You’re Never Too Old To Stop Learning

“Mom, why do I have to go to school? Homework is so dull and boring! It’s draining my life from me!” Cordy has always been one to tend towards the dramatic, although these outbursts have become more frequent in the last month.I understand her frustration. “Well, sweetie, we all have our jobs to do. Mommy and daddy each have jobs to earn money and help our companies with their purpose. And your job right now is to go to school and learn everything you need to know to be a successful adult who will make a difference in the world.”

“I can’t wait until I can be done with school and never need to learn anything ever again!” she huffed. I knew she didn’t mean that. She loves to learn and absorbs new material like a sponge. In this particular instance, she was just unhappy with the amount of homework she had cutting into the few hours she had at home before bedtime each night.

I gave her the same answer I’ve repeated to her several times. “You’ll eventually be finished with school, and it’ll then be your choice as to what you want to do from there. Many kids go on to college, where most of your classes will be in whatever subject you’re really interested in, and I hope you’ll do that. But I think no matter what, you’ll want to keep learning new things your entire life. Think of how boring life would be if you stopped learning anything new! Someday you’ll stop going to school, but education is something that should keep going for your entire life, whether you’re in school or not.”

And truthfully, I do believe education is a life-long endeavor. After all, since starting kindergarten at five years old, there have been just six years in my life where I wasn’t formally enrolled in a class in some way. (Yes, ONLY six years, and I’m 37!)

I went to college right out of high school, completing my four years and graduating with a BA in History, cum laude. I changed my major three times during those four years of college, mostly because I had too many interests and trouble deciding which direction I wanted to go.

After college, I immediately went into a Masters Degree program for History. However, halfway through the first year, I discovered my primary professor was planning a sabbatical for the next year, meaning I’d either have to take a year off from my program or choose a different focus. I quit the program before the year was up, choosing to work until I could determine what I wanted to do next.

A history degree isn’t exactly a perfect match for jobs in the real world, but my self-taught technical skills landed me a job in web design at a university library. I had been dabbling in HTML all through college (unofficial education), and that side-interest earned me a job.

I didn’t make it even six months before I decided I wanted to be back in school again. I applied for and was accepted in a Masters program for Theatre, specifically costume design and theatre history. I had also been working as a seamstress on the side, making costumes for our renaissance festival for myself and friends. I minored in Theatre in college, too, so theatre history was a good fit.

Thanks to my web design job, I had moved on to a job in online instructional design at that point, developing corporate e-learning courses for a private company. I worked from home for much of my time there, going above and beyond to meet and beat my deadlines while also taking graduate level courses in theatre history part-time, teaching Intro to Theatre classes to undergraduates every Friday morning, and serving as costume designer for one of the university’s plays that season.

I probably would have finished my MA, but after getting married in 2003 and then pregnant in 2004, we made the choice to move closer to family. I had planned to finish my degree remotely, since I was only a class and a thesis away, but the demands of work and baby pushed all of that to the back. I also realized at that time that I probably wouldn’t find a lot of jobs related to that degree.

It was just after Cordy was a year old that I got the idea to go back to school for nursing. When I was in college the first time, I considered going into pre-med. At 28 years old, I thought I was too old for pre-med, but still young enough for nursing school. My hope was that nursing would give me the job flexibility I needed for my family.

I started with the prerequisite courses first, and found them to be a breeze, giving me confidence that I could make it through nursing school. By the time I started my clinical courses, Mira had joined the family, so I was committed to a full course load, clinicals, and a preschooler and baby at home. (That was about the same time Cordy was diagnosed with autism, too.)

She liked my Chemistry bookCordy helped me study Chemistry back then

Was it easy? No way! It was probably the most intense period of my life. With all of the responsibilities on my plate, adding college into the mix was tricky. But I was passionate about the subject, which made it easier to stay up late doing homework while everyone else slept and study for exams with Dora the Explorer as background noise.

I graduated in 2009 and immediately got my RN license and a job. That wasn’t the best year for jobs in any sector, with the country in full recession, and I moved to another job in 2010 when it was clear that the birth center I worked at was going to close due to hospital budget cuts.

I worked two years at the next job, as a nurse and manager for a pediatric nutritional call center. My previous work experience prior to nursing helped me get the manager position, while my RN license got me in the door. It wasn’t the perfect job by any means, and I didn’t have the flexibility I was expecting in nursing. I considered going back to school for my BS in nursing, or possibly becoming a nurse practitioner.

