New Job

So, I've been at Awesome College in Middle-o'-Nowhereville since mid-July and haven't blogged once since leaving my beloved home and native land. And my first blog post since arriving here is to announce that I got an awesome new job and am moving onwards and upwards!

My lack of blogging from AC is in large part simply due to an absolute lack of time. That's the first year on the tenure-track for you. And as is now obvious, I added to all of the first year craziness by going on the market, unbeknown to my colleagues for the first six months I was here until I finally got the job and wrapped up negotiations.

There's also the simple fact that Awesome College has turned out to be not so awesome after all, and Middle-o'-Nowhereville has been depressing as hell, and therefore neither has been worthy of blogging about. To be more precise, Awesome College is actually awesome--if one is a student. But it leaves a lot to be desired if one is a prof. We are definitely a teaching school with a strong focus on the student experience, but faculty needs go out the window. The worst thing about this place is the complete and utter backwardness of AC's approach to technology. It has been incredibly frustrating for this geek to deal with stone age infrastructure. I've been banging my head up against the wall time and time again at each attempt to get the administration to improve the technological infrastructure. But the IT dept. has purposely kept the faculty in the dark about technology for the past decade as a means of control, so the rest of the faculty, and consequently the faculty-governed admin people, don't even realize that they are working with tech tools that are barely superior to a chisel and stone tablet. The IT dept has manipulated "ignorance is bliss" to their advantage, and it has been far from bliss having to confront AC's technological shortcomings on a near daily basis.

MV, quite simply, is really not worthy of more than a sentence to say that living here has been a soul-sucking hell on earth. I have never been so glad to contemplate saying goodbye to a town as I am to this one. I like my cozy little apartment, but I can't wait to get out of this town that depresses and frustrates me daily on the five minute drive from my apt to the office. I honestly do not know how people can make a life here and be happy. This is definitely a scary town with zero potential.

That said, my colleagues have been fantastic and I will miss them very, very, very much. It felt like I bonded with them instantly and they have been wonderfully supportive in getting me through the first year and helping me adapt to life in this place. They are the warmest, most kind, and most caring bunch of people I have met in a very long time, and I very much doubt that I will find friends and colleagues this amazing where I'm going next. There has been a core group of women here, all junior faculty, who are incredibly tight and supportive of each other, and I feel so lucky to have instantly become one of their group. I've never spent so much time socializing before, and that has been really key to surviving life here. I think that we socialize so much precisely because that's the group's survival strategy, and it works. Among the many parties and events, our core group of women has had a monthly dinner and movie night, and we've come to call our group "the coloreds and queers" since everyone is either black, Latina, South Asian, or lesbian--or some combination of such. We all want out of here, and they have been just as supportive of me leaving as they were when I arrived, happy that I'm getting out since they all want out too, but they really are a truly fantastic group of women whom I'll miss a lot.

But, onwards and upwards, so here's the scoop on my new job. It's at a big Southern football school (henceforth SFS) in a big college town (henceforth BCT) which is technically a city, but I wouldn't go quite so far as it call it a city--it has the population of one, but in my world what makes a city a city is a gay bar, and this place no longer has one, although it used to. The nearest gay bar, and the nearest airport, is an hour's drive away, but both of these factors are still vast improvements on MV which was an hour and a half away from either of those things. SFS is 15 times bigger than AC, and BCT has 10 times more population than MV, so getting away from the claustrophobic small-town feel will be really great.

SFS offers a 2/2 teaching load (compared to 3/3 at AC), a PhD program with graduate students I will eventually have to supervise (yikes!), and technically it's a R1 research school, not one at the top of the R1 scale but certainly not one to turn up one's nose at either. It has a strong program in my field, and the funds to support that program and the profs' research, and several smart colleagues to work with. There a tradition of frequently bringing in outside scholars, so lots of colloquia loom in my future, which will be really great. It's rare to continue to have access to that kind of scholarly community after grad school, so I really lucked out to end up at a place that is similar to my PhD school in that regard.

Being Southern, one of the really great things about SFS and BCT is that it never snows! Même si je suis fière d'être québécoise, and a proud Canuck too, gawd do I ever hate the snow! MV has snow up the wazoo, worse than Canada, and I'm so glad to be leaving that behind and to know that next winter I'll be basking in 20C temps and bright sunshine.

And, BCT has a much larger community of Canucks. Here at AC, I've been the only one, and it has become a huge part of my identity to the point where it feels like every third word out of my mouth has been "Canada". Even though BCT is much further south of the border, as a bigger community it has more Canadians, so I won't be alone on the cultural/national identity front anymore. I'm already FB friends with one of my new Canadian colleagues, who also happens to be a dyke--what more could a girl wish for in a new friend. SFS also puts me in a much better position to find a job back home someday (although after 5 years on the market, I have no plans of going on the market yet again next year!), and that's a really important part of what it has to offer as well. But at least it's a place where I can foresee living my life if a job in Canada doesn't materialize, which is something I definitely could not say about AC. Until I finally got the offer from SFSI was seriously considering quitting academia and taking up the offer of admissions to law school, just to get the hell out of MV and back to Canada. I'm really grateful to be going to SFS, which really does feel like winning the lottery.

So, the move from MV to BCT is hopefully going to happen sometime in mid-June, which is only 6 weeks away! All told, I'll have only been in MV for 11 months, and there's something satisfying about knowing that it will have been less than a year of my life. I'm still waiting for SFS to finish negotiating a tender with a new moving company, so I haven't actually been able to book my move for sure yet, but their purchasing dept says my dates shouldn't be a problem, and I've already found a great place to live when I get down there. It's a cute, brand-new, condo that is less than a 10 minute walk to campus, only 600 sq. ft. but with hardwood floors, granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances, and altogether absolutely gorgeous. I can't wait to be in the new place--and I just hope I can fit all my stuff in there, but I've measured out how much stuff I have, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!