Dear TIPSters--
I wanted to share the happy news with you that, many painful rejection letters and their accompanying self-doubt notwithstanding, I have indeed managed to land myself a job for the coming year--an opportunity that dramatically and unexpectedly came up from behind at the last minute, rather like Seabiscuit.
Two weeks ago I accepted a position as a visiting professor at Emmanuel College, a small Catholic college in Boston. While this appointment is only for one year, the department is growing by leaps and bounds--Emmanuel went co-ed two years ago, and has been booming ever since--and I'll be under consideration for one of at least two tenure-track positions to be posted for next year. (Happily, Emmanuel does not seem to have that weird Groucho Marx self-loathing whereby anyone who has ever worked for them in a non-tenure-track position cannot possibly be thought of as qualified for a tenure-track appointment. They recently hired an English professor who had taught for them as an adjunct.)
It is, of course, a wondrous thing to find a job at all, but the particulars of this job are especially appealing to me. It had long been my hope to wind up at a liberal-arts college rather than a university, and Emmanuel has a lively, collegial atmosphere to it. There is a great sense of renaissance about the place--the transition to a co-ed school was managed spectacularly well, apparently, and Emmanuel is now the fastest-growing school on the east coast. My colleagues all seem truly engaged in their work and committed to the students, the school, and its mission. I've been in enough dysfunctional environments to know the signs, and my instinct is telling me that this is a place that works. While no human institution is perfect (oh dear--am I allowed to say that now that I'm sort of in the employ of the Catholic church?) I get the sense that there are fewer real toads in imaginary gardens here than at many other schools and organizations I've been associated with.
This fall, I'll be teaching three sections of introductory psychology (Emmanuel divides its intro psych into two semesters, so I'll be teaching two sections of psych I and one of psych II). The spring schedule has yet to be determined.
I've been subscribing, and intermittently posting, to TIPS almost since I entered graduate school, nearly seven years ago. At times--because the road to the PhD was long and often rocky--it was, really, my only connection to the world of academic psychology. Thank you all for that, and I hope to be making my presence known a little bit more often from here on out.
Robin
Notices at the bottom of this e-mail do not reflect the opinions of the sender. I do not "yahoo" that I am aware of, nor do I support the artistic endeavors of Faith Hill, Garth Brooks, or the like. Thank you.
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