0

A REAL Job?!?!?

Posted by Kathy Torrence on Jul 23, 2007 in Family Stuff

I knew the day would come. That’s right – I may have to get a ‘real job’ to help pay the bills. Selling Stampin’ Up! stuff brings in some extra money, but it seems that I am my own best customer some months and we need an additional source of steady income.

I am not the only one to fall prey to the ‘real job’ syndrome lately. Several of my friends are also looking at re-entering the world of work. It seems that once your children are all in school (Emily enters kindergarten this fall), it’s time to start bringing in some income again.

Some women sell real estate, some work in the school district as substitute teachers or teacher’s aides, some go to work for the family business…

I may be teaching a computer science class at Rowan University as an adjunct professor.

Does that surprise you? Those who know me may vaguely remember that once-upon-a-time, I had not just a ‘real job’, but a ‘real career’ where I made ‘real money‘.

I graduated from college way-back-when with a dual major in Mathematics and Computer Science (NO – I was NOT a geek!!!!).

When I graduated college, I started working with the FAA and soon began studying for a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering. I finished graduate school right before I became pregnant with Andrew.

I worked for over eleven years as a software engineer, working in many different programming languages and heading up several large software projects.

I continued to work full-time after Andrew was born (my mother watched him while I worked). I also taught part-time at night as an adjunct professor at Rowan University (my alma mater) for about two years. While I was there, I also conducted some software engineering seminars and helped them develop additional software engineering courses for computer science students to help prepare them for careers in software development.

Then when Matthew was born (he’s now 8 years old), I stopped teaching, cut back to a part-time position at work and kept that schedule for about a year.

But working part-time, I didn’t feel like I wasn’t doing a good job either at work or at home, so I decided to stop working altogether and become a stay-at-home mom. We had to make a few sacrifices and downsize quite a bit, but we made it work and I enjoyed my years at home.

I always kept myself VERY busy (as you can probably tell by reading my blog!) with volunteer positions at church, school and in my community. I am certainly not one to just sit around and do nothing, that’s for sure!

In fact, Mike thinks that I’m more busy now than I ever was when I was working – but as a volunteer, I’m not getting paid for any of the work I do.

Except for the stamping. And that’s really more ‘play’ than ‘work’. 😉

So…I decided to send my resume to Rowan and see if they needed any adjunct professors for the fall. They responded this morning and said that they may have a ‘Computers and Society’ class available in the fall. A philosophical/ethical look at the impact computers have had on society.

A ‘Computers and Society’ class like that is right up my alley! And it only meets twice a week for 1 hour and 15 minutes each class. That doesn’t include all the time preparing for class and marking papers and exams, but still…if I have to do something to bring in extra money, this is a pretty good alternative.

They need to double-check and make sure that the class hasn’t been staffed yet and then they’ll get back to me.

But – yes, my friends- it looks like my unemployed days may be coming to an end really soon…

Copyright © 2024 Flying By the Seat of My Pants All rights reserved. Theme by Laptop Geek.