I love teaching. I’m really good at it. After my master’s degree I taught at a Mediocre Regional Small College as an adjunct, and I really liked it, got good evaluations, and became quite pedagogically adept, if I do say so myself. Taking this evidence into consideration, I decided that I should do a PhD. I had some vague inkling that the academic job market was pretty awful, but like so many others I assumed that if I worked hard, stayed the course, blah blah blah, that I would be different. I could put up with all the research and publishing (eh), so long as I got to teach. The PhD is the price of admission. So here I am, five years later, thinking about what to do next, and looking at the job postings on the Chronicle. It’s bleak out there.
I don’t know what I thought would happen. I guess I thought things would work themselves out. But now, so close to the time when things ought to start working themselves out, I can see no sign that they will. The job postings in my field are far-flung and scarce. I don’t want to live in North Dakota. I need to make some money (I don’t even want to talk about my student loans). I have children to think of, whose well-being I am unwilling to compromise to chase some shitty job that I should be grateful to have, in the unlikely event that I got it. The bloom is off the rose, to be sure, but I don’t know what to do next.
I have reached out to mentors. What shall I do? “Keep the faith,” they intone, they who were minted in the ‘70s and ‘80s when things were not so bleak. “You’ll find a place.” I’m not so sure. I’m not one of those humanities students who counted statistics as one of my “languages,” but I can read the numbers well enough. Today the Chronicle lists three positions in the United States in my sub-field. My PhD is (will be) from a second-tier program. For those three jobs, I will be up against graduates of Schools With A Name. I see no possibility that I will succeed.
And so lately I have begun to ask if I could be happy doing something else. The answer is an unequivocal yes. I could be happy doing something else. I am, in addition to being an historian of hamster-fur-weaving, a hamster-fur practitioner (a hamster-fur priest, even). I could do that. I would be in demand. A hamster-fur-weaver with a PhD: think of it! And I could adjunct on the side, to keep my toes in the water (and help make sure the system stays broken, but this is no time for ethics). I’ve even thought about higher ed administration. “There are levels of existence,” says the machine mind in The Matrix, “we are prepared to accept.” Maybe they would let me teach something now and again. Maybe I could be a force for good inside some heartless administration. And the money might not be awful. The mind reels.
I’m a fervent reader of CM, even in the summer, when no one, apparently, reads CM. The more platitudes I received from mentors, the more apparent it became to me: only at CM would I get a straight answer. Is it worth it? Is it worth continuing down this road? I’m going to finish the PhD. I’m this close, and it means a lot to me personally to do it. But I’m not sure what to do after that. I know I would be a good academic. I know I would make a difference in a few lives (and I've adjuncted enough to know that I wouldn't make a difference in 95% of their lives). I know I would love nothing more than to work at a small college with a leafy quad, opening minds, or whatever. I would be good at it, I would be an asset to the institution, I would be poor but self-actualized, I would wear jackets with patches on the elbows. But the closer I get to that time, or to the time when that should start materializing, the less likely it seems, and the less I feel that it HAS to be that way. There might be other ways to be happy.
Q: Those of you on the inside, who know things: what should I do next?
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ReplyDeleteChris, you mention that your passion is teaching and that you can "put up with" research and publication. You might consider broadening your job search to include independent college preparatory schools. It can be a fulfilling niche in which teaching is valued highly, while at the same time teachers hold advanced degrees in their academic fields, not in education (that is, your PhD would be attractive to prospective schools, and nobody would expect you to be certified or even to have any education coursework on your transcript).
ReplyDeleteIndependent school teachers have a great deal of autonomy in the classroom and over books and syllabi, and the students are generally bright and motivated. I can say that the level of intellectual sophistication in my tenth-grade classroom exceeds that of my Fur Weaving 101 college class by astronomical proportions.
Although the plague of education-industry gibberish has made significant headway among the administrative classes lately, it can generally be ignored or contained to tolerable levels. Your colleagues, in other words, will not have drunk the Kool-Aid. (God save us from an administrator who has just returned from a national conference with a "great idea".)
Check out the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS.org) for some job listings. Most hiring, however, takes place via a handful of private employment firms, so you'll want to get on board with one of them if you're serious about an independent school position.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
ReplyDelete@Ben: You beat me to it.
ReplyDeleteIn the more earnest mode, Surly has it right. If you are so-so on the research, you aren't cut out for this shit, plain and simple. But you luuuuurv the teaching? Then private high school teaching is the life for you. You don't need no Ed credential to do it, and the pay is often rockin'. Where I live, a prep school teacher makes easily twice what a starting ass-proffie makes, and the ceiling is way higher. If you climb the prep school ladder and become a prep school headmaster, you'll be making more than most full proffies. So providing for the family is not a problem. And if you wind up in the right prep school, your students will be smarter and ore motivated than 90% of the college students you might encounter. There's one down the street from me, and I hear the little fuckers talking about Plato and shit as they walk down the hill together, and what they say actually makes sense.
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ReplyDeleteBy all means, finish the PhD.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, I would have said, "Go to library school."
Now I say, consider community college teaching or change your mind about North Dakota.
Another vote for independent school teaching. Many of the boarding ones have family housing (though you have to decide whether you really want your home to be dependent on your job; I've seen that have bad consequences when school heads and hence conditions changed), and many of the faculty have higher degrees (in their fields, not, generally, EdDs). They're not good places for introverts (lots and lots and lots of community interaction, pretty much 24/7, at least at the boarding schools, which admittedly are only a small subset of the whole), but for people who love teaching, and want to work with bright (if perhaps, these days, a bit driven and anxious) young people, they're great. Also, curricula are usually flexible; as long as you can use your specialty to teach a skill, or make a point about a larger cultural phenomenon or period, you can probably work at least a unit into one of your classes. You do need to think about what extracurriculars you can offer (at least some sports expertise is a real plus, but you might be able to er, spin, hamster-fur-weaving and/or allied crafts).
