Postdoc Hmm

I have gotten word that they are putting my contract through (if I still want it) and that they will contact me and let me know when to come in to the office and sign --- it will take a bit to draft it up and grind it through the various levels of bureaucracy.

Here's the thing: instead of extending my current contract, they just wrote me out a new one, like for the new people they will be bringing in for the fall. That means it is a two-year contract instead of a year extension. Hmm. I wonder if that means I can adjust my book writing and job-marketing plan accordingly. At the very least I will give myself permission not to go full-bore attacking the market if I get too exhausted and overwhelmed.

Of course, who knows if there will actually be any jobs listed this fall or next? With all the news articles representing various college systems as if they were going over Niagara falls in a barrel, I would not be surprised.

I'm still getting the occasional note of interest from jobs I applied to way back when. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I mean, when I went on that community college trip that didn't pay for candidates' visits, yeah, that was a gamble that would have paid off extremely well if I had gotten the job, but I didn't get the job and now my bank balance is sad.

I also haven't heard what I will be teaching next year here in Postdoc City, which is making me antsy as I want to procrastinate with class prepping. Some of the senior faculty were shocked, shocked! when they heard that the postdocs were only teaching the comp and GE classes ---- they were sure that the postdoc had been set up for us to teach in our fields and get experience teaching upper-level classes. But I think the chair is way savvier than that and s/he wants us to fill all those comp classes and surveys so that the fulltime faculty don't complain about having to teach too much GE stuff, so I am doubtful. And part of the reason why I stuck with Stripey class is that I refused to change it, excepting the trainwrecks, and so I did very little prep work. Getting some new classes actually relevant to my academic interests would be fun, but a lot more work in an already-heavy semester.

I have not done any looking about for the freelance writing thingy jobs like ETS and so on, mainly because I have plenty of things to read and change in my chapter, so any time I have some more energy, I push forward more with revisions. Thing is, revisions don't pay --- not in a cash-on-the-barrel, help- pay-down-my-credit-cards sense. So I should probably try to multitask my way through the summer.

Hmm --- I wonder if the barrel I just put cash down on is going to go over Niagara falls? That's what I get when I try to go for themes in my bizarre metaphors.