pronoia

Deliverance

Next weekend we're having Ms. P's birthday party at the house. We haven't yet christened the house with an event, because she felt like it wasn't really up to snuff. But lately she's feeling more confident and the house is more under control, and we're going for it.

When we moved here, I packed up all the academic books I didn't just leave in my office and didn't unpack them. I left them in small boxes piled against the walls of the dining room. What does one do with such things? I couldn't bear to throw them out--just too wasteful and somehow disrespectful of the work I did do to get that far. I didn't want to give them to Goodwill, because that was somehow one and the same. But I couldn't find a place/organization to donate them that wasn't for kids. And kids will not like Nietszche.

It occured to me that the friend we have visiting could take them to the Best Used Book Sale Ever, which takes place every spring in GradSchoolTown. So I opened every box and fondled every book. And you know what? I'm just as uninterested in composition scholarship as I ever was. But I'm also just as interested in disability and body scholarship as I ever was.

Academia was not the place for me, because in academia my research and work would be inextricably tied to teaching undergraduates, and my research interests do not meet the needs of the undergraduate curriculum. It's possible I could have applied for Women's Studies jobs, but that's a particular circle of hell I watched my best friend attempt to navigate, and I didn't and don't want to negotiate it.

But there's still a lot of room out here for research and scholarship and reading and public conversation about things that are important to a lot of people, about the intersection of individual choice and public accountability, about how we can as a society productively discuss difficult subjects, about the different institutions of expertise and how they inadvertantly support oppression. It's something no one talks about on the inside, the ways that conversations are richer and more interesting when interlocutors get to be people and not just talking heads, when we aren't stymied by the academic obligations to pretend we aren't invested.

I need to do some thinking about what this means for my actual life. I'm feeling some energy behind writing and civic engagement again, but I don't know that I'm up for the kind of freelance story pitching that would put me in the magazine world. I toy with the idea of getting involved with a disability rights organization, because that's something I'm passionate about. I don't think the path has appeared yet. But I'm excited to dive into my books again.

Grad School Shuffle

I finally got to talk to Grad School Friend last night. She and her husband were on the market together this year, which is a feat unto itself. The results, however, were pretty funny.

GSF's husband took a position in UniversityTown. It wasn't quite my position, but one close to the one I left. GSF took a position at a university in NearbyCity, a position which was recently vacated by another alum of our program.

Apparently academic jobs are like those old 9x9 puzzles, the ones missing one piece that allow you to shift the others around to try to put them in order. And I thought the military was a small world.

Foot In Mouth Disease

Ms. P and I had dinner last night with friends of mine from graduate school who are currently seeking tenure-track jobs as a dual-career couple. He's graduating soon and her institution won't even entertain the idea of finding him a position, so they're searching for better possibilities. They have them, too; they both got interviews at four different schools, and they have a couple of other possibilities that might find something for the trailing spouse, whichever of them turns out to be trailing in that transaction.

We haven't gotten to talk to them in any detail since before I jumped ship and we moved, so we settled into a long discussion of why I left academia, how it all happened, and whether or not it was the fault of my institution (which is one of the places they have interviews). I hadn't talked about it in much detail for months, so I was a little surprised at the fierceness that came out of me: fierceness about my old department, about the problems of academia, about the inequities I couldn't any longer ignore.

While all of that was fine and dandy and lit a little bit of a fire under me to start thinking more clearly about the book I want to write about academia, it wasn't very considerate of my friends, who are still in the trenches, still holding out for the treasures they're finding in their work, still hoping that their experience will be different. And it may be. May everything make it so.

Tonight, on the other hand, we're having dinner with two of my ex-colleagues, one of whom is on three search committees right now, partially because of me. So that will be a very interesting--and different--side of the matter.

Location, Location, Location

Back when we lived in Small Town, Ms. P and I both worked for non-profits. Hers served people with HIV and AIDS; mine was a university. Despite the fact that my department had a budget that was many times the size of Ms. P's organization, we both experienced the belt-tightening that results from under-funded institutions.

Ms. P's institution, for example, never bought a postage machine. They stuck stamps on everything--by hand--and made regular trips to the post office. Mine had a limited budget for professional development and never reimbursed anything if they could argue it was part of the job.

And while it was annoying, it's part of the mystique of non-profits that they're always operating on a shoestring, always cutting corners, always hoping payroll goes through. In some ways, it's part of the romance you tell yourself; you're making these sacrifices, but to do good.

I had grown weary of the romance by the time I left academia; the constant use of vocation to justify what were often awful working conditions and crappy pay had worn too thin to sustain my day to day. When I took this job, I expected another version of the romance, albeit with better pay and actual (as opposed to working) vacations.

Except that story isn't here. We use FedEx. I get reimbursed for anything I spend on this organization, including parking for meetings downtown. We just purchased reference books for the office and I'm signed up for some interesting professional development. We use letterhead, not with abandon, but routinely. We're well-paid. The organization will, if we have to be here in the evenings for something, spring for dinner. They pay for an annual dinner out as a group, and the place we went last time was pretty damn swanky. We had a staff retreat at a beautiful resort a few hours away. Everything I've heard from Ms. P suggests her workplace is similar.

