Finally came to a decision on grad schools, after talking to my parents. Enough waffling. Damn the torpedoes, UCLA ahead!

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Now, to find a really nice summer job. I went with Vikki and Jon today to check out one program, which is paying $50/hour to bring remedial kids up to snuff on the CA standards exams in math. I did not, however, expect to be teaching the kids the first day with little to no preparation!!

An hour after we're there, I'm standing in front of 15 kids, and trying to keep from losing control of the group to this one little girl with severe attitude problems. Thank god she left early. Apparently, she's very bright, but she has some real issues with authority. The rest are quite nice, and I also ended up with the high end 'smart' group. They were picking up concepts fairly easily, just needed a few reminders here and there. The project coordinator showed up a couple of times to monitor progress (more likely to make sure they weren't eating me alive).

Overall, I like the philosophy. They're big on incentives and getting kids enthusiastic about the material. However, the organization is another thing - because there's virtually NONE. I had no idea we'd actually be teaching; I thought we were going to watch one of their teachers doing this kind of thing and possibly helping as classroom aide. Being thrown into this without anything more than 20 minutes looking over the packets we're supposed to teach from is ridiculous, kind of like tossing someone into the ocean and saying, 'Sink or swim, buddy!' On the plus side, after the classes ended, he said he really liked how energetic I was in the classroom (considering the nerves... no wonder). HA!

The pay is extremely good. The location right now: not so good. It's at John Muir Middle School, located past downtown LA off the 110S Slauson exit. The school's predominantly black and hispanic kids, and it's a completely different world from what I grew up with. There are chainlink fences surrounding the school; the classroom desks look old and worn. This is an inner-city school. These teachers are underpaid and understaffed, and it's showing in these kids.

But I have doubts about this company too. They pay in cash (ie, there's no paper trail), they claim to pay great rates (typical tutoring through an agency is 10$/hr)... and they aren't going to pay us until the program's done. That's 4 weeks, 3 sessions a week, 1.5-2 hours per session. That's a lot of time. It just sounds like they're setting us up to not get paid, and that concerns me a lot.

Moral: I wish I could find a job that felt genuine that paid 50$/hour, but I think this is too good to be true. Time to look for another place to work over the summer...