Friday, May 23, 2008

POP! goes the tympanic membrane


While Mo was playing tour guide to my parents, who flew in from the East Coast for a lightning fast trip to Vegas and the Bay, I was left in Berkeley attempting to cram for the Physics CSET test that I was scheduled to take on Saturday. After seeing everyone to the airport on Thursday morning I was ready to settle in for a couple days of quiet, focused studying when my left inner ear canal began inexplicably filling up with fluid Thursday night. The pain kept me up all night on Thursday and drove me to the doctor on Friday, who prescribed antibiotics and said that I had quite a royal ear infection raging in there. Argck.

Unfortunately the doctor didn't send me home with any pain killers, and I was forced to alternate between Tylenol and Advil in an attempt to stave off the ferocious, sharp, awl like pain going straight into my skull. Friday evening I laid in the fetal position on the couch as I didn't think the pain could get any worse, trying to keep my body as still as I could as every single movement jostled the pressure in my ear and caused it to intensify. I began wishing that my ear drum would just burst and I was imagining the immediate theoretical cessation of pain as the fluid found its way out of my skull. And then, while I talked (or really moaned and complained grumpily) on the phone to Mo in Vegas, it happened - my ear drum ruptured, the pain immediately stopped, and fluid began oozing out of my ear canal.

While it was a short-term solution to the indescribable pain I was experiencing at the time, if I had to do it all over again with the hindsight that the last week has provided, I probably wouldn't have wished quite so hard that my eardrum would pop. While the pain and pressure immediately dispersed, so did my hearing, as well as many other senses and neurological nuances that are evidently connected to having an intact tympanic membrane. For over one week now I have not been able to hear anything out of my left ear, and most of the time there is an annoying ringing taking place where audio input should be. My sense of balance is getting better, but for the first few days it was nearly impossible for me to close my eyes and remain standing without falling over. And one of the most annoying repercussions of my condition is the inability to audio-locate where noises are coming from. In order to determine the location of a source of noise, our brain uses an algorithm that compares the gap in reception time between our two ears - put simply, if the right ear hears a noise before the left ear, then the brain can figure out that the source of the noise must be on our right size. When the brain is only receiving data from one of the ears it can't work its magic anymore, and thus I have no idea where noises are coming from. This in itself is extremely disorienting and annoying, and combined with the ringing it is hard for me to stay upbeat, positive, and not grumpy.

Just a week of this experience has given me a whole new perspective and sympathy for a) young children that have ear infections and go through all this painful mess and b) people with life-long hearing disabilities or loss. My grandpa always complained about how stressful it was for him to go out to dinner in a crowded restaurant, or attempt to hold a conversation in a crowded room, and now I have a glimmer of understanding of what he meant. Without both ears working I have lost all ability to filter out the normal din of a populated space, and it requires a lot of brain power to separate what people are saying to you and what is just background conversation around you. I've always put hearing towards the top of my list of most valued senses, and this little medical ordeal has only reinforced that fact.

Mo is back from Vegas, my parents made it safely home to the Carolinas after seeing everything from Sacramento to Santa Cruz, and we are still playing a bit of a waiting game on the job search. The High School in Berkeley has officially offered me a position, and the school in Watsonville is still lagging big time. We hope to come closer to a decision as to where we want to live this weekend, and are excited about working out our summer plans which hopefully include a trip to Zion for a wedding and fun, and there is talk about a possible family ascent up The Capitan(!). Meanwhile, the Interweb says healing time of anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for a popped ear drum, so I am hoping recovery comes sooner rather than latter, although in truth I might miss the convenience of selective hearing loss when this is all over.

What?

-Mat

Thursday, May 15, 2008

The Secret Interview



We've been temporarily grounded in the Bay Area for a bit while Mat continues his job search and his parents come into town for a brief spell. He has been wrestling with the red tape and bureaucracy of the education hiring system for quite a few weeks now and is ready for it all to be over. It took him a few weeks to really understand the whole process, as most schools and districts love to tell you that all of their jobs are posted on a centralized website, edjoin.org, and that's the best way to apply for positions. What he came to realize, however, is that once the job is up on Edjoin it's already too late. The district, admin at the school, or department involved with the subject have most likely already selected their candidate by that point, and the posting online is merely a formality. So, he was forced to do what everyone else was evidently doing - try to line up a "secret interview".

Luckily he had been keeping in touch with a bunch of his contacts from his grad program and was tipped to a position at a school outside of Santa Cruz as well as one in the Bay Area. Through various emails and phone calls he was able to confirm the possibility of said position, and he arranged a secret interview with each of the schools in question. They both started as an informal chat between himself and the faculty, and eventually progressed into a full on, hiring committee-style round-robin interview. The secret interview at the school in Berkeley led to a personal introduction to the admin staff involved with hiring and a physical handover of his application packet. They were calling for a first interview within hours that afternoon, apparently eager to get their hands on a qualified, young, and thus cheap science teacher. A second interview followed shortly thereafter, and the hiring committee included one woman whom he taught with at Sarah's Science Camp way back in the day, and another who proclaimed "I've never met anyone else who has been hiking in Ladakh!", in reference to a somewhat non-professional but interesting line on his resume.

And now comes the sticky situation, or what Mat's dad refers to as "leaves in the pool" (because your problems aren't real problems when you're complaining about the leaves in your swimming pool). The principal of said school in Berkeley left a positive sounding message on the voice mail tonight, with instructions to call him back as soon as possible, and the school in Watsonville hasn't progressed past the secret interview step yet, despite assurances from moles inside the department that they really want to hire him. To make matters a bit harder, there are numerous factors that together add up to make this one of those semi-difficult real life decisions. The Berkeley position pays a good deal more, would be teaching Biology, could be bike-commuted every day, and is nearly signed, sealed, and delivered. The Watsonville position would be teaching with friends in a smaller school, although teaching physics, with a (short) car commute, and the hiring process seems a bit sketchy at best - but my gosh it's beautiful down there. So what it really comes down to is where we want to live and spend the next few years of our life!

Leaves in the pool, I guess, but we really just want to go swimming!

Friday, May 9, 2008

Stimulated


Mo and I woke up to the pleasant surprise this morning of more money in our bank account. Yes, we had been stimulated, as part of the $152 billion stimulus plan passed in Congress last February. And, try as we might, despite knowing deep down inside that this is a terrible idea, thinking about how many teacher pinkslips could have been avoided with that $152 bill or how prison overcrowding could have been reduced, or how this money is meant to fuel the consumerism that our country is already hopelessly addicted to, we couldn't help but be pretty happy with the money.

It turns out that about $600 each is enough to buy us off after all. :)

Thanks, W.!