Happy in Academia

Several friends are blogging about happiness in academia, prompting me to ask myself, am I happy in academia?

That's is a tough question to answer with simply a yes or no.  Thus, for me, the answer is yes, most of the time.  My frustrations with my job have much less to do with the structure or constraints of academia than to do with the bureaucracy of higher education.  I also get frustrated by long meetings (although at most of the long meetings I attend things do get accomplished) and annoying colleagues (luckily, these are few and far between).  That said, I've worked in lots other settings.  I've attended long, boring meetings and dealt with annoying colleagues in other work places before. 

For me, I love teaching, and I love my area of research.  I also like many other aspects of my job, including curriculum development.  I'm less enamored by the administrative side, although I've been told that I have talents in that area.  For now, I'm happy in academia.  But if I were ever to become unhappy, I would pursue something else.  I have no illusions about my situation.  I have been in the right place at the right time working with the right people.  If Archer had taken a job at any other university in any other location, our situation could have ended up very, very differently.  I do something that many other people with my degree do in the States but, as it turns out, that not many people do in Canada.  I am valuable to CU for that reason.  On top of that, I am a good teacher, as my student evaluations and my peer evaluations attest to (I have taken the rather unusual step of having several of my peers sit in on my classes and write me letters of evaluation, which I've had added to my annual performance reports; I have no doubt that these letters have helped me).  I'm lucky, and I know it.

So what is the purpose of this post?  Well, it seems that we don't often evaluate our job satisfaction.  It is very, very easy to get caught up in the daily aggravations of our jobs.  I am happy with my job, and I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that.