I've missed a day or two posting recently.
Last Sunday was my 11th annual Pride Parade Party here in Denver. The parade leaves Cheesman Park and passes by in front of my house. I might as well have a party. Preparation takes a great deal of time and effort. This year I had more help than usual, but I was still busy. It's always difficult to know exactly how many guests I have each year, but last year and this the consensus is that the number who were here was over 50.
Friday afternoon, I got a rejection letter for a history teaching job that I applied for a few weeks ago. These days with so many people out of work and so many looking for jobs, especially in teaching, if you don't match their requirements exactly, you are eliminated immediately, no matter how good you might be or how much experience you have.
My Master's Degree is in the Humanities. This job mandated that an applicant have a Master's degree in history (my B.A. degree is history). Now, most of the courses I took were either English or history. And even a few of the English courses had a strong history basis. I made that clear in my cover letter, but they could easily eliminate me for that technicality.
In addition, though, from 1980-1991, I taught history, English, humanities, literature, and communications part time for Pikes Peak Community College. So I have had a broad background teaching. I even got a secondary teaching certification in English during 1988-9.
Not only have I written the Rainbow Arc of Fire series of novels in the past 16 years, I have also continued to read history books and biographies. Moreover, I was interviewed and mentioned in the late Randy Shilts's groundbreaking historical study: Conduct Unbecoming: Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military because of my experience at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
But beside the fact that my degree is not exactly what they asked for, a easy justification for rejecting my application early in the process, I also never attempt to hide the fact that I am gay. In addition, when a committee reads an application fully, it's obvious that, given when I graduated from junior college, I am likely around 60 years old. I also emphasize the fact that I was in the military during the Vietnam War era. Since my name is Sanchez, though my mother's side of the family was Irish, I also indicate that I am Hispanic (as well as white) because my grandfather emigrated from Spain in 1919. (My father's mother's family was German.)
So, while most of those experiences and qualities might make me an ideal candidate to teach history at a community college, they can just as equally be seen negatively:
I am too old. My teaching experience was too long ago. I am gay. I was in the military. Something must have happened at the Academy because I was there for one year only.
You'd be surprised at the prejudices even academics carry with them. And in a process such as the one I went through to apply, all they have to do is say, as they did, "At this time, we are pursuing other candidates that we feel are a better fit with the education, experience and skill set outlined in the job announcement."
I will never know if I was rejected because of my age, my military background, my being gay, or anything else that could be seen as blatant discrimination if the selection process were fully transparent.
These days, given the tight job market, any company or organization looking to hire must ensure that they cannot be sued by those whom they reject, for whatever the reason. So, you have to sign wavers indicating that you will not sue regardless of what they discover during the hiring process (they do extensive background checks now, almost equivalent to those I experienced when I joined the Air Force or needed security clearances for being a missile officer, when you are a finalist for a job).
In fairness to the community college where I applied, they likely have the ideal candidate already picked out to hire, though they must pursue this open hiring process, regardless. When I worked for Pikes Peak Community College, and they finally had one English Department job opening late the decade, while I had taught for them for years, they had a woman who taught at the main campus part time. They knew her well and wanted to hire her. They did not know me well because I taught English classes for them at Fort Carson, nearby. They indicated that she had taught a few more English classes than I had, and that was the sole criteria they used to select her over me.
I was not given credit for being a Vietnam Era veteran; they did not know I was gay; they did not count the nine English classes I taught at the Air Force Academy, nor the literature class I taught in 1980 for Chapman College; and I was not hired because I had an Hispanic background and last name. They also did not count any of the humanities, history, or communications classes I taught for Pikes Peak Community College during that same period of time. It might seem to any outsider that the selection process was rigged.
They apparently wanted to hire the woman they knew, and so they identified and focused their hiring criteria to favor her application over mine.
The community college that I recently applied for probably also has one or two (or more) applicants whom they know and from among whom they intend to hire their one new instructor. A unknown outside applicant like myself really has no chance for serious consideration. I don't particularly blame them, but it does rather make a mockery of the "open" and transparent hiring process when it really isn't open nor transparent.
Last year I got the same rejection notice from the same college when I applied for a full time English teaching job. A couple of years ago, I also applied, at the same college, for part time history teaching jobs, just so they would know who I was. In all cases, I was not hired. Regarding the full time English job, I got the same generic rejection notice.
What surprised me most with the English teaching job is that not only have I taught English from 1978-1991, but I have been a technical writer and editor for several companies from 1980 until now, most recently at IBM from 1991. I would dearly have loved to see whom they hired. He or she must have been a phenomenal applicant to have beaten me out with my secondary certification, teaching experience, and professional writing experience of 30 years. That doesn't even take into consideration my being a published writer of ten novels and 100 poems. Not only have I taught for a community college, I attended a junior college. But none of that was enough to even be considered as a finalist for any of these few job openings.
These rejections are, obviously, a major disappointment. When I lived in Colorado Springs, I taught part time classes continuously. But when my full time job as a technical writer and editor ended, and there were no full time teaching jobs available, I had to move to Denver. I never realized that my teaching experience there wouldn't count for much here. My work at IBM during the day, and then later my writing of the Rainbow Arc of Fire novels, took up all my free time. It was difficult to summon the energy to teach in the evenings while working full time during the day at the same time I was also writing and publishing a series of novels.
And, of course, nobody could have foreseen that in several states such as California, thousands of full time teachers were going to be laid off, clogging the job market with educated and experienced people looking for work. I simply have to hope that my full time job at IBM, even with the 20 percent pay cut a year and a half ago, holds up until something else comes along. I am not all that close to retirement right now.
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