Brighter Flames Arrayed

Lately I’ve been reading some blog posts about having a lifestyle and budget suitable for traveling. I don’t really see much of the advice as applicable because when I look at my job and my life situation I realize that, wow, my entire life is perfect for someone who wants to travel aboard for a few weeks or even over a month every so often. But I don’t like to travel overseas (something that I will address maybe later) so I’m pretty much completely wasting this opportunity. But you, you can learn from this. So here is my first ever travel-related blog post on why working at an independent boarding school could be a really good idea if you are a (or want to be a) teacher and a traveler.

If you’re familiar with boarding schools (and the secondary level, mostly) in the US you would know that our school vacations are long. Usually there are at least two to three weeks for Christmas/New Years and some two or even three week breaks in addition to the longer-than-public-school summer breaks. The main reason why boarding schools have fewer, longer breaks is logistical: every time students leave school is a logistical (and sometimes financial) nightmare for the school and the families. This is especially true for international students, of which we have many. While it’s the vacations aren’t during flexible times it’s nice to be able to take two or more weeks off at a time so if you do spend a week or two traveling you still have some time to take care of other things.

The independent school hiring season occurs between January and April, so if you want to take a long period of time (6 to 8 months) off to travel but stay in the industry it is in fact possible to leave a job in June and come back to the US in January or so to apply for new jobs and attend interviews. One of my colleagues did that at least twice, though the economy was better when she did this so she got a new job every time pretty easily. With the focus on globalization and diversity experience traveling aboard also looks pretty good on a resume or during an interview.

Then there’s the possibility of free travel in exchange of taking some students with you. Not every school do this but the place I work at offer trips (and financial aid for those trips) during Spring Break to various places around the world. Some of my colleagues are spending two weeks with about a dozen students in Peru right now studying ancient ruins and native wildlife. In past years my colleagues have done trips biking across Holland and building schools in Africa. Traveling with a half-dozen teenagers isn’t exactly easy but it is an all-expense-paid travel experience where you get to share your passions with eager minds.

Let’s leave the big picture and go back to my life. Currently, I’m not paying rent since I am required to live in a dormitory (and work some nights supervising it) as part of my job. I have the same housing available to me during breaks and the summer so I effectively have storage for all my stuff that’s paid for if I travel. (Another way of looking at it is that I’m not losing cash if I don’t live in my apartment.) This is a major advantage of working at a boarding school as opposed to a day school or a public school. If I choose to I can eat all of my meals at the campus dining hall and completely eliminate my grocery bills. Essentially it is possible for me to live with zero expenses most of the time—our dining hall does close, for example, during most breaks.

Being in Vermont also helps in that it costs very little to maintain my car. Insurance rates here are wonderfully low (I keep seeing ads saying “save $200 on your auto insurance” online and I keep thinking “how is that possible since I don’t even pay $200 for my auto insurance!”) and, if you are smarter than I am, you can find a good mechanic that charges a fair rate. This doesn’t quite apply to everyone and, unfortunately, most boarding schools are at places where you do want a car. Parking is definitely not a problem though if you live on campus and park there, though I tend to leave my car at my parents’ (who live closer to a major airport anyway) when I do go away for a while.

Basically, I am living a life where I can save a lot of money if I wanted to (enough to go around the world every year, according to this blog) and have long stretches of time to spend that money traveling should I choose to do that. I don’t, but many of my colleagues (who, unlike me, are not single and do have pets) do and they are spending their spring breaks in Europe, Cancun, Mexico and other places that I have no desire to go to. There isn’t much flexibility in vacation days when you are teaching (or working in a non-teaching position that has similar vacation time), but the upside is that there is both financial stability and large amounts of time and resources available for traveling that a “normal” job doesn’t allow.

Wing :: Mar.10.2010 :: Posts :: No Comments »

After a flurry of meetings and grading and writing, summer finally started last week. What better way to start the summer than with the 30th annual sea music festival at Mystic Seaport? Thanks to my connections through a cod fishing expert I even got a wonderful tour of the Amistad; yes, that one, the one they made the movie about. To top that off I finally heard a version of Captain Ward clear enough that I can actually make out what went on in the song. Mystic Seaport is weird. It’s some chimera of a village assembled by taking parts of other New England villages together. So I got to hear a dirty song about a girl who brought more sailors to their graves than all the pirates and privateers in the world by having great sex with them.

