Kirsten has been…
Kirsten has been brainstorming alternate careers for me, in case the academia thing doesn't work out. The job market is awfully tight, after all, and if I'm trying to stay in Chicago so I can keep living with Kev, it's a hell of a lot tighter. We'll see. I like travel (despite the mopiness of last week, I really do), so she thought I could combine couriering for airlines (free flights) with travel writing. I don't know much about being a courier -- do any of you? Ditto on travel writing (which does sound awfully appealing, I must say).
Mary Anne, if you want to learn the ins and outs of travel writing, I can put you in touch with my aunt when you get back, she’s been a travel writer off and on for many many years. It has some definite pluses, but also some serious drawbacks.
Hope you are having fun!
I’ve been a courier. The rules have changed in recent years, though, and it’s not nearly as open a field as it used to be. There’s some basic info about it at this site. In short: it’s not free, it’s just a way to fly at discounted rates for someone with flexible goals/schedule and a willingness to travel light overseas. I had great fun being a courier and think it would mix very well with being a travel writer, but you’d have to be paid well for the writing. Nowadays there are cheaper ways to travel.
I think you’d be a kick-ass travel writer, Mary Anne.
Just to keep in the back of your mind: I left university academic life after fifteen years and moved to private high school teaching, where I have stayed happily. The pay is equal or better, the vacations are wonderful. The gratitude and love from students is phenomenal. You get to be the first encounter for most of them, so they read Hamlet unspoiled by tedious university academic drones. It is a much more gratifying age span to teach. On the other hand, it is truly working in the salt mines — enormously hard work compared to the leisure of the university day.
It wasn’t the professor that spoiled Shakespeare for me in college, it was the large uncomfortable lecture hall with poor acoustics and no air conditioning.