Losing your job is a good opportunity to stop and reassess, if nothing else.
When the summer was winding down, I’d started to think about how I needed a new project. A new direction, even. Sessional instruction at SFU was (barely) paying the bills, and the stability was welcome in the uncertainty of the pandemic, but you can only tread water for so long. Reapplying for my own job every term was a drag that made long-term planning difficult, and the path from contract-based, part-time-ish teaching to full faculty was unclear at best.
So in that sense, not getting rehired for the fall was an effective way to turn my idle “I should do something” feelings into immediate “I need to get to work right now” drive. Silver linings.
I’d already bought this website, thinking it was a good start to a brand-building exercise I never really got around to on my way to graduating. I’ve since finished it (well, somewhat), gotten my social media ducks in a row on Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub, polished my resume, and have just generally done everything I can to make myself seem coherent and presentable again.
The truth is, though, this exercise has revealed just how under-prepared I am for a competitive job market in the notoriously grueling tech sector. My work samples are an un-edited grab bag of code produced during my PhD. My teaching materials are difficult to showcase in a way that stands out among many other qualified instructors also fighting for inconsistent work and the few permanent positions. My technical interview skills are, generously, “rusty”.
So now that I’ve finished my first round of warm-ups and dust-offs, my new plan is to commit to a rigorous schedule of self-improvement, to be documented in a semi-diary fashion on this very website.
“Who is that for?” you may rightly be asking. Going by this stream-of-conscience blog post, already a retro medium for self-expression, these are not going to be of much public interest. These posts are for me, a way to keep myself at least a little honest, by recording my thoughts on the process and tracking my progress.
Writing these thoughts down on paper, or even in a private word document, just wouldn’t have the same effect – something, something, the panopticon. This post’s already way too long to delve into my psychology any further. Take my word on this one.
So with all that out of the way, I’ve decided to start small. I’ve got myself a LeetCode account and I’ll be running myself through their study plans and daily problems, the same way I might get back in the gym after a long absence (when gyms were a thing you could go to). More on that next time.
Right, that’s enough meandering for now. I don’t know if I should thank you for reading this, but I suppose I’ll thank you for stopping by to check up on me. Until next time, then.
Dr. Jack Thomas 