Summer Job Opportunity (Summer)

I delete a lot of SPAM on my work computer. I like to put phishing emails up on the display for the class to see as a PSA. "Look kids! The service desk wants to reset my password! Oh wait,..."

It helps that my email automatically puts an "EXTERNAL" tag on emails that don't come from within the school system. I delete a ton of things without even looking at them. A new podcast? DELETE. A survey for teachers? DELETE.

I almost deleted an email about something called BLAST. The all caps caught my attention. I looked it up and noticed it had a .gov extension. That had to be legit, right? I looked it up and found out it was an educational program with funding from NASA. That sounded cool, so kept looking further.

The email was about a chance for teacher summer employment. There were free three days camps at state universities to try and increase interest in STEM topics. I like to do something each summer, so I talked to Carrie and submitted an application. 

The application was due by 2/1. I heard back early March - I was in! There was a Zoom orientation / meet & great mid March I had to sign up for.

The only problem was the dates I was selected for.

That hit right on the anniversary. I wanted to go, but recognized it was a potential dealbreaker.

Fast forward to taxes seasons: When Carrie and I were typing in our info, H&R block kept saying we were going to owe around $3k in Federal taxes. We've never owned anywhere near that much. I wasn't worried (we had the liquid funds to pay it off), but that much money moving out disturbed Carrie. I told her I could defray it a chunk by doing BLAST and maybe summer school. We talked about it and agreed I should confirm being a counselor for BLAST and look into summer school. I sent off an email and that was that.

A miracle happened a couple days later. H&R block realized we didn't own thousands of dollars. It changed right before submitting!

It was a huge relief for Carrie. The dates will come back for a little drama later, but that will be then.

I was looking forward to being a counselor. I loved working at a camp in high school. This camp was only 3 days, would feed me, and pay out a grand. University staff would run the learning activities and I would run herd on 10 students. If it was a ton of fun, I hoped that I could send Shane to it when he was older (and that me working there would be his in!).

One alarm bell sounded in my head during orientation. It happened when we were looking at the sample schedule.

I'm a math teacher. I didn't see anything saying "Break." I started adding up the number of hours of supervision in my head and the hourly rate for the work dropped significantly!

Still, it would be an adventure. Three nights wasn't a long enough time to concern me. Shane could visit Nana and Pop and I'd get my summer adventure. I've never worked for NASA before, so I had high hopes it'd be an interesting side gig!