I Got a Job!

Last week I had a Skype interview with a search committee of several professors at a school in College Town, a few hours away from the small Midwestern town where I grew up. When the English Department chair called yesterday and offered me a job, my reaction was basically like this:


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It's a better job, too. Although it's not a tenure-track position, it is a full-time one, and it's a higher-ranking position than the one I had before. The pay is better, and the courseload is lighter (which means fewer papers to grades, YES!). The school is also more prestigious and well-known than the one I was teaching at before.

Now I feel like a giant weight has been lifted off of me, especially because these last few weeks I've been feeling like this:


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But now that I have a new job, I don't have to work as a part-time adjunct instructor, nor do I have to go back to working in retail. And that's definitely a good thing because I have a lot less patience for rude customers and might say something like, "I SPIT on your credit cards! GET OUT!"

The department chair said that my offer letter would be sent soon. I would never do this, but I kind of want to go to my old department with the letter, wave it in their faces, and be all:


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But I still need to use them as references for the future, so nah. What's interesting is that if my contract had been renewed for another year, I would not have applied for this new job in College Town. The other school posted their ad a couple weeks after I found out I wasn't being rehired. So maybe it worked out the way it was supposed to.

It will be strange to go back to the area where I grew up. I haven't been there since I was a teenager. Many of my old high school classmates still live there. They're all married with children, whereas I don't even want to stay faithful to my cable company, and when offered the chance to hold an adorable baby, am more likely to say, "No thanks. I would like to pet your dog, though." Also, I don't really want to see any of them until I lose twenty pounds, become richer and more successful, and am married to a guy who looks like Chris Hemsworth and has Jerry Seinfeld's personality (so basically never).

It will also be sad to leave behind the friends I made in Small Town, especially because I'm not sure when (or if) I'll see them again. I did not have a lot of friends in Chicago; most of my friends from college had moved on to other places, and I was pretty much an outcast in grad school. My friends here welcomed me into their circle, invited me to their houses for parties, and included me in their outings to restaurants and bars. It felt good to have something in my life other than work. I hope it won't be too difficult making new friends in College Town, but I have a feeling it will be.

But I need this job, and more importantly, I want this job. When I took the job at my former employer two years ago, I took it a little reluctantly because I did not want to leave the big city and had been hoping to teach somewhere else. But although there were several other schools who were interested in hiring me, at the time, the job that my former employer was offering seemed like the best option. This time, though, it's different. I am actually looking forward to teaching at this school.

Now I have all kinds of preparations to make: packing, cleaning, etc. And of course, I need to download more music for the long drive to College Town; I still have the musical tastes of a thirteen-year-old school girl who eats too much sugar.

Thank you to all of you who wrote supportive, encouraging comments on my blog. I appreciate it, as always, and I'll blog about the new place once I get there in August.

What about you? Have you ever started a new job that you were excited (or not so excited about)?

Maybe When Hell Freezes Over

I haven't blogged in almost a month because ever since I found out that I was not rehired for the 2017-2018 school year at the school that's employed me for the last two years, I've been frantically applying to all the schools that are still posting job openings. I've applied to about twenty schools in the past few weeks (and I applied to many more schools before that).

And I've been doing fine, really. I mean the fact that other than my part-time website job, I have no job leads and will end up on the street if I don't find a full-time job has me as cool, calm, and collected as this:


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My mother keeps calling to ask me if I've found a job yet. She keeps saying stuff like, "Well, you chose to work in that field." (When I was eighteen, I stood up to her for the first time in my life and chose to major in English, rather than choose the major and the career that she wanted. To this day, she still hasn't forgiven me.) She also said that if I can't pay my rent, she and my father can't give me any money (I didn't ask her for money, BTW, and I have no intention of doing so), but I can move back in with them. My reaction to that was basically this:


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First of all, there is no way in HELL that I will ever move back in with my parents. I haven't lived with them in eighteen years, and I'd rather move in with Sean Spicer AND Sean Hannity than do that.

One thing's for sure: I have to leave Small Town. My lease ends in the middle of August, so I have to be out of here by then.

I still have hope, though. When I was hired for my most recent teaching job two years ago, they didn't even offer me a job until July. So there's still a little bit of time, but I find myself growing more anxious (and more likely to start climbing the walls) as the days go by.

What didn't help, though, was that two members of the committee that decided not to rehire me at my old job invited me out for lunch about a week after I was rejected. They acted like nothing had happened and mentioned wanting to try a new restaurant that opened in town.

I politely declined, and I resisted the urge to say, "I'm not available now, but maybe when hell freezes over? Or maybe when Trump starts Tweeting things that don't make him sound like a narcissistic freak show? So basically, NEVER."

Maybe they wanted to explain why they voted against me (and I know for a fact that they did). But I'm not interested in listening to their rationalizations. I wasn't really friends with those two members, though they taught in my department and I had lunch with them a couple times to be polite. But now that I am no longer working there, I have zero incentive to be friends with them, and I don't want to take the risk that if I were to have lunch with them, I might "accidentally" hurl something at them. But I digress.

Like I said before, it's complicated to be friends with people at work, especially when those people have authority over your job. And I was never friends with either of them to begin with. But they kept inviting me out to lunch, kind of like the girl who continues to believe that the guy who stopped returning her calls three months ago will eventually marry her. And the trouble is, since this is a small town, there's always the risk that I will run into them, in which case I will have no choice but to do this:


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I also can't help feeling angry at them for voting against me. The person they chose instead of me is also someone that I know, and although that person is perfectly nice, they are not better at their job than I am (and I have evidence of this, too). Maybe they had other valid reasons, but still, I can't help feeling that they're either totally naive or arrogant to think that I would still be up for a lunch with them where things did not get thrown.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to apply for jobs, and keeping my fingers crossed. Hopefully I'll find a full-time teaching job soon. And if not, well...

What about you? Have you ever been in a state of uncertainty (and also, in my case, just a little bit of PANIC) over where you were going to end up when it came to your work?

Good at My Job

"You're my favorite teacher. I really enjoyed your class."

"I didn't even like reading before I took your class, but I read another book by that author we studied, and I really liked it."

"I told all my friends to take your class."

"You're not like the other professors. You always seem like you're happy to be here, and you always make time to help us."

At the end of every term, many students approach me to tell me that they like the way I teach. Others say that they signed up for another class with me. Over the past several years, more than ninety-five percent of my student evaluations have been positive.

But I recently had to reapply and interview a second time for the same job I have had for the last two years. I was rejected, which means that it is now May and with the exception of my part-time website job, I have no job leads. The lease on my apartment ends in mid-August, and I only have enough money to get me through the summer. After that, if I don't find a job before the next school year starts, I'm screwed.

