History of Me: Jobs

Growing up, Nana’s rule was “Volunteer, work, or go to Summer School.”

The summers of 8^th and 9^th grade I found myself volunteering at the local library. I got to sit at a desk a couple of hours a week and sign kids up for the Summer Reading Program. In May at the end of 10^th grade, I wore a suit and went around the local mall asking for applications from stores. I would have kick-started my career in retail, but the phone never rang. 

Thankfully, I did get a job that summer. It was a game-changer, too.


I was hired as a Counselor in Training for ACE Computer camps. My job was to teach campers how to program in True Basic, and grew to include organizing nightly video-game tournaments. There was no pay, but I got to spend 8 weeks at Georgetown University with full room and board!

I loved it.

There were parts that were difficult (working all day, sharing a dorm room with a college student and getting exiled to sleep elsewhere when his girlfriend decided to visit for a weekend), but it was a growing experience. I was out of the house and on my own. I had just received my driver’s license in May so I got to drive myself into DC, too. I made friends, worked hard, and didn’t fall down the stairs that were in the exorcist movie. One night we all played football in the mud and pouring rain. Another weekend, one of the older counselors acted like my older sister so we could all go out to the movies.

The next summer I was promoted to a Junior Teacher at American University (also in DC). The pay was $200 a week plus room and board. I met some great friends there (Andrew, Max, Ben, Coleen…) and moved up to teaching C++ in addition to organizing tournaments, teaching Basic, HTML, and whatever ‘seminars’ I could come up with. My sisters and Matt both started attending camp, too! I spent my summer’s wages on my first personal computer (a 400 mhz Gateway).

My last summer in high school, I worked a final tour at American University. I was 18, making $300 a week, and had a dorm room to myself. By this point, Nana and Pop were convinced my future was in computers.

I thought so, as well. I was farmed out to fix computers for family friends and spent a lot of my spare time in front of a computer screen or digging around in a case. I started George Mason University’s Computer Science program that Fall.

The next summer I skipped work and took three college courses: Biology 1 and 2, and Discrete Mathematics (and met Travis, but that’s another story).

Over the next couple of years I started to pick up odd jobs while in school. My friend, John, got me a job at a local library as a page, I volunteered to work the sound board at church once a month or so the next five years, and I delivered food to the homeless on some Fridays for a church aid program.

Then came the fateful semester where I decided I hated Computer Science. It was supposed to be my final semester. I loaded up on 18 credits worth of top-level classes and promptly failed all but one (and that was a D). AI, Operating Systems, and Numerical Analysis were all so much work and fun that I fell behind, gave up, and then go the rude wake-up call “Yes, Mike, you can and DID fail.” Like a champ. It was hard to get out of bed those days.

Pop started charging me rent and I had to pay up front to go back to school part time. I doubled my hours at the library and shoved my head in the school newspaper’s wanted section. I earned/won a chunk of cash in economic experiments, got some cash for participating in some sort of eye experiment, and eventually picked up a night security job where I taught myself to whistle (it gets boring being in a building alone all night).

Computer Science was not for me. Of that, I was convinced. I could do it, I was good at it, but I didn’t want to live it and I didn’t enjoy/love it on the same level as many of my classmates. I was burned out, but I was so close to getting the degree it didn’t make sense not to finish it. Math related degrees could easily transition into many types of careers then.

I worked the hodge-podge of opportunities and took classes part time until I figured out my next step.

That step came in the form of another part-time job opportunity: substitute teaching. One of my mom’s friends told her subbing was good money, was a flexible schedule, and only required 60 college credits. It certainly paid more per hour than any of my other jobs, so I quit the night job (and the 6 AM commutes home half-asleep) and put in my resume.

Subbing clicked. It lead to a pair of full-time job offers as an Instructional Assistant. I had the choice of working with a Cat B program at a high school or with an alternative program for expelled students. I picked the ALC, and the next summer I was applying for teaching positions. At the 11^th hour it came down to teaching middle school math, high school computer science, or to continue working with my expelled students but as a full special education teacher.

By that point, I’d come full circle. I hated, HATED school as a student. Nana and Pop will tell you I was an unmotivated student. Yet somehow, I was now a teacher.

Seven and a half years later, here I am.