This church was home to many dirty sailing songs that day.

The last week has been spent organizing and packing for a two-month trip out west. I’m flying out tomorrow to attend a NSF-funded institute for in-service teachers at the University of Washington tomorrow, followed by MathFest in August. I do have some exciting things on the back burner here to update the blog with, but they will have to wait a little bit longer.

Wing :: Jun.21.2009 :: Posts :: No Comments »

Spent the last three weeks sick or traveling and not updating. Here’s what I wrote today but did not post until I got to Albany, the airport of which has free Wifi.

In Her Majesty’s Service. The TSA agent in Seattle informed me that he liked Hong Kong better when it was a colony of the Crown. I agreed with him partially because I’m sure that a mutual hatred of Red China would assure me speedy passage into the inner sanctum of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The Importance of Urinating Correctly. Somehow it seems that men just can’t pee correctly in airports. So, perhaps you’re in a hurry and need to unload quickly; that is what urinals are for. Many folks without penises invest metric tons of money, time and effort in order to use urinals. You were born with the right biological adaptations for urinal use; take advantage of it. As I say to some of my teenage students, the penis has many functions, of which urination is the simplest; something like a level 1 function, if you will. If you can’t even master the simplest of penis functionality maybe it’s best we don’t let you use the more advanced ones.

We’ll Sell Them To You Later. Airlines don’t offer anything free anymore. No free bag checking, no free not-very comfy blankets, no free food, no free booze. However they take cash and credit for all those things. They even sell extra leg room and the “privilege” of boarding three minutes before everyone else. Maybe they’ll start selling horse armor next. There is still one free drink; sometimes maybe two. I actually quite like this for short flights because I’d rather stuff myself with cheap breakfast or decent food from the terminal food court before and between flights. The airlines think the exact same thing as well because they pack only about one meal per twenty people.

Worse Than North Dakota. The hotel I stayed at in Vancouver (downtown Howard Johnson) was possibly the worst hotel I’ve even been in. This includes all the sleazy motels visited when visiting long distance girlfriends while I was a poor undergrad and all the random cheap motels I’ve been to last year while driving across the country. Not only were residues of previous guests on the pillows, I was able to hear the music from the nightclub attached to the first floor lobby until 1AM—4AM according to my body. Keep in mind that I have hearing problems and the room was on the sixth floor. Somehow the Dakota hotel with the only casino and bar in the county (and the damn thing was open until 3AM) less than 50 meters from my room was quieter.

Cellos Are TSA Regulated. I got two seats to myself on a flight because—according to her traveling companions seated behind me she is stuck in Albany with two cellos. Details were scarce, but I will now think twice before traveling with two cellos.

Classism is Well and Alive. I have just been upgraded to Economy Plus class because the flight is full. Back in the early 2000s there were first, business and economy classes. Now there seems to be first class, business class, business preferred class, premier class, envoy class, economy class, economy plus class, economy with extra legroom class, and whatever else airlines have thought of. I propose that we instate some “classic” classes like honors class (the quiet, well-behaved folks who get to be in the middle of the plane), the working class (free fare for riding in the last row and fetching people soda), the middle class (2.2 children fly for free!), the featherweight class (food is not even mentioned and extra carry-ons allowed), the noble class (if the plane gets too heavy the others can vote to have their heads cut off) and the have-nots (no entertainment, no blackberries, no cell phones, nothing except the SkyMall catalogue, and they can’t buy anything from it, not that anyone with a sensible economic sense would).

Not That Northwest Passage. Though I was going Northwest my iPod refused to play Northwest Passage for me because I was going to the American Northwest and not the Canadian/Metaphorical Northwest that Stan Rogers imagined.

Wing :: Mar.27.2009 :: Posts :: 2 Comments »