My department chair said that there were more than a hundred applicants for the job. He said that they were looking for someone with a different specialization (all Ph.D. candidates choose a specialization that they focus on in their dissertations, and it typically determines what kind of job they get). But the person they chose over me has the same specialization that I have (and less teaching experience, not to mention this person rarely holds office hours, whereas I set aside extra time every week in addition to my regular office hours to meet with students). Not to mention I've been teaching at the college level for more than ten years. I've taught at several colleges, in addition to high school. It may have taken me more than a month to figure out how to turn off my cell phone, and I might not understand half the things that Millennials say (I neither know nor care what "on fleek" means). But when it comes to teaching, I know what I'm doing.

On the one hand, I've been unhappy at this job for a long time. Everything they said I could do or have, they took back. For example, they said I could have my own office. Less than a day later, they said I had to share it with another instructor. They told me I wouldn't have to keep reapplying for my job, but changed that policy less than a year later. They told me that I could teach literature classes, but then changed the job description to just freshman composition. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how I've been treated.

If I had known that all of this was going to happen, I would not have come here. But I need a job to pay my bills and to cover the health insurance I need for my ongoing treatment. My health is unfortunately not good right now (in fact, it's gotten worse), and my doctors said I need ongoing treatment. That's why I can't just fill out an application at Starbucks or go back to working in retail. Jobs like those won't pay for my treatment.

It makes me angry that I worked so hard for two years and sacrificed the only two things I had left outside of work that mattered to me: a city that I loved and my writing, which I've barely worked on since I came here, only to end up like this. It's disheartening to know that although my students think I'm doing a good job, it's not enough to make my department rehire me. The academic term isn't over yet, and I still have to face my colleagues. It's all I can do not to scream and scream and scream or run to the restroom and cry.

But on the other hand, I thought of how my dissertation committee thought I would never finish my dissertation and how they kept criticizing my work. I kept writing, revising, and doing research, and I finished my dissertation. I earned my PhD and the title of "Doctor".

I thought of all those awful retail jobs I had where customers screamed at me and twenty-two year old managers on power trips bossed me around. I kept working, and I survived.

I've applied to dozens of other schools, although I've been rejected by several of them already. But I still have hope. Two years ago, when I applied for jobs, six schools were interested in hiring me. Five of them did not start contacting me until June of that year. So there's still time.

At the risk of sounding like a Diana Ross song, I will survive this. I didn't let all the other people who tried to drag me down stop me from achieving my goals, and I won't let anyone else do it now.

What about you? Have you ever lost a job? What was that like?

Us vs. Them

Something happened recently that made me think that it might be better not to befriend people that I work with. It also made me wish that I could get away with carrying a light saber to work, but I think that seeing me chase my colleagues across campus with it just might negatively affect my students' opinions of me.

Even though my department originally told me that I could stay in my position for up to three years, maybe even a fourth year, without having to reapply, they recently told me that due to a change in policy, I would have to reapply for my job, which included an interview with a search committee from my department.

When you're untenured like I am, you don't get a lot of say in what happens to you, but it's hard not to feel jealous (and a tad resentful) of tenured professors. They get teaching assistants to grade papers and hold office hours for them, so that the professors can focus on their research. They teach fewer, smaller classes that focus on their specializations. Untenured faculty members like me, on the other hand, end up drinking so much coffee that we end up understanding what squirrels are saying, just so we can stay awake long enough to grade a hundred papers (or more) at a time. We are expected just to squeeze in research whenever we can, and we don't get funding to go to conferences. And in academia, the best way to get ahead is to do (and publish) research.

Whenever the tenured professors shake their heads and say they're sorry about how I've been treated, I always shrug and say, "It's okay! I understand!" But my real reaction is more like this:



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When I found out that they were making my class sizes significantly bigger but not paying me more, my secret reaction was like this:
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But of course, I can't express how I truly feel to them. As an untenured faculty member, my status here is not secure and I can't say things like, "STOP THE MADNESS!" or "No, I don't want to bring anything to the office potluck because you don't pay me enough to bring anything other than peanut butter sandwiches. And those are all for ME."

In addition to re-applying for my current job, I also applied for a promotion, albeit for an untenured position, but still one with better pay than what I earn now. A friend of mine was on the search committee for that one.

Work Friend had been posting about the job search on Facebook recently, and they mentioned doing interviews for that promotion that I applied for. I was not called in for an interview, so that's how I knew without being told otherwise that I'd been rejected for that job.

I asked Work Friend if they were doing interviews for my current job soon, and I got an e-mail saying that they couldn't talk about it. I understood, yet I resented this person's tone, as if they assumed I was trying to get them to do something unethical. I didn't ask them why I'd been rejected for a promotion, who was being considered for the job, or how I could increase my chances of getting rehired for next year. I knew THAT would be unethical. I also wondered why, if Work Friend claimed they couldn't talk about it, it was okay for that person to post details about it on Facebook to people who weren't in our department and also make jokes about the people who were applying for the job.

I especially resented the jokes because I was one of those people. I think it's easy for tenured professors to forget about how difficult it is to be untenured and how you have to basically grovel and scrounge for work every year. It's easy to forget that not everyone has to move around from school to school every couple years. It's easy not to know what it's like to have to work two (or three) jobs. But that doesn't mean it's okay to be insensitive to what untenured teachers are going through. Not all tenured professors are like this, of course. But at that moment, it kind of felt like Work Friend was.

Although I understand that maybe I hadn't earned a promotion yet, I must admit that the whole situation did change my perspective of Work Friend a little bit. From now on, I'm not going to talk about work with this person at all; that way, I'm less likely to end up chasing them across campus with a light saber. (But if Work Friend makes fun of job applicants like me again, all bets are off.)

What about you? Do you think that making friends with colleagues who are in a position of authority over you is a good idea, or has it ever made things awkward for you?

A Liberal in a Town Full of Trump Supporters

Small Town Local #1: I think President Trump has the right idea! I want to shake hands with that man!

Me:




Small Town Local #2: If people are poor, it's because they don't work hard enough.

Me:



Almost two years ago, I went from living in a big city where drag queens read stories to children in public libraries to a small town where many people think that homosexuality is a "choice". It was definitely a culture shock.

Although I've become fond of several of my students, sometimes listening to some of them is like listening to a panel of Fox News correspondents. Every time I see one of them wearing a Make America Great Again hat or one of the other locals drive around town in a pickup truck with a giant Confederate flag flying from the back, I have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming.

Yes, it's America, and they're entitled to their beliefs. And I have to be very careful not to become one of those professors who use their classrooms as political soapboxes. But it isn't easy to live in a town where a lot of people think that Hillary Clinton should be "locked up," shake their heads over "fake news", and yell racial slurs at minorities from their truck windows.

I'll be the first to admit that not all of the people in Small Town are like this, and fortunately, I haven't heard any of my students say racial slurs (although one of my students, who is from another country, confided in me that other students from other classes ridiculed him and laughed at him because of his accent when he tried to talk to them).

I'll also admit that there are advantages to small town life, such as the fact that I'm far less likely to get body slammed for my wallet or for no reason at all (both of which did happen to me in the city I lived in previously), and people are generally friendlier here.

