Posts Tagged ‘career’

By Jesslyn

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Let’s just all agree – Belle is the best princess.  She’s not a pushover, reads voraciously, stands up to the bullies, craves a little adventure in her life and still manages to maintain her femininity and snag a real prince when she finds him.  But there’s a problem with this Disney flick.  The rose would bloom until his 21^st birthday.  Lumiere confirms in song at Belle’s first dinner that they’ve been enchanted for 10 years.  So the Prince was 11 when he was cursed?!?  Huh? Where were/are his parents?  And how is it that the night he sets her free, it’s a lovely evening at the castle, warm enough to go out in a strapless gown, but they’re still freezing in snow in the valley village?   It’s a pickle.

Cinderella takes a close second to Belle in the race for best princess. Sure, she lets herself become a doormat but back in her day the only other option would have been the poorhouse, or worse. And she has enough moxie to sneak off to the ball anyway and break out of the attic when the duke is there. Snow White probably would have sat there waiting for a chipmunk to bring her food and water. “Oh, look! An old peddler woman is scaling the tower with a mug of bubbling black liquid for me. How convenient!”

Snow White is the worst princess.  Here’s how that one plays out.  Dwarfs: “Since the Queen is trying to kill you, don’t let anybody in.”  Snow White: “Ok, I’ll just take the apple from the wicked looking peddler woman through the window.”  We have a more complete version of the fairy tale that outlines the myriad ways the Queen tries to kill Snow White. Poisoned comb, suffocation by dress laces, and finally the apple- Snow White falls for it every time.   “Oh hello, I know I saw you yesterday but I’m sure you won’t try to kill me today.”

Sleeping Beauty is an idiot.  But so are the 3 Good Fairies.  Sixteen years they spend protecting this girl and they don’t even think to make her birthday the NEXT day? She’d never have known the difference.  Or at the very least take her back after the sun has set, for crying out loud.  Once back at the castle, Aurora, who obviously knows the whole deal now, instantly follows the first shiny light she sees.  I’ve heard others defend her.  “She was under a spell!”  But if that’s true then why does she pull her hand back from the spindle when she hears Merryweather yell, “Don’t touch anything!” Explain that one.

Ariel and Jasmine aren’t bad.  We don’t have their movies yet, so I haven’t had a chance to dissect them.  And that’s the real kicker here.

Why dissect them at all, you ask?  Because I never really quit my job.

In my B.C. life, (Before Children) I was a Senior Account Executive in sales and marketing.  Before that, I worked at physician’s offices and hospitals all through college and even summers during high school.  Attention to detail was crucial to success in those careers.  Mountains of details!  Contract details, client details, project details, patient details, insurance details.  My mental red pen and I have always been close friends.

When our first child graced our lives in 2007, I was blessed to be able to work from home.  But when the twins came last year there was just no way.  3 under 2?  I don’t think so.  And I love being a mom so I happily left my job.  But I guess I didn’t really quit.  Our daily routine around here includes a “witching hour.”  You know that time of peak fussiness from just before dinner till bedtime?  To decrease the frustration on all of us I often pop a kid video in the computer while I make dinner and feed the twins.  I never expected these frequent background movies to become the target for my editing pen and apparently the outlet my career brain needed.

A few weeks ago I realized I was reporting these observations and discrepancies to my husband along with the cute tidbits of our day.  Like how sweet it was when our B-Bugs tried climbing the stairs and how odd it is that the BNL Global CEO in WALL*E is a real person, instead of animated.  (I like the actor a lot, but why use an actor at all when the rest of the movie is so wonderfully animated?) I would deliver these obviously deep insights with all the bravado of a presentation before an executive management team. Passionately annoyed by them.  And my adorable husband would join the conversation without a hint of sarcasm.

That day when it hit me what I was doing, I had a good laugh at myself.  It was all I could do.  Well, that and start planning how to spin many years of “in depth and concise fairy tale analysis” into work experience for when I reenter the career world.  I’m certain there’s a hiring director out there who is just as puzzled as I am as to why Tinker Bell and the fairies have wings when they can’t fly without pixie dust anyway. Tricky. Very tricky!

What about you? Whether you’re post-career, or in the midst of your working life…

How do you “quit” being an employee once you leave work?

In addition to being a “retired” career woman, Jesslyn is also a wife, mother, and enthusiastic student of style. You can find her over at her blog, Image Interpreters.

By Megan

The Economy…

Budget Cuts…

Tighten Up Our Belts…

Reduce Expenses…

I’ve heard these phrases so many times over the last two weeks, I’m going to choke on them.

As is the case with so many school systems, ours has hit a financial crunch. Faced with cutting over $4 million in the immediate future, a list of proposed changes was released. On a Friday. There was going to be a Community Meeting held the following Wednesday, where we would be allowed to voice concerns, ask questions, and get a few answers.

That Community Meeting? It was being scheduled for the day AFTER the school board was to vote on the proposed cuts.

THAT idea went over like a fart in church. After much uproar, the voting was postponed, additional opportunities to meet were scheduled, and some snow fell.

And our fears, as parents, as students, as educators, were realized.

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Next year, unless something substantial changes, there will not be Media Specialists in our elementary school libraries. Of all of the cuts that were proposed, THIS one was, in my mind, the most painful.

(For those of us who are.. older, these are librarians. However, in this modern age, there’s so much more to that role than just wandering among the stacks of books. So, the official title now is Media Specialist. Just to clarify. My school system has just cut elementary school librarians. Middle school, as well.)

Young children, as they are learning to read, are blessed by qualified Media Specialists. Guided class time in the Library/Media Center allows them to explore, learn, touch and absorb the love of literature. As they get older, and more and more of the funding is a function of test scores, reading and retention are vital. I could go on and on (and on) extolling the virtues and importance of having a Media Center Specialist in every school.

I fear for the literacy of our children. I fear that they will not develop the love of reading and writing without that guiding hand. The Dewey Decimal System will be lost, devoured by Google, Bing and Yahoo. Late nights with flashlights, hiding under the covers reading after lights out, replaced by Facebooking on an iPhone. The soft sounds of pages turning will be muffled by the chirp of the next text message.

I will forever be grateful to my childhood librarian. Mrs. O. I hope that, as a parent, I will be able to continue to build the love of reading up in my own kids. As a library volunteer, I hope that I can, in some small way, provide some of that for other kids in our school. But most importantly, I hope that we can find other places to make financial cuts. That we can decide that our kids’ educations are worth far more than what we’re giving them.

In the end, there are no “good” cuts when we look at the financial pictures surrounding the education of our children. There are sensible cuts, there are consolidations, and even concessions to be made. There is fiscal responsibility. But I cannot feel that slicing open the artery that feeds the literacy of our children displays any level of responsibility at all.

Megan shares snippets of her life and random, well caffeinated thoughts as a working mom of three on her blog, All A Bunch of Momsense. Family, food, and fun at your fingertips!