It was in 2012 that I was abruptly let go when the company scaled back and got rid of the overnight shift entirely. I had been working when everyone else slept for three years, so I wasn’t sad to go back to the land of daylight.

Thankfully, through long-standing connections with blog friends, a job presented itself quickly and I jumped on it. Only it wasn’t nursing – I’d be back into the land of IT and computers. The position would challenge me with an ever-changing list of responsibilities, and required me to brush up on and grow my technical skills. I was ready for a new challenge and jumped at the chance.

Over a year and a half later, and I’m still in love with my job. It’s a position with variety, challenge, and the need to continue adapting to new products and situations. It’s also flexible and meets the needs of my family, too. While I haven’t gone back to school, I’ve spent a lot of time in self-study to improve my technical skills to be more useful for my company. And there’s a good chance I may eventually find myself enrolling in classes again to formalize and improve on my IT knowledge.

My nursing degree certainly hasn’t gone to waste – at the very least, it’s good knowledge to have for personal use. I take continuing education courses to meet the requirements of my license and keep it current, and if it wasn’t for the chain of events that ended with my previous nursing job, I wouldn’t be where I am now.

Nursing and IT are both hot fields to be in, and I’m glad to have experience and knowledge in both. Each step of my education has been valuable, including that BA in History from years ago. Working any job requires far more than just the basic skills listed on the paper – the whole person hired to work in that position can bring a wealth of unrelated, but possibly beneficial, skills to the job. I consider myself well-rounded.

My advice to my daughters will continue to be that education is never a waste. While it’s important to consider career potential, and consider the timing of when you’re seeking to improve your skills and knowledge, you’ll always have some benefit to education throughout your life. Who knows? Maybe I’ll decide to go for another degree in my forties?

Whether you’re seeking further success in your current role or a new opportunity, Kaplan University can help you prepare for the exciting possibilities ahead.*

As an accredited university built on more than 75 years of experience,† Kaplan University offers a wide range of career-focused programs designed to develop the skills and knowledge leading employers seek. Our focus: to offer you the most direct educational path to achieve your goals.

Are you ready for a change? Learn more at kaplanuniversity.edu.

* Kaplan University cannot guarantee employment or career advancement.

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Summer Changes

It’s been a rather tumultuous seven days around here. Or as I like to call it…any typical week in this house.

End of schoolWith these two, anything can happen.

We finished the school year, and summer camp begins next week. So we’re currently in a week long limbo with the kids at home while I’m still trying to work. And although they’re old enough to do many things on their own, they choose this week to fight constantly, ask me a thousand questions about life that just happened to pop into their heads (why DO they call it a Q-tip?), and need my help with just about everything they want to do.

Usually my mom helps out with the kids during this week, but she’s currently in Canada. She picked a lousy week to decide to leave the country. I need to start befriending local college girls majoring in education to find a mother’s helper for summer.

On the upside, Cordy and Mira are really looking forward to summer camp next week, if for no other reason than spending summer days with mom is so boring that anything else sounds like a great adventure. Hmph…see if I ever bribe them with popsicles to sort laundry again – what’s not exciting about that?

On the good news front, I recently changed my job position, from contractor with BlogHer to employee at BlogHer. Telling you I’m thrilled is an understatement. What started as a temp job – something to get by for a few months when my position was eliminated from my previous nursing job last year – quickly became a job I loved and didn’t want to ever leave. Luckily, they felt the same way, and I can’t think of any other job where I’ve been happier. Not working the night shift is a bonus, too.

Aaron had some sudden good luck with employment, too. He started 2013 working full-time at his position, but while we were on vacation at Disney at the end of February, he found out that they were pulling him back to part-time. That was super-frustrating, and after months of being part-time he started looking elsewhere again.

He was called for a job interview for last week, and that first interview on Tuesday went well. But then, right after the interview, he got a call about another job he had previously been contacted about, this one with an offer. The offer was a surprise to him, since he had only had a phone interview once, although the person he spoke with had worked with him at a previous job.

Job possibility #1 might be a more stable job, with a larger company, but there was no guarantee he’d get the job. The offer on the table from job possibility #2 was a solid offer, although it’s a smaller company and the position required being a contractor for at least the first five months. Figures that after nothing for months, two opportunities pop up at once, requiring a decision within 24 hours.

(Funny story: that same day he received a call about a THIRD job opening, also. It wasn’t nearly as appealing, so he didn’t pursue it. When it rains it pours, eh?)

