It pretty much describes how my spouse and I are operating. I always had a tenuous connection to my department (non tenure stream spousal accommodation who teaches primarily in an interdisciplinary program that is a tiny part of the overall focus) and not being around any colleagues for the past two years makes me feel zero connection at all. My wife could go up for full but whatā€™s the point? It would be a pittance raise and more responsibility in exchange for an ego boost and the dept getting to brag about another full professor.
Weā€™ve lost a number of tenured faculty with no hope of those lines coming back anytime soon (and we know of two who have campus visits for other jobs coming up) so all of them are on literally every grad committee because someone has to be. Weā€™re on our third (interim) chair in the 4.5 years Iā€™ve been here.
I could get a private sector (or university staff) IT/dev job that pays more but it would be a 12 month 9-5 office job vs being able to do whatever for three months every summer. Basically weā€™re at a sweet spot of time/money/workload and despite neither of us being really invested at all we canā€™t think of how anything could be better. So I do my best at teaching but go through the motions on everything else whiles looking forward to summers.
― joygoat, Sunday, 16 January 2022 16:10 (two years ago) link