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!

Last Day / Dernière Journée

It's my last day in my home and native land, c'est ma dernière journée dans mon beau pays. I'm going to miss it here--a lot!

The movers came at 8:30am. I didn't finish packing until 3:45am and only slept intermittently from 4 til 7am. Ugh. But the move at my office (which they did first) went extremely well, in and out in 30 minutes, and the move at my downtown storage locker went just as well, another in and out in just 30 minutes, and although it was a bit slower, 2 hours, the move out of my apartment went very smoothly too. I'm at my office now taking advantage of the internet connection before locking my keys inside, going to eat a 3pm breakfast, seeing a film, and then going to a BBQ a friend is kindly throwing for me at 7pm.

I fly out tomorrow at noon, connect in a major hub, will be hoping that my bags connect too, since I don't normally check baggage but will be checking two suitcases this time, and then arrive in nearest major city to Middle-o'-nowhere-ville at about 6pm. Thanks to priceline.com and American consumerism, I got a 4-star hotel for dirt cheap and can spend the night there so that I can meet a new friend for coffee in the morning before doing a stock-up shopping trip to Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and, of course, Ikea. Being an hour and a half away from this city sucks, but at least the shopping is good when one can get there! I've rented a car from the airport for the next two weeks since I'll be in my new home for two weeks before flying off to the fancy-pants, by-invitation-only conference in England, and then hopefully the new car I'm buying will be there ready for me when I get back. And hopefully all my belongings will arrive a full week before I have to go to England. The movers say they will arrive either Thursday or Friday of this week, so fingers crossed they do!

I am going to miss Canada a lot though.

Le Québec va me manquer beaucoup, beaucoup.

I've been so busy with non-stop planning for all this basically since I got the job offer. The past few weeks have been even more hectic, and I've been too busy so far to mourn or cry much. I hope that I can hold myself together for the next few weeks of unpacking too. They say the first year as an assistant prof is hell year, and this summer has definitely been the summer from hell so far. In a way I'm grateful that I've been too busy to have time to be upset, but at this point I just want this whole stressful moving experience to be done and over with, even if I'm not at all keen about where I'll end up once it is over. The new apartment is ok though, and hopefully it will look even better once my stuff arrives and I can begin nesting. It will feel good to feel settled and grounded again.

Opération Point-QC

J'ajoute un lien au site web de l'Opération Point-QC, fondée par Daniel Turp afin de pétitioner la création d'un nom de domaine .QC sans le .CA à la fin. C'est une bonne idée qui circulent depuis très longtemps (j'ai entendu des gens se plaindent à ce sujet il y a une décennie), et je félicite Daniel d'avoir le courage et la conviction de mener le project à terme, ce que je suis convaincu qu'il va réussir à faire.


Et en même temps, allez faire un tour au site web de Daniel à sa nouvelle adresse: http://www.danielturpqc.org/

Et pourquoi pas devenir un "fan" de Daniel sur sa nouvelle page Facebook?

Cultural Stockpiling

I set out from home this sunny morning with a plan to hit the used record and cd shops in the cool part of town in order to try to sell off 4 records (not originally mine; I don't even own a record player) and 4 cds. It was also a chance to take in the sun since it's supposed to rain for the next couple of days, and more importantly to take in this city which I love so much and which I will be forced to leave in just two short months. I managed to sell / simply give away the records and cds. I didn't get much for them, but I was mainly happy to get rid of them since they were emotional baggage I did not want to take with me when I move (I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff from my late spouse lately in anticipation of this move and starting over somewhat afresh and unburdened by material objects from that relationship).

Anyway, I finally arrived back home a shocking 8 hours later extremely happy and weighed down with an immense pile of second-hand treasures! And when I say immense, I mean immense. I ended up hitting just 5 second-hand cd and books stores, but I browsed away almost the entire day and ended up buying 8 books, 7 dvd's, and a whopping 18 cd's!!!

I have never shopped like that in my life. I have never splurged that much at a single time before. To be fair, it wasn't entirely splurging since everything was so cheap, no where near what one would pay for all that new. But given how fiscally responsible and conservative I am when it comes to money, blowing $300 in a single day on books, dvd's, and cd's is a big deal for me.

I am absolutely thrilled though and don't regret a single penny. I am cultural stockpiling. Yes, this splurge was all about stocking up for when I cross the border in two months into the big, bad U.S. of A. where I know that everything that is normal, abundant popular culture around here will suddenly become a rare "import", if lucky enough to be available for importation at all.

Presque tout ce que j'ai acheté est en français. Des livres sur le nationalisme (technically some of these could count as "research"), des films que je pense peut-être pouvoir jouer pour mes futurs étudiants dans une espèce de ciné-club qui existe (je pense) sur le campus, ou bien que moi je devrais fondé en arrivant, avec l'aide des profs de français, et tout simplement de la musique québécoise pour me consoler une fois que je serai pognée là-bas, triste et en peine d'amour pour mon pays. For both of my countries, actually. A third of the cd's were pure English Canadian, the kind of English Canadian rock that couldn't be any more canuck if you doused it in maple syrup.

Cultural stockpiling. It doesn't make forced exile any less emotional, but it does provide some solace. It's money well spent. I can't wait for the next sunny day to hit the second-hand shops and stock up some more... No matter how long I end up stuck south of the 49th, mon âme et mon coeur seront toujours ici dans mes pays.

Book Proposal, Take Two

I have just sent off my book proposal to the big publisher whom I talked to at MLA and whom I really hope takes it. The more I think about it, the more I think this publisher would be the best fit, probably much better than the first one I sent it too, mainly for prestige reasons and with a "there's no harm in trying" attitude. But this publisher is prestigious too, and the only harm was waiting and waiting for a response only to find out that the first one was definitely cancelling the series I'd submitted to. And not having my proposal in the pipeline at this other publisher during that time. But hopefully having talked to the editor at MLA before sending it off will prove to have been a good thing, and hopefully there will be a positive response this time around!

Now there's just that darn anthology proposal to write, the one I've been procrastinating about for over two years now, probablement parce que je dois l'écrire en français. Ayoye, il va falloir dépoussiérer ma cervelle.