What do I want to blog about first?
I guess what I am most angry about should go first. I read some blogs frequently, but I am religious about my reading of Rate Your Students. I am climbing an uphill battle with some students and I feel better when I realize I am not alone and that I don't have it as bad as others. That having been said, a recent post has me pretty pissed. This post argues that Junior faculty should just suck it up and be happy where they are and not do their respective schools a disservice by looking for and taking a better job. WTF? Really? That is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard.
What about fit? When I was on the job market, I couldn't have a conversation with a faculty member or administrator that didn't mention 'fit.' It is arrogant and self-focused to assume that a person could choose a job that is a perfect 'fit' for them after a brief interview (some of mine were less than one full day, all were less than two full days). It is not just the interviewee on his or her best behavior. The faculty strategically pick who should interact with the interviewee, putting their best, brightest, or perhaps least orny faculty members into the limelight. And the students we meet on interviews are always top 5% students, the best, the brightest, the most involved and not necessarily the most representative. Labs are cleaned, offices are straightened, and everyone is polite. Then you arrive on the job and within a year experience this, this, this, and of course my melrose place drama, summed up here. What I bought when I took this job is not what was advertised. I should get the opportunity to evaluate the 'fit' from my end. Hell, I am evaluated by every student that shows up to the day I pass out evaluations in every course. My chair and dean pour over these evals scrutinizing every word to decide how good of a teacher I am overall. That means the worst of my students get equal voice to my most respectful students. Just this week alone, I had a student call me a stupid B!T@H. This student gets an equal voice in evaluations that my chair takes to heart. Further, I am observed in roughly 10 hours of teaching time each semester. Finally, I am on a one year renewable contract. You guys here at TBU evaluate me and decide if I get to keep my job every year. The administration meets with every member of my department individually to discuss my (mainly) pros and (very few, thankfully) cons. So you are doing plenty of evaluation about me--Why don't I get to evaluate you? Why don't I get to make the decision each year if I stay--you get to voice your decision each year about if you want to keep me?
I left hometown city to take this job. I left every friend I have (almost all are within 4 hours of hometown city), I left a thriving social life where I actually got to date and enjoy the company of men, I left my family. I started over new somewhere alone. I think sometimes people forget how hard that is to do when you are alone. I didn't have a husband to help unpack and I spend each Friday and Saturday night alone. TBU is located in the tinniest town in the world (that, of course, is an exaggeration). But it is not an exaggeration to say that I can count on one hand the number of single men in this town (not counting students, because that is against the rules, and because YUCK). I have less than 3 friends in town. You would think with such a small, safe, quiet little town, everyone would have been knocking on my door bringing me vegetables from their garden or pie. How many people have came by to say hello to me in the years I have lived here. Zero. Not one. Not a single neighbor. You get the feeling that it is high school all over again (not high school for me, which I enjoyed because of the dear friends I left to come here--more like high school stereotypes with the cliques and unfriendliness and loneliness--lifetime movie high school). Everyone has friends and there is no need to let the new kids in town play in your sand box. So I have no friends here and no chance at any dating or social life.
So the person who wrote the post in question at RYS said this:
" [I] let loose on some selfishness I saw among a group of junior faculty who were spending a good deal of time congratulating one another on working in tenure track jobs while slaving like mules to get better jobs in more attractive situations - close to Mommy, warmer weather, a place where their own peculiar preciousness will be admired by all."
Kiss my ass! There. You want to 'let loose' on someone like me--go for it, because I have been pushed around enough. Now I get to let loose. If I want to be closer to my family, Ill do it. When my dad went to the hospital last week because he collapsed at work and people thought he was having a heart attack--I was over 25 hours away. There was nothing that I could do. I couldn't help my mom, and I couldn't be there--It was like I wasn't even part of the family. How dare you criticize someone for wanting to support and be close to those they love. My parents are partially responsible for my getting through graduate school and in my family we take care of each other. It is what we do.
I don't want my 'peculiar preciousness to be admired by all', but some fricken' courtesy would be nice. Don't scream at me in front of my department (happened this semester) and don't call me a stupid B!XCH (a student on Monday).
Most 'non-junior' faculty I know are not at the first position they took. How quickly they forget. They went back out on the job market and found a job that worked for them--but I am supposed to stay in a place that I am unhappy both personally and professionally. I am a lot of things, but I am not a masochist and I am not that weak.
