Staying The Course

I am not a patient person.
That may sound really strange to many of the people who know me and know that I spent years providing day care to several children, or who have known me to sit down and really listen to whatever kind of problem they needed to vent about, with no impatience.  But really, when it comes right down to the day to day living of life, I am not a person who likes to sit back and wait for things or contemplate the roses, or in any way wait for things.  Did I mention I'm not so great at the waiting part?
Last month, as I sat down at this very computer to go through the job listings looking for the kind of job that I WANT to do, I saw the headlines that ALCOA was planning to close the local foundry.  Now, I had been watching the job market for years and had been actively looking for a job through the summer and fall.  I want a Monday to Friday, day shift job, full time or part time, either is fine, but I want to get out of the house, I want to make some money, and I'd like to learn and stretch myself at some new tasks.  The place I've applied at the most is Clarkson University.  I'm a bit infatuated with their campus and would greatly enjoy working there.  It doesn't hurt that if I work there that my son could get free tuition there, if he were to be accepted, when he goes to college.  It also wouldn't hurt that I could take classes, too.  But I haven't been exclusively looking at just that one place.  So now I saw that a major local employer was closing in less than a month.  This meant that all the older children of those employees, all the currently not employed spouses and significant others of those employees, were all going to be joining me in the search for work.  It meant that the job marketplace was about to be flooded with hundreds of additional job seekers.  Anything resembling the kind of job I'd like to have was about to vanish into a puff of smoke and what was going to be left were two fields I already had extensive experience in:  retail and food service.  I would rather not work in those fields.  Food service I actually wouldn't mind all that much in the short term, but really didn't want to look at it as the job I might retire from.  Retail I've done....I've worked every position in retail, from the stock person to the store manager.  I've done my time on the sales floors and behind the cash registers.  A back room position during the day during the week would be lovely, but I don't want to work out on the floor.  I've burned out.
So I pulled up the website for the State University at Postdam and filled out an application.  I've already got a couple years plus of college so I'd be starting as a junior.  I would need two years to complete a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology.  To earn my Master's and PhD I would have to look toward online classes because that just wasn't available locally.  But as much as I loathed the idea of all of that, it still beat out flipping burgers or running a cash register.  Plus, in about a half dozen years, I could work doing the job I was really born to do, making enough money that my husband could retire early if he wanted to, or cut his hours a bit.  I filled out the financial aid paperwork, got everything all set to go, and then things changed.
Alcoa is not closing.  Well, not this month, anyway.  They are allegedly not going to close for about three more years.  I don't personally trust them to hold to their end of the bargains that they've made, but either way, they aren't closing right now.  So the job market is NOT going to be inundated with new people whose need would exceed my own, who would make each job infinitely more difficult to even get an interview for.  Also, my husband has been given a new medication to help with his chronic pain problems.  Having tried so many only to have them do nothing or next to it, it was a wonderful surprise when this new one actually worked!  It's not a magic cure, it doesn't actually fix any of the physical problems that cause the pain, but it does eliminated much of the pain much of the time.  So my self-imposed need to make it possible for him to have options has let up.  Suddenly, the two main reasons why I was about to put myself back into college had evaporated.
I didn't change anything, immediately.  I spent a couple of weeks just watching and waiting and seeing how things went.  In the end, though, I called the college and had them withdraw my application.  It's still on file for a year, and the school isn't going anywhere.  I can go any time, I've already done the paperwork.  ;)  But I'm not going right now.
And there are a few jobs that have popped up at Clarkson that I have applied for and am crossing my fingers and hoping against hope to get interviews for.  Thanks to a tip from Kendra at Frazer's where I managed to get an interview (only to fail the math portion of the requirements, but onward and upward) I recognized the need to explain in my cover letter why there appeared to be gaps in my employment.  This had held me back previously at that location, so maybe it has done so at others.  So I've amended my cover letters to explain that I was lucky enough to get to stay home with my son a lot during his childhood, but that now he's a young adult and if I don't get out of this house I'm going to go stark raving mad.  Well, I don't phrase it quite like that, but I get that point across.  ;)  There is also a civil service test coming up that I'm sending in an application for on Friday for a Legal Secretary position.  Being a secretary was actually one of the first jobs I ever wanted.  It's why I went to a business school for my degree.  It's not just within my skill set, it's in my nature to organize the chaos and juggle all the things that go on behind the scenes in any office o business.  I'm damned good at it, too.  So those are the kinds of positions I'm most heavily applying for.  But I am staying the course, for now, with the job hunting and plugging away at things.
Hopefully, over the next few months, something gives and I start getting interviews.  I look forward to having a steady paycheck and putting my mind to use learning something not domestic.  After all, I've managed to reach Domestic Goddess level here at home....time to learn something new!

So, What Now?

These dark corners in my mind are sometimes just dizzying!

So here's what's preying on my mind this week.
Based on various factors in my own little world, I made a decision a few weeks ago to return to college and pursue a higher degree with the intent to be able to attain a specific type of job by the time in 50.
In the grand scheme of things, on the ladder of things I want to do (or don't want, as the case may be) the very bottom rung of said ladder is working in retail.  I don't ever really want to work in a retail setting again.  The next rung at the bottom of that ladder is returning to school.  I did not like school.  I met wonderful people there, the degree I earned has helped me, but I hated it the entire time.  I so very much disliked attending college that I was taking 24+ credit hours a quarter in order to graduate a quarter early and get out of there!  All that while holding down a job, making a car payment, and staying on the Dean's List.  So you can imagine that leaping back into that world is not really high on my list of things to do.  In fact, it falls just above stepping back behind a cash register at my local Walmart, below which we fall off the ladder into the ninth circle of Hell.
One factor in my decision to return to school was the imminent closing of ALCOA.  Since then, they have postponed that for a few years, if we are to believe them, but they will not be closing in the immediate future.  This means that the already tight job market is not, after all, about to be flooded with spouses and older children of displaced employees looking to help support their households.
Another factor was a medical issue within the family that has since resolved itself in a satisfactory way and is no longer an issue.

So!  I can withdraw my application to SUNY Potsdam for this semester and continue to job hunt, as I have been all last summer.  I can even step it up a notch and expand to some other places that I wasn't really paying much attention to, previously.  If things don't work out, it isn't as if the college won't still be there next fall.
Or!  I can suck it up and go back to school.
I told Terry in the student transfer department today that I would make a decision by the end of this week and let them know on Friday.

I can tell you that I am reasonably sure what my decision is.  I just don't want to jump too fast and end up wishing I hadn't.  So this week I am chewing this over in my head....and over, and over, and over......not that I have a tendency to over think things, you understand......no...not me!  lolol!

Blargle!!!