We discussed it all that evening, unsure of which direction to take. Should he hold out for hopes of an offer from job #1 or take the offer presented to him. He emailed his contact from the first job, explaining that he had an offer from another company but wanted to check if there would be a decision soon from this company. She responded, saying it can take their company weeks to get to a decision, and couldn’t confirm if he was a top candidate or not.

With that job proving to be anything but certain, he took the offer for the second job. Since I had recently acquired benefits, it’s less of an issue for him to be a contractor for a short while, and the company ended up countering his pay requirements with an offer above them. Above all, he’ll be full-time again and working not far from home, which are both great aspects of the new job. He’ll start the new job late next week.

And now? Now I watch for the sky to fall, because everything feels too awesome at the moment. It’s been a trend that we’re both not allowed to be happy in our jobs at the same time, a trend that has lasted for several years. I’m hoping we might break that trend this time, ’cause I’m ready for some good times around here.



I Am Not An Island (And Neither Are You)

I’ve tried to avoid writing all week about the Mitt Romney secret tapes where he essentially stated that nearly half of this country are freeloader victims looking for nothing but a handout. I’ve been engrossed in reading the stories of others, how they represent the 47%, how they have had to rely on assistance at some point or another in their lives, and how it has helped them reach a better place.

I guess this is as good a time as ever for one more story.

There are no tales of being on assistance when I was growing up. We didn’t have much, but my mom worked extremely hard for every penny and we got by. There were some very slim moments, but she was always fully employed and her employer provided very good health insurance for us.

I went to college with the assistance of federal loans and grants, in addition to scholarships I had earned for an excellent academic record and an allowance each year of money that my family had saved for my college education. I needed all of it, and even then I still worked all the way through college to afford a few of the beyond basic items, like a night at the movies or dinner out with friends. Without the federal grants and loans, which covered more than half of the costs of my in-state public school education (go Miami!), I would never have been able to fully afford my college degree.

After college I worked continuously until Mira was born. (That’s nine years from when I graduated college, for reference.) At that point, Aaron had a good job and benefits, and I was making a decent part-time freelance income as a blogger, so I quit my day job to focus on Mira, and on attending nursing school.

And then the summer of 2008 hit, and Aaron was laid off.

Of course, he applied for unemployment. Each of us had worked for most of 13 years at that point, paying our taxes with each paycheck. We couldn’t feel too bad about using the unemployment insurance we had paid into for so many years.

It wasn’t a lot of money, though, and our emergency savings soon ran as dry as the job prospects. We didn’t want to apply for more help, but we had no choice. Our children needed health insurance. We needed food, but also needed money to keep our house and not fall behind on bill payments. We were sinking fast.

And so we applied for food stamps, WIC and Medicaid. There may be several stories out there about people abusing the system and getting benefits they don’t quality for. From our experience, I’d call most of them myths. Never before have we had to produce so much documentation for our situation and jump through so many hoops.

In some ways, we felt glad that the system was set up to make sure it wasn’t grossly abused. On the other hand, it was tremendously difficult to get approved. We were held up several times for missing paperwork, or not enough documentation, or because we were required to visit the office in person, with the children, and wait in a crowded waiting room, to even have a chance at being considered. How much harder would it have been if we were poorer to begin with, without a car or without all of our income documentation?

Aaron’s unemployment and my small part-time blogging income disqualified the entire family for Medicaid, but we still made little enough for only the kids to be covered. The food stamps and WIC covered a large part of our monthly grocery bill, freeing up what little money we had to pay for our mortgage. We made about $1200 a month with Aaron’s unemployment and my freelance income. Our mortgage was $1100 a month.

If it wasn’t for that help, we would have lost everything: our house, our cars, our dignity, our hope. It would have been hard to get a new job with no permanent address or transportation to make it to the interview. Instead, we found ourselves in the safety net provided by our government, dangerously close to the pit beneath us, and looking for a way to climb up and out.

No one wants to stay in that position. Before that, we had been living a semi-secure middle-class life (I’d call it lower middle-class, honestly), and we only wanted to return to that life. And it’s no surprise that for two years, our income was low enough that we paid nothing in income taxes. We were the 47% – we made too little to pay taxes, and we needed government support services to keep our family fed, healthy, and keep the house we were so proud to buy back in 2004.

Did we feel “entitled” to all of this? We didn’t want to be in the position to accept help, but we took it. And I can’t speak for Aaron, but yes, I did feel that I deserved help from my government, just as our taxes in years before were used to help others get back on their feet. I believe that a just and humane government looks out for all of its people, so that no one goes without basic necessities of food, shelter, and health care.

