The FOT paper accepted at NCA

My paper I wrote with Kat, "The Friendship Over Time (FOT) Model: A paradigmatic shift into a new theory of cooperation" was accepted at the National Communication Association convention in November. I used a mathematical matrix process to develop an additive model that shows how international relations can be grown over generational contact between hostile nations. I kind of thought they'd turn it down because it doesn't use the same old methods of negotiations that everyone else seems to like. I'll be on a panel with an admiral and several other professors from Harvard and Stanford.

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Okay, it's kinda hot right now

Most people who know me know that I LOVE it when it's hot weather. Well, that was pretty much until I realized that having no air conditioning in my studio apartment makes me VERY VERY hot. Well, I finally broke down and bought an industrial sized fan that I'm now using in my apartment, and let's just say that I can breathe again.

Yeah, it wasn't really a powerful topic to be discussing right now, but I figured talking about the heat has to be somewhat of a relief from my usual "I can't find a job" postings.

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The job front and other scary things

For the record, the job hunting isn't going very well. I really should have been able to find a teaching job after graduation, but nothing seems to be opening or on the horizon for me. Instead, I'm constantly being "told" to lower my expectations. It's like being promised a new world of great opportunities, but when it comes time to bathe in those opportunities, nothing happens. Instead, I have the same job prospects now that I had before I went further into debt to add another master's degree to my resume.

I really kind of suspected something like this was going to happen more than a year ago, especially when last year was so hard for me to find a job during the summer. I was looking for full time jobs that would continue beyond the master's degree, and I found nothing. I didn't even get a single interview during that time. Well, I got one interview, but it literally led nowhere.

Instead, I kept getting responses of "you should lower your expectations", which equates to settling for a manager's job at McDonald's rather than a community college teaching job. To be honest, I don't think I'd get the manager's job at McDonald's either; my only solace is knowing that because I haven't fallen as low to apply to it that it means I don't have to back up that theory.

What really burns me is that I'm in no different boat today than I was before I went back to school. I actually had a job when I was in Michigan, and I was lucky to get even that. I've been convinced that most jobs are obtained by knowing people, and that's literally how I got that job. Human Resources gave me a "thanks for applying, but no" letter before my friend pulled the application FROM Human Resources to offer me the position. So far, most of the community college jobs have not gotten past Human Resources, and even my friends in those colleges indicate that there's little they can do.

Yeah, I have a temporary job to last me the next month, but then I'm pretty much screwed. I really don't know what to do after that. I'm applying for everything I can find, but I don't have any time to do anything. Other people keep placing "requirements" on me because they need things done, and I end up with each day passing with me being no closer to taking care of myself at all. Yeah, I'm going to be screwed in about a month. Until then, I'm working a pretty dorky job that I really don't want to be working, but I don't really have much of a choice concerning. I can't figure out how to get a real job.

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