It Must Be Something in the Water

Never have so many people worked so hard to get me some play. Yeah, that's right. I said it: get me some play. I was going to say "get me a booty call" but "get me some play" seemed funnier. It was a game time decision. I made it and never looked back.

And besides, it was better than titling this "Pimp That Professor."

I said that, too. And I'm not sorry.

But it just occurred to me that every person who has ever tried to fix me up has some sort of time in the area that I'm now living in. At the last job, there were two professors who'd evidently begun to hatch a plot to fix me up. Both had strong connections to this region. And when I came for a job interview here awhile back, a friend went out of their way to make sure I met a friend of theirs they thought would be perfect for me.. If that's the case, I wonder if there's a point where I'm going to start shoving my single friends at each other.

The other option that seems most possible is that at dinner parties here, it is customary to attempt to hook up the new guy. Heck, maybe it's not even about being the new guy: maybe it's bring some wine, get a prize. If that's the case, I probably shouldn't have been bringing six packs all these years. Whatever the case, it's odd but funny. I've now been to at least three dinner parties where someone has tried - most recently explicitly - tried to fix me up with someone also invited to dinner.

And every single one has been hilarious. They're like the Road Runner stealing birdseed from Wile E. Coyote. At one, I cleverly avoided talking with the intended. At another, a different guest was so talkative that the party broke up before dessert made it to the table.

Who could resist this kind of fun?

Belated Happy Thanksgiving and Such

Dear Readers,
If, in fact, there are still readers here, I want to wish you a belated Happy Thanksgiving. As I've probably said once or twice before, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and this year I took a slight bit of techno-vacation with it.

Why is it my favorite holiday? A story from this year's dinner explains it well. Sitting at a back corner of a big, cobbled together table with some dear grad school friends and other Thanksgiving orphans, the charming Swiss woman to my right asked the charming German woman to my left and me whether there were any Thanksgiving songs. The German said not that she knew of, and I said that's one more thing to be thankful for. There aren't cards for it, songs about it, decorations that HAVE to be put up. My traditions aren't your traditions, and no one really blinks about it.

The charming Swiss woman patted my arm and said she could see why I liked it. Then she offered me more mashed potatoes. She gets it.

---

Evidently, after I left the celebration to return to my own home to wait out the food-coma, I became quite the topic of conversation.

Earlier in the evening, I noted to my charming German friend that I have accidentally perfected a sort of scruffy orphan vibe that causes people to want to look out for me just a bit. I'm getting invited to lots of dinners and sent home with lots of food. Folks in the department have been e-mailing me links to restaurants and grocery stores and asking if I need anything. And people are trying to fix me up.

In case I haven't said it before, the fix up is particularly distressing. Generally speaking, people are either strongly for or strongly against the fix up. I'm clearly strongly against.

One reason for this is that the logic of the fix up generally works like this: "I like Person A. Person A is single. I also like Person B, and they're single, too! They must meet! And mate! And produce beautiful babies that I will be partially responsible for in that I'll have made it happen but won't actually provide any support for, not even changing a diaper!" The fix up is the relationship equivalent of an unruly child throwing spaghetti at a white wall and coming up with Monet's "Water Lilies."

In part, this desire to fix me up is my own fault: I'm wickedly private, and so even when I'm dating, most of my friends don't know it. Being so private, you can, of course, imagine how thrilled I was to have the topic of my love life become an after-dinner conversation starter. But I also think it owes to the other tendency that seems common to folks in the pro-fix up camp: the certainty that other people's lives can be handled - and enjoyed - like theater.

To try and get the full effect of my fear and distress, imagine this: think of a friend who makes your head hurt. Or one who you have to think really hard to explain their charms. Now imagine they're the one who has decided to fix you up. Without consulting you. About anything. At all.

What is worst about all of this is now, whenever I see anyone present at the dinner, this is now a source of discussion. Except, of course, for the folks fixing me up, who are content to believe that I'm oblivious and naturally don't want my input anyway. It's like being confronted over and over again with a mistake everyone is convinced you'll make before you ever actually come to the choice about it.

Curse my scruffy orphan-like vibes!

---

And that, dear readers, should catch you up and give you plenty to speculate upon. Perhaps in the coming weeks, I'll get my shit together and start some sort of pool about all of this chaos. In the meantime, enjoy some leftover pie for me!

Tangents and Positive Thinking as Schtick

This trying not to complain for a few days is already proving difficult.

Wait. Is that a complaint? Aigh. Let's try again.

This trying not to complain for a few days is already proving difficult a worthwhile experience that is pushing me to new limits and realizations.

That's better. Unfortunately, it means I don't have such a well thought-out post for today. That has resulted in a more free-form sort of post. In the past 24 hours, as I've been undertaking this new adventure with a smile on my face, I've found myself pondering the following things:

• drawing a cartoon with a superhero called "Riot Grrl," intended as a positive feminst role-model, whose arch-nemesis would be "FemiNazi" would be the straw-woman my students often make feminism out to be. Unfortunately, I cannot draw, but I have a great script if anyone is interested. What a great opportunity for me to learn to draw, unless someone would like to collaborate which would be keen, too!
  
