Well, here it is. It's the last Friday night of June. June 28, the end of the month in two days. And I'm basically at the end of my rope when it comes to searching for teaching jobs. I have received no callbacks, no rejections, no replies of any sort for any of the positions I've applied for over the course of the past month, and as such, after I file my last few applications for teaching positions tonight, I must close the book on that chapter of job-searching for the rest of the summer in order to expand my focus into looking for positions that don't have a set start date of early-to-mid-August, and positions that aren't on the opposite side of the country.
My reasoning for this has been stated before (and should be pretty obvious at this point) -- I no longer have the time or money required to move across the country to a teaching job with about six weeks' notice. Up until this point, I had the time and resources to do so. Moving to somewhere in the tri-state area, or moving up to Omaha once I get a position there? That would be do-able in six weeks' time if absolutely necessary. Being able to move across the country to California, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, or any of the other states I've applied for teaching work in is no longer possible in this timeframe with the budget I have and with the setbacks of having a car that's falling apart and three cats that I must move with me without a lot of help and/or a financed relocation, neither of which any of the positions I've applied for will provide me.
It is actually quite disheartening and depressing to let this go. I was hoping I wouldn't have to. I have a lot of important teaching credentials. I have two degrees. I have designed courses. My references are all top-notch people, two of whom have PhDs. My CV is excruciatingly detailed and contains all of my important achievements and skills needed to perform even the most basic of adjunct teaching jobs I've applied for even though I don't want to be an adjunct because the pay is fucking terrible. I've spent many hours during late nights and many hours during the sweltering hot days filling in boxes and forms on online applications, creating profiles, uploading CVs, lists of references, cover letters, and unofficial transcripts. I've even spent hours filling out paper applications for some positions which required them, and spent several dollars' worth of my own money in stamps to mail off those applications to colleges and other institutions who won't even give me a courtesy email reply or telephone call saying they're not interested.
Some places state on their applications that reviews of said applicants won't begin until July 8. If it takes them a week to get to and review my application to call me if they're interested, I will no longer have time at that point to move across the country. I just won't. Cleanup and move-out of this house will take at least a month straight of daily work when I'm doing it by myself with no help, and that doesn't count actual time spent moving all of this stuff, my car, and my cats to another city/state, nor does it count the search for a new house in said place. And I'm also pretty sure that Daisy wouldn't be able to uproot herself over the course of a month, either. It's a catch-22, a horrible situation that can't be remedied at this point. Colleges will start classes back up in six weeks. It would take me eight or nine, minimum, to get out of here and moved somewhere if I were offered a teaching job today. It's no longer possible unless that teaching job is someplace close or someplace familiar to me.
So, it's over. My search for actual teaching positions for the fall semester is now over. And I can't do anything about that. I worked hard to apply to as many positions as possible, in as many places as possible (my "CV and Apps" folder on my desktop has 25 cover letters in it alone, and three different versions of my CV) and I failed to get anyone to call me back or say "hey, we think you're a good fit for this job, would you like to Skype-interview with us?"
No, I just thought, Brandon, stop thinking like that. You didn't fail. These places failed you.
It has always been my mentality, and my mantra when I was teaching my classes, that you as a professor don't fail students -- they fail themselves. In the world of teaching, that is true; all students have to do (especially in the classes I've taught) is show up, follow directions, and actually do the work. Even if the work is shitty work, if they're showing up and doing it, and following the directions to do it correctly, it is really hard to fail any of the classes I've ever taught. It's the students who don't show up, who don't put in the work, and who don't even attempt to follow the directions that end up failing.
In the world of looking for teaching jobs, it's almost exactly the opposite. You can be the best applicant out there and you can have all the experience, motivation, intelligence, and willingness to teach that you want -- but it means precisely dick if the institutions you apply to drop the ball and don't even bother to contact you. Do I think I'm a fantastic instructor? No, I know I'm a fantastic instructor. My degrees, other credentials, experience and references back me up on that. If these institutions I've applied to don't recognize that, that's on them, not on me. It's their loss. I haven't failed them -- they've failed themselves in not hiring someone like me.
Wow. So it is sort of the same, then. Hm.
That doesn't mean it's any less disheartening or depressing. For once, however, I can place blame on the outside world and not on myself. I've done everything correctly and to the best of my ability -- it's these institutions who are failing to meet me halfway by even giving me any sort of acknowledgement that they don't want to hire me.
Now that I've said this, watch me get about ten offers and/or interview calls after July 8th, when I'd have no time to do anything even if the job were a good one. It's simply a terrible fucking situation. I wish I could explain to you how saddening and frustrating it is.
Well, tonight's the end of all that. Starting tomorrow I begin looking for other employment, non-teaching employment, on my terms. And looking for non-teaching employment that will actually pay me a decent salary, at that. The past six weeks of applying for over 100 teaching positions with no responses have shown me how little my knowledge and skills are appreciated when it comes to academia, and it's time I let that go for the time being. There are few things I despise more than being unappreciated or underappreciated -- it is something I cannot abide.
I have already started this non-teaching job search, sort of. I applied for an on-air radio position at Entercom in Kansas City.
...what?
Yes, I'm serious.
