A Time of Great Change, Part I

Dear Mr. [my last name]
I hope this email finds you well. We have reviewed your application for the adjunct position and would like to invite you to campus for an interview. However, for the fall semester, we are looking  for adjuncts who have daytime availability to teach face-to-face classes. If you are available to teach during the day, would you be able to visit our [redacted] campus next week on Tuesday before noon or after 2:30 or Wednesday after 2:30 for an interview? The interview process takes approximately an hour. Best,

[Name], PhD

Professor of English
[School]

You've got to be kidding me, right?

I just received this email yesterday afternoon.

I don't know how to respond to it, really.

The school in question is a community college. In Maryland. In the DC area, actually, right next to where the Washington Redskins play football.

I applied for a teaching position there at least two months ago; they were one of the first applications I filled out (I have a list). They were also one of the many schools which I wrote off about a month ago now because there would be no more time to move cross-country to teach someplace. In June, when I applied, that would have been feasible. In August, it is not. No way, no how. Especially not now that I'll be teaching here this fall.

The email above -- while it is indeed nice and to-the-point, shows that the department there must've read my qualifications and cover letter, but neglected to notice my physical location of Kansas. Can I fault them for this? Well, yes, of course I can -- unless they think I am independently wealthy (which would negate the need for me to be teaching for them as an adjunct), a little closer reading would have helped them to realize that I can't just hop a plane to DC for an interview in four days. It is, again, bittersweet, as this is the only interview request I've received all summer for any teaching position outside my own university.

Had they replied a month ago? It might have been do-able. I might have been able to fly home to visit my parents, detour to that interview, and then fly back here. Now? Nope. It's August 9. Classes here start in ten days. Ten days. I don't know when classes start there, but if they start around the time they do here, that's A) a really fast window for interviews, and B) they must be absolutely desperate for help.

Sorry, can't do anything about it now, ma'am.

I will have to reply this weekend, telling them I have accepted an adjuncting position here, and that I am now unavailable -- but with the caveat that if they would like to hire me on in the spring I would certainly interview with them again at that time, though it would have to be via telephone or Skype. I don't know what else to say, really.

I also received rejections for two different positions I applied for at the University of Colorado, both of them form emails delivered within one minute of one another. Classy.

I have been in sort of a hermit's hibernation period over the past few days, trying to soak in the last bit of "summer vacation" I have left. I put that in quotes because it's not so much "vacation" as it is "forced temporary unemployment." I haven't heard anything else from the department, and Parker (who has been teaching this summer and has been up there quite a bit) told me that it's been crazy busy, so I should cool my proverbial jets and relax a bit while everything works itself out. Whether I'll be offered anything else is unknown, and to be honest with you, I'm starting to get a little panicky about that. I know I'll get the one class I've already been given, but again that's little more than a stopgap when it comes to finances. I told Daisy I hope I get a big load of classes, four or five total, because -- while that will almost certainly not happen, and I would be so busy teaching, grading, and making lesson plans that I'd never sleep, it would allow me to save a buttload of money for the wedding and be able to move out of here whenever necessary. And, of course, I wouldn't have to worry so much about paying bills and starting those student loan payments in a few months.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to Walmart. I did not want to, but I could wait no longer -- I needed to get the essentials for another few weeks' survival, and needed cigarettes and coffee. As an aside, I've been drinking relatively little coffee as of late, but I was still almost out of it. This is the first time I've left the house in a week, since I was over at the newspaper last Friday morning. When I go out nowadays, everywhere I go it feels like people are staring at me and judging me silently for some reason. I don't know why, but it does. Yesterday I think I looked fairly normal -- tie-dye shirt, khaki shorts, flip-flops -- but it still felt like everyone was staring at me and judging me, as if they can tell I'm mostly unemployed and useless to society. It was a really weird feeling. I got the stuff I needed at Walmart and got the hell out of there. It was, to say the least, unnerving.

I think my allergies are building up so much that they're compounding on one another, mostly because of all of the rain and storms we've been getting here over the past two weeks or so. I woke up yesterday morning with what feels like a possible ear infection coming on, and have been unable to shake it. I can take allergy medicine and my congestion and the like will go away, but as soon as the pills wear off, everything comes back full-force. Since I can't become dependent on the pills to get rid of everything, I can't take them all the time. I've been drinking a lot of water as well, since I want to see if I can help flush everything out of my system that way. Plus, for some reason I've been really thirsty over the past week, and have been drinking a lot of water. Last night I was having a lot of bowel trouble, and couldn't actually crash and fall asleep until after I took medicine and it kicked in. It's like my body is staging a revolt of some kind.

The storms have quieted down a bit over the past two or three days; I've been awakened once a night or so by a few loud thunderclaps, but nothing else, and certainly nothing like the storms we've been having over the past two weeks. It'll thunder loud once or twice, and then I'll hear a few more softer rumbles, and then nothing. Apparently rain comes with it, at least for a while -- the pavement is always wet or puddled when I get up in the morning. However, it's a lot more difficult for me to hear storms when I'm downstairs in the below-ground bedroom and the low drone of the fan(s) blowing on me creates ambient noise. Since I started this post, however, there's been a lot of little storms and moderate rain popping up on the radar around the area, so I know that once I go to bed I will probably once more be awakened once or twice to some loud thunder.

As for my car and how I hastily stowed it in the garage a few nights ago, apparently I did it well -- when I took it out yesterday I realized that I couldn't have put it in there straighter if I'd tried, and that's a pretty big feat for me since the car is a fucking landboat. When I came home from Walmart, I made sure to pull up in front of my garage door as straight as possible, so that in the case that I have to do the same thing once more if we get more rough storms, I can pull her straight in and pull her in quickly, even with no light but my headlights and if a storm is raging around me.

In this time of change, this time of my last few days of, well, almost total unemployment before I become an honest-to-god professor, I mentioned that I've been rather slothlike and sedentary, trying to enjoy my time left before I have to begin teaching again. It's been my only true relaxation time the entire summer -- up until last week, I got up every day with a mission: apply for whatever jobs I can, be depressed, freak out little by little when nobody wants to hire me as the days pass, etc. Now that I know I'll be teaching again, and that I have a sort of rough game plan laid out for me for this fall, I've finally been able to actually breathe, and I've been able to relax somewhat. Not completely, of course, but somewhat. Enough to where it's not a chore or a miserable exercise to even get up and go about life. Daisy's presence here last week helped with that a lot as well, but being able to relax and do what I want, when I want to, without total gloom-and-doom and failure hanging over my head? I cannot tell you how much that helps me mentally and emotionally. My stress levels, while they will always be high, have lowered considerably.  My sleep has improved. Somewhat, anyway. I can't tell you exactly how much. My energy levels have remained much the same, though I no longer feel as if I'm being crushed by the weight of the earth. This is good.

In my downtime I have watched the entire first season of Todd and the Book of Pure Evil, a fantastically amusing show from Canada that a friend recommended to me. I liked it so much that I watched the first season of thirteen episodes in two sessions -- ten on Wednesday, three yesterday -- and I ordered the second season set from Amazon immediately, even before I'd finished. It arrives sometime today via UPS.