Job Time

With great fortune I was able to land a full time job out of graduate school, with an MFA no less. It has now been 5 weeks of full-time employment with the organization called Exceptional Children's Foundation. This job comes with full-benefits that the organization pays half of and vacation time. My position is the Site Supervisor at their downtown art studio location. I am responsible for supervising 35 adult students with disabilities and 6 instructors.

I should really be thrilled, but alas I am not. I find myself unhappy working with this population and feel that there is still yet something calling me. Transitioning from the intellectual world of graduate school to social services where I work with limited intellectual capacities has been very difficult. At the very least I think I should be doing public programming or community building, like the job I left that couldn't really pay me for what I was doing.

Another part of the discontentment is the mission of the program. There is a strong focus on the art product that is being produced and not the process of art making. For a lot of the clients there is also a lack of intellectual understanding that makes the workings of the program border on the line of unethical. However, I took the job 1) for the need and 2) to see if there was anyway that I could improve the program.

In the meantime this job is supplying me with stable money and the time to look for other jobs, contemplate what is important to me, and otherwise motivate me to continue my quest. I long for the day that I will feel content with my contribution to the world; to feel as though I have found my place. I am told that this takes time and to be patient. I hear that, but also don't want to waste time doing things that do not connect to my life path.

I took this current job with reservation, but felt that it was the most responsible thing to do at the time. I also knew that there was something to learn from this job. This position is the first full-time management job that I have held. I am patiently waiting, looking and organizing for the time when this job will be over. An unfortunate feeling, but also a realistic one. Sometimes only time will tell.

Back to School...and Work!

Months have gone by since I swore up and down that I was moving on from Otis and not going to finish my MFA. Well, over the summer I spent my time job searching and interviewing for the few jobs out there. It was scary times, and while I got real close to a few jobs, it was a lot of rejection.

It was down to a week away from when school would have been starting for me, and I had just had an awesome interview with a really cool arts education non-profit in Pasadena. I had pulled out all the stops for this interview and felt really good about it. After a couple of days without hearing back, I started feeling bad about leaving another program, and felt like I just wanted this degree for what ever reason, that I couldn't explain or quantify.

I talked to my program director and somehow had convinced her into giving me more scholarship money and accepting all of my transfer credits. That means I would only need to take 4 more classes to finish this degree. Finally I heard from the job that they had hired someone else, someone that had just graduated from my program. This really made the decision for me, and with the new deal I had worked out with the school, I was going back, just like that. Months worth of stress and laboring over decisions, how to make decisions and utter denial was all resolved in 3 days. Sometimes time fixes things.

In going back to school, I was able to convince this non-profit, to create a position for me, and hire me on part-time. They would partially be paying me through my work-study. So going back to school actually gave me a job. At least I won't risk spending a year job searching and can finish this degree--part-time at that!

I am also still planning to apply to 2 graduate programs this year for the following year. One is in Urban Planning, and could be finished part-time while I start working. The other is a full-time program in Public Health. I realized that no one job path/degree is going to give me what I'm looking for. So the plan is that I will do both. Create a professional option where I can make money in an ethically responsible way and fund my own artwork.

This is of course only the plan for now, and I am open to new opportunities and change, so only time will tell, but I'm looking forward and enjoying the present.

He's Grad School Bound!

During the first week of March James found out that he will be moving on into grad school. He was formally accepted to Cal-Poly Pomona for their Landscape Architecture Program. This is a 3 year program, with the option for a fourth to double major in Urban Planning. He was also accepted to Cunny in NYC, but we've decided to stick it out here in LA, and see what happens. Beside, Cal-Ploy's program is much better.

As James is about to begin his career path, I am floating around in mine. A year through my MFA and I have a terrible feeling about the direction of this path. Everyone that has come lecture through our program is broke, and has been working odd jobs for the last 10 years and making art on the side. If this is the case I don't think I need to waste another year's worth of money to make that happen. Ah, yes the option to teach in a university. Well, there is always that, but apparently that's just as unlikely as anything else.

So while I'm thrilled for James and our life together, and I'm back at the drawing board for my career. Two masters programs down, how many more to go? For the first time I'm considering the most practical of career paths, and am finally ready to make money. For the time being I'm looking for work, and looking for a new direction.