First Job After College
That was in a small town about 70 miles away from Bucharest. I was to teach English to both primary grades (2-3), middle (5-6) and high-school (9-10). I went to meet the principal and discuss my schedule. Because I was from the capital, I was not perceived as one of them, serious enough to pursue a career there. And they were quite right. I was very unhappy about this position and the prospects of commuting by train every day approximately 5 hours a day (half there, half back). The train was a slow one that stopped at every little village and it had to be changed with another train half way. As if to make my life more miserable, the principal showed me my schedule and it was terrible. I had 1-2 hours here and there so that I had to stay there all day. One day, I think it was on Saturdays, he had put one hour down for me. I told him that it was a very bad schedule and that it did not seem worthwhile for me to waste 5 hours on the train for 1 hour of teaching. He did not make any amends.
To make things worse, we did not start the lessons right away. The students had to go harvest the grapes. It was again the patriotic “volunteer” work. This time, I had to go as a teacher. Every day, with students in tow, we had to board large trucks and go to the vineyards. It was hard, dirty work and the weather was hot. A few times I felt I got sunstroke and had to lie down. One day, after hard work at the agricultural endeavors, I boarded the train to go back home. I was hot, sweaty and dirty. There were no facilities to wash and change. I fell asleep on the train and when I woke up I overheard some people discussing me. They were pitying me and saying they imagine that it was hard being an agricultural worker. I chuckled to myself. I didn’t tell them that I was a teacher not an agricultural worker.
When classes started, my satisfaction level was still low. I had some success with little ones. With middle grades it was somewhat harder. Highschool kids had no interest whatsoever for English and probably thought it was a waste of time. These were kids raised in a rural area and probably they were more concerned about the state of the fields, farm animals, etc. These students played pranks on me, did not come to classes and pretended they didn’t know they had English at that time, etc.
In the meantime, many of my classmates, even with lower grades, had managed, through connections to find jobs (non-teaching ones) in Bucharest. Some of the colleagues had not even worked at their state assigned jobs for one day. So, I pressed my mother to find some solution. As a pharmacist, she had contacts with many people. Luckily, the same person who had helped me find a job in-between highschool and college, was able to help me again. He found a job for me as a technical translator in a Bucharest construction company. These jobs that were “found” were most of the time just created. They were not really needed but that was the communist society. Everybody had to be employed, even if there was no need for that product or service.
There was a long, hard struggle to obtain release from my teaching post. The principal did not create too many problems because he knew that people from the capital would not stay there. They had to find somebody local. The greatest difficulty was with the Department of Education. My Hungarian teachers had some connections there so they tried to help. But, the Minister of Education (a very fierce communist woman) would not let go. She was granting interviews with people that wanted to be released, like me, but the interviews were not one-on-one, like I would have thought. She called 4-5 people at one time, and before anybody could open their mouth, she said, “NO, It’s Not Possible.” I interrupted her abruptly and told her in no-uncertain terms that I came there to be allowed to speak my point of view not told to shut-up. She was extremely surprised that somebody had dared to oppose her. After talking with me, she suspended all interviews saying she had a bad headache. But I obtained my release and happily started my career as a translator.
I worked at that position until I immigrated to America but that’s another very long story.
