spynotes ::
  September 24, 2006
Coda

After spending most of my weekend agonizing over a poorly paying but interesting adjunct gig, I decided to turn it down. The main reason? I was afraid it was going to come between me and finishing my long-overdue dissertation. The answer probably should have been obvious, but I had to think it through. But thanks to those who commented. You guys helped me out a lot. Elgan reminded me that teaching is actually what I�m trying to go for, so I should consider this job seriously, which I did. If you really love teaching and you can deal with the pay, at some point you have to wonder if adjuncting is an okay place to be. Because as an adjunct, you don�t have the research pressures that tenure-track faculty do. You can focus on your teaching and your students.

But it�s not just the teaching I like. Although I think I could adjunct fairly happily for a while, should it come to that, I would not forgive myself if I knew I�d gotten so close to the other route and not given it a go, if I�d given up on the project.

Teranika offered some very solid advice and pointed out that really I�m choosing between two things that are both good. While it feels like it�s hard to know what�s right, it�s also hard to be wrong here. So I followed her advice and went with my gut.

As lemming pointed out, this is my last year to spend mornings with AJ. I�m already losing two mornings a week to the class I�m already teaching. I want to keep my Friday date with AJ. I don�t want to go back on a promise I made to him, even though I�m pretty sure he doesn�t care about this nearly as much as I do. My gut says this is the right thing to do.

My friend L., whom I called for validation because I knew she�d say what I wanted to hear, agreed that I needed to pass this time. �You need to finish the dissertation.� She�s right.

I�m invested a lot of energy worrying about this all weekend. I�m feeling bad for not being able to pull it off, and also for having to give up an opportunity, even though I know this is pretty ridiculous. So we�ve declared tonight a family party. I�m celebrating starting one new job and not another. My husband�s celebrating wins by the Sox AND the Bears today, and AJ is celebrating his new desk. I spotted it buried under tchochkes at an antique store yesterday and went back for it today. It�s a beautiful, adult-sized but small scale solid maple desk with a drawer for AJ�s treasures. It�s perfect. He and The Girl Next Door spent a good half an hour trying to find the right arrangement of objects for it. I put his Charlie Brown lamp and his dad�s old nameplate (they have the same name) on it. The girl next door added two green wooden trees, borrowed from AJ�s train set, one on either side of the nameplate. AJ added two cars (�one for decoration and the other to play with while I�m doing my homework�). He also put his Turbotwist (an electronic math toy) and prism and some glow-in-the-dark solar system stickers in the drawer. We packed up his little table and chairs and will try to find some other small person who might have use for them. AJ�s ready to be a big kid.

[Second entry today. If you care about my personal drama, you can click back two entries for the beginning and back one for the middle.]

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