• how much my insurance is paying beyond my copay for a physical therapist to have me do an exercise I was taught in first grade
• the unintended consequences of race in teaching (see here - particularly the comments for what started this thought process)
• where are the eligible women in my age bracket have gone from the place I currently live and whether this would have been considered a plague in Biblical times, assuming of course that women counted in the Bible how fortunate I am, as a single male, to be in place that makes it so easy to focus on my career, which is good because some naysayers might compare this to a Biblical plague only to then use that comparison as a negative commentary on the foundational text of one of the world's major religions
  
• what I was thinking assigning weekly essays to my two largest classes and how when I make it out of this term alive (ha! you thought I was going to say something that needed to be struck out, didn't you?) I will be much more cautious for at least two to three days in choosing what assignments to hand out
• that probably only my father would have appreciated the reply, "No, I'm not such a grand uncle. I'm really kind of average." to his phoned announcement that my niece just had a baby girl as much as I enjoyed making it
  
• how wise it was of me to spend extra money on a boxed set of John Lee Hooker's music at this time in my life (answer: so very, very!)
  

There was other stuff. But the stack of essays appears to be growing as I type this.

Looking for love in all the wrong places...

Not so long ago, one of my relatives sent me a gift card and a note wishing me well. This was especially kind of them as I've not been in touch the way I should be, and I certainly haven't managed a visit. Tucked in the card was a note asking about my well-being and about that most typical of my family's concerns - am I seeing anyone.

I've been struggling for months with how to answer the question, and it may seem strange to address it here rather than across the dinner table or by the tried-and-true "reach out and touch someone." But bear with me. Let's ignore for a moment my own dating idiosyncrasies (and there are a lot of them, to be sure). Why talk about it in light of my career as a fledgling academic? The reason is relatively simple economics. What my relative doesn't understand - in fact, what many friends and family don't quite get (and what is never addressed directly) - is that I simply can't afford what they think I can. Not only am I not visiting (and rarely calling), but dating itself becomes a dicey proposition at best because I live on an income that's decidedly smaller than you'd expect.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education points out that while for the first year in quite awhile faculty salaries have grown at a pace that is higher than inflation and cost of living, it's only one year out of many. And, it notes, there are pretty wide disparities by discipline, rank, and type of institution.

Let me take a moment for anyone unsure of how life in academia works to help explain the notion of rank and type of institution.

In (American) academia, there are a variety of ranks which are largely invisible to anyone not actually involved in some way with this career ladder:

• adjunct/instructor
• assistant professor
• associate professor
• full professor

Generally speaking, as you move from the top of that list to the bottom, job security and pay increase. One hitch in this is whether a position is a tenure-line or not. Typically adjunct/instructor positions are not tenurable. In some cases, this is strictly a financial decision on the part of the institution; in other cases, such positions are offered because the person in question hasn't completed a step in the process (and academia does love its process).

For example, it isn't uncommon for someone who is still completing their Ph.D to be hired as an instructor with the understanding that once the process is complete, they will jump to the next rung. The lack of the Ph.D is often a distinguishing feature for the adjunct/instructor position.
Moreover, quite often adjuncts and instructors carry a different workload - sometimes less, sometimes more - as a cost saving measure. At some institutions, for example, adjuncts are only allowed to teach a limited number of courses because exceeding that number would require the institution to offer health insurance to them. It is worth noting that at many institutions, a large percentage (often a clear majority) of undergraduate coursework - particularly large courses and introductory courses - is taught by people employed at this level.

It should also be noted, though I'll keep this part brief, that it isn't uncommon for institutions to hire someone at any of the above ranks as a fixed-term faculty member, which denies them the chance for tenure but tends to pay better than the typical one-year or term-by-term adjunct or instructor position.

With that in mind, one of the perks of academia that seems well-ensconced in the public consciousness is the notion of tenure. Typically this is understood to be a perpetual sort of job security that once achieved makes the holder invulnerable to being fired, etc. This isn't actually true, and it also ignores the process both pre- and post-tenure. In the typical case, tenure requires a six or seven year process (it varies slightly by institution and by the individual worker).

In order to get tenure, the typical faculty member must:

• produce enough research (measured in books and articles published, conferences attended, etc.),
  
• taught to acceptable standards (a particular number of courses with acceptable student and peer evaluation)
• served at an acceptable level for the university in other capacities (serving on committees, helping get the university's name out into the academic and civic communities, etc.)

In practice, this is the first step to moving up the career ladder. Once tenure is achieved, some small reward is given (at my university, it is a one time pay raise of about $1,000 - I'll let anyone reading this offer other figures), then you begin the process again to move from assistant to associate, and then from associate to full professor with fairly similar pay increases.

Pay also changes by the type of institution - whether the school is large or small, whether is has endowments from the State or outside business, whether it produces only undergraduates or graduates (and if so, what kind - schools that grand doctorates tend to pay higher wages). For more information, see the Carnegie Foundation's explanation of its classification system and uses.

In my case, I'm at a small, non-doctoral granting institution with a fairly small outside resources (State assistance is minimal as it is private, business support is limited because we're in an economically depressed area and the university hasn't done a good job at tapping alumni or seeking outside connections). I'm in the liberal arts side (which tends to pay less than the hard sciences and business sectors, though it is consistently the area that most employers indicate helps future employment the most). And my university doesn't pay well (this will come up again in this blog, I'm sure). So my pay is going to be smaller than it might otherwise be.

Let's put it in perspective: most people in this career path are going to have roughly ten years of higher education in order to get such a position. Think about that a moment and jot down or make a mental note of what you think that career must pay, considering the cost of higher education, the limited number of degrees, the importance consistently placed on education by employers, government policy, etc. Got your number?

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the average starting salary for someone with that education is roughly $55,000 a year at the typical Master's granting liberal arts school.

And that, my friends, is why I'm so rarely dating or visiting.