ReplyDeleteDefinitely contact the NAIS. Last I looked into it (while ABD, like you), there were local job fairs, and placement agencies with which you could file your c.v. (and which, if I'm remembering correctly, the schools, not the candidates, paid). Ah, yes, here's a list on the NAIS website: http://www.nais.org/career/placementCompanies.cfm . You might also call a school or two in your area and ask if you could come in for an informational interview, and/or which agency they use. Really, if you fit the profile (and you do), it's a supportive system.
Or, yes, be a hamster-fur-weaver. Probably less secure/lucrative than independent school teaching, but better than waiting around for the academy to spit out a job that's a good fit (and I have to second Archie: if you're in a niche field, and don't really want to devote significant time and energy to research, the chances of a job that's a good fit coming along are slim to none. If you teach at an independent school, you can always do a bit of research, and present it to whatever audience you choose -- popular, scholarly, whatever -- over the summer. But don't expect to have any "spare time" during the school year; those places are really, really intense, and you're expected to give students all the time and attention their parents don't have to give them -- that's the downside).
DPR, huh?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the suggestions. I will certainly check into the NAIS. The idea of teaching at such a place has been in the back of my mind, so it's good to hear more about them. I do, as it turns out, have a collegiate background in a common but unpopular sport with no glory whatsoever, so that might be a bit of leverage.
I don't *hate* research. It's just that in my field, everything that there is to say was more or less said by the year 600, and to say anything new requires engaging in the most arcane and tedious work imaginable. I've managed to get around that a bit in my work so far by bringing together unlikely data with outlandish theories, so it's at least interesting. But that scheme won't last forever.
As for pirating, if they offered tenure, it would certainly be tempting.
@ Walt
ReplyDeleteConsider community college teaching? You have got to be kidding me! The market is flooded right now with adjuncts and it's only going to get worse.
How could you give advice like that?
@HCH: I misspoke. Sometimes it is hard to gauge CMers' intentions and humor, especially in light of the recent Katie drama and the passing of the baton to a new captain.
ReplyDelete- What's wrong with North Dakota? Seriously. Fargo is booming. Really.
ReplyDelete- What Surly said.
I apologize if I have offended any North Dakotans. North Dakota is my stand-in stereotypical Place One Does Not Want To Live, although I have never been there before. If it makes you feel any better, I almost went with Minnesota.
ReplyDeleteYes, consider independent school teaching. And while you're looking into that, read this book: http://www.amazon.com/What-Are-You-Going-That/dp/0226038823 -- it's a great guide (with both ideas and step by step advice) to job-hunting outside of academia.
ReplyDeleteOh dear god if you have children stop now before they hate you. These days if you want a good job from a second-tier program, you need to be willing to hop around one or two one-year visiting positions in strange places. Which are hell on kids.
ReplyDeleteIndependent school teaching looks lovely from where I stand. Go for it. Your kids will LOVE growing up on or near a prep-school campus if you choose one of the fancier country day or boarding ones, and if you are in a city, you'll have connections to all the good schools and a decent shot at financial aid (admissions folk are sympathetic to teachers) when it comes time for them to go.
Sorry, but I'm one of those people who thinks that kids' well-being should come before career ambitions if at all possible. No, I do not believe one parent should stay at home -- just that the most glamorous versions of any career tend to involve sacrifices that are really difficult for kids.
Is Hamster Historian the same person as Chris from Christiana? Can't the moderators get anything right?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I HATE it when people who give their own time and effort to provide me with a free service make minor, inconsequential mistakes! Gawd.
ReplyDeleteI emailed the CM moderator to ask if I could post something, even though I am not a regular contributor. They agreed, and since I had not given a name, they posted it under one they created. Later, when I saw that the comments were interesting, I decided to make a blogger ID that would be anonymous and fit the occasion, and wade into the comments. My apologies if it got confusing. The CM moderator did nothing wrong; to the contrary, they helped me out a lot.
ReplyDelete@HCH: pay no attention to annoyed_prof. The whole process made perfect sense to anyone who was paying attention. Hope you'll stick around under the HCH moniker (which is most CM-appropriate) and let us know how it goes.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as having "a collegiate background in a common but unpopular sport with no glory whatsoever," yes, at least in my experience with independent schools, that sounds ideal. Add the hamster-fur-weaving as an occasional club activity/charming quirk to be mentioned in faculty profiles/demonstration for parents' day, and really, you sound like a strong candidate.
@HCH
ReplyDeleteWe're awfully helpful when we're not stinking drunk.
De-lurking to say this: I was in your shoes and I did exactly what most of the others here have advocated. I am at a private college prep school and it is everything that has been described. I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteFind a good community college gig. They exist, and they can be very rewarding.
ReplyDelete@EMH
ReplyDeleteSorry...should have qualified: consider rural community colleges. We have a stronger ratio of full-time to adjuncts because there just aren't that many adjuncts around. Plus, housing is cheap -- bought my first house for $8,000 and the current one for 35,000. Plenty of foreclosures available, too. Yep, green acres is the place to be...
God, but what would you do for fun in Green Acres? No city art fairs, only one or two local universities, fewer opportunities to see you favorite music, longer commute for traveling to foreign countries, no public transportation, little opportunity to bike around, misery misery misery.....
ReplyDelete