I'll also admit that I'm not completely liberal, partly due to certain liberals whose behavior is often as intolerant as some of the Trump supporters I've met, like the ones who try to prevent controversial people from speaking at colleges and have even gone so far as verbally (or physically) attacking them when they try to give their speeches.

Many colleges are in small towns like this one, so it is quite likely that I'll spend the rest of my career in a small town. I'd be okay with that, as long as I had more job security, a salary that enabled me to quit my second job and have at least one day off a week, and more classes that I want to teach, rather than the "required" classes that most of the tenured professors do not want to teach. That's not the case at the school where I'm teaching now, which is why I want to leave.

I've applied to almost forty schools, and I'm hopeful that I'll find something, although I've already received a few rejections. There's a strong possibility that I'll still be here next year, although it's not a guarantee.

I'm worried, though. If I don't find something better for next year, then who's to say the situation will be any different next year? I'll still have mostly the same qualifications. I do need to do more academic research, which is hard when I'm working about thirty-five to forty hours a week at my teaching job (due to my full teaching load, large number of students, department/committee meetings, etc.) and twenty hours (and sometimes more) a week at my website job.

It's ironic (and unfair) that in order to advance in my career I have to do more research, but because I'm not in an advanced status yet I don't have time to do that research. Tenured professors, on the other hand, have fewer classes to teach and assistants to grade papers and hold office hours for them. But I digress. Such is academia. I probably should have gone into something less stressful, like taste testing for the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un.

What about you? How do you react when people start praising a politician that makes you want to Google "one-way ticket to Canada" and "cheap flasks"?

On the Road Again

Whenever university administrators talk about the need for making budget cuts, I can't help thinking of their six-figure salaries and how they have more than enough money for food, nice clothes, and country club memberships where they can get together with their rich friends and talk about how hard life is.

At the school where I teach, there's talk of budget cuts. Although I am a full-time faculty member, my untenured status means that I might not have a job next year. When I first came here, they told me my contract could be renewed for up to three years, and that many people stayed longer. But now they're advising me to apply for jobs elsewhere, just in case, which makes me angry; I could have stayed where I was before and saved thousands of dollars.

I'm applying for everything that I'm remotely qualified for: postdoctoral fellowships, lecturer positions, and tenure-track jobs. I doubt I'll get a tenure-track job, though, due to the fact that I don't have enough publications. I've been trying to work on my research, but my two jobs are why I've been working more than fifty hours a week with no days off. I was so stressed out that the other night I had nightmares about being attacked by raccoons (WTF?) and being crushed by stacks of students' papers while having a bunch of red pens thrown at me.

I think that I can afford to be a little more choosy about where to work, despite my lack of academic publications. I have my PhD now, as well as recommendation letters from my bosses, teaching experience at both rural and urban colleges, and positive evaluations from students.

The question is where I'll end up next. I'm hoping for a place that's bigger than Small Town and a job at a school with a more selective admission rate. I saw ads for a few schools located in towns where the entire population was made up of less than two thousand people, and I immediately thought, "NEXT!"

It's okay if I end up in another college town, as long as I don't have to drive too far to get to the nearest big city. But I must admit that all those years in a big city have ruined me for small town life. Sometimes I feel claustrophobic in Small Town, to the point where I feel like shrieking, "I have to get OUT of here!" Other days I find myself wishing that I had a little bit of vodka in my coffee mug when I'm at work (and I don't even drink alcohol!).

My ideal teaching situation would be at a medium-sized Catholic liberal arts college in a big city or medium-sized town, where the majority of the students are respectful, disciplined, hard-working, and turn in all their work on time. Then I wouldn't have any more nightmares about red pens. I'd like to teach more literature classes than freshman composition classes. I'd like to teach English majors. I've mainly been teaching students who are only in my classes because of their General Education requirements and would rather be getting root canals while watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians than learning how to write thesis statements.

I'd also like a job with better benefits than the ones I get now; although I have dental insurance, I currently can't afford the copay for a dentist appointment. (I also have nightmares about my teeth falling out and me teaching while looking like a jack-o-lantern). I'd like a salary that allows me to quit my second job, so that maybe I could have at least one day off a week. Maybe then, I would be less of a neurotic workaholic, and I could finally let myself relax for the first time in more than a decade.

My biggest fear is that I'll end up in the middle of nowhere, teaching at a school whose students spend more time partying than studying, with coeds who are "offended" by pronouns (apparently that's a thing now. Insert eye-roll here).

What about you? What does your ideal day job (other than writing) look like?

Fake Reviews

When I first started teaching, I found out that there were a few "rate your professor" websites, and I was on them. I found a few good reviews that were written about me, where students praised me for my patience with them; some of the positive reviews indicated that the students planned to take another class with me.

I noticed one weird trend. On one of the websites, students could also rate their professors' looks with a chili pepper, to indicate that they thought their professors were "hot." I, alas, did not get any chili peppers. Maybe if I bothered to wear makeup or brush my hair most mornings (I usually go for the mad scientist look), I would have gotten at least one chili pepper.

There were, however, several bad reviews that were written about me. That's to be expected, because there are many bad reviews about a lot of professors on those sites. Undergrads who are disgruntled about not getting the grades they wanted can write the nastiest stuff they can come up with (and many of them do) and post it online for everyone to see.

The problem was that some of the stuff that was written about me wasn't true. One student falsely claimed that I was never available for office hours. Other students lied that I graded their papers unfairly and played favorites with certain students.

At the end of each term, the students fill out course evaluations about the classes I teach and about my teaching, which are read by my bosses. I keep their comments in mind and make changes to my syllabus or teaching style. Almost all my reviews from the past several years have been positive.

The online reviews, however, are another story. In both cases, the evaluations are anonymous, but I guess students feel freer to be more candid online. It bothers me that students can post incredibly hostile insults about me that aren't even true, and I can't do anything about it.

The moderators of the sites are undergraduates (or former undergrads) who claim that they're "helping" students decide which professors to avoid and which ones they should take classes with. I think they're helping students who are upset over their grades (or anything else) slander their professors. I also think those moderators know NOTHING about teaching, and they wouldn't survive a week on the other side of the desk.

Several of the schools that I applied to for teaching jobs requested copies of my course evaluations, which I sent. But I heard that some search committees also look at those websites, which worried me.

For a moment, I was tempted to post a few more positive reviews about myself. The thing about those sites is that I can pretend to be a student and post whatever I want. I could have written stuff like, "She's the best teacher EVER! People walk into her classrooms saying, "Please, teach me."

But I didn't. Once, a cashier forgot to charge me for an item that I bought. I brought the item back and paid for it, surprising the cashier. If I can't even lie about a two dollar purchase, there's no way I can lie about my work. I hope that the positive evaluations I sent speak for themselves, and that I won't end up having some kind of breakdown where I reenact the end of every Lifetime movie and start shrieking, "If I can't have this job, NO ONE CAN!" while the members of the search committee run in terror.

I have heard, though, of authors who posted fake positive reviews of their work on Amazon and other websites in attempts to get people to buy their books. I can't help wondering what makes them think that's okay, and if anyone has ever been fooled by those reviews.

