The Job Market and Fallen Leaves

OK, I know I owe you photos, photos of the house... but bear with me, I'll get to them soon, hopefully. But first... just a little reflection for today.

Last week I had my first peek of the job postings and today I spent sometime reading them and checking out other academic job search engines like the Chronicle Careers and the Higher Ed Jobs site. There are some positions (general ones -- mostly for English, composition & rhetoric) in three community colleges in the area, but I think I don't have a chance because that's NOT my specialty and they require only M.A.s so I'm over-qualified, besides being in the wrong area. The university not so far from me which has an opening that's in my area, but not my specialization is really a long shot. I emailed my committee members for advice and one of them responded right away that she thought it'd be a waste of time to apply. Sigh. Before getting her email I even started working on my CV, updating it and trying to change my research and teaching interests to fit the position.

I felt really discouraged, though, so I went outside in the still slightly warm air of the twilight and I started raking leaves. It was way too dark for photos, but I took a few anyway.

This is what the tree looked like a few days ago, the lawn was still green and leafless:And now the leaves are all on the ground, raked into big piles:

I like raking leaves, I really do (and it's the first time since we came to the U.S. that we have big trees in our yards and will need to do quite a bit of raking). And while I was doing it and thinking about this post I realized that a lot of the work that I did in the "insane" research parts of my dissertation is very much like raking leaves. Typing encyclopedia entries, one by one, over 12 thousand names and many more thousand dates. I'll tell you ALL about it next year after I defend the d__m thing. In fact, I can't wait to tell you, but I just don't want to do it until I'm officially done. You know what silly thoughts I'm entertaining even? Of telling people in my dept, particularly my committee, about my "double life" after I'm done. Even though we're far away, and I've written about them here on occasion, I do care about them and I wish they could come here and read my thoughts. I cannot bear this compartmentalization of my life any longer. I long for being ONE and not holding secrets from people.

But back to the leaves. I do feel at peace about all the work that I did in this dissertation. I just love to research, to do hard work that nobody has ever done before. I trust that someday I'll find some use to it. I just don't know what, when, where, or how, but I know I will. Maybe someone can pay me to metaphorically "rake leaves" for them and make connections, analyze the results, etc... It may lead somewhere. Or... maybe I can learn to become a better scholar, a better writer, yeah, that would be nice...

After we finished raking (my husband and sons helped me at the end) we came in, had dinner, spent some time together, and then I came to the computer and after sending some emails out (for committee members), I began to translate into Portuguese one of my two academic essays ever to be published and which will be published in Brasil as well because the authors I analyzed loved it and arranged for its publication. Isn't that awesome? Then I went and read this post by Dawn and was just blown away at how much I learned from her (I wrote a huge comment there). I know that my writing has many problems, but I can learn to identify them and write better.

I will soon start a new "series" of post, a new label titled "Issues" in which I will discuss various issues that I have, "superficial" things such as my hair or my skinniness, but deeper things too. I've been planning this for months now and I'll start with writing. The post is already written in my journal. It's this humongous thing that I wish I could learn how to do a "cut" thing in the post (a "read below the cut if you want" thing) for since it will be awfully long. I hope you'll want to read it. ;)