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Personal Narrative: A Career In Santa Barbara

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If you are looking for a job in Santa Barbara, the Historic Presidio on Canon Perdido street has 10 new job openings. Following the retirement of Dr. Jarrell Jackman on December 31st of 2015, 10 more people have either been fired or “jumped ship” from this historic State Park. One SBTHP anonymous insider explains, “They have 10 of 22 positions open. Even if they hired for these positions tomorrow, they'd have 16 staff members who were hired in the last year.” With this many people fleeing El Presidio Santa Barbara one might ask themselves if these positions (Director of Advancement, Santa Ines Mills State Historic Park Agricultural and Maintenance Supervisor, Facility Rental Coordinator, Maintenance Assistant, Event Attendant, Director of …show more content…

I had just left the MFA program at USF, I was 22, lost, highly discouraged and living with my parents. I had befriended Jerry Jackman the year before while working as a Weekend Interpreter, making minimum wage and learning everything I could about the museum industry. It was partially my nativity that led to my friendship with Jerry. At the time I did not know, (or maybe I knew and did not care) how walking into the Museum Director’s office uninvited to ask about his day, or to complain about some unsatisfactory ending to a book I was reading or to ask if he wanted to accompany me on a coffee break might be construed as inappropriate or unprofessional. These hours with Jerry, waiting for a ride home, or the hour we took for lunch, proved to be my favorite time of day. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College I was desperate to go back to school, I spent hours a day applying to graduate school (for two years in a row), I wrote personal statements and essays about my academic pursuits, I wrote about the importance of an academic community for personal growth without really realizing that I was already enrolled in Professor Jarrell Jackman’s seminar “Tips to live a successful and rewarding …show more content…

There were rumors about the questionable nature of these hours I spent with Jerry, we talked about that sometimes, about the gossip, but never for too long, that kind of talk didn’t interest Jerry. In exchange for his lessons, I helped Jerry as best as I could, though I was young, (still am) and somewhat unprepared for the job of Office Manager, Jerry was always patient, he had a vision of what the Trust could accomplish and he was not to be distracted by the small things. Though I admired his knowledge, it was his compassion I admired the most. It was during my biggest failures that I saw this compassionate, (one of my first failures being an unfortunate miscommunication that led to me emailing the entire staff everyone’s private passwords.) Jerry knew everyone on staff, he knew their history and their families and their academic interests. He loved helping people. He was dedicated. On his last day As Executive Director, he worked long past 5pm in order to draft his last executve order. Though we disagreed on a lot of things, (politics and other disparities) he never belittled me or my ideas. He was a true leader. One of my favorite times with Jerry were the Fridays that the two of us would sneak off to the archives beneath the Santa Barbara Mission. Jerry was working on a book about jkhajakjha and though I knew little about the subject, he allowed me to assist him. We read letters from uskjsaj to uqahishka, we studied drawings

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