A Job

The other big thing that's happened in the last year is I got myself a bona fide teaching job. Which is good, since I spent 3 years in grad school in order to make myself qualified for such a thing.

Spring of 2007. I'm living in Portland, temping at Freightliner, and adjunct teaching (meaning part time, not paid well) at the University of Portland. One of the professors at UP has decided to go into phased retirement and they do a national search to replace him. Many times when a school does a national search they are reluctant to hire from inside (otherwise why do a national search, which is expensive). I figured I had a chance, but it wasn't too great (since I'd not had a full time teaching position, though I had years of part-time going back to grad school), so I was happy with each step I continued to survive through the process. Once I was named one of the 3 finalists, I figured my chances had improved (I was in the "devil you know" category). The interview lasted 21 hours over 2 days (this is moderate for academic interviews, I've heard of longer). It was intense (and then I had to wait a week while they interviewed the other 2 finalists), but in the end they offered me the job. I was quite happy, since it meant staying in Portland (which I wanted to do, but I wasn't going to temp & adjunct forever). Also, in addition to teaching undergrad drama classes, the job entails running the graduate directing program (one of 40-50 in the country). The grad program makes the job more interesting (and harder too). And now I have health insurance again, which is nice (I had health insurance, but it had a $10K deductible and everything up to the deductible was out of pocket, so it wasn't useful unless I got hit by a truck).

The first year was like any first year of a job: more work than one expects. I knew it was going to be a lot of work (teaching a few classes for the first time, and the first time you teach a class is the most work you're going to put into it...the second time you're fixing and, for me at least, by the third time the structure is there and sound, so the prep work starts to drop off considerably). I was also directing 2 shows, and supervising the director on 4 more. So I was busy with all this expected stuff. But then comes the unexpected stuff, the little things that are part of the job but were either completely unexpected (coordinating publicity for all the shows) or take more time than you plan on (meetings).

So I didn't have much of a life off campus, but I knew that was going to happen to an extent. The shows both went well, and the classes too (for the most part). The main thing is I survived and didn't make any huge mistakes.

Now I start thinking about next year. In the fall I'm teaching FA207 (the intro the arts class I started teaching as an adjunct, so it's pretty well set as a class), the 1st year grad directing class (with 1 student this year, so I'll have to see what kind of adjustments I'd like to make because of that), and the Shakespeare Acting class (which I taught last fall, and I've got a pretty decent list of changes to make; plus the grad directors take it this year--so I've got to figure out what they're going to do--and I've got an honors student in it so I need to add additional components for her). I'm also directing Blithe Spirit to start the year. In some ways it will be easier (since I'm mostly treading previously explored territory) and in some ways harder (since it's the second time around for most of this, the bar is a little higher than "getting through it"). And I need to carve out a social life too (try get get a bit of a work/life balance). So there are goals.

So that pretty much catches you all up on the highlights of the last year or so, and pretty much brings you all up to date. I still need to cover June (Reunion!) and July (JAW!), and then we'll be all caught up to now.