Of course, many of you know the next chapter of this story. The job market did improve, slowly, in 2009 and 2010, and Aaron and I both found jobs again. The first minute we could, we called the agencies and told them we no longer needed assistance. It felt great to do so. We had a hefty income tax bill last year, and we’ll have a smaller bill this year with our employment status changes. I guess that means we’re no longer in the 47% at the moment, but we’re also the exact same people who once were a part of it. Do we deserve to be treated differently because of our income now?

We – like many – didn’t want to be on assistance. It was barely enough to get by and we certainly didn’t live well during those times. The prejudices of strangers also made the emotional stress of a job loss even more difficult.

I will forever remember how I felt standing in the checkout line at Kroger, Cordy by my side and Mira (just a toddler) sitting in the cart, as I grouped the items on the belt to match up with my WIC checks. I was still carrying a little extra weight around the middle at the time, and I remember one older lady in line behind me talking to her friend – loudly enough that I could hear – saying how shameful it was that I was on assistance and had the nerve to have another child while on assistance, too.

Beyond being pissed off that she thought I was pregnant, I was so angry and embarrassed by her judgment of me, when she knew nothing about me or my family’s situation. Because my husband’s government job had been eliminated, and we needed help to cover the basics until he could find another job, we were suddenly a target for shaming, an acceptable demographic to judge and look down on.

I once held my own prejudices about people living off the system, too “lazy” to make an effort to better themselves. Our experience, as well as the experience of so many people that I met when I worked as a nurse, has changed much of my opinion.

The problem isn’t the system, the problem is being off the system. It’s hard to consider taking a job that will pay just enough to remove that safety net from under you, but will still pay so little that you end up being even closer to losing it all. It’s hard to apply for jobs and be told you’re not being considered because you have a college degree and therefore are overqualified, no matter how much you assure them you’re committed, you’ll work hard, and you need the job to support your family.

None of us are an island. We are part of a society, and one purpose of that society should be to ensure a basic standard for all people in that society and work together towards a greater good. (In fact, the definition of society is “a highly structured system of human organization for large-scale community living that normally furnishes protection, continuity, security, and a national identity for its members.”) We depend on each other, and we help each other. I don’t believe this means that some can’t have more than others, but there needs to be a system in place to provide a minimum standard of living. A line in the sand that declares that this society will work together to ensure no child goes without food, or a safe place to sleep, or lose all they have just because of a layoff or a health crisis. 

Just as in a marriage, it’s never an even 50-50 split. Sometimes you’re contributing, sometimes you’re the one needing the contributions. If you have never needed any help from anyone at all, well, I don’t believe you. Everyone needs help from someone else at some point.

If you’ve never needed government assistance, then be thankful instead of bitter that others have needed that assistance that you – and millions of others – help pay for, and pray that karma never finds a way to humble you. Because if karma finds you on that little tropical island for one that you defend so fiercely, you may find yourself eating your words when you can’t afford food.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons



Did I Mention How Much I Dislike Uncertainty?

So remember how I said Aaron was being laid off at the end of May? Yeah, that. Well, he’s not quite laid off yet. He didn’t work on Friday, but yesterday was back in the office. Confused? Me too.

Seems that one of the vice presidents of the company reaching his boiling point at having his ideas ignored while the owner continued to mismanage everything, so he quit. With his leaving, the owner decided he wouldn’t re-hire for that position, leaving more money in the budget from the lack of one salary. Another VP then saw an opening and begged to have his team back together in some way. So their only human relations employee – also the receptionist – was brought back from part-time to full-time again, and Aaron found himself putting his unemployment application on hold.

He’ll only be working 25 hours a week at the moment, hourly now instead of salaried. But the bonus is they are allowing us to keep our health insurance. The premiums will eat up a large chunk of his part-time pay, but we’re not looking at this stay-of-execution as a long-term plan, so we’ll keep cutting back and make due with what we have. There’s a chance they’ll bring him back to full-time if they are awarded a new contract for a job, but either way Aaron has lost any trust in the company owner and plans to continue job hunting as if he was unemployed.

There was one snag, however. Aaron was supposed to be paid on the last day of May, like everyone else in the company. An email sent out late the night before informed everyone that a few payments from vendors were late, and as a result they had to make the choice to delay the pay for a few people. Aaron was one of them, of course. Never mind that we had bills to pay, or that at the time we were expecting this to be his last paycheck and needed that money. As of today, he still hasn’t be paid for the last half of May. Good thing I didn’t schedule any bills to be paid yet. Grrr.

