Further Musings

This year I shared an interior office door with a senior colleague who was storing  bookshelves and bookshelves of his old journals in my office.

This arrangement gave us some sound privacy and freed up some bookshelf space for me.

It also got a lot of second looks and compliments for creativity.  The chair liked it enough to ask me to leave it up as a sound barrier for the next person to occupy it.

HT: Sarajevo library for inspiration.

We move to RI in just over two weeks and I’ve been thinking a lot about what this year has meant and what it has been.  I took the job at Furman (and painfully left Chapel Hill) to have a test run as working as a professor.

In the end, I think this year has really helped.  After the emotional and professional turmoil of grad school my emotions and thoughts about academics felt like swirling, churning, muddy river water.  This year has been a year to let the silt settle, the water clear, and know what I want.

The year has really changed my perspective.  I hadn’t realized how different being a professor is from being a graduate student and how much more I would enjoy it.  The pressure is less.  I’m not worried about if I’m going to measure up to the department or the dissertation committee.  There is a lot less “what do I do with my life?” angst.

The days are more structured.  I taught and planned three classes a semester instead of just TAing for one class.  I see students and faculty often, and this has been really good for my mental health. And I respect myself more. I feel like an adult in a way I did not in grad school.  Students, faculty, and even the Dean see me as a valuable asset instead of a burden. That feels good.

Also, I thought I knew what it would be like to be at a liberal arts college (LAC) before I came to Furman, but sitting at the end of the year I realize that I didn’t.  I’m surprised by the depth of relationships I developed with the students in just a year.  I had students for both semesters and I didn’t expect the bond that developed seeing them twice a week for a year.  I know them better.  I’ve shaped students more here that I ever did at UNC and that has been fulfilling (and I’ve got the cards and baklava from them to prove it )

I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed teaching upper-level seminars.  The students are interested in the material and they care more than they do in intro classes, the only kind I had taught at UNC.

I was surprised at what good colleagues the faculty were.  The job here demands less of their souls than a research university … they are still pretty odd by normal person standards … but a lot better than the vast majority of my grad school professors.  Furman isn’t a utopia but it’s better in deeper ways than I envisioned when I took the job.

All that to say that I’m glad I gave the academy a year or two as a professor before deciding whether or not to leave it.  I’ve had space to settle emotionally, get real experience being a professor in a way grad school couldn’t provide, and keep my options open between staying and leaving academia.  Working in Raleigh or DC is still an option but placing at a Furman (or Brown) wouldn’t have been an option if I had left the academy first.

I can walk away from the academy or remain in it with some emotional maturity that I didn’t have before.

I feel a connection with a church planter headed up to Boston who I had a beer with recently. He became a Christian his first year as a professor.  He wanted to become a minster but also wanted to make sure he wasn’t running from a fear of tenure.  He tenured and then changed careers.  Seeing in through brought a sense of solidness in his decision.

A year later I feel like I can leave or stay in academia on my terms, not being driven out by my own emotional muddiness nor by a lack of respect from others.  For that, I’m grateful.

It’s official: I’ll be teaching at Brown next year and for at least two more after that.  The offer has been in the works for a while but today is the official day.

It feels great to know that we’ll be somewhere for at least three years.  I haven’t had that kind of surety since 1997 when I had three years left at Clemson.

Praise God!  Who could have envisioned such an outcome?  Amazing.

One great thing about this year has been the progression of Charity’s career.  The home office has been a welcome change from a commute and a dreary office building.

We’re now two weeks into our tenure here in Greenville.  Good news is that the new work environment has been great.  The bad news is that the hope of permanent position has faded.  We’re on the job market again.  For the third year in a row.  That stinks.

I’m usually not one for lists but I’m working on using words to talk about the adjustment process from Chapel Hill to Greenville.

Good Things about Greenville/TR/Work

• Seeing mountains everyday on the drive home.  Beautiful.  I even stop in the parking lot when I walk out of Walmart to admire the vista.
• Actually going to the mountains.  The state park 30 mins away is awesome.
• It is so quiet at night.  No nightclubs.  No drunken college students screaming.  No cars with thumping base parked next door.
• My department is very friendly.  They are abnormally social for PhDs.
• The university is so small that it’s quaint.  Every time I have a question about how to do something, say get an ID card, people tell me to go see Paul Smith or Jim’s wife, Betty.  I have to prod them about the department/service because they just think in names not in abstraction enties like HR.  Always.
• The small raised bed in our yard has given us an endless supply of cherry tomatoes.
• Our new house is great.  It’s huge, clean, and well insulated.  It feels a bit like living in a hotel.  Dual sinks are as good as advertised.

Culture Shock Items

• Gritty rural poverty and obesity.  Whew.
• The constant sound of lawn care in our neighborhood.  Our landlords believe in . . . ah . . . a natural lawn approach (let grow what may) which we like.  Our neighbors worship theirs.  There always seem to a noisy offering taking place.  Let’s just say the property lines are pretty clear.  Decidedly not the woodsy CH approach.
• Kids. They are everywhere in the neighborhood.  The little girls next door use the playset in our yard which is fine but strange after 8 years of living on a block comprised entirely of college students and childless couples.  The little boys across the street who pee in the front bushes are particularly funny.
• The ugliness of some of the necessary drives (esp. between here and downtown Greenville).  It’s miles and miles of ugly strip malls, abandoned manufacturing plant and treeless parking lots.  It hurts the soul to drive through.
• The traffic.  Whole Foods and TJ’s are 30 minutes away and it can be a brutal drive.  Bleh.

