Help, I'm trapped in an ivory tower! Or "what the fuck am i getting myself into with this academia stuff"

shit really? I have a student who's trying to find a cc job, for geo reasons, hasn't been winning, maybe this is why

cc jobs are pretty great too

I mean I don't know what cc search coms are like, a big problem is if they're by people outside of the discipline, so that you'd be culled just for not listing the right AOS

in which case, just list the "right" AOS

haha i dunno i think this place was kind of screwy, but from what i know, ccs that don't hire thru the local temp pipeline (seems very common in my area to upgrade over time) are hella hard to break into, maybe your student needs to do the 'foot in the door' bullshit to prove emself trustworthy first. i would think your school would be fine enough for cc searchers, and yet not stigmatized w/ an elite glamor. but these places can have ~~opinions~~.

i applied at a local slac once that had not been using many temps, preferred visitors for budgetary/pedagogical reasons, and at the interview they mentioned having used one of my program's graduates several years back (~10? long memories) and had a 'bad experience'. they just supposed we were not turning out the 'right kind' of teachers for them.

ugh yeah, you're dealing with very small depts and prob w/ people w/o fingers on the "pulse" of grad programs so ~~opinions~~ can last a long time

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/04/lsu_academic_bankruptcy.html

says a lot about the job market and my performance in it that getting on an "alternate list" for a good postdoc sorta cheered me up. it means next to nothing in reality since people who have already accepted would have to leave in order me to be bumped up. that won't happen. still, a slight acknowledgement!

maybe someone will tap out and you'll get called in

best case is maybe that they get a better offer somewhere else. this is a good school and situation but it's only a one year fellowship.

Ha, I'm waiting for my connecting flight, scrambling to put my presentation together for tomorrow. I ended up with much less time for prep than I anticipated; feels like a crapshoot at this point.

Ugh, I've been up since 3:20, finishing this and rehearsing. I think it's less of a mess now, as long as I don't screw up from the lack of sleep.

Any acknowledgment is encouraging, esp from a good school. Good luck, Ryan.

im sure the adrenaline will carry you through. good luck!

Hilton is fucking sweet, though.
xpost thx

So they offered me the job on Tuesday and I just accepted. I'm still letting it sink in that I'll be moving yet again in a couple of months.

congrats!

congrats! nice to get a happy ending on this thread for once.

The successful candidate will teach a 4/4 load primarily in the areas of first-year writing courses and possibly second-year literature courses.

i swear that "possibly" appears in almost every miserable composition job listing.

the area of possibly second-year literature courses

Thanks, Sufjan and ryan! It's a visiting position (prob. renewable for four years) so not really an ending yet but, yeah, it's a great opportunity despite the mild upheaval. I hope it'll be happy though. There will be some real challenges at first.

http://chronicle.com/article/To-Protest-Colleagues-Lack-of/230057/

As a tenured associate professor of English at Yeshiva University, Gillian Steinberg had been a winner in academe’s fierce competition for secure, decent-paying jobs. For the past several years, as director of the writing program at Yeshiva's undergraduate men’s college, she had tried to lift up other writing instructors — offering them positions that, while not on the tenure track, at least were full time and on long-term contracts.

Last week, however, convinced that her efforts were about to be undone by administrators as part of a broader reorganization, Ms. Steinberg decided to walk away from her otherwise secure position. She formally resigned, effective at the end of the summer, when she plans to begin teaching at a private Jewish high school in Riverdale, N.Y.

well i finally got a break. i got a one year postdoc. i am being brought in as a replacement for someone who got a late TT offer and couldn't defer. ha. it's a pretty hi-falutin seminar though and hopefully i can do my damnedest one last time to salvage some kind of academic career.

congrats!

thanks! seminar is a topic that is sort of adjacent to stuff i consider myself to "do." so the rest of summer will be a pretty intense cram session.

Congrats! Does that mean it's a teaching post-doc? (My summer is also going to be a music technology cram session.)

I had a Skype interview on Monday for a VAP teaching position and am already seriously questioning whether I would even want to move halfway across the continent for a 4/4 teaching load.

Ha, I actually got called back for another interview this week. It kind of felt good to say "I have accepted another offer." When it rains, it pours, I guess?

yeah it includes a small teaching load. i dont even know what the course(s) will be yet, other than undergraduate. this has been very sudden.

things are happening for me also! but this isn't on 77 so funk dat

but congrats ryan, keeping the game alive

stay of execution! they're gonna have to physically remove me from academia.

yay congrats ryan!

(btw not in academia rn & rn don’t plan to return, for my own reasons; don’t miss it rn but ivory tower will always have (gnawed off) piece of my heart)

Has anyone been following the La C0ur scandal? Interesting stuff.

http://crookedtimber.org/2015/06/08/professors-do-far-less-teaching-than-the-public-imagines/

'ppl we trust to teach' = some grad student who seemed ok and managed not to flunk out by year 3 or 4 and needs an assignment just when the dept needs a slot filled

so much trust

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-university-without-shared-governance.html

good stuff

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/entitlements-for-education-pension-universities/400820/

on 'coming pension crisis'

yup, yet another reason to get out (of the country, for instance)

you pastry-ass eatin motherfucker

that's cheese-ass eatin motherfucker to you

they got the one in the other over there, i hear

eat em in their little hats, with their little mustaches trimmed so they never get any cheese on em

First lectures of the new semester tomorrow! I've spent most of today and yesterday and, still, things feel a little loose.

Ditto, good luck out there!

Thanks, you too! I'll need it.

First day of class in a liberal arts college: we didn't get through everything because people were caught up in describing how Ligeti made them feel. I could get used to this.

How was yours, bentelec?

First day of class in a liberal arts college: we didn't get through everything because people were caught up in describing how Ligeti made them feel. I could get used to this.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 25 August 2015 20:41 (15 minutes ago) Permalink

Haha. That's sweet.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/business-executive-named-university-iowa-president-33517754

How was yours, bentelec?

― EveningStar (Sund4r)

Just seeing this now - it was pretty good! It takes a while for those in-class powers of improvisation to come back. I just moved from teaching mostly grads at a mid-sized private university to mostly undergrads at a giant public university, so it's going to take some time to feel out who I'm working with.

Having come out of a highfalutin liberal arts college, Ligeti ~feelings~ are a very warm memory - it's possible but unlikely to get in a comparable situation in my field! Just be sure to sensibly prune back the 2.5 students who eagerly want to turn the class into a private discussion.

Just be sure to sensibly prune back the 2.5 students who eagerly want to turn the class into a private discussion.

This seems wise, yes.

MLA job list time! English is a brutal wasteland again, but this phrase amused me:

"Located approximately 30 minutes from culturally rich downtown Indianapolis..."

uh, if you have to say it...

i've been telling other academics that i plan for this to be my last year on the job market, no matter what. (I have said this before.) but i've noticed that to a man/woman, they unfailing respond with "what will you do?" (i have no idea.) at first i was thinking this might just be natural curiosity but now im starting to detect an amount of real interest, as if i might have figured something out, some hopeful alternative. alas.

that's so generous of them, they're assuming you would only be giving up if you had some actual plan, like a rational actor

i picked up another couple online courses late in the summer, and then just in the past week an emergency fill-in at a school in town here, so now i am adjuncting 3. not a lot at these rates, and no benefits anywhere, but enough to quit my side job that i hated, and maybe have enough money for some much-needed health care this semester. it's nice to think of being in a classroom again, too.

oh nice. congrats on that!