Teaching Taught Career Lesson

It was a rude awakening for Nicolette Jackson, who worked as a waitress to put herself through Cal State Long Beach.

“I knew when I went into teaching I wouldn’t get rich, but I didn’t know I would make more money waitressing,” said Jackson, 38, the new director and counselor at the Re-entry Center at Orange Coast College.

Although naive about money at the beginning, she said “it didn’t bother me that much because I believed in what I was doing.”

At least, Jackson said, until she “became a classic burnout case” after teaching eight years in inner-city schools.

“I kept applying for transfers, but it was difficult to get out of it. And then the money issue started bothering me more,” she said.

More depressing, she added, was involving herself in the emotional needs of inner-city children while watching them grow and develop under stress.

“I would see people getting beat up and saw colleagues getting hurt,” she said, noting that her drive to school was distressing. “I was driving through a basic combat zone. Initially, I thought I was bulletproof.”

It was time to regroup, so she resigned and took a year off.

“I rented a dinky apartment, tried to re-evaluate my life, got some career counseling, and went back to waitressing and back to school,” she said.

She earned a master’s degree in psychology and counseling and became a licensed family therapist.

“There is much more opportunity to grow and change in that field, and it more suits my personality,” said Jackson, who once thought of an arts career that she hoped would take her to remote parts of the world to study ethnic dance.

She decided against that after finding out she didn’t like camping.

But she liked waitressing and made it a stable part of her life.

For a while, Jackson worked at the Jolly Roger in Long Beach and would often wait on people who would come in from their boats for lunch.

“It was a perfect environment for a waitress,” she said. “We even had a nice view of the water.”

After jobs at Cal State Long Beach, the Norwalk-La Mirada School District and as a re-entry counselor at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, Jackson decided the community college level was best for her.

“This is a dream come true,” she said. “You deal with all levels of people. Some are training to be carpenters and others are looking to be doctors.” Mainly she works with “baby boomers coming back to school; divorced people looking for a new life; people recovering from substance abuse and others ready to take a new challenge in life.”

“Since I moved into counseling, this is the happiest I have been,” she said. “Community colleges are nurturing places for re-entry students, and they are an inspiring group of people.”

When she started working at Orange Coast College, it was sort of a homecoming. She took swimming lessons there when she was in the first grade.

The Laguna Art museum, trying to increase its membership, found a friend in the Kathryn G. Thompson Development Co. in Irvine, which offered to match dollar-for-dollar new memberships up to $30,000.

People joining during the winter campaign will also benefit directly from the fund, according to museum spokeswoman Nancy Coop.

“The money they pay for their membership is matched and that means an automatic upgrade to a higher level of membership,” she said. “It’s a good deal for all of us.”