough philosophy.  

 

I’ve been thinking more about jobs.  At first, I really liked the idea of being a traveling speech pathologist.  However, I would be starting a new job every three months.  And that would be difficult.  I would be in a constant state of catch-up and readjust.  And the recruiters for the traveling speech pathologist positions have not been real forthcoming with information.  So, it’s not looking good.  On top of that there are not a lot of medical positions available for a CF (clinical fellow – I need supervision for 9 months before I am a certified speech-language pathologist).  It is directly because of that supervision that medical positions are hard to come by for a CF. Medical sites do not have the man power to supervise a CF.  (with that in mind, the schools really don’t have it either, but we have to begin working somewhere).  Anyway, back to the point: there is a private school in Hillsborough, California specifically for children with severe physical and communication impairments.  Most of these kids use high-tech communication devices (basically a computer that talks for them).  I think I might begin looking into gaining employment there.  It’s in the San Francisco area, so the cost of living is astronomical, and my pending employment there would be dependent upon substantial financial compensation.  We’ll see what happens.

 

Other than that there is not much exciting happening here.