No Snow Day!

Usually, I would be among those praying for a snow day. Strangely, I am now among those people who protest the necessity of a day off due to extremely cold weather and expect the school to open unless the roads are extremely dangerous. There is a reason for this abrupt change of attitude.

As you may remember from my recent posts, I decided to focus on tutoring at one of my workplaces this semester. So far, that's been a decent choice. My income is not going to change too much. I'm working basically the equivalent of what I did last semester, so I'm not in worse shape. I didn't receive as many hours tutoring as I had hoped, but there are only so many hours to go around for the many tutors working for these writing centers, so I'm content with what I received. I only have one class at my other school to prepare for, so my off hours are almost always actually "off"! However, holidays and school cancellations affect me much differently than they would if I were teaching. When I teach, and school is cancelled, my life is not impacted significantly. I still receive my usual pay for those hours because the school closed through no fault of mine (...or was it?...). If, however, I am tutoring, that time is not covered during a school closing. If I don't work those hours for whatever reason, I'm not paid for them. This fact has altered my attitude about school closing for one of the colleges I work for.

Today, this school closed until 11:00, a delayed opening. I was a little annoyed by that because I should start tutoring at 9:00, and this steals two hours of work (and pay) from me. I'm not happy about that, but I can deal. I wasn't as upset about that as I was about the prospect of school closing completely today. I work at the writing center about 20 hours per week; 6.5 of those hours are on Tuesdays. As you can see, that is a significant portion of my work week (and income). "Snow" Day now means "No Pay" to me, and I can't handle that. Fortunately, this school was one of the few in the area that didn't completely close for the day, which utterly surprised me, so I only lost two hours for the day.

Now, if my other school delayed or cancelled classes tomorrow, I wouldn't be upset. Apparently, my change in attitude is relative.

I hate how mercenary I seem in this post, but this is my blog and my perspective, so I guess it's better that I'm relatively honest about such things. I write this as much for myself as for those I know are reading (and the public of the internet), and I try not to lie to myself. I have been more concerned about money in the past year than ever before. The past day and the resulting concerns have further reinforced to me the necessity of seeking a new job this year. I still don't know what I'll hope to find, but I do know that security and stability are going to be two key factors in what I do in the future.