Life Sux

(For those of you that are fortunate enough to not live in this god forsaken town, SUX is the airport and international code for Sioux City.)

No, things aren't going well but they've recently crossed the line into where they are going so badly it's funny. I had to find a new place, I'm flunking nutrition, I still can't find a job (although I have gotten a bunch of very lovely rejection letters from Mercy), my car is in the shop, and it's getting cold.

The place where I was staying didn't work out, and I wanted to try to find a new place before the end of the month. I looked at the ads and found a cheap furnished place near my school and went to check it out. When I got there, it took me a few seconds to pinpoint what was wrong with it-- no kitchen. I shrugged and thanked the nice man for his time and went to look at a few more places. But that little one-room "apartment" kept popping back into my mind. It was cheap, available, and actually quite well furnished with a bed, dresser, chairs and tables. It did have a fridge and a microwave. And all the utilities were paid, which in my mind translated nicely to three less things to remember every month. In the end, I decided to take it. I found a $9.99 single electric range at Walgreens and now I am all set, assuming that I can ignore the fact that I have to do my dishes in the bathtub. Fortunately I just got back from a place where food was cooked over open flame and I haven't had time to get picky.

Not only that, but I have irrefutable evidence that god hates me. It happened while I was driving to my new place. IO was in my car, everything I own in the backseat and was stopped at a light at the corner of my new place when I heard a loud pop. At first I thought that I was being shot at, but having lived in warzones I was enough of a gunshot connoisseur to know that the sound wasn't just right. My second thought was that something in my luggage was compressed and had exploded. I turned around to look at the back seat to check my stuff and I saw that my entire back windshield was completely shattered.

No, I have no idea how it happened. The people at the glass place are pretty clueless as well. The obvious answer is a rock, but rocks don't come flying at you on their own when you are at a standstill at a stoplight. This isn't Hogwarts. The light changed and I pulled into the apartment parking lot. I got out of the car, staring open-mouthed at what used to be my back window and was now a mass of spiderwebed glass. My one consolation was that the glass was still intact (thanks to the safety glass combined with the defrosting wiring) and that it would remain that way for a few days until I finished moving in. As I had this thought, I closed the driver side door and the entire window fell out of the frame into the backseat.

I'm starting to think that maybe I should have just stayed in Thailand.

You've Got To Be Kidding

After more then three weeks of waiting, I finally got an interview for a nursing position at a local big hospital. As being an Secretary/Energy Clerk/Temp Worker is getting old real quick (see next post) I placed a ton of hope on the interview. Three different outfits, two showers, and no less then fifteen minutes of practice in front of a mirror later, I finally got into the car and drove to the hospital's HR department.

I made a great, impression, if I do say so myself. My interviewer was a Peace Corps wanna-be and had a bunch of questions about my background. Everything that flew out of my mouth was perfect-- the fact that I was a nursing student didn't hurt none neither. Anyway, the interview quickly took a downturn when she discovered my full-time-student-status and came to understand that I couldn't work full time or weekdays. The nursing assistant position that I was interviewing for required that.

But never fear. The hospital is a big place, and while opening a thick file marked “open positions”, my interview told me that there were many opportunities. She glanced through my resume, looked at my work history, and flipped a few pages. Here, she told me, was a perfect opportunity. Part time, mostly weekends. Good pay. Challenging. Flexible. I was all excited until she closed the book and leaned towards me, completely serious...

“How does a Unit Secretary sound? With your computer skills you'd be perfect...”

Adventures of a Tyson Temp

My job continues on. It is still depressing, but now for a new reason. You see, as a job it's actually rather hard. I'd say about 75% of it is entering lists of numbers into different lists and that part is difficult in it's mindlessness and tedium. But when I am not doing that, I am doing work that really requires every bit of my critical thinking and logic skills-- which, if I do say so myself, are considerable. For example, I might have to enter a number. I don't know where the number is supposed to come from. So I have to go to the previous month, look at that number, and then pull the records from that month and hunt for the number. Sometimes I find the number-- that's the easy one. Usually, however, the number is actually two numbers added together, a number multiplied by another number (which can range from the easy: a 0.1 multiplier or the impossible, a 42 multiplier). Or sometimes the number is wrong. From what I am seeing, my predecessor was a real idiot and made lots of mistakes. Another part of my job is fixing all the mistakes that she made.

