I just got sympathied at, and I'm pissed.

I hate meeting with students.

You have to be on campus, and you have to have your door open. Then they don't show for the appointment and your boss does. It's hard to hide.

My dean wanted to know how my search was doing and if I had landed anything yet. Nope. Interviews but no second interviews. He said some kind, sympathetic things and asked if I was going to move back to where my family was or stick around --- STICK AROUND AND DO WHAT, MOTHERFUCKER?!?! YOU JUST DAMN FIRED ME! I HAVE NO JOB AND NOTHING TO KEEP ME HERE! ---- but since my first reaction to this kind of confrontation is to shut down and try not to cry, all I said was that I was planning on moving back to my family town and, I dunno, try and reinvent myself for a new career. Go see a job counselor or something.
 
I don't know that you have to completely change careers, says my boss. There are a lot of colleges over where your family lives and you can probably work out a schedule for putting work together at various schools, blah blah blah other sympathetic things here that I forget now.

Oh, says I, but that, that's really tough, and adjuncting doesn't really pay enough to live on; it's very insecure. I'd like to somehow have income security, and rents, you know, they're really high...

And then he says more sympathetic stuff about updating my letter and anything he can do to help and a few more suggestions about adjuncting and luckily he leaves and gives me a window to have a nice little cry and then recover so I don't look like I've been crying and then meet with all my students for their appointments.

But really?

I mean, now that I've had time to think about it, I am furious! Yes, I do the anger equivalent of "Oh yeah? Yeah!" and then come up with a snappy comeback days later all the time. This may be part of the struggle I have with students as I rarely show anger or blow up at them at the moment they are angering me, because it takes me a while to figure out that I am angry and then I obsessively replay the conversation in my head with angrier and angrier comments back to them and then the next time students push my boundaries, thinking I never get annoyed by anything, then boom!

Because really, did you just tell me I was good enough to be an adjunct but not to work for you full time? That I am a great teacher and really really good at what I do but I don't deserve to be paid a salary for it? That I shouldn't bother with a career change to something that will value me and pay me appropriately? DID YOU REALLY JUST TELL ME THAT?!?!?!

Inner Me is growing spikes out in all directions, extending fangs and mottling with all sorts of WARNING! DANGER WILL ROBINSON! colors. Inner Me is puffed up like a cobra, unhinging my jaw to swallow you whole after giving you a righteous beatdown with an enormous spiny tail. RRRRRRRR!

Unfortunately Outer Me just looks like a sad girl.

Ugh. I am not in a good headspace right now.

Freaking out. Panic attacks. Had to pull over on the freeway cause I thought I was dying. (Panic attacks --- I do these.)

Ok, I can do this. I can do this. One step at a time. Baby steps, Bob. Baby steps.

Siiiiiiiiiigh.

Accountablogging

Haven't done this in a while, but I have so many competing types of things on my to-do list I thought writing it out might help. I have a lot of cleaning type stuff I need to do, but a lot of grading and preparing class stuff I NEED to do. Here goes:

house:

clean catbox
bathroom
last load of laundry
dishes
clean up kitchen (and floor?)
dust/tidy/vacuum living room
sort the travel stuff --- paperwork?
go through bills/receipts
call for haircut?
carwash?

teaching stuff:
grade other half of essay pile
check turnitin
respond to 2 student emails (3?)
grade HW 8 for Mon
grade HW 7 for Tues class
prepare Tues class
prepare Wed class, other Wed class (finish reading)
make grade updates for other other class?

also I am gross and need a shower.

Let's do this!!!

Adding:

find appy thingies
apply 5 thingies

Clearly I need help

with the format or preparation for the very structured community college first round interview, if I keep getting that far and promptly rejected. I just did more of those and had no better luck than earlier. Siiiiiiiiigh. I finally got in touch with the search committee for that other thing (it was the place with the weird job ad) and I have been rejected there too. I know that my little demos haven't been completely and utterly polished --- I am keeping on top of my full time teaching and grading, after all, which is a huge time commitment along with all the travel to other locations --- but maybe I am doing something wrong or offputting or I am wrongly assuming that I am an experienced enough teacher that I can just run through my usual class stuff.

