signalnoise

Sometimes my *career* gives me fits. I feel keenly aware of my *limitations* at this stage (the advanced resident/post-doc/visiting assistant/adjunct/junior faculty period). By limitations, I explicitly mean the need to keep people above me happy. By people above me, I mean, apparently, *anyone else in the profession.* It's pretty exhausting.

Because of my wife's possibly limited career options here, I've had thoughts about going on the market again this fall. The market is exhausting, time consuming and psychically destructive. At least for me. I'm sure going out from a position of security makes it better, but even then: I feel like a dick for leaving my colleagues here. But I also feel pinched by my wife's - the one with the real capacity to earn money by the way - career possibilities. Plus, I mean, she worked just as hard to get her degree - why should she jockey an Excel spreadsheet or get coffee for someone when she's a *professional?* (And yes, there are faculty spouses here who have advanced degrees - like high school teachers with Master degrees in the hard sciences - that are essentially secretaries.)

But the pinch for me is: some folks say it is bad to leave a place too early. That it makes you look like a "trouble" employee who can't play well with others, who isn't productive, is greed, petty, etc. And yes, I can put in my cover letter all this shit about my wife's job issues. But will anyone care? Or will I just be a jerk-off looking to bail on their small school/struggling department/whatever after two years?

(Of course, I don't really know if moving early is a problem or not. Like everything in academia, it's a claim made by a few people - wrapped in innuendo, paranoia and smug condescension.)

What rubs me about this is that I'm annoyed by how fucking *medieval* my job is - and it IS. Academia is *essentially* still a modified guild system. What's weird though, is that academia has all the costs of guild systems, re: you eat lots of ass when training, but none of the perks, re: guaranteed employment if you dot your i's and cross your t's. What troubles me is that academia very much wants to present itself as a gentlemanly and dignified profession - all about respectability and courtesy. Except when it's not in its interest to behave in that fashion.

The whole process of graduate education is self-interested and mercenary: there are too many PhD programs, that admit too many students, and too many schools too happy to screw over adjuncts. PhD programs squeeze students for their teaching labor and their intellectual insights. But when junior faculty consider responding in kind - by moving up the job ladder as fast as possible, getting one job and leap frogging to better ones as they - well, *that's* bad from.

Blargh. I know I'm lucky. My wife and I are stupidly over educated, have a pile of "post-material" skills that play well in the current market, and have a reasonably low amount of debt. We have families that are solidly working class, and we can fall back on in an emergency. We have a nice collection of material possessions that are in good shape for years. I also know other people are in worse off places. I also know EVERY job sucks in its own special ways.

So my whining is misplaced. And its also based on conjecture - it could be that the wife gets a great job next year, or I'm able to move to a school in a city where she can get and work and pull off that transition in a totally drama free way. But I've spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about this shit, and the wife and I have had too many downer/tense conversations about "what next?" this year. My biggest fear is that we miss spending our last year of two of child-free freedom together. My other biggest fear is that we leave so she can work, and *I* end up jockeying the Excel spreadsheet.

I'm fucking exhausted. Yet, I pick up, and head out once more.