The difference is not that we're rolling in money. We could use all of that money for other things, things that were perhaps more visible on the day-to-day level of operation. The difference is that these organizations value employees and work hard to be places that are good to work. Part of their job, they figure, is to make all of the sometimes long and difficult work of educating children or representing abandoned and neglected children worth it not only ethically, but practically. They value attracting and keeping good people, and they don't kid themselves that the feel-good mission will make up for really crappy working conditions. We could each probably make better money in the for-profit world, but we're doing just fine in this non-profit world.

There are so many things that make me glad I jumped from academia. But feeling really, actively valued is a big one.

But I Was Promised Ennui!

September was not what I expected.

The people I know who have left academia all warned me about September. The first time school starts up and you aren't copying syllabi, they said, well, it will be strange, and you are likely to be sad. When your friends who are still in academia talk about their students, when you're sitting at a desk for hours on end, when you aren't doing research, you will mourn.

I have not mourned. I haven't even really felt sad, or much noticed that school has begun other than repeatedly closing the door to the development suite when the high schoolers thunder to lunch. The other day I realized how satisfied I feel in my job, how much I like what I actually do of a day even when the day is a touch long.

For the most part, I spend my day in my office, hidden around the corner, researching and writing grants and reports. I venture out for lunch with colleagues, wander upstairs to ask Programs about something. I have lots of quick conversations, nearly all of which are cheerful. I spend part of every afternoon surfing blogs, usually when I've written so much already that I can't quite see straight. I get to solve problems, and bring money in, and make sure people know what a great organization this is.

It feels like what academia was supposed to be--lots of solitary work for a common purpose, a lived belief of ideals. I am not mourning.

The difference, most likely, is that I chose. I could have stayed in my R1 job. I didn't not get a job I wanted. I didn't not get tenure. I recognized that it isn't for me. Better to leave my space for someone who really wants it.

I've been recognizing, however, that as we've been settling in, I'm starting to process all of the crazy transition we've had over the last two years and all that the transitions have demanded of me. So today, for the first time in six years, I have a therapy appointment. Because everyone needs a tune-up once in a while.

Dilution

When I lived here, in Small Town, there were things I didn't do. I didn't wear my Tigger pajama bottoms to the grocery store late at night. I didn't wear my overalls at school, even if I were only hibernating in my office and having no teaching or appointments of any kind. I didn't go to bars or clubs very often. I didn't take any creative writing classes, I didn't join any creative writing groups, and I certainly didn't participate in any open-mics.

To some extent, these things felt taboo because they threatened the teacher-student relationship that could be so fragile. It wasn't that they couldn't see that I was a person; I taught best by being fairly casual, teasing students and being really, really present. But if you've ever been a 5'2"-tall, young-looking woman trying to tell a 6'5" 22-year-old football player what to do and expecting it to stick, you'll understand why there were certain things I did not do.

Part of it, though, was the tininess of the place. Who knew who I might run into at the grocery store at midnight: a student, the chair, the dean, the provost, a colleague sitting on a key committee. These were very real possibilities; I saw all of these people around town on a regular basis. (I wonder sometimes if it's different for colleges closer to cities, but I suspect any non-commuter campus will have the same problem. Students and faculty will still cluster; they will all still go to the same places.) There's an unwritten rule that you only get to be so quirky unless you're a full professor or you're bringing in mad research dollars, ideally both. Chances are my sartorial choices wouldn't have marked me as all that odd, but they would have marked me as profoundly young. For most of my time in Small Town I was constantly being mistaken for a sophomore; I didn't need to confirm that sense in the people who evaluated me.

But to a large extent, I didn't do these things because they felt like exposure. I didn't want what feels like my risky, authentic self to get too entwined with some job I didn't really want. I didn't want colleagues I had no interest in getting to know to know anything about me that wasn't surface.

I knew all of this, but I didn't really register most of it consciously until I left and came back. When we drove out of town, I was dirty and grimy and wearing Shrek ears. They are my power ears, the ears I wear when I'm doing hard things that require me to be in charge or when I'm feeling a certain kind of sad. I have it on good authority that I'm awfully cute in them. On our way out, I went into the convenience store wearing the ears without a second thought. Yesterday I headed out to talk to our neighbor about taking our second piano without even noticing I was still wearing them.

Part of the new freedom is moving to a big city, the dilution of people I want to keep at arm's length. Part of it is the options a big city presents; writing groups and writing classes and all kinds of things where I enter as just another person, not as part of the town's mythological power structure. But part of it is being where I want to be, doing what I want to do.

On Youth

There are people who are kept young by this profession and the endless succession of young adults. They like to listen to the latest music, they have all the latest gadgets, they wear some version of the latest fashions. Some are only posing, grasping at youth, but most are energized by the movement, the continual experiment.

