Forgive the rant, but I am down today. This has not been a good week, as I found out that my contract with my employer would not be renewed due to educational "Budget cuts" across the board. Now, if the cuts had come with something other than an Ark Park, that might soften the blow. Big might.
Austerity has come for me, as a public employee here in Kentucky. And with bad timing.
I work(ed) the past year as an instructor of nursing at the local community college, taking students on their clinical experiences and teaching newbies to the field the ropes, including some CNA instruction. Never before had I taught, and I loved it, and the students and I got close. But, I was the last one hired, so I became the one who got "the axe". I am finding this out right before starting a Masters program as a Family Nurse practitioner that they had assistance options for. Now, I got paying for that on my table too, and it is no cheap program to attend. Years of work, trying to get my skills up, getting my BSN, and trying to get into that competitive program that I had been rejected for once before. Now I am in and got to go find and get familiar with a new job, that probably won't include assistance for that, at least not for a while, while keeping my grade up. In that program, we are required to make no less than a B in every graduate course, making less would mean being kicked out and having to try out again against the pool of candidates, something I don't want to ever risk.
I can get another job, Nursing is just one of those fields with plenty options, many are not so lucky. But I LOVED being an educator, and I got one year of it and poof it was gone. Like many, moving is not really an option.
I was reading earlier about how our unemployment would be a full point lower if not for public sector job cuts, and how previous recessions didn't crawl out by throwing people like me out of work. Maybe I will return to teaching one day, but until then it's back to the hospitals for me. The other new instructors or staff in the other departments, I hope they can find something else as easily.
I really hope people get something out of that damn Ark park...Sigh...