Wake-Up Call or the Story of the Middle Class in America

Wake-Up Call

          I didn’t know when my wake-up call was going to come. I’d been out of work for too long. Teaching was my profession, and getting a job in New Jersey is easier for a brain surgeon if a person is beyond their twenties or thirties at most. I’d done everything possible to find sub-fields related to education. I’d served as a substitute teacher, an online educator, written articles for NY Examiner, and tutored plenty.

          When was it going to change for me? I just kept hoping for an opportunity to break. I had an alliance with my children’s former high school Principal who still worked in the district. Nepotism abounded in our town. Don’t get my going about them. I’d asked just about everyone I knew who was teaching in the garden state. Nobody could help me.

          As a last ditch effort, I enroll in an online doctoral program. Hal, my husband, doesn’t even know about the amounts I take out on student loans. I figure that older people teach in colleges, so why not me? I have important insights to share. Hal doubts my success in this venture, my own therapist questions why I need the word doctor in front of my name. It certainly isn’t for any notion of grandiosity that I do this. In the courses, I am successful, at least until I got to dissertation proposal writing.

          The question abounds, when do I cut my losses? That is the wake-up call. What if Hal loses his job? My mother certainly can-not bail us out a second time. I need to take charge of this.

          Yet, as I apply to ads, I have some nibbles. A part-time adjunct opportunity opens up with Manhattanville College, a writing tutor position with Pearson. Berkeley College may be another opportunity?