One of the disconcerting…

One of the disconcerting things about the whole job interview process is realizing that I'm honestly not sure where I would be happiest. Not so much which school, but which kind of school. I'm sure that teaching in a small liberal arts college is very different from teaching in a large research university. But I don't know that I have a real preference for either one. Which is difficult when they ask me what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for a place with interesting, engaging students. A place with an active, energetic faculty. A place where the teaching load is light enough that I still have time to write, but where I can also develop and fine-tune the classes I'd love to teach. I'm also feeling unformed enough as a teacher that I think I could be happy teaching a lot of different types of classes, from small group sessions to large lectures, from intimate courses on a few authors in a sub-field like South Asian Diaspora Lit., to a large survey of American lit. They're all appealing, in their own way.

Ah well. I suppose at this point, we just wait and see whether I get any offers. If I get multiple offers, then I can fret about which would be the best fit and make me happiest.

Finished reviewing the Gustavus info; another hour or so to go. So I suppose I will go back to writing. Only a thousand words of chapter 18 so far today; four thousand to go. And we're going to try to squeeze in a quick visit to Kate and Becca and Gavin and the new baby this afternoon, so that may interfere a bit with writing, but in the very best of ways. :-)

Total word count: 91,900. Starting to feel like a real book, though I think there's a lot to add in the next draft. Bodies in Motion was only 89,100, even with the acknowledgements and everything. That's a bit startling.

1 thought on “One of the disconcerting…”

  1. That actually sounds like quite a good answer to the question, “What are you looking for?” At least to me. (But then again, I’d be suspicious of someone who said, “I want to work at a large research university,” as if all large research universities, or all writing departments in large reserach universities were the same.)

    Good luck with both the book and the interviews!

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