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!