Happy Holly-days!: The new job

As you may have heard, I got a promotion! Now instead of "teacher in training" I am "Assistant (to the ) CEO." I work at the corporate office and it is fun! Now, some people are surprised to hear about a school having a CEO, but we are a pretty big company-- 23 campus in 4 states and well over 1000 employees. We are a private, for-profit company, after all! And we sell a great product that people love. (For example, 20% of our students score in the 99% percentile of national tests. True story.)

My position is great! My boss is great! I am learning all about the school and always learning fun new things.

I've composed a list of things I love about my job.

1. I have my own office with a door. The door even has my name on it.

2. I learn new stuff all the time. Or get to spend time thinking about and discussing interesting things. As part of my work, I study the Constitution. This morning I spent an hour with my boss discussing whether the emotion or the thought comes first and how we can use that to motivate children to be conceptual thinkers. The day before the main topic of discussion was how much of your personality if trained and how much is innate, and how effective teachers can influence that. Lately my boss has been very interested in my views on energy, chakras, meridians, etc. As an extension of that, I've been watching youtube videos explaining quantum physics.

3. I get to be politically involved. I've helped plan several events for candidates. I organized a field trip (including chartering a bus) to the Tax Day Tea Party at the Capitol Building, which I also attended on company time. I made myself a sign for the event:

(I could have had the Publishing Department make me one, but I wanted to look grass-rootsy.)

4. I get to read all the resumes and decide who gets to come in for testing. It is fun-- most of the time. I have also learned that of all the possible bad grammar things that could bug me, the thing that bugs me the most by far is how often people omit much-needed hyphens. For example, I guarantee you that 95% of the people who apply, would have left the hyphen out of the previous sentence. It drives me nuts!

5. When I have a hard decision to make at my job, I ask myself "What would Ayn Rand do?"

6. We are a very pro-America company. When I moved into my office, there were (by actual count) seven flags there.

7. Since I'm not standing in front of a class all day, I can wear high heels every day. And that makes me feel pretty. Also, since I'm trying to impress the higher-ups, I usually wear earrings. It's nice.

8. Since I have my own office with a door and it's in an openly politically conservative office, I finally have a nice place to hang my Ronald Reagan calendar and my NRA plaque.

Of course, it's not all kicks and giggles. There are some things that I do not like about my job. Namely, sending rejection letters to people who came for an interview, but we decide not to hire. On one hand, it's a good thing because before I started they didn't send them at all, which is kind of inconsiderate. But I have learned that I do not like signing anything where a smiley face after my name is not appropriate. And I send a lot of them-- I bet an average of one per day. But that is about the only thing I don't like, so I guess I should complain too much.