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Janus_de_Romanus
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Name: Janus
Location: Florence, South Carolina, United States
Birthday: 10/29/1979
Gender: Male
Interests: I do have a variety of hobbies but at the moment the only one that I actively indulge in is reading. I love to read. I will read everything and anything that is put in front of me. Much to my Beloved's irritation this does mean that I also collect books. The old saying that goes "there is no such thing as a few books" is all to happily true in my case.
Expertise: I am as noted in the occupation field a student so saying that I have an expertise in anything is a bit of an overstatement. I am a history major though so I suppose you could say that history is my field of expertise. I also wait tables so I suppose you could also say serving people is my expertise; either one of the two suits me well enough.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Other
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
6/3/2003
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| I do not have time to say much, but I wanted to reply to a comment I recieved. I will try not to be a stanger but as always we are at the whims of time and place; more often than not a thousand things conspire to keep me out of touch. If you really want to find me, send me an email through this page...I keep the address updated as much as possible.
~Janus | | |
| I have not updated this weblog for almost a year and yet I still continue to pay for it that tells me that I wish to at least have the possibility of this outlet. I have still not found an appropriate job that actually offers me permanent use of all the skills that I spent four years honing in college. I guess I should start with a brief review.
Between March and the present day in September I left Sylvan Learning Center because I needed to work full time and Sylvan refused to make me more than part time. At first I found a job at a convenience store, Justin did not like it but I did insist on working and he did actually want to me to work and help pay for our mutual expenses. At first the convenience store thing worked out well enough, it paid as much as Sylvan Learning Center and it was at night and part time so I had plenty of time. Gradually, however, things became worse. I was quickly, as in within two weeks, promoted to assistant manager and my hours went through the roof. Before long I was averaging seventy hours a week and there were a few days in August when I was acting as the manager when I was actually very close to ninety hours. Though, that was not the worst of it. I am capable of working for ninety hours without too much complaint though it does make me tired all the time. It was the way that company treats people, it was manipulative and abusive in every possible sense of the word. It routinely cheated people out of raises, myself included, and it often recorded different amounts of overtime than people actually worked. In short, I await the day they are properly investigated with some impatience and anticipation. The worst abuse was the manager I worked under when I first arrived. She constantly accused everyone of being a thief and mostly she was wrong, oh I cannot argue there was no wrong doing but I know that some of them were not thieves. She was one of those people that talked constantly behind peoples backs, I know a Southern trait but she did it excessively. I never came to work once without hearing about something she had said before she left for the day. She also had this tendency to leave crazy lists, that were to long for any mortal person to finish really. I always did but only by working, sweating, and fearing a heat stroke nightly...our store had well over 200% turnover while I was there and that is a low end estimate given to me by the District Manager.
I started applying for teaching jobs, something I have always wanted to do but was always chased away from by teachers who felt that it was not a good job for anyone. Even my college professors urged me to consider anything besides teaching. I am ashamed that I let myself be talked out of it, knowing that when I was younger it was the only thing that I really wanted to do. I interviewed for three different teaching positions, but two of them wanted a certified teacher and were not willing to considering hiring me under the P.A.C. E. Program. The third offered me a temporary position teaching United States History until the regular teacher returned from a long absence. That was about nine weeks, I have been teaching for seven of those weeks, and I have two weeks remaining before the earliest estimated return date of the regular teacher. I do not look forward to her return, I will miss teaching and I will miss the children that I have in my classes. I will be leaving in the middle of the semester and I do not believe that it will be a good thing for either them or me, there will be little conclusion in what will be happening when the teacher returns.
In other news, Justin and I have formulated new plans for both of us. Assuming that I am not offered a teaching position somewhere in the district, something that is possible according to the principals if not likely, then I will be returning to school for certification in January. Currently I plan to complete the requirements for admission to the USC MAT program and apply for admission to that program virtually as soon as I am back in school. As for Justin he plans to get back to nursing school starting in January as well. We believe that we can afford to do both at the same time, though we are not entirely sure of that. It is unfortunate, but Justin will have to continue working full time in order for us to be able to afford to do anything even close to that.
