You Haven't Heard of the School that Will Hire You, a series of posts
This week, due to job search committee responsibilities, a book chapter on teaching at a non-elite institution, and general scheming with Shakespearean colleagues, I came to the realization that I want to run a professionalization workshop for graduate students called "You haven't yet heard of the school that will hire you."*
So, in order to start thinking about this topic (and hopefully a snappier title, since I am actually in charge of some professionalization panels for a November conference), I've decided to try to blog about the experience of teaching at a small, teaching focused college, while trying to be an active (or active-ish) scholar, living in a community far from home, and generally maintaining some areas of interest outside of work.**
What I'll write about is drawn heavily from my own experience, teaching at two small institutions; but it's also drawn from years of reading and from years of developing a network of fellow scholars at similar institutions.
To kick off what I hope will be a regular set of posts (or irregular, whatever), let me outline my career up to this point:
I finished my comprehensive exams in the fall of 2005 and immediately began work on my dissertation.
While I worked on my dissertation, my husband was hired by a public regional comprehensive university in Florida. We moved there and I took a part time instructor job for one year, then a full time instructor job the second. In the first year, I was writing my dissertation and teaching three classes; in my second I defended my dissertation, taught four classes, and began applying for tenure track jobs.
In the late spring of our second year in Florida, I applied for a tenure track job at a small, private, church-affiliated school in an extremely small town in North Carolina. I got the job and negotiated a tenure track job for my husband. (After this, I'm leaving him generally out of the explanation, because it's not really necessary for what I'll be writing about; rather it's necessary for you to know why I wound up in Florida and how I left.)
The church affiliated institution turned out to be a bad fit for us. It was more religiously conservative than we were initially led to believe. While that's their prerogative, it simply wasn't good for a couple of liberal people who don't really go to church very often, but have a strong enough commitment to theological differences in protestant groups that we wouldn't go to just any church to comply with expectations. (TL;DR version of that last sentence: I'm Lutheran and I won't join your [any other denomination] church.)
I found a job at another small liberal arts school in Ohio after 5 years in North Carolina.***
I am up for tenure this year (decision in a month!). I was also tasked with overseeing our Honors Program, which puts me in a part-administrative and part-faculty job.
With the exception of that first year in Florida, my contracted teaching load has been four courses every semester. When I've not taught four courses, I've been overseeing programs instead.
I've also taught a wide array of courses:
College Writing (Basically, English 101 in all of its permutations)
Intermediate Academic Writing
Introduction to Critical Thinking
Introduction to College Life
Introduction to Honors
Introduction to Literature
Interpretation of Fiction
Interpretation of Poetry
Interpretation of Drama
Introduction to Literary Theory
Shakespeare
British Literature before 1798 (the survey)
British Literature after 1798 (the survey)
Women's Literature
World Literature (courses in ancient drama, Caribbean literature, magical realism, and the post-1700 survey of literature in translation)
Novels
British Literature (courses in early modern literature, early modern drama, 18th century literature, monsters in British Literature)
Senior Capstone in English
Along the way, I've also mentored all kinds of senior projects.
The point in all of this is that I'm a busy professor who is constantly learning new things to teach -- and that's part of the job. But what I'm learning isn't pushing me deeper into my field; rather it's pushing me to explore far beyond my specialization and it's challenging me in ways that grad school didn't necessarily prepare me for (though the good people in my graduate program certainly worked hard to do so).
What I want to do here is to talk about my own experiences -- and if those experiences help current graduate students out a bit, then this becomes something beyond navel-gazing.****
My experience is not particularly unique, but it's one borne of experience that graduate school could not have given me -- and I think that's why it's worth writing about publicly.
Because this is public, I will say all the disclaimer things here: my work only represents my own views, not those of my employer. I also will not identify students or specific colleagues in ways that make them identifiable: but I also try to avoid complaining about students and colleagues in public forums anyway. For every moment I get annoyed with someone, I'm sure someone else is frustrated with me. It's part of working with, well, people. I won't name the schools where I've worked, but they're easy to find (I link to my CV from this blog).
Based on reaction that I got from the title yesterday, I'm going to tag this series "Secret Schools" (h/t Meg Pearson for that name). Let's just see how well I keep this up.
*If you can find tenure track (or full time) work at all.
** I might not be the best person to discuss this last part, but whatever.
*** I leave out much about my husband, because this is where our careers get complicated and sent us to live in different towns for a few years. The good news is that we live together again and he's working on a college campus again. The less good news is that it's not in a faculty position, the way that we would like.
**** I'm also okay with navel gazing.