What about you? What do you think of those rate your professor websites? Have you ever heard of authors who posted fake reviews?

Back into the Writing Groove

When I was finishing my dissertation, I gave up writing almost everything else, including the novels and short stories I was working on. I didn't blog as often as before. Even when I went to coffeehouses, I didn't write in my journal like I used to; I immersed myself in cups of coffee and heavy library books.

Now that I'm finally done with my dissertation (insert joyful music from gospel choir here), it's hard to get back into the writing groove, which is one of the reasons I haven't been blogging as much. I go to coffeehouses to write, and instead find myself checking Twitter several times an hour, where I see Tweets like #CancelYourEngagementZayn, which was trending on Twitter yesterday (apparently some One Direction fans are irate that one of the members is engaged and think that acting like obsessive stalkers will make him break off his engagement and marry one of them, which would only happen on the bizarro planet that they live on). Other times I see Tweets from people ranting about whatever it is they're "offended" by at the moment (Tweets like that make me want to leave Twitter altogether).

Instead of writing, I often find myself making paper airplanes that I try very hard not to throw at the guys who blast videos from their cell phones. Or I roll my eyes at the hipsters with their ginormous headphones.

At home, I sit down at my laptop to write, and instead I check my e-mail to find yet another rejection letter from yet another school. It's been disheartening to be rejected by so many schools, though I know that for every one full-time, untenured faculty position available, there are at least a hundred (or two hundred) applicants vying for it. I feel discouraged, because I spent too many years in grad school. I lost almost everything else that mattered (my twenties, most of my friends, potential boyfriends), and now I feel like it was all for nothing.

There is one school here in Illinois that said they MIGHT hire me, but only if the budget allows it; they can't let me know anything for sure until the end of the month. In the meantime, instead of writing, I've been applying for part-time faculty jobs (the low pay worries me, because then I won't be able to pay my rent AND my minimum student loan payment each month). I've also been considering jobs in retail again (insert primal screaming here) if I can't find any adjunct jobs.

When my professors turned to me after I successfully defended my dissertation and said, "Congratulations, Doctor!" I didn't even feel relieved as I thought I would. I felt worried because I didn't have a job lined up yet.

So needless to say, I've been preoccupied. If I knew what was going to happen this fall, I could relax. But since I don't yet, I can't stop worrying.

At the same time, I still want to write. But it's been so long since I've worked on my fiction and creative nonfiction that it's hard to get back to writing it.

What about you? Have you ever taken a long break from writing? What kinds of things did you do to get back into the writing groove?

I Did It! Now What?

I haven't blogged lately because I've been preoccupied with my dissertation defense. I'm happy to say that I successfully defended my dissertation! I will now get my Ph.D., and I am FINALLY done with graduate school! When my committee told me that I passed, I wished I had a hat that I could fling joyfully into the air like Mary Tyler Moore did. I also resisted the urge to run gleefully down the hall, yelling, "I'm FREE!!! Footnotes, be gone! WHEEEE!!!!"

The completion of my dissertation is definitely a relief. It's consumed my life for too long. I sacrificed several fun things that I could have done, like watch Lisa Loeb perform here in Chicago, spend time with my friends, and work on my fiction writing. I worked so hard that I was about five footnotes away from writing the words "REDRUM" and "All work and no play makes Neurotic Workaholic a dull girl" over and over again in my dissertation.

Now I have to focus on finding a job. I've received more rejection e-mails, as well as a couple leads. I could have taken a full-time teaching job at a small school in the South that paid the same salary that the janitors at my school make. I did some research on the small town that the school was located in, and I admit that the caffeine addicted city snob that I am cringed at the idea of living in a town with only one coffee shop (and it wasn't even Starbucks).

I just had an interview with another school in a different state that requires a heavy teaching load (more than most of the other schools I've applied to); it also requires full-time professors to work as advisors. But the salary is very low compared to the amount of work that they expect teachers to do.

The salary that this school is offering is only about a thousand dollars more than the salary offered by another school that I'm interested in, which offers a lighter teaching load and doesn't require professors to work as advisors. I'm still waiting to hear back from that other school, but I'm thinking about withdrawing my application from that school that I did the interview with.

I'm not the type of person who demands or expects a high salary. I just want to earn enough money to live on, with some money left over to pay off my student loans and put in my savings account.

If I took the job with that school, I'd be overworked and underpaid, just like I've been for the past several years. When I work too hard, I get so stressed out that I start screaming at inconsiderate drivers that cut me off and I stand by the tables of WiFi freeloaders in cafes and hold my coffee cup threateningly over their laptops.

I always thought that once I completed my PhD, I'd finally have a chance to breathe. Maybe I could finally find a full-time job that pays enough so I don't have to work a second job (or a third). I'm worried, though, that if this school offers me that job and I turn it down, it may be the only opportunity I have this year for full-time work. And then I'd end up working three part-time jobs again anyway.

Have you ever "settled" for a job that you didn't really want? What are deal breakers for you when it comes to jobs?

Country Mouse and City Mouse

I am still applying for full-time teaching jobs with no luck; I've even contemplated getting my old job back at Expensive Clothing Store, where I would get paid slightly more than the minimum wage to say, "Thank you! Come again!" when I really want to say, "I bet when you sold your soul, Satan flinched and offered a refund."

One of the benefits to being single is that I can apply for jobs pretty much anywhere, since I don't have to worry about how a move to a different city or state would affect my spouse or kids. I'd like to stay in Chicago, but I'd also like to wake up looking like Sofia Vergara tomorrow. Unfortunately, the chances of either situation happening are highly unlikely. The former is especially difficult to achieve, due to the draconian budget cuts that the governor is implementing, which have severely and negatively affected the schools in Illinois.

I've applied for jobs all over the country, everywhere from New York City to tiny towns in West Virginia with only a thousand local residents. I'd prefer to live in a big city, rather than a small town that is similar to the small town that I spent eighteen years wanting to escape from. But most colleges are in smaller or medium-sized towns.

Small town life isn't all bad. I do miss the peace and quiet, and how, when I was a child, I used to lie on the grass next to my dog and hear nothing but birds chirping and my dog barking at passers-by. In the city, I lie on my bed and hear sirens blaring, horns honking, and my neighbors yelling, "Chug! Chug! Chug!" as they gulp down their umpteenth beer.

I don't miss the fact that in a small town, everyone not only knew each other, they knew everyone else's business. So if you made any big or small decision in that town, everyone would know within days (or hours), and they'd be sure to throw in their two cents. I like the anonymity of Chicago, where I can walk down the street and not run into an old acquaintance who wants to rehash one of the many times I publicly embarrassed myself at school.

I miss the sight of farmland and wide open spaces, unlike Chicago, where everyone is always bumping into each other or pushing each other to make space for themselves. I remember crossing the street in my hometown and waving to drivers I recognized, whereas in Chicago drivers are much more likely to honk and scream at me for not moving fast enough. I respond by screaming, "I'll move faster...in HELL!"

