As luck would have it, there's a job opening for a generalist at a small-ish teaching school with a 4/4 load, in a city and state where hubby and I would very much like to live. It's only 4 hours away from my parents, and only 2 hours away from Hannah's biological father and his family. It looks to be the kind of school that would be a great place to start out, and the department (in my field) doesn't currently have anyone who specializes in my area. To make things even better, yesterday, we found out the school is also hiring in my husband's field!
When I called my mom to share the good news with her, this is the advice she offered:
"You should fly there and start meeting people in the department!"
Normally, my mother "gets" the academic job market. Not this time. I politely explained this would be the academic equivalent of Fatal Attraction. She gets it now.
Friday, October 03, 2008
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3 comments:
Tee-hee. My mother and SMIL DO NOT get the academic job market. Whenever people ask me where I'd like to end up and either of them is in hearing range, they inevitably bring up State University which happens to be 45 minutes from The Pit: "What about SU? Can't you apply there?"
This only ends up in me sounding terribly condescending when I have to explain how the job market works (or doesn't work) and in having to listen to both of them, in turn, explain to me why living close to family would be easier than living further away.
I usually leave it at that rather than go into great detail about how that scenario would either end up in my divorce or my arrest and incarceration for murder in the first degree. I guess my version of my job future then becomes So I Married an Axe Murderer.
Yeah, my MIL couldn't understand why I didn't just show up in Ann Arbor and say, "hey, I'm here with my lovely degree from NYU, give me a job now!" Surely U of M would want me, right? (ummm, they rejected me from their Ph.D. program, so I don't think so...)
As if I wanted to live in the same state as my MIL in any case...
lol! People outside of academia have a really tough time imagining what it is like. You take THE JOB you are offered. Sometimes you have a choice between two or three. You rarely have any geographic options if you are looking for a tenure line. But that job close to family sounds like a really good possibility! Fingers crossed it all works out. My experience is that it all DOES work out, it just isn't always the way you thought it would work out.
Well, on that almost zen thought, good luck!
ha- that sounds like my family. My dad suggested that I have a priest write me a letter of recommendation for catholic universities
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