Thursday

Just checked The Chronicle of Higher Ed job search pages. The postings include non-teaching positions, pretty much what I'm looking for or at least what I'll take. In case you missed it or forgot, I don't dislike teaching. I dislike teaching in a system which has so many institutional impediments to teaching and learning. Anyhow, no luck today. However, I did run across this pretty cool essay from the First Person feature in the Chronicle Careers section. It's a reflection on dealing with denial of tenure. So no jobs, but a nice essay which resonated well with me.

I'll be heading onto campus again today for more loose end tying up, then off to the dentist to make the most of the last few weeks of my dental insurance (cavities - yikes!), and then I'm scheduled to accompany my fella to the house of a faculty couple who routinely invite people over for drinking, hazing, and schmoozing. While I've been in the department and have spoken to a few people about my decision, if I go to this thing tonight, it will be the first time I'll be immerse in a high contact environment with my former faculty and peers since making my decision to leave official. By official I mean since having told staff and grad students who are integral to the departmental communication network (i.e. the gossipy people). I'd be a flat out liar if I said that the idea of going tonight hasn't given me some pause. But I'd also be lying if I denied the perverse impulse I have to not slink silently off the scene. I've had enough small scale, isolated interactions on this topic to know that some of the elements described by the author of the tenure essay seem uncannily like aspects of my own situation.

"For the time being, I have chosen the satisfaction that comes with confounding colleagues' expectations that I should be a cowering wreck. Dignity and forthrightness are easy to embody in my increasingly brief visits to the office because the bar is so low. Surprising people by merely walking upright offers both small victory and perverse amusement. I am always cordial, sometimes frank, but never ashamed.

A few people have praised my plucky stance. Being commended for how you handle tenure denial is a dubious honor, yet it also makes clear the absurdity of the logic that equates losing a tenure bid with losing dignity. I need my dignity not to prove something to my colleagues. Rather, I need it to prove to myself that I need not be helpless in this scenario. I have decisions to make."