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?

Old Friends, Googling, and Mug Shots

Recently, I received an e-mail from an old friend from high school. I hadn't seen or spoken to her in person in almost twenty years (God, that makes me want to immediately apply anti-aging cream to my face). We'd exchanged e-mails for a while after graduation, and then we lost touch. She must have Googled my name because she sent the e-mail to my work address (there's a picture and profile of me on my school's website).

The message was brief and didn't really reveal anything about her life. Ordinarily, I would have e-mailed her back. When I joined Facebook, I received (and accepted) multiple friend requests from old high school friends and classmates, including people I barely talked to when we were teenagers. But this time, it was different.

When I didn't respond, she sent another e-mail a couple days later saying that she "wouldn't bother me anymore" but that she viewed me as one of her best friends. She also mentioned a few sad things that had happened in her life, which made me feel like she was trying to make me feel guilty for not responding.

She clearly has a selective memory in regards to our friendship. We were friends, but she spent much less time with me once she met her boyfriend, who came home from college almost every weekend to see her. I was only fifteen at the time, but even I could tell that it was unhealthy to let your life revolve around just one person. Our lives went in opposite directions after high school. While I moved away to attend college, earn my master's degree and PhD, and become a teacher, she married her boyfriend soon after high school and had children.

Why didn't I write back? I won't go into all the details, but let's just say that before I joined Facebook, I did a Google search of her and some other old friends, because I was curious about how they were doing. I found the usual information: their LinkedIn pages, wedding websites, pictures of their children, etc. When I Googled Old Friend's name, I found her mug shots (and that's right, I mean mug shots as in plural), as well as her details about her criminal record.

What I found shocked and scared me. I couldn't believe that the shy person I'd once been friends with would even be capable of committing crimes like that. She's not in prison now, though she did spend a little time in jail.

I wasn't sure about whether or not to respond to her e-mail at first. What was I supposed to say? "Hi, how are you? I mean apart from all the felonies?"

She still lives in the same town where we grew up, and most of the people there have steered clear of her, due to the damage caused by her actions. I suspected that she must be pretty lonely if she's seeking me out after all this time. But that still wasn't enough to motivate me to e-mail her back.

Another friend suggested that I send her one e-mail back and say that I didn't feel comfortable reconnecting, given her circumstances. But I thought that might hurt her feelings even more.

Part of me thinks that I should feel sorry for her, but I feel more pity for the people who she hurt. I feel angry at her for doing those things. She had all these options, and she chose the worst one. I know that I shouldn't judge her, especially since I don't know all the details of her life. But it's hard not to, given the circumstances.

What about you? Have you ever had a friend or acquaintance with a troubled past try to reconnect with you? What did you do, or what would you do?

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"?