Job News

I never thought I'd ever say it: I turned down a job offer yesterday.

It was my first job offer ever for an Assistant Professorship. It was from a local university to which I'd applied for a tenure-track job--a late posting. It would have been a really nice first job, and it would have been a really nice place to live permanently if it turned out that my first job also ended up being my only job for the rest of my life. After the job was approved and advertised as tenure-track, however, the university president decided that one way to deal with the university's current financial crisis (which I knew nothing about) was to decide unilaterally to refuse to rubber-stamp already approved tenure-track lines--and without that last, essential John Hancock it's not a tenure-track job after all. And so, I was offered (rather last minute and out of the blue, sans interview even) a one-year assistant professorship instead, what we Canucks would call a CLT and south of the border would be a VAP.

A one-year CLT--with a "strong chance" of conversion to tenure-track, but we all know what such promises mean in academia--versus one last year as a postdoc? Teaching six courses, four of which are out of my field, while commuting a somewhat substantial distance, versus 100% free time to work on my two book proposals and to finish two partially written articles, one of which has already been taken by a volume? The obligation to go on the market yet again next year no matter what. Hmmm... It really shouldn't have been a tough choice, should it? And yet it was agonizingly difficult. Pressure from the university in question (which really is a delighful place, and is in a really rough situation trying to cover its slate of courses this year), pressure from my current postdoc supervisor (which was surprising and illogical in many respects, but whose advice is definitely not to be taken lightly given said supervisor's status), and the lure and desire to be a grown-up, a real academic, to assume that all coveted identity of "assistant professor" (with the accompanying shockingly high salary, more than double what I'm making now).

I said no. It was difficult. As the panic and anxiety and stress of this week have begun to subside in the last 24 hours, as the feeling of relief has begun to bring my heart rate down a bit closer to normal, I'm beginning to feel proud of myself. Proud of myself for saying no, but also just a hint of pride, a vestige, from that initial moment of elation when the offer arrived in my inbox and I realized that someone out there thinks that I don't suck, someone out there thinks I'm actually worthy. That's a damn good feeling.

Pride, I know, shall soon be replaced with the stress of making the most of this last year of glorious postdoctoral freedom, of maximizing every potential publication and getting as many new lines on my c.v. before next year's job season (only 2.5 months until the new MLA listings!), but for now pride and relief are to be savoured as much as my erratic heart rate will allow.