Fully Employed

As of last week I have a full-time job! It turns out that six months is in fact a normal amount of time to spend floundering and hunting, assuming I'm normal. I remember feeling so relieved to have gotten a long-term assignment from the temp agency, and in the end I wasn't even able to work at the property development consultant's office the full three months.

The saying is true: When it rains it pours. I had an interview with Educational Perspectives just over two weeks ago. At the same time, a woman I know at Association House was really interested in hiring me to teach adult literacy. To make a semi-long story short, I decided to take the position with Educational Perspectives.

What is Educational Perspectives? They are a credential evaluator, which means we analyze foreign credentials and assign them an American equivalency. One of the things that interested me about this work is that it involves learning a great deal about foreign educational systems. My job title is Documentation Specialist, which falls just short of being an actual evaluator, though that does have some bearing on my responsibilities. My position is a newly created one, and it is essentially as a bridge between the administrative and evaluative sides of Educational Perspectives. I think my most important function will be looking at all of the applications and credentials that come through the office and determining whether or not we have all of the information necessary to perform the type of evaluation requested. My understanding is that there is certainly the potential of me someday becoming an evaluator, since the amount of business the organization gets has been growing fairly quickly.

Some of the other factors I considered when making the decision to work here are:

1. EP is a small, not-for-profit organization (six people), nationally accredited by NACES.
2. The atmosphere in the office is very relaxed and, in my case, patient and nurturing.
3. EP and credential evaluation is connected to international education, which is how I heard
about it.
4. I will have the opportunity to use some of my Russian and to learn more about the former Soviet
Union, other countries in that region, and just about any country that has ever had a
functioniung educational system.
5. Ken, the president, feels strongly about providing professional development.
6. There is the opportunity to travel to national conferences on international conferences.
7. I have benefits (full health insurance with dental).
8. Three weeks of paid vacation with assorted personal days, etc.
9. The salary is respectable and certainly on the higher side of what I had been willing to work for.