I don't miss the fact that in my hometown, it seemed like everyone was expected to be the same. If you were even a little bit different, you were a freak, and everyone treated you like a freak. And that was my life for eighteen years, because I was different. I'm not saying that all small towns are like that, because they're not; I'm sure that other towns are more accepting. But one thing I like about Chicago is that there are a lot of people who are much "freakier" than I am, and here, they're viewed as "cool". I don't have to hide who I am here, and I've always felt more comfortable here than I ever did in my hometown.

It makes me sad when I think about leaving Chicago and all the things I'll miss (which is another post in itself). But I always knew that my time here came with an expiration date. The thing about the academic job market is that you can't afford to be choosy. You have to go where the work is. So if I end up in a town even smaller than the one I grew up in, so be it, as long as I get to teach at a good school. But as my rejection letters pile up, I am starting to lose hope that I'll find anything.

Also, I really don't want to go back to working in retail, because I think that a few days at my old store just might end with several customers running out of the store, shrieking, while I chase after them with a mannequin.

What about you? Do you prefer city life or life in a small town?

An Uncertain Future

This year I have applied for full-time teaching jobs at eighty schools all over the country. So far, I have been rejected by thirty of them.

It's discouraging, to say the least, to open my mail and find yet another rejection letter. It also makes me scared about what's going to happen in the future. I have just enough money to pay my basic expenses through August. But what will I do after that?

I started working when I was sixteen, as a cashier in a grocery store in the small Midwestern town I grew up in, where I routinely had to tell customers to put shirts on so they wouldn't be made to leave the store (and I tried not to stare at their farmer tans as I told them). I've had a variety of jobs, everything from stuffing envelopes, to resisting the urge to strangle rude customers with the clothes I was trying to sell them, to breaking up fights among troubled high school students, to resisting the urge to fling undergraduates' cell phones out the window.

I've never been unemployed, though I have been underemployed, underpaid, and overworked. When I couldn't find a full-time teaching job after I got a master's degree, I started working as a part-time adjunct instructor at various schools. Adjunct work is difficult because the pay is low; there is no health insurance or benefits; you're hired on an as-needed basis, so you could have a full course load one term and no classes the next. That's why I also worked in retail, and I took on a part-time job for a website.

Despite the fact that I'm a workaholic, I never liked working multiple jobs. I was tired all the time. I was screamed at and disrespected by some of my students, my customers, and my supervisors. I accepted it because I had few other options, though I often cried privately when it got to be too much. The harder I worked, the more my personality hardened: I went from being cheerful, friendly, and optimistic to stressed, antisocial, and cynical.

Now I'm close to finishing my dissertation, and I'll be defending it in about a month. If it doesn't get approved, you'll hear me screeching like a howler monkey from thousands of miles away. If it does get approved, I'll finally have my PhD. But the question is, what happens next?

I've applied to large research universities, small four-year colleges, and community colleges. I've applied to posh boarding schools, because they occasionally hire PhDs. I've even applied for tutoring jobs at university writing centers, even though they pay tens of thousands dollars less than teaching jobs do. But with the exception of one school, who was interested in hiring me until they found someone with more impressive credentials, I have no other job leads.

It bothers me that even though I am a good teacher with hundreds of positive evaluations from my students, someone with a longer list of academic publications and awards is much more likely to get the job. What most of these search committees are looking for is someone who has excelled as a scholar, while his or her teaching record is much less important. I think it should be the other way around, but I'm in the minority on that issue.

The chair of the English department at my school told the PhD candidates that it was normal not to find a tenure-track position within the first year and that the search could take at least two more years. Even after that, we still might not find one. But in the meantime, I still have bills to pay, and I can't even get a job as an untenured, full-time lecturer at a community college in the Middle of Nowhere, USA.

It's depressing and scary to think that I could be rejected by fifty more schools. After I get my PhD, it'll (hopefully) be easier to find a job. But in the meantime, I may have to go back to work in retail (if I do, you'll hear me screeching like a howler monkey from thousands of miles away), continue working as an adjunct, and increase the hours at my website job.

Even if I worked three jobs again, I wouldn't necessarily have enough money to live on. As an experienced salesgirl, I would get paid more. But I would get fewer hours, because it's cheaper for the employers to give hours to the ones with less experience. Adjuncts make little more (or in some cases, less) than retail workers. For example, I was once offered a teaching job that would have paid less than a hundred dollars a week (before taxes). I could get health insurance as a salesgirl (but not as an adjunct instructor), but it's very basic insurance, which wouldn't cover the specialized treatment I need for my neurological disorder.

But I will do what I have to do. I will NOT ask my parents for money, for reasons that are better left unwritten. I've heard of other untenured faculty who had to live on food stamps, but hopefully I won't have to do that. I may, however, have to sign up for Medicaid.

Right now I'm still waiting to hear back from those other schools that haven't rejected me. A lot of them just posted their ads in March and April and won't start reviewing applications until May, so I won't hear anything until June at the earliest. The uncertainty is the worst. I just want to know, one way or another, what's going to happen, so that I can figure out where to go from there.

What about you? Have you ever had difficulty finding a job in your desired field?

I Remember...College

1. I remember when I was in college, I befriended a group of fellow Catholic students, whom I thought of as the "Not only am I holier than thou, but thou art going to hell" group. I enjoyed potluck dinners with them, snowball fights on the quad, and movie nights with them.

They went to Mass at a small church near campus almost every day, and they made me feel as if I was a "bad" Catholic because I only attended church on Sundays and other holy days of obligation. I made it clear to them that I didn't think I would burst into flames just because I didn't want to spend my Saturday nights playing the guitar and singing songs about why God was awesome. As much as I liked them, I grew irritated with their attempts to pressure me to be the kind of Catholics they were.

2. I remember that my friends described me as "independent." I went on my own to watch the movies or concerts that none of them liked. I often went to open mic nights and book signings alone while they hung out in bars, studied at the library, or sat around singing songs about why God was awesome. Whenever I heard about an interesting neighborhood, museum exhibition, or bookstore, I would look up the information and figure out how to get there by myself.

Some of my friends thought it was weird that I was a loner while most of the undergrads didn't even want to be seen eating dinner by themselves, but I enjoyed the freedom of being able to choose exactly where I wanted to go and stay for as long as I wanted.

3. I remember that I often stayed on campus during spring break, while everyone else visited their families or traveled with their friends. I was studying in my room with the door open one day, and one of the only other people on my floor who was also staying on campus passed by and invited me to join her and her friends on an outing to a restaurant and a park near campus.

I accepted, grateful for the invitation and the company. Her friends were very nice and welcoming to me. All went well until we were sitting in a circle in a quiet corner of the park, when one of the friends pulled out a joint and started passing it around. They offered it to me, or rather, they offered it to my quickly retreating back as I made up an excuse and left early, so as to avoid getting high and also avoid the possibility of getting arrested for getting high.

