Sigh. Back to the grind.

Uggggggggggghh. I don't wanna send out goddamn job applications! I don't wanna! I don't wanna! I don't wanna!

Also: re-tooling these apps from last year is a pain. As is tailoring them in a bunch of weird directions.

I have quite a few things with rolling deadlines (ie send it in immediately) and a few more that are due by the end of the month, but I just haven't been able to buckle down and do them. I have started working up one letter for a weird thing, but haven't completed it yet. And I mostly updated my CVs but need to go find my list of activities for tenure and make sure everything I did gets properly highlighted in my service. And I need to pester people about letters. It's all very annoying and draining. This is why I haven't been working on them ---- I go out and do annoying social things with family members first thing in the morning and then don't have the energy or ability to do anything unpleasant in the afternoon. So today I did a bit of letter-revamping and now am in my post-lunch slump, but because the deadlines are right now, I need to go back in and do more hard work. I think I have already done all the easy nonthinking bits.

And once I have these all worked up and sent along I get to create a couple new classes practically from scratch! My break is no fun this year.

That reminds me: visiting with all the family this year was really hard. It's tough not telling them things (see my last post). I kept noncommittal for the most part but my uncle proceeded to ask me and my cousins about our new year's resolutions or plans. Totally normal and fun, right? But it was very awkward talking about possibly traveling over the summer or whether I should buy a car and how the housing market looks over in my town (my cuz especially likes hearing about this and trading house renovation stories) without telling them I wasn't going to be sticking around. I'm not technically lying to them, but...

It is also hard to hear stories about how my nephew has crashed and burned and been asked to leave his state school (and honestly, is not doing too hot at the local community college this semester, either) when I'd like to give him advice as well as a strong tongue-lashing (him and his parents need to hear the what-for, since their worst habits are strongly enabling his unproductive behavior), but I don't feel like I can hold myself up as any sort of model behavior or success, considering. And who knows: maybe I am terrible at this and my standards/expectations are all off and therefore any advice I would give him is bad! Anyway, one of the things I have learned at this school is that giving advice and warnings only makes students mad instead of making them heedful, so it is probably for the best that I sit on my hands and clamp my mouth shut over my tongue in the case of my nephew.

If only I didn't have to send out all these damn applications. Then I could be complaining about my course planning instead...

I have a secret, and I can't tell anybody...

That is all I am thinking as I walk down the halls, as I teach my classes and meet with my students. As people stop me in the halls to ask how my weekend went, and as I attend a special emergency faculty meeting, all I can think about, obsessively, is I have a secret, and I can't tell anybody! 

This feels so weeeeeeeeeeeeird.

Except some of them know... I just don't know how paranoid to be about how many people know already. My tenure review committee is not supposed to say anything, but I assume some people talked. I think that some of the people who have never warmed up to me shared that feeling with certain committee members who then kept them in the loop with my non-renewal. But fit is fit and if they really wanted me here they would have done something different, given me more time to turn around my student evaluations etc. And they are probably right that I do not fit so what am I going to do?

That's a real question --- what does one do when one is nonrenewed? It's not like there is a chapter of etiquette on Miss Manners about this. It's just this weird awful burden I am constantly carrying around wishing I could tell people about. But what good would that do? That would just make the relationship/interaction awkward on both sides, and possibly lead to people coming together against me, talking me down so that they could feel better about pushing me out. And since I have to apply out again I don't want anything out there making it even harder to get a new job than it has to be. But, man, from here to the end of the school year is looooooooong. I don't know how long I can keep that up or how much I can disengage from the school with so much lead time. And I don't know how to handle social events: avoid the subject, straight-up lie, just don't go?

And I haven't told anyone in my family. That'll make Christmas break fun.

I'm leaning toward not telling them anything about this until I get a new job set up, if ever. But then that's a lot to keep in and not tell them and I have a lot of past shit that I haven't told them or that we're not speaking about, and it sucks to add even more to the pile.  And my dad is getting to the place with his Alzheimer's that I'm not sure he will understand whatever I tell him, just be confused and worried and upset. Nope, I'd rather try to solve this problem on my own than explain it to family.

But that just leaves me wandering around with this weird invisible weight: I have a secret, and I can't tell anybody...

I don't get it:

I am looking through ads in the Chronicle and saving and printing things and I ran across this ad, and have spent about 20-30 minutes clicking all over their website trying to in any way get it.

Not that I'm trying to apply for it; it should be clear from 5 minutes of knowing me or reading me that there is no way I would "fit."

I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. Is this really a thing? A thing that people pay insanely expensive tuition for and then get a paying job at the other end? Is it woo? Is it a scam? (Dude, SF Art Institute, you are totally a scam. Unless you can produce placement lists of more than half of your graduates straight into Pixar or whatever other high-paying job you've got, you are totally overpriced for your degree field and in one of the most expensive cities ever.)

Anywhoo, at least I get what an art school or a culinary school is. This thing ... Hmm.

When "it's not us, it's you."

Le Sigh.

Ok, I am going through many many emotions about this turn of events, but I am not too sad. It is a question of fit, and I agree with that. To tell the truth, I was idly thinking about selectively applying out this year anyway, but I am also overworked and tired and trying really really hard to adjust myself to the location, community and local students --- to bloom where I'm planted. The frustrating, humiliating thing is more that they got to release me first, and I have to admit that I have failed at something, rather than I get to spring on everybody my move to someplace bigger and better (or at least better fitting me).

Oh yeah, I haven't told any family or friends yet. Sigh. It would just be better if I had been able to announce job interviews and a new position first. I might still do that.