Thankfully I still have my job, and we’re busier than ever. Last week truly was a blur to me. I was going full-steam for so long that by Saturday night I felt lost without something to do. This week is the same, and I’m working on perfecting my ability to keep as many balls in the air as possible. I’m still dropping a few, but I’m doing my best to pick them right back up and keep going. It’s fun and works well with my ADD nature – I never have to stay focused on one thing for long.

I’ve also had some great local opportunities in the past week. On Wednesday I shared a delicious lunch and even better conversation with Chef Dan, the head chef for McDonald’s, and on Saturday I had the opportunity to be one of the first of the public to tour our new Nationwide Children’s Hospital. More on those soon.

My goal for this week is just to get through it. Summer camp doesn’t begin until next week, so Cordy is home with me each day. Yesterday she gave me a math quiz on fractions using Draw with Stars on the iPad while I worked. Today she says she has a spelling test planned for me. I hope I pass.



Brought To You By The Letter D (for Depressing)

No one likes to read bad news, and I don’t really like writing about depressing things. But my little family has had our fair share of setbacks over the past few years, and sadly another one popped up recently. I considered not writing about it, although of course it then wouldn’t leave my brain to let me write about anything else. So here it is, and I’m only letting myself feel down about it in this one post and nothing more. If I get mopey in a future post, feel free to tell me to snap out of it.

Aaron got the bad news last week that his company is cutting him loose at the end of this month. He was told that it has nothing to do with his work, and everything to do with the president of the company choosing to run on a cash system – so if there’s a lull in contracts, like at the moment, he lets people go so he doesn’t run a debt. It’s a small company that depends on government contracts, and even though they recently won several contracts that should be coming soon, the money hasn’t arrived for them yet.

Aside from the head of the company, the VP’s and the project managers and everyone else he works with would rather he not leave. He’s the only writer they have, and his leaving means that the documentation for their projects – including an enormous user guide needed for a government agency software project due soon – will fall to, uh, someone else. Probably a project manager who isn’t exactly the best fit for something like that and would rather not do it and won’t do as well at it.

But despite objections from everyone else, the company president is focused on cutting expenses, even if it means cutting out staff who are vital to the development of the project. Not the wisest move in my eyes, but what do I know about business?

There is still talk of having Aaron stay as a contractor, with varying hours available to him, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. Either way, we know that his steady income and all of our health benefits are out the door on May 31. He’s already updated his resume and has started networking. We know from experience that job hunting is rarely a short endeavor.

He’s angry, of course. Angry that he’s done everything right, has gone above-and-beyond for the company and has been praised over and over for his efforts, and gets rewarded by being laid off. It’s no wonder that loyalty towards a company by employees has been steadily declining – when treated like that, how can you do anything but constantly wonder when your employer will decide you’re not worth it? Too often now, an employee is just a set of skills to be used and discarded, and not a real person with a life and family and a relationship with the company. Mutual respect is gone.

I’m upset that we’re losing our health insurance again and hoping it will only be a short lapse. Why this country should continue to tie a family’s health insurance to their employment is beyond me. When people worked at the same company for 30 years, it made some sense for health insurance to be something shared between employer and employee as a benefit.

Now it’s just a cruel joke – if you work for the right company, you can get great insurance. Switch employers and it’s a gamble if your insurance could be worse in coverage and/or cost more. Your health didn’t change, and your need for certain coverage didn’t change, but because your job changed, your benefits and the amount you pay can drastically change. Lose your job with no ability to pay COBRA, and you have no coverage at all. What kind of a screwed up system is this? Why should a person’s job with a specific company dictate what kind of health care they can receive?

Not to get too political with this, but how is this a stable system for supporting the health of the country? A single payer system would be far more stable. Even if you don’t agree with a single-payer system, then it’s time to stop including health insurance as part of employment compensation plans entirely, raise the take-home pay for everyone and cap premiums from the profit-heavy insurance companies.

Stepping down from my soapbox now and returning to us: it’s obvious we’re scared and angry and frustrated, but we’ll be OK. I have a job at the moment that I love, so we do have some income. Aaron will qualify for unemployment if needed and has a lot of people trying to help him find another position.

It sucks to take a big step back financially (again), but money is just money. We may not be able to do or buy as much, but it can’t take away our family, our friends, or our determination to succeed.

And moments like this piss me off enough to push us to succeed, just to spite those who set us back. The best revenge is success.

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