Wednesday, June 03, 2009

I'm Striving for Adequacy; Forget Excellence

Spring term is two weeks from over in Happy Valley and I'm ready to be done. I was about to explain the details of how and why I'm behind but let's leave it at unrealistic expectations, sickness, and malaise. All I have left after these classes is a tennis class that I'm taking from Independent Study; I don't get a discount. I trained the design assistant that rewrote large portions of the course and I don't get a discount.

This brings up BYU Independent Study, the company that will not be hiring me on full time. I understand this is because of a company-wide hiring freeze, but it still sucks.(begin rant) I've worked there longer than sixty percent of the full time employees. I helped create a new process for more rapidly and effectively updating old courses. I trained some fifteen new students and two new designers in the process and wrote ninety percent of a thirty page manual on that process. I revised and created hundreds of questions for a myriad of courses. I also worked on loads of problem projects (end rant).

I'm a little bitter that I don't have a job when I graduate. My supervisor told me a year ago that I'd have a job there for sure. I counted on that and hadn't even thought about it until a few months ago. I was told that it was unclear if I'd have a job. A few weeks ago, they nailed the lid on the coffin of my hopes and dreams.

I enjoy my work. I want work and get paid for it. This whole being out of a job thing interferes with my plan. I also have no idea what I'll be expected to do at a new job. Will I be able to ignore misplaced commas and unnecessary colons or will I have to hunt them down? I'm bored even talking about copy editing.

I'm in my publishing class and I'm horrified. The teacher is droning on about the history of printing and all the steps between cave paintings and Adobe InDesign. We're not even going to be tested on anything. I don't know why he thinks this is applicable.