4. I remember that I had a vague idea that I wanted to teach someday, but I was afraid of public speaking. I got over that fear by becoming a campus tour guide. I'd like to say that I perfected the art of walking backwards while talking to large groups of people, but what usually happened was that I would keep hopping up and down, yelling to make myself heard before I eventually backed up into a trash can or a patch of grass.

5. I remember that I toyed with the idea of becoming a journalist, which is why I wrote for the school paper. I remember that the editors (as well as many other students at college) strongly disliked one of the faculty members at the school, so much so that they encouraged us student reporters to interview all the people who also disliked that faculty member in an attempt to dig up dirt on that person. The editors claimed that this was the type of article that would get published in Rolling Stone. I thought it was the type of article that would get published in Us Weekly, and it disgusted me so much that I stopped writing for the paper.

6. I remember that four years of English classes taught me how to over-analyze books and write papers about them, though none of them taught me what I was supposed to DO after graduation. I did internships in public relations, publishing, and the nonprofit sector, which educated me on the proper ways to make copies, make phone calls, and organize filing cabinets.

7. I remember that I wanted to be like my professors, who taught me how to understand and appreciate fine literature and poetry, which opened up my mind in endless ways. But when I told them that I wanted to be a professor, almost all of them warned me about how difficult it would be and how long it would take. I remember I thought that as long as I was good at teaching and liked it, that would be enough.

After spending the better part of my twenties and thirties working in academia, I finally understand what my professors were talking about.

What about you? What do you remember about your college years?

Why I'm Not Dating

1. When I work out at the gym, both the muscular guys and the not-so-muscular guys either ignore me altogether or take one look at me and immediately avert their gaze to the girls with bigger boobs, flatter stomachs, and tighter clothes that accentuate their bigger boobs and flatter stomachs.

2. I thought about joining Tinder, since apparently that's the new dating app that everyone keeps talking about these days, and I've already tried match.com, eharmony, chemistry.com, and okcupid. But in order to join Tinder you have to join Facebook, which I never joined.

My parents are on Facebook, and they still don't know that I have a blog/a Twitter page/haven't voted Republican in the last three elections. I can't even set the alarm clock on my cell phone correctly half the time, which is why I keep running around shrieking, "I'm LATE! I'm LATE! There is NOT ENOUGH coffee to wake me up right now!" in the morning. So I doubt I have the patience to figure out how to use those privacy settings that would "parent-proof" my Facebook page.

3. I mentioned in a previous blog post how I recently became closer to a guy that I liked, who liked me back. Like I said before, I had my reasons for not describing in detail what happened with him on this blog. What I will say is that the person I thought he was turned out to be very different from the person that he actually is.

It felt like we were both trying to get each other to change a little too much. It's one thing to address your flaws and change bad habits, but it's another thing altogether to try to change who you are entirely. He and I are just very different. Although I've now accepted that it never would have worked between him and me in the long run, that realization was a letdown, especially because it's been a long time since I let myself feel anything real for anyone. I still want to meet someone special, but there is a part of me that is afraid I'll experience yet another letdown, and I'm already stressed out enough for the following reasons.

4. I've been applying for teaching jobs, and although I will not get an offer for a tenure-track job this year (you have to have gotten a request for an interview at the MLA conference that already took place in January), I am still hopeful that I will land a full-time position as a lecturer at a four-year college or a community college. The thing about the academic job market, especially for an English Ph.D., is that I have to go where the work is. I have no idea if I'm still going to be in Chicago next year or if I'm going to be halfway across the country in some college town. I don't think it's a good idea for me to start something new with some guy when there's the possibility that I might not even be here next year.

5. I took a leave of absence from teaching this year in order to focus on my dissertation and applying for teaching jobs, both of which have taken up a lot more time and a lot more caffeine than I expected. After tearing apart my most recent draft, my advisor told me that I could always defend next year if this year doesn't work out. But I have to finish and defend my dissertation this year, because I won't be able to get any more graduate funding after this year; I'm not willing to take on another student loan. The longer it takes me to earn my doctorate, the more difficult it will be for me to get a tenure-track job (and the reality is that many PhDs never become tenured). I'm ashamed that I'm behind many of my classmates, who finished a year earlier than I did (though their student loan debt is more than twice the size of mine, since they didn't work additional part-time jobs like I did) and already have tenure-track jobs.

I'm anxious to prove to the people who told me that my work isn't good enough (which, as a workaholic, made me feel like I wasn't good enough) that even though I will never be an academic superstar, at the same time I am intelligent and my work and experience do make me worthy of a full-time teaching job at a good college. I've been spending almost all my time holed up in my apartment, at the library, or in coffee shops, writing, reading, and caffeinating myself in order to stay awake long enough to get more writing and reading done.

Basically, I'm in full-on workaholic mode, and I'm so focused on my academic and professional goals that I have little time, energy, or interest in perusing more online dating profiles that say nothing but "If you want to know anything about me, just e-mail me"; to get "winks" from guys who are twenty years older than me; to get e-mails from guys my age that say, "I don't live in Chicago, but I'll be in the city for a couple days pretty soon. Want to meet up?" (That's code for: I'm looking for a one-night stand. Interested? My response to those guys is always a polite "no," but what I'd like to say is "Sure, I'd be happy to meet up with you...in HELL!")

On one of the rare occasions I let myself take a break to spend time with a friend, that particular friend told me, "You know that this is what you have to do to get your PhD." And I do know. But I can't help thinking of how I spent the majority of my twenties (years I'll never get back) earning my master's degree, teaching full-time, working in retail. In addition to the last years of my twenties, I spent almost half my thirties pursuing this PhD. Sometimes I regret that I didn't let myself take a break from working and enjoy my youth more often, and I worry that I'll wake up one day in my forties and realize that I worked my thirties away too. 

What about you? Have you ever had to severely limit your social life in order to focus on other responsibilities, like work, school, or family? How did you deal with the consequences of that decision?

My Next Move

I wish I could participate in NaNoWriMo, but instead I'm working on my job applications. The application process in academia takes months. I've applied to more than a dozen schools so far, but I'll be lucky if I get one interview this year. The professors told the graduate students that the job search for tenure-track positions can take years.

And some people never find a tenure-track position. I seriously fear that I will be one of those people. But I will NOT go back to working in retail, because instead of telling people to "have a nice day," I'll say, "Have a nice day...in hell! Hahahahahaha!" before the retail supervisors drag me away and punish me by making me fold a never-ending stack of sweaters and constantly criticizing "my folding skills."

Most of the schools I am applying to are not in Chicago; they're not even in Illinois. So far, I've applied to schools in California, New York, Indiana, Maryland, and Florida, among others. The thing about my field is that I can't pick and choose where to live and work. Instead, I have to go wherever the work is. That means that eventually, I'm probably going to have to leave Chicago, sooner rather than later.

