My noble scribe

Congratulations to Taylor on his new job: Emergency Department Physician Scribe! After only three 24-hour rotations on his new shift at EMT, Inc., he was offered the new job and he took it. Now instead of taking senior citizens to dialysis and making emergency runs out of nursing homes, he'll be following ER doctors around and basically writing down everything they say and do. It should be much more interesting, with a much more diverse caseload. And this move couldn't come at a better time. With me unemployed, his new salary will be the equivalent of his old EMT paycheck and my AmeriCorps stipend combined. There's also the potential for health insurance, for growth, and for just overall life improvement!

So how did this come about? Well, I have been job-searching 24/7 for the past, oh, two months. As I searched for "administrative assistant" positions, I came across this scribe position, probably because of its assistant nature. I looked it over, but saw that the company preferred to hire EMTs and paramedics for these positions because of their medical background. Fortunately, I happen to know an EMT so I passed it on to Taylor on a lark. I knew he already had a job and shift that he liked, but I noticed the pay was higher and thought he might like to see other career opportunities that EMTs can take besides working for lousy ambulance companies that suspend yearly $.05 raises because of "budget concerns." So he applied. And a few days later, he was taking a typing test, doing a phone interview, and filling out tons of paperwork. He was hired just like that.

As happy as I am for Taylor, a small part of me is saying, "Are you kidding me?" I'm the unemployed one! I'm the one with Career Builder as a shortcut on my web browser! I'm the one who needs a job!

But the truth is Taylor was, and still is, more employable than I am. You see, Taylor decided to leave college at the end of his junior year. Just walked away. He said that he never really liked college, didn't like his major (English...yeah, talk about unemployable), and he didn't want to get further and further into debt over something he just wasn't that into. That isn't to say Taylor doesn't recognize the value of a four-year degree, or that he never wants to go back to school. But Taylor did want some time to figure out what he really loved--and that turned out to be the medical field. He enrolled in an EMT program at Butler Tech and within months of leaving Miami, he had state licensure and national registry as an Emergency Medical Technician. And most importantly, he had a set of skills that made him highly employable. I'm not saying that he is rolling in the dough or that this is the career he'll retire from, but for now he is gainfully employed in a job he loves. And he is happy. How many recent college grads do you know who can say that? How many people do you know who can say that?

I hope to be able to say that soon. After one week of unemployment (minus the unemployment check), I am feeling restless. I don't like sitting idle. And I don't like not contributing--both to society and to my household. We have a mortgage to pay, kitties to support. I need to give my share.

In the meantime, thank goodness for my patient, and recently promoted husband. It certainly is nice to have someone to lean on in times of stress and instability.