Well I have said enough for now and the students will be returning soon and I must be ready for them when they do. To those who have not heard from me in some time I hope this updates you and please feel free to re-establish contact through this route.
~Janus | | |
| I do not have a whole bunch of time to write because I have to actually
go to work this morning, no I didn't find a permanent full time job
yet. However, it seems that Sylvan has been keeping me pretty
busy for a part time employee. This morning they want me to come
in to learn how to do the entrance evaluations that we give to all
students when they come to us. This testing helps us determine
what programs to tell their parents that they need and at what level to
start working them. It also gives us a very good idea of what
grade level the student is working at in all subject areas, this is
very useful considering that we measure our success in testing by how
many grade levels they improve over the course of the program.
Now I do not particularly mind going in at nine in the morning and
learning how to administer these tests, but I do wish that I had had
more than one nights notice. Since I normally stay up all night
and sleep all day until time to go to work, I had a horrible time
trying to sleep last night and now I am about to go administer some
tests with only five hours of sleep, poor kids.
Anyway, there really isn't, much else that I need to report.
Justin is still grumpy about feeding six people every weekend and he
has a right to be but that problem looks like it might just resolve
itself without me or him having to do anything at all and that's how I
would prefer it. My upbringing makes it impossible for me to say
anything about someone eating food that I have prepared other than to
offer them some more. Justin thinks I am nuts, but I keep trying
to tell him he wasn't raised with Southern manners. We
Southerner's like to make people fat from our cooking, it reassures us
that the food is good, and will sit there and offer more food until the
poor guest is rolling off their chair. Justin on the other hand
tends of the be the Northern persuasion that you feed people only when
they are consciously invited to dinner. I am just Southern enough
to offer food to every person who walks through my door while there is
something on the stove.
To tell the truth before I make Justin get all irritated with me for
making him look bad to my Southern readers, Justin probably would not
be mad except that the situation got so bad last week that I had to go
get something from a restaurant and leave our guests to eat the food
that I had prepared and I didn't get any of a stir-fry that I had made
specifically because I wanted that combination of foods in a
stir-fry. I do NOT however, blame my guests, I should have
planned better and bought more food. After all, I know that they
come for three days every weekend. The only problem was that two
days last weekend included at least one person I hadn't planned on and
that taxed my meals beyond the stretching point.
I guess, I had best head out for work now...
~Janus
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| Justin irritates me some times, do not get me wrong I do love the boy,
but it is beginning to cause me problems that he constantly complains
about me having friends over on the weekends. It is true that
they tend to spend the night, but then again they come from out of town
and moreover I have repeatedly told him that if he lets me know in
advance that I can be sure that they make other arrangements. He
never bothers to let me know ahead of time and then complains at me all
weekend long. I think that I have tried to be reasonable and
understanding of his point of view and most of the time I feel that he
has been understanding of mine. My friends that come on the
weekends are the only social interaction, besides elementary aged kids
and him that I get and I would truly loathe to give it up.
I did get one bit of good news today, though I refuse to get too
terribly optimistic about it, I received an email from Cape Coral,
Florida, telling me that I had met the basic qualifications for a job I
had applied for and that my resume was being forwarded from the Human
Resources Office to the office of their Attorney General and that the
preferred candidates would be contacted directly from that
office. Getting that job would be nice since Justin's sister
lives in Cape Coral but I will not even speculate about it. Every
time I get my hopes up about a particular opportunity it seems that
nothing comes of it, so I figure that if I ignore this then there is a
good chance that something might possibly come of it. Though I
will admit that it does seem unlikely to me that Cape Coral will hire
someone from South Carolina if there is someone with anything
approaching my qualifications who is more local. Still there is
always the possibility.
On top of all this there really is not terribly much going on, however,
I think that I am going to get annoyed quite quickly with player
questions.
