I grew up in the Bay Area. Then I went to college. After I graduated, I got a job for the Associated Press. I was stationed in Saudi Arabia, before being "promoted" to Israel after a reporter quit as a result of being fired on by BOTH sides while covering a riot there. I lived there for several months before being moved again to Switzerland. I lived there for about a month, and was then offered a job working at a Southern California news station. My job there was to work with the teleprompter (that thing that tells the anchors what to say). Yes, anchor people really are as stupid as everyone says, though I didn't find my anchors to be abusive to anyone. Anyway, that job took some getting used to but I eventually became good at it, so that they let me cover some stories for their affiliated newspaper at the same time (earning me extra money
). I worked at that job for about a year and a half.In the meantime, one of my friends from college had become a Vice Principal at a High School in the Central Valley. He offered me a position as an English Teacher there. Even though the pay for teachers is less, I accepted the job because he was a friend of mine and he told me it was easy to teach at the local community college at the same time, so I got two teaching positions (one technically a professorship). California let me earn my credential while I was working, so that wasn't even a problem.
As soon as I got my credential, I was promoted to teaching advanced Juniors and Seniors for the school in English. Those were my favorite classes because the people there were intelligent and many of them actually wanted to be there. That was a great job, but the Principal of the school had some problems. He wanted to make it so that anyone could become an advanced student if they had a note from their parents. In one year, my average class size rose from 23 students/class to more than thirty five. Some of the new students spoke very little English, and many were largely illiterate. My friend (the VP), resigned in protest of the decision after he realized what had happened. I told the Principal that I would be leaving, too, but that I wanted to graduate the Juniors that I was teaching, then. He wasn't very happy with me, and made me teach some remedial classes for him during their Senior years (NOT fun), but he acquiesced and I was able to stay on to see my final years' students graduate. I then resigned in a belated protest of his decision regarding advanced students, and went looking for another job.
I was offered a post as a copy-editor of a local newspaper (I had to make sure there were no typo's in the articles), but was quickly promoted to a slightly better post as a low-editor, where I still had to catch typo's, but I was also now responsible for managing a few reporters. One of the reporters was my current fiancee, who was later promoted to an editorship after one of the senior editors resigned. I asked her to marry me when she was still a reporter (I was then a staff editor), and she has since been promoted (NOT by me--I'm not in charge of that stuff) to a junior editorship. I now live in the SF Bay Area, and really enjoy working in the editing room.
That's my amazing life, so far. I'd be happy to answer questions, but I will NOT give out names (for fear that my employers might come back and sue me), or you can post your background for everyone to see.
.
