My Jobbity Job (or a Job is a Job is a Job, Part 2)

(Part 1 here, if you need a refresher, and thank you so much for your great comment, Laura/Geeky Mom!)

First, a self-administered pep talk:

1) I do not need a full-time job;

2) I do not want a full-time job;

3) I enjoy research and I think the work I did on the dissertation is valid, but it was never central to my existence, quite the contrary. Therefore: why even consider a tenure track job that I never wanted?

4) I have a feeling that this current "job" of mine really does have a lot of promise if I just work enough, get the language establish, create a need for it, etc. It's definitely not uncertain as typical adjunct work goes.

All that being said, I'm pretty pumped up about work this week. In the past few weeks I've been thinking of proposing a class to the department chair and when I talked to her she said yes. Then I talked to some colleagues and figured out my options and talked to the chair again. On Monday the class was added to the Fall line-up. (I am also going to be teaching my other two "regular" language classes).

It will be a cross-listed class taught in English as both a Gen-Ed (200 level) and a language department 400 level class, depending on whether the students can read the works in the original or in English translation. It will entail lots of work for me because I will have to read tons of things I've never read to prepare, but these are things that I need to read at some point in my career as an "expert in my country."

So... I'm excited! The only problem is that I need to quickly assemble a sizable "library" of Very Important Books (VIBs) in Portuguese and in English and I simply cannot afford it (if I could, I would own these books already. It's pretty sad to see how few books I bought in grad school and even in my undergrad years. I did buy more for the dissertation although only the strictly necessary ones, oh, and  in the end I had to use some of the little money I made from book reviews in this blog to buy scholarly books -- I wasn't that happy about that).

Note: I don't want to use library books and I don't even know if the university library has them, certainly not in Portuguese. In any case, these are books the I really do need to own if I want to claim any expertise in my country. I will probably get desk copies of the books that I adopt for the course, but I will still need to consult many VIBs to prepare.

I off-handedly suggested to my mom in an email last night that maybe she could ask my rich uncle for a donation for a poor scholar in need... let's see if she will have the courage (or "cara de pau" [wooden face] as we say in Portuguese) to mention it to him! ;) ("Ask and you shall receive," right?)

As I've often shared my struggles with this "job" issue here in the blog, I thought you would appreciate to learn of these new developments! And I'm sure I'll be able to figure out something so I can get the books I need. Thankfully there is a really good online used-book seller in Brazil now and both my parents and in-laws are coming to visit so they can bring me the books. I think I'll be really busy next Fall!