So...it's been a while. Hi there. :)
I'm here in order to get the words out of my head and remind myself what happened. I had more eloquent ways to say the things I need to say all planned out in my head, but they're not coming out that way, so it's more important that I get them out than I try to get them out perfectly.
So, back story. Exposition, if you will. I have tenure. Yay! I've had it for a year. I teach a 4/4 load, usually 2 composition courses, 2 non-comp courses (1 literature, 1 Humanities) a semester. I was hired as an eighteenth-century scholar, which I was. I specialized in Jane Austen in particular. I've never taught Jane Austen at FSU, but that was my specialty.
In the last eight years, since 2007 in particular, I have switched my academic specialty from the 18thC to the modern popular romance novel. The one literature course I teach each semester is a pair: 18thC BritLit in the Fall, Romanticism in the Spring. I'm pretty locked into teaching Humanities as well. So I never get the opportunity to teach what I study.
I've spent the last five years not only changing my own focus (not really, because my theoretical focus is female-constructed masculinity and women's popular fiction) but also building the field. MAKING an academic field: creating
IASPR and
JPRS and IASPR's conferences, running the Romance Area for PCA, editing
New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction.
All this is to say that problems with my teaching have been masked over the last five years because I've been so busy with other things that I could excuse issues with my teaching as just being too busy. Something happened in the middle of the semester to make me rethink all of this. It was a personnel issue with my colleagues that I won't go in to, but suffice it to say, I feel that I need to find a way out of FSU. I was on the job market this year (Sept 2011-April 2012), and I did well. I got two interviews for 11 applications sent out. That's really great percentages, but I didn't GET a job. I'll go out on the market again, probably for two more years, but it's a brutal process at the moment and the odds of getting something are low.
But the thing that happened in March made me re-evaluate other things about my job. Academia is tough. You spend many years (7 for me) getting a very advanced degree, so it seems a shame to "waste" that degree by doing anything other than being an academic. However, my realizations are thus:
- I'm a very good teacher in the classroom with students. I'm a bad "educator." I don't WANT to be an educator. I don't care about teaching strategies and grading rubrics and raising our DFW rates (D, Fail, Withdraw, not Dallas Forth Worth), etc. If I'd wanted to be an educator, I would be teaching high school. I didn't and don't. I want to be a scholar. I want to revel in words.
- I'm a bad administrator. I don't care about our OPAR and Assessment and marketing our school. I want to be the scholar who publishes enough that everyone leaves me alone and doesn't expect me to do anything about that.
- I'm...I can't think of the adverb here. A vital part of teaching composition is the grading, more than teaching Lit or Humanities. You can do all sorts of classroom activities and teaching and theories and all that, but if you don't grade the freaking papers, then there's not much point to anything that happens in the classroom. And I don't. I just don't grade my comp classes. It makes me feel depressed to do it. I don't like grading for content as well as for expression. Like, when I grade Lit or Humanities, I can focus on content. When I grade comp, I have to focus on the way it's written as well as what it says. Which, of course I do. I just don't like doing it. It really depresses me. If I'd wanted to spend my life doing that, I would have a Rhet/Comp Ph.D. and a MUCH better job. I don't care about strategies for teaching and grading comp. Really don't.
- The thought of teaching composition for another five years makes me want to hide under the bed, let alone for the rest of my life. I'd really rather, I don't know, work at Food Lion and not have grading hanging over my head for the rest of my life. If Food Lion paid $60K a year. Which, of course, it doesn't.
Considering these things, a teaching school is not a good place for me. I know I went to FSU happy in the prospect of a good job I'd never have to move from. But...I realize that maybe I'm just not cut out for the job I have.
I think I would do well at a research school, but there's problems there:
- Many schools are slashing their grad programs in the Humanities. And they're specifically cutting the parts of their programs that don't place grad students in jobs. So while I was hoping to eventually get a job at a research school on the strength of my romance work, not only are programs getting slashed, they're slashing things like...popular romance studies. Or, sure, they're not slashing them because they don't exist. But they're unlikely TO ever exist because people who study romance novels don't get jobs.
- The teaching I do now is actually severely degrading my own analytical skills. Even if I were to teach romance at any point at FSU, my students, much as I love them, are mostly of a level that it wouldn't actually help my research. Therefore, the longer I stay here, the less and less likely it is that I'll be able to do the research to get me out. And to be able to live up to the needs of a research institution if I ever got there.
So, with very low prospects of ever enjoying my job at FSU, with very low prospects of getting a different job with or without composition, and with even lower prospects of a research institution job, finding a way out of academia has become important to me. There's reasons not to, of course. And reasons against those reasons:
1. OMG, you spent 7 years of your LIFE getting an advanced degree that pretty much only prepares you for teaching your topic and you're going to chuck it?!
- Educating, TRUE educating, is very self-sacrificing, all about helping students learn how to...whatever: write better, think better, etc. Spending 7 years at grad school getting a Ph.D. is a very selfish endeavor. A good selfish, don't get me wrong, but VERY selfish and very obsessive. (Selfish is not pejorative here. It's descriptive. Selfish does not preclude good, useful, worthwhile things coming out of that selfishness, that obsession. I certainly believe that my scholarship has applicability to "real" life. But!) These two things do not mesh very well. Or at least, they don't for me. My obsessive ability to write about Jane Austen and about romance novels is not the skill I need to be able to teach and GRADE composition.
- I spent 7 years learning about the 18thC British novel, among other things. I have spent 5 years learning about the modern popular romance novel. Spending the rest of my life teaching composition is as much chucking those 7 years or those 5 years as leaving academia. Or at least, it feels like it to me.
2. But romance scholarship NEEDS you.
- Yes, it does. IASPR and JPRS would not exist in their current form without me. There is currently no one really ready or available to take over (I have convinced myself. I like to think I'm not just being egotistical here, but...I'm not sure). But...if I can't move away from composition, I HAVE to move away from academia. I canNOT do composition for much longer. It's going to be a huge wrench to have to leave some of what I do now, but I can't continue to teach composition in order to do that.
3. $60K a year is not easy to replace when you have no other skills.
- Ah, yes, indeed. But that leads us to what I might be able to do.
I had the thought that I might be able to edit fiction, specifically romance fiction, even more specifically m/m romance and BDSM fiction. I've never DONE this, but I've spent 4 years reviewing at Dear Author and I know I AM a good academic editor. I thought it was worth a shot.
So, after the Thing That Happened in March, I emailed the owners of a start-up digital-first press and said, "Help!" They were incredibly nice and helpful and wonderful. Then they tested me and, as of yesterday, I was, in fact, hired (on a contractor basis) by Riptide Publishing as an editor. They publish fiction with LGBTQI characters: mainly romance, but not always. I'm also opening a freelance editing business. I'm already working with one amazing author and hope to work with more. Part of that business is also BDSM consulting for authors.
I don't know if this new venture will replace a $60K salary, but I've put myself on a 3-5 year plan. I'd prefer it to be a 2-3 year plan, but we'll see.
ETA: This does mean, by the way, that I'm no longer reviewing for Dear Author. Just wanted that out there. Announcement will be going up about that soon.So, there you have it. I don't want to teach composition for the rest of my life. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I can't. And if I can't get another job (or can't get funding to study romance for a year or two), then I need something else. And I think I'd be good at editing. And I think I'll enjoy it. So I'm exploring. And...we'll see.
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sarahf's journal