Things I miss about Chapel Hill

• The food.  CH is a paradise.  For comparison, 3 of the top 10 places to eat in our little town on Yelp are gas stations.
• Our friends.  This weekend we were at a wedding with many of our favorite CH people.  We laughed and hugged and celebrated for three days straight.  It was lovely and awesome.
• The church.  Our first visit drove home the difference between where our church in CH is and where the church we visited here is.  It’s not bad, it’s just pretty different at first blush.

Over the last two years I’ve applied to 64 schools, had eight phone interviews, and came in second in three different searches.  Today that searching and wondering has ended (at least for next year and God willing for a long time).

I’ve accepted a one-year position at a small liberal arts school in South Carolina.  I’m very excited about the location, the classes I’m teaching, the coworkers, and the students.  There’s a decent chance it will turn into something longer term which would be very welcome.

It’s been a bittersweet week as Charity and I have come the decision to take this position.  On the one hand it’s a great school and literally a God-send, but on the other, we very much wanted to live more of life in Chapel Hill.  It’s been tremendously sad to face leaving our dear church and our friends here.

It’s been all the harder because even weeks ago we really believed that we would stay.  Three weeks ago we were out with a realtor looking at condos in the area.  But then the tenured faculty in my department voted in another candidate.  Through them God said no to staying here.

There has been a lot of grieving as we reconcile ourselves to not staying in our home of six years.  It’s hard to break the news to each new person.  There’s a teary silence for a minute as we both take in the new reality of how our lives are changed forever.

Yesterday and today I’ve been trying hard to say out loud the good things about where we are going.  This new reality involves both leaving and going.  I’m trying to talk more on the going: being in a great job near the mountains.  I think that helps.

See you all in Greenville?

“A Mother’s Poem” by My Mom:

When he was two he liked to “read” his books.

His mother said the words and prayed a prayer.

When he was six he left her for a school.

His mother packed his lunch and prayed a prayer.

When he was eight his teacher said, “he’s bored.”

His mother talked to her and prayed a prayer.

When he was twelve he hated Ms. L,

His mother drove the car and prayed a prayer.

His junior year his homework was “undone.”

His mother found his book and prayed a prayer.

Today this boy received his P-H-D.

His mother smiled a smile and prayed a prayer.

It’s job season again.  I’ve been a lot less frantic about it than I was last year.  Feeling some peace about options outside of academia makes me calmer.

Here are the open positions I’ve been thinking the most about.  Not mentioning any names for google reasons but you might be able to guess a few of the slots.

I’m also thinking my world in Chapel Hill a good bit.  The dot near Chapel Hill keeps me from grieving . . . for now at least.  Prayers are very welcome.

Late April is . . .

Wrapping up planning for London, Normandy and Paris (just one week away!).  Printing maps, learning transport systems, making to-see lists.

Grading frantically all weekend to turn 750 blue book pages around in 72 hours.

Hosting a pastoral candidate for our church.

Working hard on the dissertation.

Putting the last of the plants we’ve grown from seed into the ground.

. . . .

My eyes stop focusing around 6pm every night.   Sleep needed.

A followup email from a student inquiring when she would get my comments on her paper.

This is so embarrassing, I just checked my “sent” folder and discovered I did not send the prospectus to you. I am so sorry, I feel like such an idiot. Attached is the prospectus.

Tis been a day filled with students (and a professor) white as sheets when they realize they’ve forgotten to bring their essays to class . . . or forgotten to come to class to give the exam.  Oops.

Makes me think again about the balance between grace and holding people to high expectations.

I actually prefer to do all my journal readings while dressed as a gourd of some sort.

This semester I’ve required my students to submit a cover letter and resume as good training to become professionals.  I’ve gotten a lot of feedback as they worry about getting it right but this has been the most amusing:

Thanks so much. I’ve been working really hard on my cover letter and resume. I think I’m on the right track, because last time I proofread my cover letter, I became impressed with me. Resume writing isn’t good for one’s humility.

From the mouths of students eh?

“Where land is unequally distributed, income produced in agriculture is skewed towards a few very large farmers.”

My editor and friend, C, points out that this sentence structure makes it seem like obese farmers make more money, probably through their gravitational pull according to my sentence.  “Towards owners of a few very large farms” would probably be more accurate and make people less likely to laugh.  Oops.

Ah grammar.

People at the Capital are serious about knowing where their doughnuts are.

Sometimes I sneak out of my office and sit in this conference room to work, as I did this afternoon. It has windows and even on this gray day it was a welcome change of scenery.

Somedays billion dollar decisions are made around these tables.  Somedays it’s used for internal meetings.  Somedays it’s used by a lonely young analyst who’s just grateful to peer out at the gray of the day.