I started by doing tutoring. After less than one month I was one of the top 5 busiest tutors with the company. Since getting tutorees was the most difficult part of the job, getting so many so quickly was quite an accomplishment. In addition I got a job with a local school called, Hua Xia . It is a supplementary Saturday school for ridiculously high achieving kids. I teach 5th grade, 7th grade and SAT prep students. Their original teacher dropped out, and so I was hired on Thursday. I had to develop three entire curriculum and syllabi by Saturday. It was a great adventure. Now I get to teach about setting, and characterization, and grammar diagrams every week. And I couldn't be having more fun.
It's only part time, but combined with the tutoring it was plenty to keep our heads above water. But, and this is the crucial but, I've also been doing a randomly large amount of free work for the More Good Foundation. They run and help support unofficial LDS websites. They help it so that when someone Googles information about Mormons they get accurate information. Gabrielle got a job working with them some time ago, and as I was looking for a full time job, I often talked to her about what she was doing. So I wrote a YouTube sitcom for them, that they are currently looking at getting produced. This was a great chance to meet a lot of people in the company. I've also impressed them with some technical help I did for Gabrielle's presentations. Well they were looking at getting an intern staff writer, so Gabrielle gave me the heads up. I had a great interview, and we were working on getting the internship set up, and they lost one of their regular writers. So now it's turned into the full fledged job of my dreams, and has effectively ended my current job search. Thank you so much to everyone who has helped me as we've looked and who have sent great leads my way. I couldn't have done it without you. I'll be leading a team of writers that create buzzfeed style lists that teach about the church. Do I feel a little silly writing for a group with a name like "More Good" yeah I do, but at least this wording makes it clear that Good is acting as a noun, so it is grammatically correct.
I've also gotten involved in the local writers group, and have started their first anthology. I'm collecting stories from the writers, and then I'll put it all together using all my mad English major skills. When it's done we're going to sell it print on demand for cost off of Amazon. It's a great project I'm excited to be heading up.
Susan's been no slouch herself. The reason we moved down here was for her to start a Family Therapy program at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. She's already a star of the department. She joined the Marriage and Family Therapy student association. We enjoyed attending their opening social a couple weeks ago, where Susan and I totally rocked out on a fun version of speed charades. They also elected/said hey you do this/appointed Susan as their student government rep. So she gets to go to weekly meetings and vote on important issues like whether or not to fund the Vietnamese club party (she voted aye.) The work for her program has also started to swing in. She wrote her first paper this week. I don't know if this is impressive or unimpressive but she wrote her eight page paper in six hours. It helps that she has an in-house proofreader. She also did her first ever practice therapy session. The students in her class roll played. Susan did great and was singled out by the professor afterwards for validating the feelings of a resistant client. I'm happy she's getting to do therapy, she was so geeked out after she did it.
Susan also got a new job. She's working for a place called Learning Rx. She'll work one on one with students like she did before we moved. But rather than working on social skills, she's teaching cognitive skills. She found one of their offices about five minutes away from our house. So for this semester while she hasn't started her therapy practicum ,she thought she had the time and it would be a good way to keep using her skills. She's started training and should start actually working in the next couple of weeks. That guy below is their actual mascot. I know I know, so cool.
So we have been very blessed in our move, lucky to be in Houston and finding good ways to be involved in the community.