Every now and again I get a monthly report and a few of the numbers invariably don't match up with mine. At this point I have to go back into the weekly reports and find the wrong numbers. These numbers were taken from the difference in a meter reading, so I have to compare the start and end meter readings until I find one that was keyed in wrong. The meter readings are about 8 numbers long. (I am impressed, by the way, if you have managed to read this far.) The highlight of my day is when I find a mistake and I get to rip a new one into some poor meter-reading clerk in Texas or somewhere.

So why is this depressing? Well, I have determined that you need a college degree to be able to handle this job. The reason that it's depressing is that I know that the fifty or so people that sit around me are doing basically the same jobs. It depresses me to think that four years of college and lofty dreams and ambitions this is the best that they can do, and they are probably going to be stuck here for the rest of their lives, arguing with Texan energy clerks about broken meters and how many pounds of edible product where produced in the week ending 10/21/07. That's why I'm depressed. Those poor people.

I Just got the Clep

I just took a CLEP exam. CLEP stands for "College Level Examination Program" and is the new way to get out of college credits. English Composition was one of the courses that I needed and I flat out refused to take it after 3 years of teaching English. I figured that I would ace the exam but got books from the library anyway.

(Man, I love the library. I can't believe that before I left America I used to just take such a wonderful resource for granted. Take it from me, kids. Go and visit your local library today. And give them money. They probably deserve it.)

Anyway, I took the first practice test and got a 70%. That wasn't great, but not bad either. I did some studying and took another test and got a 67% More studying and testing later caused my grade to sink down to 61% I decided to just stop studying at that point and just take the damn test.

Let me give you an example of one of the evil little questions that the test offers. See if you can see the problem before moving on:

In today's modern world, it can be rather difficult to connect with friends, family, and peers.


Highlight for the answer: The answer is that modern should be struck as redundant. Now although I can certainly see why the test writer would feel that way, I think that it's a debatable point and standardized multiple-choice questions should not be debatable! Modern can mean "from today" or it can serve as an adjective-- the opposite of "classic". Jane is a classic dresser in jeans and a sweater, Electra is a modern dresser in a leather skirt and boots. They can be wearing clothes that were designed and made on the same day, just bought in different stores

Having said all that, I am actually a lot more amiable towards the exam since I scored a 71/80. The girl at the desk was pretty impressed, as the passing requirements were only set at 50. If only they had a test for Anatomy...

Welcome to the Jungle

Well, I finally got a job. I am working for Tyson Meats. No, I am not on the line slaughtering cows-- I'm not that desperate, although after two weeks of unemployment I was beginning to worry that it might come to that. The job market here is terrible!! I guess that Gateway (remember them?) took off and left a ton of computer workers here. So the skills that I thought would be very much in demand are actually a dime a dozen. Plus no computer biz wants to hire a nursing student, even if they did used to work for Microsoft. They know that they aren't going to get their 110%.

It's just 16 hours a week, which might actually work well for me since I am taking three classes (Nursing Assistant, Developmental Psychology, and Nutrition). I basically sit at a desk all day and enter data from the individual plants into spreadsheets while wondering why they just don't network all the systems so that the data gets automatically entered the first time that it is entered in. I thought about suggesting this but then thought better when I realized that such a change will cost me my job. I am taking a measly $9 and hour, which is the highest paid job that I have had in three years and only the third-lowest paying job that I have had in my life.

It is rather depressing, however. The first item that goes into the spreadsheet is "Heads Slaughtered" followed by a very big number. I spent eight hours today cataloging all the thousands cows and pigs were killed to allow me to earn my $9 an hour. The detached way that they were listed as slaughtered, processed, and turned into "lbs. of product" seemed so cold, especially when I considered that aside from me there was probably no one else who stopped to think that it was a shame that cow #6734 out of 214,539 cows had to die.

Other then that things are slow. Went to get my physical for nursing school and was amazed that the long and somewhat uncomfortable method of taking a temperature from when I was a kid has been basically reduced to waving a wand over the forehead. Was also amazed that they managed to somehow make the TB test even more uncomfortable then it already was. The things that change after three years overseas...