The biggest emotion I am struggling with by far, of course, far more than anger or sadness or even relief, is PANIC PANIC PANIC OMG I WILL NEVER WORK AGAIN AND WILL STARVE IN A DITCH BEING GNAWED ON BY MY CATS AIIIIIIIGH!

Yeah, I wouldn't work out well in a high-risk, high-turnover job. I totally need the 9-monhth extended job interview season to plan that far ahead and ride the waves of alternating panic and euphoria.

Thing is, if I am not a good fit here, then I am not a good fit many many places ---- and I am at the mercy of whatever jobs get posted in a market that has only gotten shittier and scarier with time. I have also gotten much more picky, now that I have a job. I mean, I don't any more as of next year, but it is not so quick to undo my whole raising of standards and expectations thing.

See, I am in the West. And I like that. And I am in a town, and I have found my smallness limit. And I am not toooo far from family to drive although hopping on a regional aircraft would be easier. Ooh, and I'm right here at a regional airport. So when I looked through the Chronicle and IHE for a quick pass through of jobs that haven't closed already .... dude, a lot of your jobs out there kinda suck. I'm just not interested in moving to the midwest to a tiny town and a school that is only 1000 students and is 2 or 3 hours from a major airport. I did the whole three-transfers-and-a-full-day-of-flying to go visit family in CA and got tired of it. And to be harsh and brutally honest (probably the reason I am being nonrenewed) I bet that a tiny private nonselective school that I have never heard of and that has nothing around it would probably have the same standards, and thus I run into the same problems, as my cc. On top of that, I am already used to my lovely CC salary and small privates seem to pay much less. And the place I posdoc-ed started the Asst Prof in English at 47K when I was there, so I know things are low.

But on the other hand, if I am not a good "fit" for this community college, and it's just me, like me as a person or some fundamental aspect of my personality, then how would I get any other community colleges to take a chance on me? Wouldn't I be a bad fit there as well? Most of the MLA type market has passed already, so I was assuming I would apply out to the ccs that are closest to my family's home. I am not qualified to get into a four-year school's writing program except as a lecturer (no comp/rhet PhD) and those pay way less. And my family is in the Bay Area, so even if I were to land one of those CA cc jobs I am looking at struggling to make ends meet and never buying a house or anything. Argh. Sigh.

So I am mentally constantly whizzing back and forth between terror and feeling that I have some sort of fundamental personality flaw that will prevent me from even barista-ing at Starbucks and feeling like the jobs listed are a step down, or at least a step away from what I want. I just have this thought that I shouldn't be going backward in lifestyle, you know? I'm sure that as unemployment looms closer I will change my tune on this, but it's just adding to my sluggish response in finding some apps and dusting off my job materials.

Yeegods and I'm gonna have to figure out how to address this in a letter and references too. And I think I let my Interfolio account lapse. Dammit.

Huh, fired.

I've been told I won't be asked back here next year. Huh. I mean, I expected the worst when my meeting was postponed, but somehow I thought it wouldn't happen.





I'm feeling so many different feelings I'm just frozen and shutting down.


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Uh, what?

Dead man walking?

People, we were supposed to have another tenure meeting here ---- at a cc, you don't have research expectations so you get measured by being observed a fuckton of times and have a pile of meetings. Anyway, I was supposed to be called in for the second half of the meeting and it went on so long that they asked me if they could move the meeting with me to another day when they were free. I assume that this is bad news. It also instantly took all the relaxation and joy out of my vacation I had just come back from and put me right back at the same level of stress as before leaving. Ugh.

And of course I haven't applied out for anything because I assume, what with the continued decline of English jobs and all, that having no publications from the last 5 years and tons of teaching, esp. at a cc, makes me not competitive for university jobs. And it is not yet the season for community college job apps, which I think I would be competitive for. Ugh. In the good news, The Hot Place is being pounded by rain. We don't do things by halfsies here, that's for sure.

Also, I should be just pounding through these annotated bibliographies I just got but so many of the students in this early morning class didn't even try to do the assignment correctly --- note to self: don't let them know you are going to let them revise until they have handed in the assignment --- that I have sputtered to a stop. I sure hope the other classes are better.

And while I am complaining, today I once again had a bad intro to the novel day in my other comp class. I'm just not used to lecturing after a semester of really putting the discussion on them, or more exactly, they couldn't handle staying awake and doing a more lecture-based discussion after a semester of them doing group work and worksheet questions. But I know that since they had just turned in a paper to me over break, I can't expect them to be up on the reading (some of them were, it was clear, but it was also clear that a lot were seeing the first page of the novel for the first time when I read it to them. I had this same problem teaching the novel before ---- and I sorta fixed it for last spring but that was a MWF schedule and I had to change everything yet again back to the T/Th schedule format.

I'd think more about how to fix that but I am teaching different classes next semester ---- you know when those syllabi are supposed to be due to the printshop? Yesterday! Ugh! We did a new thing where their enrollment times are waaaaaay earlier in the semester (I guess to capture higher enrollment, but how many of those students will get dropped from those classes when they fail the prereq and need to take it over again?) and so for some reason that means the syllabi also need to be submitted super early. Since all I needed to do was update the dates on the schedule for the  froshcomp class, I turned that in, but I have barely even started thinking about the two new-to-me classes yet! I haven't even read through all the textbook yet!!

Don't even get me started on the emails pouring in. Most of them I am quite glad to see, because it is a sign that the student has really started taking the research project seriously, but when I get a dislike of a student or we have a rough interaction, and then they email me, it affects how I approach my inbox. I start to get procrastinatory and avoid the whole situation. I know, I know, this is a very bad habit.  Sigh. I should close up the blogging for the night and force myself to cull through my emails and send some reasonably timely replies.