My parents want me to live near them. They offered to help me get an apartment and a car. I told them no. I think it is better if I live on my own. Besides, I do NOT want to take money from my parents. I spent years grinding my teeth at nasty customers who threw hissy fits over the fact that I wasn't ringing up their purchases fast enough. Two people (who I think of as Satan's spawn) demanded that I refold their clothes three times (and kept insulting me) before they were finally satisfied and let me put the clothes in their shopping bag. It took all the strength that I had not to fling the clothes at them or to chase after them with a clothes hanger (though not in the Joan Crawford Mommy Dearest sense).

I spent years working as an adjunct faculty member at various colleges around the city, where the word "adjunct" basically means "those whom we do not have to pay a living wage, HAHAHAHA, now let's go and enjoy our country club memberships and houses in the suburbs, DAH-LING" (But I digress.) I dealt with way too many undergrads who waltzed into class forty minutes late, missed half a dozen (or more) classes in a row, turned in their assignments late (or not at all) and then blamed ME when they didn't get As. (If my life was a cartoon, that would have been the moment where my face would have turned into an erupting volcano.)

I put up with all of that and worked multiple jobs for the majority of my twenties and well into my thirties, specifically so that I would not have to ask my parents for money. Even all those jobs were not enough, to the point that I finally had to break down and accept the fact that even I couldn't keep working seven days a week (because it got to the point where I was so stressed that I kept shrieking at drivers who apparently think that if they stop staring at their phones, even long enough to keep their eyes on the road, they will burst into flames).

So for my last two years in graduate school, I went against my earlier conviction of never accumulating any student debt and took out a couple small loans. I'll have a sizable debt when I complete my degree, but at least it still won't be half as big as the debt that my fellow graduate students have, since they took out loans every year or relied on family members and did not work additional jobs like I did.

Financial independence is important to me, because it allows me to live my life on my own terms rather than someone else's. My parents have been talking to several of their friends who work in academia. My father even contacted a few faculty members at a couple schools in the state where he and my mother live and told them that I was looking for a job, which is why I received some bemused but kind e-mails from those faculty members who explained that I should send a formal application to their search committees. I was so embarrassed, and I told my father never to do that again (though he insists he knows more about this than I do, even though he's never worked in academia). He may have meant well, but his attempt to take charge of the situation only served to reflect badly on me and made me look like I didn't know anything about the application process.

I'd like to find a job in an interesting big city or a nice college town that's close enough to a big city that I could visit at least once a month or even every other month. I hope that wherever I do live has some good restaurants  (partly because everything I touch in the kitchen turns into fire, and I mean that literally, because I keep burning everything) and cafes that I can write in. It'd be good if there was at least one bookstore with a decent selection of books, as well as a well-stocked public library. It would also be nice to live near a Catholic church, since I am Catholic and I still attend Mass. I want to live some place safe, where I don't have to worry about creeps who try to grope me or think that following me down the street or yelling lewd things at me is going to make me run into their arms (instead, it makes me run in the opposite direction or throw things at them). I want to live in a place where I won't be made to feel like a freak just because I'm different, because I was treated like a freak for the first eighteen years of my life in the small town that I grew up in. If I could find a school in a town that fits most of that criteria, I think I could be happy (and of course, as long as the school was a good school with disciplined, polite, and hard-working students).

What about you? If you could pick and choose where you got to live and work (or if you already have), what kinds of factors would affect your decision?

Dear Search Committee

Dear Search Committee:
    I'm writing to apply for a teaching job at your school in College Town, USA. Even though I've lived in Chicago for several years, I grew up in a small town. So it wouldn't bother me at ALL to move back to a town where people refer to Wal-Mart as "the mall."

While my grad school classmates were winning academic awards, publishing articles in scholarly journals that no one but other scholars read, and presenting their research at conferences that no one but other scholars cared about, I was taking orders from twenty-two-year-old retail supervisors on power trips.

I was shelving books and climbing over people who stretched out on the floor of the store while they read, scattered books all over the place, and never bought anything. At least fifty times a day I resisted the urge to bitch slap people who complained that The Economist wasn't where it was supposed to be or that I wasn't ringing up their purchases quickly enough. I was folding clothes and selling store credit cards to customers who didn't really need them, all so that I could get nothing more than minimum wage and a high-five from my supervisors. I was selling overpriced souvenirs to tourists who would say stuff like, "Wow! Is it this loud in the city ALL the time?"

Working in retail is an exercise in patience; you could say the same thing about teaching. Therefore, I'm much more likely to keep my cool when my students take out their cell phones for the twentieth time during class, rather than pry them out of their hands and fling the phones out the window.

My students will DEFINITELY learn about grammar. I correct people's grammar all the time for FREE, and no, I don't know why I'm not invited to more parties either.

I've taught students at schools all over the city. That means that I know how to teach students at all different levels, AND I know how to respond to all their excuses about why they didn't do the homework or why they missed the last seven classes in a row.

I'm a better teacher than I am a scholar, even though I know that's a MAJOR faux pas in academia. I just never understood why an academic lecture or discussion in an English department sounded more like a discussion that political science majors or economics majors would have. I'm pretty sure that when William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Ernest Hemingway sat down to write, they weren't necessarily obsessing over the political/economic/racial significance of their themes (though I know that some writers did). They just wanted to write good stories that people would read and enjoy, not stories that people would over-analyze in articles and dissertations with hundreds of footnotes.

I know that my lack of scholarly credentials means that I will probably never get a tenure-track job at a prestigious university. I think that's almost as unfair as the fact that university administrators get six-figure salaries, while untenured faculty members don't earn enough money to buy food.

I gave up almost everything else in my life in order to become a professor. I worked harder and suffered more than I ever thought I would.  I wish that mattered in academia, but it doesn't, at least not as much as all those scholarly articles and conference presentations.

Anyway, I hope against hope that I'll hear from you, especially because I REALLY don't want to go back to working in retail.

Sincerely,
Neurotic Workaholic

I'm going on the academic job market this year, which is why I haven't been blogging as much lately. That letter is what I wish I could write, but of course, I'm not allowed to say anything like that to search committees. It's the truth, though.

What about you? What do you wish you could say to your employers, prospective or current?

Writing My Way out of Here

I read a book called Letters to a Fiction Writer, which is a collection of letters and essays on writing by various authors. One of the authors, Ann Beattie, described living in a small town in Connecticut. She described what went through her head as she wrote in that small town: "I am going to write my way out of here."

That line resonates with me as I work on my dissertation. When I was an undergrad and when I was studying for my master's degree, I did well as a young scholar. But when I was in the PhD program, I started struggling just to keep up with the other grad students. It didn't help that unlike them, I didn't have a family member or student loans to support me financially; I worked two or three jobs instead. But the problem was that it left me with little time to study, and I ended up disappointing my professors and myself on more than one occasion.

It wasn't just because of my extra jobs that I struggled to do well in school. It was also because of the fact that I never really fit in with the other academics. I became an English major because I loved literature and poetry. I wanted to become a professor so that I could inspire other students to love literature and poetry as much as I did. But the problem with academia is that we often spend hours talking about everything BUT literature and poetry; the focus is typically on critical theory instead.

