EMPLOYED

If you couldn’t tell from my obnoxious entry title, God provided me with the job I oh-so desired with Team Prime Time. I am their newest Media Arts Specialist, and will be traveling to four different schools in LAUSD to shower the beauty of Media Arts to some lucky preteens: Emerson Middle School, Webster Middle School, Palms Middle School, and Westside Leadership Magnet School.

They are in for a treat because I am STOKED.

Now I have been on the job hunt for a very frustrating 3 months now, and I cannot express the amount of joy that I have in getting a job finally. And on top of that, I cannot wrap my mind around how much this job suits me. 3 months is a pretty good amount of time to find a job in this economy, and I am so grateful. Truly this is a testimony to God’s unique love and provision for each of us.

This opportunity to be part of such an amazing organization, Team Prime Time, will truly allow me to grow in some different passions. The experience will open various doors and allow me to explore things from media to teaching to non-profit organizations to issues of at-risk communities.

I work from 3-6pm Monday through Thursday, (start at 2pm on Tuesday) and Friday is left for me to work on lesson planning. This is perfect for ministry in the future, as I am able to use that day for staff meetings and conferences. On top of that, my supervisor asked if I would be up for helping to design fliers and such because of the certain skills I have, and of course I agreed. I love designing and creating and to be able to actually have real projects and be paid for it, that excites me even more.

This actually was my first week on the job, and I was able to shadow each of the sites (except for Palms Middle School) to get a feel for each location, the students, and the other staff and volunteers. It was a good experience indeed, and I’m learning what challenges I’ll be facing and meeting students that I look forward to interacting with. The kids can be quite rowdy and rebellious, and it is easy to lose patience as I can even see it with some of the staff. But I will praying God can fill me with that as I get to know these students and be a part of their lives, even if only on a weekly basis.

Today (Friday) I went into the Team Prime Time office after checking out the computer labs at Emerson to see what media resources were available to the students and for my class. I got speak with my Art Academy Supervisor, Arielle, on a lot more logistics and how the class was to shape up. She showed me all the equipment that was available, with things ranging from a couple of laptops to HP Photosmart cameras to camcorders to the awesome projector I could use for class. I was worried at first in teaching my students anything on more advanced programs from the Adobe Creative Suite. This was due to the fact that besides my sort of “janky” version of CS3 Photoshop on my ancient VAIO laptop, I myself only got to use such amazing software as a student when I worked at ResTV and could access the on-campus computer labs at UCLA. But the Lord indeed provides as they lent me a laptop with the CS3 Suite on it, and though it’s acting a little funky and it’s an older laptop, I feel I am way beyond blessed to be able to receive such an opportunity to use these resources.

I am nervous about this job and hoping that I have the ability to run a media arts class. There were precautions to me that Media Arts needs to be integrated and that it’s crucial to find a way to get kids engaged constantly. Basically, I have to sort of “wow” them with my first class in order to guarantee they keep coming back in order for us to then “wow” our donors who fund us and give us grants. No pressure at all :S

I will trust that whatever happens, I need to work hard and that at the end of the day, it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t do everything spectacularly. My supervisor stated she was a perfectionist, but patient, so I hope I don’t stress her out too much. I’m sort of a perfectionist too with certain things, and I hope they are with the same things as her.

This is Amy Hu signing off for October 23rd, 2009.