There Are Ups and Downs

by L. Nguyen


" Hey, guess what? I got the job!" he said.

" That's awesome! When do you start?"

" School starts next week."

" Wow, talk about getting lucky!"

" I know, the only thing that sucks is that I don't have time to prepare my lessons."

My boyfriend is a first year teacher at Andrew Hill High School in San Jose. He graduated from San Jose State University in June 2008 with a degree in social science. As soon as he graduated, he started applying to multiple schools for a job. A couple of months had gone by and he didn't get any responses. He just thought because of the way the economy was going it was going to be a while before he finds a job, if he even finds one. He had just come back from a vacation to Portugal, he was there from the end of July to mid August, when he got a message telling him that he had an interview if he was still interested. The message was almost a week old before he got to it. Thinking that he had missed the opportunity, he frantically gave them a call back right away hoping that they didn't find someone else for the job. To his surprise, he got an interview with the principal right away and got hired a week before school started. That was a year ago. Now, California is cutting costs from education because of the budget crisis.

" I might get a pink slip," my boyfriend tells me one day.

" What? How do you know?"

" The school got a notice for teachers to look out for pink slips in the mail. If you get one, most likely you'll get laid off."

" I'm sorry, that sucks. Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones and you won't get a pink slip!"

" I hope so, but I doubt I'm that lucky. I'll probably end up getting one."

" You can't be sure until you actually get one."

" I know, but one of the other teachers that's been here for a while said that he got a pink slip his second year teaching. So it doesn't look good for me."

" Well, all we can do is just hope for the best right?"

" Right."

At the same time, I was looking for a new job because the one that I had didn't pay too well. I worked in the front desk at Dave and Buster's restaurant. I had been working there for quite a few years and needed something better. I was also going to design school in San Francisco and taking out student loans. Buying books and art supplies were getting a little too expensive. With the way that the economy was going, my hours were being cut and I couldn't afford to stay in school. It got to be too much of a hardship for me to try to pick up more hours and keep my grades up at the same time. After I decided to leave, I focused on finding a new job. It was actually perfect timing because my sister's company,which is a bio-technology company, was looking for a new receptionist to fill in temporarily for three months. Even though it was only temporary, I jumped at the chance. As soon as I got settled in with the new job, I decided to go back to school. Since I had attended De Anza before leaving for design school, I decided to go back.

Making the choice to go back to a community college after attending an expensive art school was an obvious one. It gave me a sense of relief to know that I was going to be getting a good education without paying such a high tuition. At this point I thought that the economy might of [have] been getting better. At the end of the three months, they only offered me a part time position. I did not fully realize how bad the economy was going until I only got part time at my new job. I went from full time for three months to half time just a couple months ago. When I did not get the full time position, that's when I knew that things were far from being back to normal. On the other hand, I have to say that I'm lucky to still have a job while others are struggling to find one.

My sister is waiting to get in the Nursing program here at De Anza. So when I found out that teachers and classes were going to be cut, I had to tell her.

" Hey,guess what? My teacher just told me that they're going to be cutting teachers and classes," I told her.

" What? Really?"

" Yeah, I think my teacher said they're going to cut like 60 teachers or so."
" Did he say what classes they're going to cut?"

" No, he wasn't really specific about it. He just said cutting classes will make it that much harder for students to transfer to state or a university because they have to wait until the classes they need are offered again."

" I really hope they don't decide to cut any nursing classes. I don't want to have to wait longer."

My sister has been waiting to get in the program for a little over two years now. She knew that the budget crisis was going to affect education, but it didn't hit her until she heard about something that would directly affect her own education.

I was actually feeling a lot happier when I thought things were getting better and that things were going back to being somewhat normal. I felt relieved when I heard people saying that the economy was on its way back up. I thought, yeah, this is good. If it is getting better like people are saying, then it should get better for everyone. As time would tell, things did not get any better. I try not to think about how the economy has affected me and the people around me, but it's hard to do so when I get opportunities to do so. I get this overwhelming feeling of sadness and stress. I often ask myself, will it get better and when wil it happen? I can ask myself these questions until I'm blue in the face, but I won't know for certain until we get to that point. So until then, I just have to wait and see what happens.