I'd sit there during lectures and conferences and put on my "I totally understand what you're saying" face, though most of the time I didn't understand. And I felt like an idiot compared to most of the other grad students, who did understand. They went on to publish articles, present their work at conferences, and win fellowships. I just struggled to keep up. I worked hard; I tried again and again to measure up to my professors' expectations, but I usually fell short. And the fact that my work wasn't good enough made me feel like I wasn't good enough. When you're a workaholic, you define yourself by your work; it's hard to think positively about yourself when your work isn't going well.

Maybe I should have dropped out of graduate school years ago. But I stayed because I loved teaching. Even though I didn't become a good scholar, I became a good teacher, and I have hundreds of positive evaluations from students to prove it. Many of my students signed up for more than one class with me, which always made me feel good. Several of them would come up to me at the end of each term and tell me how much they enjoyed my class or how I was their favorite teacher.

I did encounter many "difficult" students (which is an understatement), as every teacher does. But even those experiences made me stronger, because they taught me to assert myself and not back down.

I still feel a rush of excitement and happiness every time I'm in a classroom, sharing what I know with my students. I think that the classroom is one of the places where I am happiest, aside from bookstores, libraries, and Starbucks (I tried to live without coffee for a week, but I was practically climbing the walls by the end so I had to go back to my caffeinated life.). I love when students have that "aha" moment when they finally understand what I've been telling them. I love when some of them tell me that they enjoyed a particular author that we studied so much that they went out to read more books by that person. I love when they get excited over what they're learning.

But unfortunately, the search committees for many colleges are going to care a lot more about my work as a scholar than my work as a teacher. And I have a sinking feeling that I'm never going to become a tenured professor at a university. I'll be lucky if I get a job as a full-time lecturer at a small college or a community college, and the thing about lectureships is that they usually only last for a few years at a time. 

Maybe I should have become a high school teacher instead of a college teacher, because at least then I could have focused more on being a teacher instead of a scholar. But I don't like how high school teachers are treated in this country. They're underpaid, overworked, and typically blamed for all of the schools and students' problems. They're often forced to spend more time teaching students how to take tests than how to understand subjects that matter more. I've taught high school, and even though I enjoyed working with the students, it was a very different dynamic from working on a college campus.

Often I sit down to work on my dissertation and I feel so paralyzed that I don't know what to write. I feel so overwhelmed by how much work there is still left to do, and I'm afraid that my work will never be good enough to satisfy my professors (and myself).

What I've finally realized is that I need to stop focusing so much on what other people think and just get my dissertation done. Like Ann Beattie, I am going to write my way out of here. And by "here" I mean grad school, my sense of inadequacy, my fears about the future, and all the other things that have dragged me down all these years.

I just want to finish my dissertation and finally move on to the next stage in my life. I'll probably never be a tenured professor. I'm still going to try and find a good teaching job somewhere. As long as I get to teach at a good school, write, and earn enough money to satisfy my caffeine cravings, I'll be happy. I still feel scared about what's going to happen in the future, but I'm also determined to write my way towards the future that I want.

What about you? Do you ever feel anxious about the future? How do you deal with it?

How I'll Spend My Summer Vacation

Even though the school year is not over yet, I'm already thinking about what I'm going to do this summer. 

If I were to lay out in the sun and just relax, I'd a) start worrying that if I lay out for too long I'll end up looking like one of the Jersey Shore cast members (only not drunk); b) only be able to relax for a few minutes before I start thinking of all the things that I have to get done that day, like go grocery shopping, do laundry, and make extra large signs to hang in my windows that say, "Won't you be my ex-neighbor? Seriously, just MOVE OUT already!" for all my loud, annoying neighbors to see; c) feel self-conscious about being in a bathing suit and cover myself up with a beach towel (or three), because I do not have the body of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model (but God, I wish I did).

I've spent almost every summer working since I was sixteen, when I got my first job as a checker at a supermarket. But the truth is, I would love to be able to take a vacation. I'd love to be able to spend the whole summer enjoying Chicago like a tourist would, by going to neighborhood festivals, museums, and outdoor concerts. Even being able to spend every day writing fiction for as long as I wanted without feeling guilty about all the other work that I have to do would be wonderful. And even though I usually work two or three jobs, what's key is that they are part-time jobs, which means I don't get a full-time salary or a paid vacation. But I still have to pay rent, buy groceries, and pay other bills during the summer, so I have to work.

I've been trying to think of places where I could work this summer, but there are a few jobs that I had to rule out.

I could never work in a bar, because a) I don't have any experience or training as a bartender, let alone a shot girl; b) at many of the bars in Chicago, you have to "audition" to work at a bar, meaning you have to go down there and let the employers determine if you look "hot" enough to sell drinks. Other places require applicants to send in photos along with their applications. And again, while I don't think that the sight of me would make any man scream or turn to stone (at least, it hasn't happened yet), I do not look like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model; c) I don't like alcohol, and I don't like it when people get really drunk. So instead of trying to sell shots, I'd probably just be judgmental and disapproving every time someone took a drink, and then I just might not be able to stop myself from saying stuff like, "Do you really want to be hungover tomorrow? Because you will be if you drink another shot," or "That's such a nice shirt you're wearing! You don't want to ruin it by throwing up on it later, do you? Didn't think so."

I would like to work as a dogwalker, because I love dogs. I had my own dog when I was growing up (she died of old age), and I walk my parents' dogs, Jane Dog and Neurotic Jr., whenever I visit them. But most of the places that are hiring dogwalkers and pet-sitters require the applicants to have their own cars. I've relied on public transportation ever since I moved to the city, so I don't have my own car.

I did apply for summer jobs that are in my own field (education), of course. There was one summer program that was willing to hire me, but I didn't accept the job; let's just say that I didn't agree with their grading practices for the students. I found out that two of the educational jobs that I applied for were given to people who had way less experience and fewer qualifications than I do but also happened to be friends with the people who were doing the hiring, which made me really mad.

The one field outside of academia that I have the most experience in is retail, because I've worked in a bookstore, a clothing store, and a souvenir store. So I know that it would not be that hard to get a job at yet another store. But I don't want to work in retail, and that's another post in itself.

I actually already have one job for the summer, which is my website job that I also do during the school year. But it's only part-time, which is why I was thinking of getting another job. However, I've finally faced the fact that I can't keep working full-time if I ever want to finish my dissertation and just be DONE with graduate school already.

So I'm going to try just working part-time this summer. I've been saving money for months so that I won't have to rely on my credit cards too much. And maybe this summer, I'll actually have time to relax. (Except by "relax", I don't mean just lay out in the sun and do nothing. Because I really can't do that for too long without thinking about all the work that I could be doing instead. What? When I say that I'm a neurotic workaholic, I'm not exaggerating. It's not like my screenname is Easygoing Slacker.)

What about you? What kinds of summer jobs have you had? What was your first summer job like? Have you started making plans for this summer?