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All right, you were saying "What in hell? After all, you were teaching... what's up with the money problems? Why the need for two full-time jobs?" Fair enough. As I'd written last week, money was starting to get tight in August 2001, and I'd borrowed from a couple payday loan places. Dumb idea. But with school starting up soon the biweekly pay would start rolling in, and with only a few weeks working nights to get the loan sharks paid off I'd be in good shape. As it was, it didn't turn out that way. In mid-September instead of getting a check, what I received was a letter stating that my teaching license was not on file with the school district and that my pay would be suspended until they had it. It took some digging through Madison to find out that my license wasn't sent because the state hadn't received a copy of my grad school courses at UW-Oshkosh. It was my fault entirely... I hadn't sent a letter to UWO to release the transcripts. Letter to Oshkosh. They sent the grades to Madison. Madison sent the license to me. I dropped off the license at the district office. I got paid. Of course, as anyone who'd dealt with state bureaucracy in the past knows, this process took some time. I spent seven weeks teaching without being paid. The two payday loans turned into four, and the interest amounted to almost $300 every paycheck. (My pay from the school after taxes, insurance, child support, and union dues, netted about $700. Rent, food, gas, and electricity were also good things to purchase at the time.) It wasn't until the following school year I learned of another teacher who'd not had her license in the first year. For some reason, her pay wasn't docked at all. At the risk of seeming paranoid, someone behind the scenes had it in for me. |