New job

My profile tells you that I have a new house, new job, and new blog.

I have written several posts about my new house. I have even written posts about my new blog. I haven't written much about my new job.

My new job is strange. I am a tenure track faculty member at a private university. I've been teaching at this university for about half of a semester now, and it has been an interesting ride. After half a semester, I get the feeling that everyone walks around on tiptoe here. Why? Because people are quick to be offended and quick to crush perceived offenses at my university.

I offended somebody last week. I sent an email that was forwarded up and up and up and down to my department chair who sent the associate chair into my office for a private chat. The conclusion: I need to be more careful with my emails, because they may be forwarded to the Enemy. The Enemy is currently having a heyday with this blog of mine, saving up every post to display all over the department during my next status review.

Thinking of Bob the Enemy, with his balding head and his potbelly, really doesn't help me to feel much like blogging. It takes all the fun out of writing when you know that your words can and will be used against you -- even if this is an anonymous blog, and I haven't really told you who I am or where I live or where I work. Most of you are just really super clever and have already figured out where I work based on the clues I leave around the posts.

So what am I doing working at this university, where the administration like to pretend they are playing The Sims with their faculty characters? I am an opinionated feminist. I screwed up one job interview 1.5 years ago by offending an administrator at a university in SoCal. (Told him that I had a young family and I wasn't going to teach evenings. So there.) And then I take a position at another top heavy university. What was I thinking?

Or why don't we spin it another way? What am I doing being an opinionated feminist in the first place? Why in the world am I still working? I am happily married to a guy who is really good at his job. We are financially stable with his income alone. I have a young child. I am an active, tithe paying, fully participating member of a religion that strongly encourages its women to stay home. How did I end up in this job?

Those questions are like interesting sculptures to be handled, turned over, studied, and then replaced on the shelf. I have lots of reasons, but most of them aren't public reasons, and I'm definitely not putting them out there for Bob Enemy. Sorry Bob, you'll just have to work with what I've already given.

On a somewhat (but not exactly) related topic, here is an interesting link I was forwarded from a new-faculty listserv this morning.

http://sciencemoms.wordpress.com/

These women also have young families but want tenure. It's a fight we're all making as individuals -- my paths so far have been different from theirs. But sometimes it's nice to read the thoughts of other fighters.

OK, Bob. Stopping for now. But maybe I'll work up the courage to write a few more things about my job. Good and bad. Maybe.