Of Life and Times

My life is feeling rather stark and useless right now, so please take my comments with a grain of salt.

In high school I wanted to go to college and become a history teacher. I love history. My father brow beat that out of me by flatly insisting that it would be foolish on my part because I would always be poor, and you couldn't find jobs as a history teacher. So I didn't graduate from college for several reasons, just one of them being that my father didn't want me to be a teacher, which is all I have ever wanted to be. So I spent my entire adult life working menial jobs, never able to pay the bills on my own because I wasn't trained in a skill that would make it possible to do so.

When my children were almost all grown and gone I left my job of five years at the university and went back to school. My students told me that I helped them learn a lot about English as their boss, and they felt I would be great in the TESOL program - Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. So TESOL it was. Not planning on leaving my wife and moving to China to teach English, I decided that I would just go back to the university and get rehired, presumably with a raise because I had a degree, and get on with the rest of my life.

Perhaps that might have worked, except that the economy had a severe downturn and there was a freeze on all hiring. Three years later I am still unemployed. I can't get anyone to hire me, not even for something simple like a receptionist, part time. They all decide that I would not be happy or they tell me that they found someone more qualified. Like someone else is more qualified than me who has been executive assistant to presidents and CEOs of businesses? Give me a break!

Finally I decide that my pride and self esteem has had enough abuse so I return to school for a fifth year program in education so I can become a certified teacher. At least that way I will be employable. I would really like to teach adults. The chair of the Education department says, "Let's get you certified first, then we will talk about your options." It wasn't until much later that I learned that to be certified is to be way over qualified to teach adult education. Evidently he was only looking for numbers for his program. What did he care about wasting a year of my time. He got his graduate. Snort.

So now I have finished my education program and am in the process of being certified with the state to be a teacher. What a surprise, the state has had another economic downturn and the people in my field are being let go so it is next to impossible to get a job. But we have 49 other states in this country. Perhaps if I look in the five states that would put me closer to my family on the mainland I could kill two birds with one stone. Guess what? My degree in TESOL is worthless on the mainland. Teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) is a "skill", not a subject. English is a subject. Teaching English to those who cannot already speak it is not. Such is the belief of at least Arizona and Utah. I'm still looking at the other states, but it looks like I will find the same thing. Even the state of Hawaii can't tell me yet what they will or will not be willing to let me teach with just a TESOL degree. Everyone expects me to go back to school to get some classes in English so I have something to teach in the classroom. I guess teaching English isn't enough, it has to be just plain English, no foreigners allowed.

This sums it up. I worked for a university and felt like a fake because I was encouraging everyone who worked for me to finish their degrees and move on to even higher education. After all, a degree will get you a much higher standard of living, right? The university promises that those staff members who have degrees will get paid a little more because of their degrees, but the university won't hire me for anything I apply for. So my years finishing my bachelor's degree were pretty much a financial waste of time, because it has led to unemployment that has lasted for six years now. Going back to get certified in education was a bust because now that I am certified I still can't teach because I apparently don't have a core subject to teach. Foreigners who want to learn English don't count, remember?

I keep being told that I just need to have faith, and that it will all work out. But is it really a matter of faith? Why do I feel like a poor dupe who is told that if I hit my head against this stone wall long enough something really good will happen to me? Well I'm still beating my head against the wall, and six years later all I have is blood in my eyes, and nothing to show for it. Don't I feel intelligent now?

So I ask you, dear reader, what can I do? I can't give up; I have already lost everything. I can't go on and go back to school, I've been doing that off and on for 37 years now. How long does this have to continue? I'm not qualified to do a trade, and I can't become an editor, of course, because I don't have a degree in English. I am now too old to even go teach in China. They have laws about people my age having passports for that sort of thing. So even the Chinese don't want me. Is it really a matter of faith? I would love to hear your opinion.