~Janus
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| I really do not have a lot of time to spend making this entry as I have
to get ready for work at Sylvan but enough has happened, finally, that
I considered it time to update this thing. In the face of still
not having any promising job prospects and the fact that working at
Sylvan has made me feel even more dragged in the direction of teaching
I have decided to pursue a Master of the Arts in Teaching from the
University of South Carolina. The program is a good one, though
getting myself admitted is going to be quite fun. As anyone who
has ever worked on getting a master's degree knows these programs can
prove to be very selective. So in the next couple of days I have
to reapply to Francis Marion, Acquire Financial Assistance at Francis
Marion, and then take two more classes to meet the basic entry
requirements for the Masters Program at USC. Then in the upcoming
months I must complete the GRE and then finally apply to the program,
which includes finding at least two professors that I have not pissed
off to the point that they hate me to write recommendations for
me. I think I can do that the question is will they be glowing
enough. Those recommendations are generally on the order of "So
and So can walk on water, heal the sick, and create you an atom bomb to
kill the people he or she couldn't cure all while working on a brand new
sonata in D." With that in mind, I am fairly sure that it is
understandable that finding people to talk like that about me is a
little intimidating, though at least I don't have to talk that way
about myself which has been one of my major problems with finding a
job, I cannot imagine a reason to praise myself like that. I
mean, let me do the job and decide for yourself whether or not I
deserve to be praised the constant praising and selling of oneself is
humiliating and just the sort of thing that I would expect in this
modern society.
This is what we get for letting corporations and people like Bush win,
the need to constantly be selling something never you mind that the
product you are selling is yourself. It brings whole new
dimensions to slavery when the masses realize that they are selling
themselves into slavery and that they are doing it willingly and
happily at that and for what? For a pitiful sum of money, no job
security, not a company they can work for life for but instead a
company that will replace them when they get older with someone with
half their years and experience, in many cases they don't even get
health insurance, and forget about dental (something that worries me
considering that my teeth are still disintegrating and I cannot afford
to have them fixed). I guess my point is that we surrendered to
this because we were told it was what we wanted and amusingly enough we
are still told that its what we want and we still buy it. We
continue to put politicians into office who want to run the country
like a corporation (Does that mean we get to lay off the aging and
the impaired?) and then we are surprised when the corporations make a
recovery but the common people really don't. I saw something the
other day that should illustrate the point, the Dow Jones is back
almost to where it was before the recession, the NASDAQ is not even
close to its pre-recession height, but in my home region unemployment
is still topping 15% some months and hasn't dropped below 10% since the
recession started. A Jobless recovery they call it, well I have
news for them just because your CORPORATE numbers get better does not
mean that the situation of most Americans is improving. How brain
washed are we though? We are so brainwashed that after four years
of hearing mumbo jumbo about jobless recoveries we are willing to
re-elect the people who initiated programs that helped the corporations
recover while leaving the common man behind. How absurd!
The only thing more absurd is that the poor of the South seem to think
they are identified most closely with the republican party. It
irritates me constantly, the Republicans are rich fat cats who care
little for the poor. Most Southerners won't see that income
bracket if they live to be a thousand and so what exactly is it that
they think they have in common with these people that they keep voting
for? Oh yeah, I almost forgot. They see the Republicans as
the party who will secretly hate black people, gay people, Mexicans,
and Asians with them and let them keep on feeling racially superior,
never mind that they are starving at least they still have their
prejudice. Don't get me wrong, I am white, I am from an old
Southern Family (300 in 2017) and I was raised like that too, the only
difference is I try to forget that upbringing as much as
possible. Oh I am a sucker for being polite and opening doors for
people and I also got the best of the disreputable but distinctly
southern arts such as being polite face to face and then smearing a
person as soon as they are gone from sight and being highly
manipulative but I put aside most the negative parts of my heritage and
they should and could also do so. To do any less condemns us to
perpetual economic obscurity.
It seems I went off on a tangent about a variety of things and in all
my bitching I did not once suggest a correction to these problems, so
here is one: Vote Bush out of Office, impeach him (he's lied more than
Clinton could have done in ten terms there's more than enough cause),
and finally put someone with some good sense in office. Then lets
throw the corporate culture out of America! They seem to think
that moving overseas is good enough for manufacturing then it can be
good enough for their headquarters, once they are out ban their lovely
products from our ever so desirable market and let the now empty market
niches be filled by entirely American companies who make their products
in toto here in the United States. There! Patriotic,
something that will never happen, but something that would be very
satisfying to do!
~Janus
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