Job Interview II

Ladies and Gents, Amy Hu has just been contacted for another job interview, and she is quite excited.

The position is a tutoring job for an after-school program under Team Prime Time, “a non-profit organization that offers academic intervention and enrichment opportunities for at-risk and high-risk youth in Los Angeles.” I’d be working as a Media Arts Teacher, part of their Art Academy, and would be teaching one of their “choice” classes they can go to after an hour of homework help.

My passions of social justice and the media arts are intersecting, as this would be an opportunity to take part in building up at-risk communities as well as show the youth how to express themselves through the media arts. I actually have always wanted to teach, and planned on doing so later in life. The problem had always been finding the subject to pass on knowledge with. But I hope that with my experience, I can provide these middle school students what they’re looking for in videography, photography, graphic design, etc.

I’d be working at the Ralph Waldo Emerson Middle School off of Santa Monica Blvd, and that is only a 10-15 minute commute from where I live. I really do hope I get this job, and it would definitely give me something to look forward to.

This past Sunday, my pastor, John Teter, spoke on the passage from Mark 4:24-25, and it convicted me in my job search:

24Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; and to you who hear, more will be given. 25For whoever has, to him more will be given; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

I realized that if I could sacrifice more to God during this time, maybe I would receive more opportunities. What I mean by this is that I decided to fast from coffee until I actually found a job. Now this all may seem silly, but I absolutely addicted to the substance. Yes, I’m one of those junkies who has about 3-4 cups a day, which is not insane, but pretty darn bad. You know you are one when you still have one at 10pm, and it’s not decaf. As I decided to give up this pleasure and endured piercing headaches and jonesin’ like a mad man, I soon found myself somewhat “cheating” at Iso Cafe with a Grande Duet (milk tea + espresso) and realized though it is not pure coffee, it is just as gratifying. And on that day, I found myself frustrated with almost no job opportunities that worked for me after three hours. And as I sat there feeling a bit hopeless and flirting with utter annoyance, it hit me. I was trusting on my own abilities, and was fooling myself with this alternate gratification.

Discipline is something that I am striving for and extremely lack. And in even in something as simple as fasting from a stewed bean product I think I need, I want to deeply understand that I do it because I want to see God’s power come through. I am a person developing that obedience in and to Him again, and am realizing that my own desires and needs have taken the best of me during this season. I have been numb to what the Holy Spirit desires of me, and forget that those things are never guaranteed to be easy paths, but are ultimately good. I can affirm myself that I do not know such truths because someone has told me it is so or because it is written, but it is from my own experience which I refuse to doubt or brush off.

And so in this whole job hunt, I will continue to give and give because I trust that I will ultimately gain in the end, however it may look like. I hope to remove myself from depending on getting this media arts teacher/tutoring job and holding on too tightly to it, no matter how perfect or right it seems. And though I sounded like a nervous weirdo on the phone, I will trust that if this is the job for me, even that can be redeemed.

So friends and random blog readers, I ask that if you are able and want to, to say a quick prayer for me. My interview is on Thursday at 2pm, and I hope I knock ’em dead. And if I don’t end up getting the job, I hold up my blackberry iced tea from Iso Cafe and say cheers to trying, trusting, persisting, and non-coffee drinking.

This is Amy Hu signing off for October 12th, 2009.