I hate it here. I hate it here. I hate it here. Why can't I have magical shoes to click my heels and go home. These suede boots I've got on are hot, but I'd take magic over hot any day.
There now it's out of my system. I don't hate it here. The newness just makes every stupid inconvenience boil my blood just faster than necessary. I thought that I was at a football school. It's January, we don't play Football in January, bowl season is over, campus is safe again. I should be able to be at my office any time without fear of the traffic-sports clusterf*@&. Buzz. WRONG! Having stayed late at the office today to prep for class tomorrow (I'm finding new an unique challenges associated with teaching to the much smaller class size at my much larger U-no the irony is not lost on me), I was shocked to be stuck in campus traffic at 9:00 pm. Which is when it dawned on me that we are also a basketball school. Ugh. Haveing spent the majority of my academic breeding at the Mecca of College Basketball, I should know better than to stay late on campus on a bball game night. I adeptly scheduled around these events for years. Now that I know that this situation exisits, I can adapt, but for the love of god why didn't anyone warn me????
In light of this new development (and a few others of recent weeks) I present my top three tips for choosing a tenure track faculty position...should you of course find yourself luckier than I and with an actual choice...unlikely in this current economic time, I know, but I'm sure you lucky ones are out there, and I'm equally sure that you are reading my little blog. ;)
1) The two-body situation. (I know I promised more on this topic and really it's coming). Negotitate it up front. Ask for a dual career office, if they hedge, don't have one, or try to brush you off, get uppity.
2) Start-up funds. Make sure that a) they aren't in any way tied to the stock market in some hinky incomprehensible funding sort of way and b) that they won't be the first thing attacked in budget cuts leaving you with plans you may not be able to follow through on.
3) Sports. Ask the real questions. How will the sports teams impact my chances of tenure? How often will I be unable to get to or from campus in a reasonable time frame because of sporting events. How many home games are there? Should I plan my teaching around them in order to get the best possible ratings (e.g. no exams the week before or after homecoming, opening game, senior night, etc.) From my own personal experience I would shy away from any University that has won or come very close to a National Championship in the last 5 years and those that are > 1 hour away from any other professional sporting teams, making the U the defacto team spirit for all of the surrounding population.
I wonder if there is a correlation between home games and tenure rates? Maybe I should do a study. Do you think I could get grant money for that? If I could my chances of tenure would really go up, but then that would skew the results. Two complicated. I'll just settle with the N=1 sample I have now. Yes, tenure is impacted by sports. Of course, with such a small sample size, it wouldn't hold up to peer-review...but hey it's my blog, I don't have go through peer review. I save that hell for my real life. :)
Uh...I have some bad news...you're also at a baseball school. And occasionally the gym meets and softball games are pretty packed, too. So yeah...about that...
ReplyDeleteBut, on a positive note, I do think that the university benefits from being in news in a positive light. Sure athletics doesn't share the money it makes, but people who feel good about their school tend to give back, at least in my experience. So maybe that will help with the funding? =)
Thank goodness blog posts don't have to be peer-reviewed. Talk about sucking the fun out of something...
ReplyDeleteI remember when I first moved to where I am, I HATED it. I had only ever lived in the Upper Midwest (only in the Great Lakes, actually) and the place I wound up is like an outpost of the American South. (And silly me, I thought it would be more like Southwest).
So I had a major culture shock. I think that's another thing new faculty aren't prepared for and don't always take into account. I literally went home and cried most nights the first few months I was here - it was hot, I couldn't understand anyone's accent, the first thing people said upon meeting me and hearing me speak was "You're not from around here, are you?" which I know now was just a conversational gambit but which sounded terribly hostile to me then...
I shopped my resume around at any school in the Wisconsin/Iowa/Illinois/Michigan area that was hiring (and a few that were not). Got nothing, decided A job was better than NO job, so I stayed on.
I eventually got used to it, but there are still things that irk me - the town I'm in is VERY small; shopping is mainly wal-mart plus a few shops downtown; if you want something other than Wal-mart or giftee shoppees, you have to drive 1/2 hour at least. There's not much of a bookstore. Everyone but me (or so it seems some days) is married, has kids, and has done that nuclear-family close-in thing where anyone who is an "outsider" is frozen out from anything, socially...
Then again, there are a lot of frustrations that don't exist that would in a bigger area - crime is low, traffic is not bad (even on home game nights!), the expectations are not impossibly high.
Hopefully you will adjust and come to hate the new position less.