Hiatus

You've probably already figured it out, but I think it's time to officially say this blog is on an indefinite break. I always hesitated to say so before because, inevitably, as soon as I vowed to take a break, I'd think of something else to say. This time, I think, I can safely make the call.

I'll still be around. I tweet in the meantime and follow a handful of blogs via my reader. And you're certainly welcome to comment on old entries; I'll still get those and try to respond :).

Employed

Back in December, I left teaching. If you've read this blog for a significant portion of the 3+ years I've had it, you'll know that I've done so before. My motivation each time was slightly different, but I will say this: the outcome has been the same. I've come back to teaching. Again.

I gave the job hunt a good 10 months or so. I had few promising leads in that time, a few interviews, and a couple jobs that I would have been really excited to do. Alas, none of them panned out. As it became more and more apparent that the dream job I applied to and interviewed for probably wasn't going to hire me, I intensified my search and began to reconsider teaching. If I didn't have a job by year's end, I finally decided, I'd go back to teaching. Within about a week of getting the rejection from would-be dream job, I sent an e-mail to my department chair and told her I'd be up for teaching in the spring. That afternoon, I got a call--turns out there was a second-eight-week composition class. So here I am. Less than a month from now, I will be back to a familiar grind.

It's a good time to be back too. Enrollment is way the hell up at the community college and sister campuses, so while campus services are being strained to meet the demand, it also means there are lots of classes--and more classes than instructors to fill them. As anyone who's ever adjuncted knows, that's a situation far more rare and favorable than the reverse though not likely to change for a while if the economy doesn't pick up.

I still have mixed feelings about the whole deal, but the mix is... unexpectedly weighted with optimism. While I feel a twinge of regret that I didn't come around to this decision in time to have a full fall course load, I also know that I needed to come around it in my own time. Some people can be told the burner is hot; I've always had to burn myself to figure that out.

The last month or so has been a time of reconsideration on multiple fronts. I have changed my mind on a few important things, but those changes only came about after carefully weighing the risks, the benefits, my options, and the situation at hand. The balance of the scales happened to come up a little differently in the reassessment. So be it. I've learned a few things about myself from the experience, and for that at least, I am grateful.

So here's to a new beginning... and maybe even more blog fodder in the forseeable future!

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Now playing: Lucero - On The Way Back Home
via FoxyTunes

Keep slogging on

On a good day, I can send out job applications with something remarkably akin to optimism. Well, that's a rather strong word--guarded optimism, perhaps. On those days, when straggling rejection notices return to me, I laugh them off and gleefully talk about my upcoming wall art project. I may not have a wall worth of the fuckers yet, but the collection is growing.

Other days or times, like this morning, are not so great. Tired from poor sleep and trying to shake off some lingering moodiness, I opened my inbox to find a free and unsolicited shredding of everything wrong with my resume, courtesy of a job listing site. This was, I knew rationally, a set-up for the pitch at the end of the e-mail: "But if you pay us, we can write you an awesome one!!!1!" Still. It smarted. I'd be lying if part of me didn't think of bursting into frustrated tears.

I moped for a bit, though, and I stewed. I gave in to the worrisome fears: "What if I don't actually have anything worth offering to a company that will pay me a living wage? What if this attempt to leave academia also fails? What if I made a mistake in leaving? What if I have to go back in the fall with my tail between my legs and my pride bruised? Am I going to be stuck for the rest of my life teaching reluctant, under-prepared college freshmen things they should already know how to string coherent sentences and paragraphs together, without ever having stepped outside of academe?" Life looks pretty bleak on little sleep and no coffee yet.

And then I put on my big-girl panties and a pot of coffee and decided to try a couple resources for job searching/career changing advice. Score. I found Leaving Academia and numerous recommendations for a book specifically geared toward what I am trying to do. In picking up the book from the campus library, I also picked up several books on resumes and cover letters.

Incidentally, the advice in the books coincided to some extent with the contents of the e-mail that nearly undid me earlier in the morning. And here's the kicker--the criticism didn't hurt because I felt it was uncalled for; it hurt because it cut straight to the heart of some of my nagging fears. I hadn't yet constructed my resume in a way to emphasize my assets and make some of the idiosyncrasies of adjuncting less glaring. (For one thing, put in strict chronological order, my resume makes me look like a job-hopper--until you look closer at the dates to see that at any given point 2 or 3 of the positions were concurrent ones. I'm told HR folk don't look twice.) I had a mission.

And thus my meltdown was over. I opened up a new document and constructed my resume again and went back to square one with my cover letters. The search continues. It's getting a bit wearying, but I've lived the alternative and don't wish to go back, not without having at least seen what else is out there.

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Now playing: ELUVEITIE - Omnos
via FoxyTunes

Rumors of my demise, etc. etc.

In the absence of blogging, here's a smattering of what I've been up to:

• making things with yarn
• working as many hours as I can without going over allowed hours
• watching Dr. Who
  
• sending out job applications to other cities in a slowly widening radius
• reading interesting books
• planting flowers and herbs
• getting back into evening walks
• working consciously on correcting negative and self-defeating patterns of thinking
• reconnecting with friends and acquaintances and being open to meeting new people
• teaching an acquaintance's granddaughter how to crochet
• catching up with my unread National Geographic magazine stack
  

Huh. Guess I've been busier than I thought.

Change

I've done so before, but here I go again: I quit teaching.

While I am not unconditionally saying I will never teach again, the truth is, I can't afford it right now. I need a "real" job, one that won't wait six weeks into the semester to pay or tell me at the last minute that I can't have enough classes to earn a living wage on. Bitter? Me? Not much. Mostly frustrated, honestly.

I have several resolutions for the year, but they can be lumped under one broad heading:
This is the year I stop putting my life on hold or just "get by" on the path of least resistance.