The Market

Archer and I are currently in the midst of deciding whether or not we will go on the market this year.  In many, many ways, I want to go on the market.  I want to see what will happen.  I want to try to get a job in a department where I can teach literature, not just theory.  I love teaching, but I can't see myself being completely fulfilled professionally if I can't teach the things I got into this profession to teach.  It is, of course, much more complicated than that.  As I told a friend this morning, the pros and cons are infinite.

Pros

• teaching what I love
• being in a location we like better than CU Land
• potentially being closer to family and friends
• having my teaching and research intersect in more clearly defined ways
• having easy access to materials in my field (the ILL librarian and I have become really tight in the 5 years we've been here)
• being closer to locations I need to go to do archival work
• being able to teach our children about their home country without going out of way to do so (this seems like a little thing, but we've already had to start giving Wild Man mini lectures on American history)
•  being able to attend conferences with more ease
• I could go on and on.

Cons

• moving
• starting over
• leaving our house
• leaving our network of friends and colleagues
• learning another university/college system
• being closer to family (yep, this is both a pro and a con)
• going on the market (it is such a time drain that it is a con in and of itself)
• interviewing (it's not my favorite thing)
• the negativity that comes out of the experience
• the guilt that I will feel (we have jobs; going on the market means we may be taking jobs from people who don't have them.  Yes, I worry about things like that.)
• leaving a unionized system (it comes with lots of hassles, but we have recourse when things go badly, as they often do in academia)
• Again, I could go on and on.

We haven't yet decided what to do.  I want to give it a go, but Archer is more hesitant.  Neither of us is 100% happy here (nor are we naive enough to think that we would be 100% happy anywhere), but it's familiar.  He is close to tenure, and he'll get it.  He is also being "groomed" for an administrative role, which means more money and lots more headaches.  Currently we're in a liminal space and trying to figure out what the best step is for us professionally and for our family.