Entercom runs my favorite radio station ever, 96.5 The Buzz, out of Mission, KS. I have a few slight connections at the station -- namely that most of the on-air talent and I follow each other on Twitter and occasionally converse back and forth. Do I want to live in Kansas City again? No. I never want to set foot in Missouri again if I can help it. BUT. I would totally be happy to live on the Johnson County side, the Kansas side, of the city. Mission is a small town of less than 10,000 in the suburbs of the city. I'd be happy to live there or somewhere around there. I could start a real career there, start building a life there if I got a job with Entercom, even if I'm not on-air.
The point is, not necessarily being tied down to looking at teaching positions opens up all sorts of avenues for me which were previously unexplored. I've always wanted to be on the radio. I've always wanted my own podcast, too (though discussions about starting one with Daisy have led to some pretty big fights between us). Part of what I liked so much about teaching is that I had a captive audience -- people who would listen to me because they had to, but more often than not wanted to. A large part of teaching is performance; it's persona. It's about creating rapport with people listening to you. I've always wanted a position where I can do that for a living, where I can talk to/at people, yet be myself and be at ease. Performing, of sorts. I've always thought I could be a stand-up comedian, too. My friend Adam (who I've collaborated with on posts here in the past) does that now, actually. If nothing else, I've got an application in at a company where at some point I may actually get to do something I'd like to do for a living. If nothing comes of it, so be it, but I can't say I didn't try.
Daisy has been forwarding me postings for companies and other places in Omaha. Some of them are as varied as call center positions, sales jobs, or 911 operators (no, not kidding there; she wants to apply for that one herself). I'm trying to remain as open as possible, but it's difficult for positions that I have no interest in doing, or positions that I could have done almost ten years ago with no degree whatsoever. I will admit that a big part of it is pride; I don't want to have wasted seven years in college and graduate school to wind up with a position that doesn't require a college degree. I want that time to mean something. I want people to look at my vita and say "wow, this guy has his shit together." If I wanted a position that wouldn't require a degree, I'd move back to Missouri and work in the grocery store again for $17k a year and default on my student loans.
The truth is, though, the job market isn't much better now than it was during the massive recession we had a few years back, and it's certainly not any better for people like me who actually want to do something productive with their lives. The jobs that are being added are unskilled labor positions or entry-level positions that pay horribly, not positions someone with an education and bills to pay could actually live on and make a career out of. Those jobs are disappearing and/or there's an incredible amount of competition for them. All of it is depressing and somewhat troubling.
In other news, my parents went to see Man of Steel yesterday and loved it, which I thought validated my opinions of the film more than anything else possibly could have. Daisy and I want to see a movie again when I venture northward to Omaha next week, but there's not really anything coming out that I'm interested in, really, in the least. World War Z is out, but as it apparently shares nothing with the book it's based on, I'm not as interested in seeing it as I was before. The Lone Ranger comes out on the 3rd, but...eh. The trailers look good, but I could really take it or leave it. This Is The End is still playing, but it may not be by the time I get to Omaha, and the other very few movies I want to see this summer don't come out for another month or so -- Kick-Ass 2, The World's End, and Pacific Rim still have several weeks to go before they come out. Kind of a shitty July 4th movie weekend, if you ask me. I can't remember a year in recent memory where there wasn't a big tentpole action/sci-fi/comic book movie released on July 4th weekend. Strange.
Then again, I've already seen three movies this summer, which is three times more than I've seen in theaters for the past...three? Four years? I think the last movies I saw in theaters before this summer were Green Lantern and Inglourious Basterds. The latter was 2009 and the former 2011, so yeah, I guess it's been a while. I was poor for a very long time. Well, I'm still poor, but I'm talking too-poor-for-movies-poor.
This weekend I need to clean the house; I meant to vacuum yesterday after my trip to Walmart, but instead I made a late lunch and then went back to bed until 9PM, taking a long nap. I'll have to vacuum today, then. At some point, anyhow. I need to wash the bedsheets, too, as I've been sweating all over them for the past two weeks (which isn't really conducive to smelling that great when it's been as hot as it has recently).
Over the past day or so, I've noticed this skunk-like, vinegar-y smell in the house, getting somewhat strong whiffs of it every so often. Mind you, there's not a skunk in the house (obviously) and my vinegar sits unopened and untouched on the kitchen counter. It's not the cats; I cleaned their litter pan/cat room yesterday morning, yet the strange smell remains. It's not me, either; not only have I not begun producing vinegar-sweat, but I showered a few hours after I got up. The smell is not really strong, mind you, but a stiff whiff of it will hit you every once in a while, enough to make you think WTF, man? and start looking around for culprits. Finally, on a whim, I Googled "vinegar smell in house" and found the culprit.
It's the trees.
Remember, about 36 hours ago we had horrible storms that tore the trees in this town apart, including many oak trees (like the ones on my street). When healthy oak trees are cut -- this time by winds and rains -- they secrete acetic acid. Guess what vinegar is? You guessed it, acetic acid and water. Get enough trees down throughout a town? The entire town will smell like vinegar. I'm smelling the acetic acid of the trees as the air and breezes (helped along by my fans) waft through the house. The cats don't seem to notice it (or, if they do, they don't care) but every once in a while I get a good, strong whiff of it. Oh well. It's better than the normal Newton smell, which I like to call "spread cow shit." Because that's what the town smells like a lot of the time, especially when it's windy.
So that's what's going on right now. I'll update again when I can, before I make the journey to Omaha.
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