(Almost) Real-World 2-Body Problems

I know it's been a month. It's been a busy month. And no, my diss revisions are not done yet. It's hard to get motivated on something that you know no one will read, including your committee. I'm hoping to start writing fiction soon but refuse to start until I finish the last paragraph of my revisions. Seriously, there's only a paragraph and some citations left.

So what busy things have been happening? My lease was up at the end of May, so I had to move out. I moved into my parents garage. Well, my stuff moved into the garage. I moved into the basement. It's not ideal but at least it's rent free. My parents have their moments of being pretty awesome. They're housing me, being a bed & breakfast for my brother until he finds a place in a new city, and still doubling (tripling?) as a daycare for my sister & nephew. See? Awesome!

And why am I in my parents' house and not with my boyfriend? BF has an actual career already. He needs to do one more year of residency before he gets certified and an actual full time, well-paid gig. Since I wasn't that far down my career path, I decided to wait until he knew what city he'd be heading to before I looked for a job. Well, he got a good offer last week and we now have a destination! This has led me to two very different problems:

1) I need to find a non-academic job in New City. I'm looking at non-traditional jobs at universities and for positions at large companies. These are not the only places for Ph.D.'s to get non-aca jobs - I need to stress that. That's where I'm looking at the moment because these are easier to find from a distance. And I have found some good possibilities.

But the more I look at non-aca jobs, the more people keep trying to get me to look for adjunct gigs. These are the same people who have been supportive so far about my leaving academia. However, now that reality is setting in, people just can't seem to get past the "only job a Ph.D. can do is teach" mentality. They usually couch this as "it'll be an income for awhile". Everyone seems to think that I can make a little money adjuncting. Let me stress "little money" here. I've looked up the schools in this area on The Adjunct Project and they pay about $2500/class. For the math-phobic out there, I'll crunch the numbers for you. That's $20k/year for a 4/4 teaching load. And that's assuming I can get 4 classes at one or a combination of universities. No benefits, by the way. It's aggravating.

2) I never pictured myself as a trailing significant other. This may seem like a minute problem compared to the first one but I think it's about equal. I always thought of myself as an independent woman who wouldn't give up her career and follow a man. Well, I gave up the career I was working on for a mountain of other reasons unrelated to my romantic relationship. And now I found myself following a man who is working, sometimes single-mindedly, on his career and working around that. I am glad he's focusing on options near New City, which wasn't hit as hard by the recession and has lots of possibilities. It's still hard to put my entire life on hold while he made a decision and now have to adjust to that. To be honest, I didn't think this would be this difficult to deal with. It's a lot of identity changes in one shot. I just keep trying to tell myself that this is a practical decision and in no way makes me any less awesome.

To top it all off, I seem to be the one who has to find the new place in New City for me and boyfriend commuting to two different cities and two dogs. BF doesn't seem to understand how much that is going to cost and that he may have to pick up the rent on his own paycheck for the first month or two, depending on when I get a new job and start getting paid. Oh the joys of real-world two-body problems! If he had been the trailing significant other, I could be the wage-earner and he could deal with these financial and logistic issues. Here's another place those Ph.D. skills come in. There's some serious project management skills needed to accomplish all this!

So that's what's eating up my time. I'll blog again as interesting things happen. Meanwhile, check out what's happening in other post-academics' lives through the links on the right.

Reflexes

I like words. I had forgotten how much I like words. They can communicate multiple things simultaneously. They can communicate information: where things are, what they were doing (or not doing), why they were doing (or not doing) it. Words can also communicate how the author feels about what and why those things were doing whatever it was they were doing or how the reader should feel about them. Words can communicate the author's general mental or emotional state. Words can communicate whole currents of meaning...all while describing something as simple as what a person has on their coffee table. As I continue on this journey, I find myself paying more and more attention to people's words - and what they say between them.

The value of words came up when someone posted this on Facebook. James Pennebacker has a new book out (The Secret Life of Pronouns: What our words say about us) about all the meanings of the words we don't notice. I haven't read this yet but it's on my wish list. It got me thinking about a different FB post a friend had put on my wall last week.

This friend is not aware that I plan to leave academia. Given the general political climate of my department and the fact that I haven't defended yet, I'm selective about letting the word out on this plan. The posting didn't particularly bother me. I'm glad they thought it would be a good job for me, so much so that they took the time to post a link to it and encouraged me to apply. It's a job at a prestigious museum in my field. I'm kind of honored they think I have the chops to get it.

What bothered me was my response to this job posting. I looked up the job posting. I read it carefully. And then, in something weirdly akin to a reflex action, part of my brain began thinking about how I should adjust my CV for the job. I thought about the people I knew at that institution that could put a good word in for me. And then the logical side of my brain and the self-preservation part of my brain both stood up and slapped that original part of my brain, simultaneously. Imagine an intellectual 3 stooges moment.


Why was this simultaneous brain-slapping occurring? Let me clarify a few things about this job. It required using research from a part of my academic field that I consider to be the most boring, the most snooze-inspiring, the most stab-me-in-the-eyes-so-I-don't-have-to-read-this-any-more. It was in a city I really don't care for. In a museum where politics can be disturbingly close to those in (the rest of) academia - I've done research there before. I could almost hear my soul screaming "NOOOOOO!" And yet, my reflex was to apply for this.

I'm fairly certain this is akin to what Post Academic and other post-academics have felt when someone offers them yet another adjunct position. It may not be academia in the strictest sense but it would be acceptable to my faculty. An acceptable post-Ph.D. job. I could get some more research in. Get some articles published. Move on to a VAP or maybe even a TT job. Even as I type this I can hear parts of my brain yelling "Don't drink the kool-aid!" They do it in unison. Kind of makes it seem like some sort of intervention meeting in my head. It's always good when your soul and your instincts can make you feel the love.

So, I read the job ad again. This time, I listened to my reaction, to the words my brain used in my reaction. They were grey words. Not silver. Not gunmetal. Grey words, like a rainy day at the end of winter when all the snow is turning into overdriven slush. It was not hopeful. I don't want a slushy life.

I had to remind myself why I'm leaving. I'm slowly turning it into a mantra of sorts. Next, I think of how my partner would feel moving there (he's not a fan) and where I would walk my dog (no idea honestly, very few parks there). Finally, I imagine the life I want - even though I still don't know what field I want to work in. But every time I imagine this life, work stays at work. I like that idea. This may become my ritual during the next year while I finish my dissertation and transition out of academia, an "actionable step" if you read motivational books. Hopefully soon, this will no longer be my reflex to such job offers and I can expend my energy less in mental damage-control and more on moving forward.