I am not that person.

Today I had lunch at the student union between candidate gigs. The student radio station was broadcasting from the lobby; throbbing technobeats could be heard upstairs. Friends were screaming to each other across the room. People eddied around booths to prevent cancer, learn about the library, sign up for volunteer opportunities. A TV was blaring from the corner.

All I could think was: I'm too old for this.

The truth is that I love people of this age. I find them endlessly fascinating for their vision and their energy and their enthusiasm and their newness. They're still growing into who they want to be, and there are tendrils now of those people they'll be in ten years. I adore them in their specificity, and in so many ways I am not too old, because I can always get them to tell me their stories. But the truth is that I have never been the kind of youth that is so visible on college campuses--the loud, risk-taking, pop-culture-consciousness kind.

I spent college with my best friend, renting movies and hanging out with an endless succession of guys. We played euchre, we drove to Chicago, we fought about books. We learned the harmonies to the Indigo Girls and had art dates. When we got frustrated with our lives we spiked coffee in a thermos and drove out into the cornfields to look at stars or take pictures of old churches or dance in the glare of the headlights or deliberately get lost.

That is the kind of youth I once was and the kind of youth I still am. I this profession I am always out of place--too nerdy for the hipsters, too artsy for the old farts.

I do not want to be young. I want to live the fullness of my life, and a college campus is no place for that.

Sign #495

I spent the morning reading the Worst Thesis of Modern Times. No main idea, no actual discussion of what's out there already, vague and abstract language, internal contradictions, random topic switches, unrelated tangents, chapters ending abruptly.

The most annoying part is that this is someone I've worked extensively with in the formulating phase of things. I practically gave her an outline. She heard me. She has the subheads. They just don't related to the content that's under them.

Right now, everything like this is a sign that I don't want to do this anymore, that it's really time to move on. We've been talking about moving closer to Big City, instead of across the country to Neat Smallish Town, and it occured to me suddenly that I could apply for actual jobs instead of starting with freelancing. Real jobs with salary and benefits while we move and get settled and I get a clue.

This is probably not so startling a possibility to you as it is to me, I realize.

So today, after I give a stupid talk about using advanced functions of Word in your teaching and writing (how is this my job? tell me!) I'm going to go home and work on the resume and perhaps even send it out to a few of the places we found yesterday with a cursory search. A brief look got me probably ten or a dozen places I'd be happy to apply, so I'm feeling like this is all possible.

My initial plan of staying for one more year feels incredibly untenable right now. I want out and I want out as soon as possible, so I'm going to throw some things against the wall and see if anything sticks. If I have to stay, I have to stay. But I'm praying with all my soul I don't and that we can follow breadcrumbs a whole lot sooner.

Even When She's Good, She's Bad

My supervisor-colleague stopped in today to explain the fact that she and I had posted responses to a listserve that crossed in the ether; she wanted to make it clear she wasn't trying to step on any toes. It was a fine conversation, collegial and chatty about what's coming up in the program, and even so I had a surge of anger and frustration when she left.

Part of that is her habitually controlling nature; she couched a decision that should be more general as a management decision, deciding "where she'd put us" as if we were legos to be stacked to make better walls. This is annoying, but not horrible, since her point was well taken. Part of it is that she rarely comes across as human except in her complaining, and I don't like the all-business-all-the-time demeanor, which is antithetical to everyone else around here.

And part of it is that she opened a whole can of worms for me. She asked after my health and then suggested I casually mention it to our department chair to explain why I haven't been more involved this year in things like receptions for job candidates.

Fuck. Bear with me while I think this out.

It's not that I think he'd be judgmental or unsympathetic; he and his wife have been dealing with their son's mental health issues this year and he gets that life goes on outside the department. It's not even that I think he wouldn't keep it confidential; I don't really care if he does, honestly.

It's more that I'm offended that I'm being called to account for myself for all of these things despite doing all of the service work I already do. I'm being called to account for my Saturday nights. I'm offended, too, that she described it as "politicking."

She's probably right that I should give my chair the heads up. But not because it's politicking.

Every time I think I'm going to get to blog about something fun and interesting....

Conflicts

Or, you know, I could take my meds in the morning so they wouldn't kick in in the middle of the night and wake me up. This depression thing has kicked any common sense I have right out of me. I'm just saying.

After three nights of blessedly complete sleep and regular medication (sans a small, ill-advised overnight gap), I woke up this morning feeling energetic, and motivated, and even a little excited about all of the work-related things I needed to do today. Of course, my supervisor managed to puncture that by a) trying to take over part of my job and b) being mean and accusatory when I asked her about it. She did take it upon herself to apologize not long afterward, but it kind of killed the mood.

Instead of doing all of the little academic tasks I should be doing today, I'm instead planning Ms. P's birthday adventure tomorrow. Her birthday falls on a day I don't teach, and her work gives everyone a paid holiday for their birthday, so I've got a whole day's worth of birthday celebration planned. I'd tell you more, but I don't want her to find out too soon!