Truth Justice and "the American Way." Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, the man above was typecast as "Superman" and couldn't get another good role in Hollywood after the show stopped filming. Why is this a lesson to be remembered?
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Recently, I decided to contact an old friend who I've stayed away from because of his politics. He was starting to go off the rails when I last was in contact with him, and what he mentioned about his vaccination status implied that he drank some, but not all, of the Kool-Aid that his political tribe is drinking.
But I digress....
This fellow was the person who inspired me to enroll in my Masters program and get a degree in Education. The idea was that by getting a foot in the door, I could get a tenured position in some school. I quickly found out that there were no jobs available for people like me with this certification. Yet, I found the degree to be the greatest investment in myself that I could have made. No, it did not do anything to help me find work. Instead, it helped me find in myself what I could be (or could have been) when properly motivated and mentored.
Although I was able to stay in the computer field for 3 years after getting my degree, my friend has been out of anything related to technology for years. For him, the past 13 years or so have been a series of substitute teaching gigs broken up by some long term (a little less than a school year) teacher replacement positions. This is not the life I wanted to lead. But I wonder, could he be overqualified to find work? And, has he been taking too many short term gigs, instead of finding available work in a New York City public school as a starter position?
My acquaintance has 2 certifications - courses in both of his specialty areas are required for students to graduate with a "Regents Degree". But this hasn't gotten him the job he wanted. So I wondered, has he been subbing too long? So, I started to think about an unrelated field - acting. His experience reminded me of people who try to break into acting by starting out as extras. They get an idea of what acting is like by being on a set, putting up with a lot of the headaches of filming a show, and building up a starter set of professional experiences. Yet, one can only be an extra so many times before people stop taking your desire to be professional actor as a serious desire. Could this have happened to him?
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Years ago, I decided to stop fighting to stay in the technology fields, as I had too much to catch up on, and I'd be out of the field way too long. Three years after I left the bank, I gave up on the idea of being a project manager - and this made things easier for me to move forward with my life. I wonder what would have happened if the man pictured at the top of this entry had made plans, as Lyle Waggoner did, to have a career after acting. And I wonder what would have happened if my friend has a plan B to be used if teaching didn't work out....
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