Notes from CU Land

Overall our trip to CU Land was a rousing success. It was stressful, as we tried to cram as much as we could into the 4 days we were there. We looked at about 20 town houses/houses with a real estate agent and 2 rental properties; we visited 3 schools for Wild Man (I wanted to visit another one that was highly recommended by one of the faculty members in C's department, but we ran out of time); and we drove over the entire city at least 3 times in the process of accomplishing these things. Wild Man had a few meltdowns, but overall, he was a dream. I mean, by the end of every day, I was a bit cranky by how much time we'd spent in the car, so I totally understood why he was cranky too. Here are a few highlights from our trip.

• The chair of C's department, whom I am naming Dr. Nice Guy, and his wife, Mrs. Nice Lady, were wonderful. They went out of their way to make us feel welcome and to answer any and all questions we had. Dr. Nice Guy even drove C around town one evening and helped him determine the best areas for us to look at homes.
  
• First, Dr. Nice Guy convinced one of the grad students in the department, who is out of the country for the summer, to let us stay in her house so we didn't have to stay in a hotel room. This was extremely generous of this woman, especially considering all her furniture is vintage (on a side note, the house was cute, but the interior looked like a page out of Architectural Digest circa 1950; everything was retro-modern, including the 1950s toaster that I'm certain she stole from my grandmother!), and one of the house guests was a 19-month-old. Having a kitchen and a yard made our lives much, much easier. In fact, we only ate out twice during our entire stay, and Wild Man burnt off lots of energy pulling Dr. Nice Guy's son's wagon around the back yard.
• Second, Dr. Nice Guy pestered the dean into pestering the head of the Women's Studies department into meeting with me. I went into this meeting with no guarantees of a job and came out 45 minutes later with the promise of a part-time gig. It seems that CU doesn't have anyone who can tackle both race and gender in literature, and apparently their Women's Studies students are very interested in such issues. I quickly explained that I had in fact taught all the courses on my CV. The head of Women's Studies was confused because technically my title is Teacher's Assistant; she thought I had graded for all the courses (about 8 different courses). Once I explained I had taught every one of them myself, she said, "Well, so tell me what you can teach at CU." After brainstorming for about 10 minutes, she asked me to teach a course on Women's Slave Narratives, so I'm very, very excited. She's supposed to get back to me by mid-June to let me know if I'll start in the Fall or the Spring, but either way, I know I will be teaching sooner rather than later.
• Third, Mrs. Nice Lady, who is a teacher at a secondary school in CU Land, explained the Canadian school system to me. By Wednesday, I was getting very, very frustrated with our real estate agent, whom I felt was being dismissive about my questions regarding school districts. She kept saying, "Well, it all depends on where you want to send him. . ." and then would change the subject. It seems that CU Land only has 1 school district, which is very, very good (Mrs. Nice Lady has sent me the stats via email, and I'm really impressed). But we can choose to send Wild Man to public school, Catholic school, or French-immersion school. Catholic schools are fully subsidized by the provincial government, and many of these are very good. I didn't know this, so every time the real estate agent said, "It depends on if you choose public or Catholic school" I wanted to throttle her. Once Mrs. Nice Lady explained this, I suddenly understood: I was asking the wrong questions. C and I have since learned enough to decide that if we're in CU Land long enough we will send Wild Man to the French immersion school, which is essentially a magnate school. It is part of the public school system, but we have to sign him up for the school about a year in advance.
  

Overall, I returned to Southwest College Town relieved. CU Land is a place we will be happy. Now I just have to prep for my upcoming research trip to the Northeast, pack up our house, and finish the Phelps chapter and make good headway on the Kemble/Wilson chapter before we move in August.