Or maybe the problem is me and there is something just plain abrasive or unpalatable at the very core of my self that comes out more clearly in person than in print.

Sigh. Now I am back to the same crappy state of feeling I was in before.

I don't care

Ok, email about me leaving and my office is up for grabs went out, which means I am planning on being on campus as little as possible from here on out. Sigh. I think I have about a month left?

It is weird driving home between classes when I usually do work in the office. But it was nice doing some grading outside. And I took a nap and played video games. I had a sudden flip of the switch where I went, wait, why the fuck do I care about you kids? You can all fail for all it matters to me. I've had this song playing in my head off and on for a while now, and now it is time to make it my anthem:





Sing along with meme: I DON'T CAAAAAAAARE! I DON'T CAAAAAAARE! I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE.... (bass drum thump)

Fast and Slow

I eagerly await the approach of the weekend. I am so fried. I am messing things up for classes right and left. Sigh.

So I had a call for an interview, at a cc, and I went to it. And I just got a very nice rejection phone call. Sigh. That was fast. I bumbled a few things because I tried to teach my classes instead of cancel them and then drive up to the interview with plenty of time. Now I am behind and muddling things up for my classes and they should be peeved that they had a distracted and confused instructor who gave them the wrong instructions and hustled them out of the classroom early --- and I do not have a second interview to prep on Friday. That's good, in terms of getting on top of teaching and organizing this next week or so... long term, not so good.

In other news I still haven't heard back from that other interview! They must have made the offer to someone else and can't close on the search until they finish negotiating? But even then, the other candidate must be really dragging out negotiating! I just wish they would contact me because I need help with closure, and I can't admit fully that I have been rejected until I have been officially rejected (hope springs eternal).

I am processing this Fast Place rejection and while I am second-guessing bits here and there, really it all went too fast for me to imaginatively invest and build up lots of hopes, so I am more about worrying about the inchoate future than on grieving specifics about that job. (Hmm: inchoate? Upon looking it up, I think that might not be the word I want.)

I think I have another Thing in the pipeline, but man the semester is winding down fast. People are having a fight over the old retiring faculty member's office and someone has come to me and said they need to announce my leaving at some point to put my office into this fight in a fair and transparent way, but didn't want to just spill the beans on me without my permission. Sigh. Ideally I would like to say, so sorry but I am off to take a wonderful opportunity at ______. But I still don't know what my wonderful opportunity is. It might be me leaving and relocating with no clue what my next job is. (Gulp.) And I will need to get back to Office Arrangement Person in about a week, I think.


Sigh. There are many many ways I would have liked to write this story but this doesn't seem to be going in the direction of any of them.

Not done imploding yet...

*whimper*


Still waiting. Although I think that now I need to start preparing myself for the rejection. I keep replaying in my head what went well and what went poorly at the interview and self-flagellating. (mentally.) I am working up to it. Right now I am at about 5 minutes of continuous contemplation of not getting the job and the need to totally re-plan the future. I will try to extend that time period to 6 minutes through repetition and practice.

Also.


I cancelled the Last Chance Saloon interview. Backed out. Rejected it. Which was supposed to be yesterday. No, wait --- today. This afternoon. I didn't feel like I had the time to prepare a demo on something I haven't actually done or planned yet for a below-transfer class, drive an exceedingly long distance, go through all that crap, and come back, and also deal with grading and class prep. Of course,  as soon as I did that, I started kicking myself. You're about to be unemployed! Don't pass up an interview for anything ever! I can't tell if I am making a wise decision or am choking in the home stretch, which is certainly a talent of mine. But I thought about my struggles to deal with my rural unprepared students, and how much I dislike anything that has to do with their interests, and thought about how this other place was even more rural and impoverished, and I thought: would I rather not work in anything education-related at all and have to move back home than take that job?

...






...




...



And I sent that email. Jeezus, this has been a stressful break. It's shaping up to be one shitty summer.