Post Moving Update #1 - The Job Hunt and Training

Well… it’s been a little over a week. And while I’d rather be playing a game, editing a video, or going to my non-scheduled, but still mandatory observation for my new part-time job… I feel like crap. Allergies hit me harder than a Falcon Punch to a point where I couldn’t really breathe at all last night and I couldn’t keep down my breakfast this morning. So let’s talk about what’s new and different since I moved back to the hometown.

First, having everything of mine crammed into one little room is frustrating, but, by no means, something I’m not used to. But not having a desk to work at makes PC gaming, video editing, or writing less comfortable. Looking at it another way though, now I’m like Ryan (RoosterTeeth) before they moved to their newest office since he would be seated at the couch for pretty much all their videos. Let’s just hope my computer doesn’t melt playing Typing of the Dead like his computer did, or we’ll have other issues going on here.

That said, it is nice to be home to eat more regular, decent meals and not just frozen food and fast food. It’s nice to have a place that actually looks livable and less like a crack den because the people you live with don’t bother to take care of it or their share of it in anyway. Admittedly, it’s weird to know that lots of my stuff is locked away in storage. Accessible, sure, but not really without its own challenge (digging through boxes and piles of stuff to find any one thing). Hence why I had to buy a new cheap microphone this past week for our first Let’s Play back in Des Moines.

I’m excited to do more videos like it. Hopefully I’ll be feeling better to give editing it my full attention and recording the next one… less coughing in the background.

But let’s get on to something that probably interests you. The job search. Been looking for roughly a week and a half. Most places haven’t called me back. I had two interviews, the first of which was with a marketing agency that never got back to me. The second was with a place called LearningRX, which is a place similar to a tutoring center. But rather than teach kids basic information (or any tangible information) their focus is on improving their cognitive skills to improve their learning, memory, and information processing… and I’m in the middle of training to work with them… somehow.

I walked in. Did a short interview and took a brief test, which apparently was all I needed to be hired. Reminds me of when I got hired for Great Clips, except this feels slightly more fulfilling. For those basically not understanding what it is that I’ll actually be doing, think of kids as computers. My job is to make sure these metaphorical computers have decent amounts of memory that work (HDD) and to also make sure their processing speed and capability works as well. That differs from basic tutoring/teaching where they are putting information on that HDD and expecting a kid to memorize it.

We go over various drills/exercises with the kids/students to help improve all their cognitive skills so that learning becomes easier and the information they absorb is retained and utilized more effectively.

Is it what I want to do forever? No. But it’s different from anything else I’ve done and will at least generate income for me for a while, while I look for what I really want to do with my life (or make it happen via a book, movie, etc). Plus this job provides a purpose or service I can get behind. Insurance is a complete waste made by a machine that’s broken as dicks. And while I have nothing against food service, I just don’t want to cook for large slews of people. Small groups of friends and family are fine, but too much more and I’ll just burn myself out on cooking (which I like to do).

But this? This has shown to actually improve the ability for kids to learn. Maybe it can help the next generation of kids succeed in this broken world and make things better for themselves as they mature. I’d certainly like to believe, in the very least, that helping kids here has some overall benefit that gives me and the job I’ll be doing greater purpose than answering a phone all day or cutting up onions all day (exaggeration on the second one). It’s something that makes a difference, ideally, and that’s what matters to me. Finding something that has some real meaning to it.

The thing that interests me the most about it is their philosophy or method. They don’t teach kids with the goal of success. Their goal is to make the kid fail at the tests. As weird as that sounds, I get it because that’s how I learned (in a manner of speaking). In life, failure, rejection, and mistakes happen enough where the kid has to learn to accept that, but not only that. They have to accept it, and work past it. A good example is video games. When you die in a level of Mario, do you just stop? Of course not. You keep going because you know what to do differently. You build upon the experience and knowledge gained from what you’ve done and you improve. That’s the goal at the learning center. Not so much to make the kids successful, but constantly get them to fail to further improve their abilities until they are capable without our help and believe in their abilities as well.

That’s all I got for the time being. I’m going to go continue being sick while watching NetFlix or something because this is driving me crazy.