My Career Is…

I graduated from Molloy College and suddenly, even though I was in my 40’s, I was, just like most students, being cut loose in their 20’s. I needed to get a job but faced another problem. Because I had my English degree +20 years of work experience I was now overqualified. Most businesses would grant me the opportunity of an interview but I would never hear back from them. Finally on one of my last interviews I asked the person interviewing me if there was any recommendation; why I was constantly being overlooked. He was wonderful because he shared with me the problem that I was now facing. He told me that many businesses were going to be scared to death of me; not only was I now returning to the business community with an English degree but I also had 20 years’ experience. They really felt that there was no way that they could hire me. I explained to him that no one had ever granted me a follow-up interview and as a result of that they didn’t even know what I would be willing to start with.

Born to Teach

Armed with this new information, since I had been so successful in the writing lab, I began to think about teaching again. I discovered that I had a natural ability to teach.  I could explain something more than once and in different ways because I realize that people learn differently. Some people are visual learners, others audio and still others are kinetic. I began looking to see what teaching opportunities were out there and I discovered that while I had been attending college there was a need to educate people on the PC and there were many PC storefronts. So, I began to investigate and I found a couple of places nearby. One of my first clients was going to be someone that I met from the New York City transit department. I taught a number of classes and my results were excellent. The students actually enjoyed what they were learning. I have this way when I teach that I’m not just teaching.  I make learning painless and fun becoming animated and sharing this with my students.

From the transit department I answered an ad and soon was on my way to teaching through a contract I had with AT&T. I was with AT&T for a little bit more than a year and a half and traveled around the country.  With AT&T I concentrated on Microsoft Office specifically Word, Excel and PowerPoint but also taught Lotus 123, which is IBM’s answer to Excel. I enjoyed this and my reviews always came back very favorably from my students. The interesting sideline to this was that nine times out of 10 their immediate supervisors would come and sit in on my first day of class as well as my last day of class and almost always the resulting remarks were the same. The supervisor would say to me “you have the same enthusiasm and excitement that you brought on the first day of class.”  “By the fourth day of class you still maintain that high enthusiasm and high excitement in the classroom.” I returned to the storefronts because Gateway was now opening up their storefronts. Prior to that, Gateway Computers were sold online but they saw an opportunity to open up classes in storefronts. So I would go to Connecticut from Long Island, NY and teach at the Gateway storefront morning, noon and night. While there I learned that Norwalk Community Technical College was looking for someone to be an adjunct professor and teach Microsoft subjects. I interviewed and I had an opportunity to meet with and favorably impress the head of Allied Services as well as the Business department.

From MS Office To Medical Coding…and back again

I began teaching Microsoft Office and was only given one subject and that was Excel. I had fun with it. In the meantime I had also met with someone in Allied Health and they were more interested in having me teach Medical Billing & Coding. I would be teaching students about CPT codes which refer to different procedures and treatments that doctors will render, and ICD-9 codes, which describes “what’s wrong with me.”

Once, while teaching Medical Billing & Coding, there was an emergency call that went out and I met with someone who asked if I would be available to take on another teaching assignment. This time it would be teaching Microsoft WORD. It was explained to me that the person who was teaching this class had been teaching for approximately 2 weeks, which was four sessions, and in that time never gave the students an outline of what was going to be covered, and never discussed the textbook. Almost nothing was done with the students. I walked into the classroom and I had about 20-25 students. While I taught the first class I explained to them that by the next class I would have an outline ready for them and what I expected from them and what they could expect from me. Interesting thing about this class is after the first night the students stood up and cheered me because they said I taught them in one night what they had missed in the prior four sessions. I had as one of my students the Executive Assistant to the President of Norwalk Community Technical College, Lynn Dennis. She and I really became fast friends and whatever classes I was teaching she was sure to be there. She encouraged other people to sit in on my classes by sharing I had a wealth of information.  Again, in a classroom setting I demonstrated this ability to move around… to dance around the classroom, if you will, and just have fun, sharing with them all the excitement and enthusiasm that I had for the subject I was teaching. Medical Billing and Coding was also growing and I had large amounts of students in my classes when I was teaching.  Suddenly I went from one or two classes to 4 or 5 classes teaching as an adjunct professor. I stayed with Norwalk Community Technical College until we moved to Delray Beach, Florida in 2000.

An Excursion from NYC to Florida

After “vacationing” for a month I started working for a medical billing group which I absolutely loved, doing coding for ER physicians throughout the country. Huge canvas sacks would be delivered on a daily basis and we would get stacks of ER physician reports.  We had to wade through their writings and pick out the correct CPT codes for the emergency room (99281 to 99285).  Then we read the documentation and pick out the correct ICD-9 diagnosis codes.

I stayed with the medical billing group for approximately 6 months. This business kept raising the bar. After a while I soon tired because it seemed no matter what I was doing they were expecting more and more, so I decided to register with a temporary agency, All Medical Personnel, and began looking for a more permanent position, this time working in a doctor’s office. I had a few temporary assignments from them and finally I got a call for a more permanent position. An office was looking for someone to do medical billing and coding and it was temporary but it could lead to full-time permanent. I began to work for Dr. Sayetta, a very well respected psychiatrist in Boca Raton, Florida.