The Altac Chronicles, Episode 2: Flexibility

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…doubt can feel like an admission of error — and the stakes of such error can be too high to countenance. (Having spent ten years preparing for a career, for instance, experiencing doubt about the choice not only feels like failure, but like a failure so long-term that it raises the possibility that one can have wasted one’s life tout court.)

Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “Doubts”

My first post in this new…um…series…was a snapshot into how I was feeling when the news that we were officially moving to Texas sunk in. I had been thinking about this moment last weekend when I finally sat down and starting filling out job applications. I had been procrastinating on this, as you can imagine, but now that I have done one application things are moving.

This morning (April 3rd), after I chatted on Twitter for a while, I hopped in the shower, late as I was for work. Somehow, it occurred to me while in the shower that one of the big themes in yesterday’s post was flexibility, but I hadn’t really explored it. I focused on giving you a narrative picture of that day, but I didn’t delve into the issue–or should I say, the idea–of flexibility and alternative academic careers.

Here are my tweets from this morning:

The always-insightful Jo Van Every reminded me:

Now that I’ve had some time to think about this some more, I need to revise that part about “job security a la tenure track.” (Oh Twitter and your 140 characters…) It sounds like I’m saying that tenure track jobs offer job security, which is not what I was going for. I am aware that tenure track as path to job security is an illusion. Also, I’m not arguing here that altac means no job security whereas teaching or the tenure track is. What I was trying to work through was the stability of the idea of the tenure track that kept me focused throughout graduate school for so long. I was focused on getting a PhD because I believed that was the step before getting a teaching position, and so that goals kept me focused. When I decided to pursue alternative academic jobs, I didn’t have that one job/focus to keep me moving. Instead, now I have a career that can be comprised of different jobs.

That flexibility of jobs to choose from is one of the things that appealed to me about going the altac route. However, that flexibility can be scary, because flexibility could mean, like it does now, that you leave one job and go for another one that may not be in the same department or field or office or division. (I’m not saying this is unique to altac folks, but that this is the situation I find myself in at the moment.) However, the way I work around that is I’m trying to focus on jobs that are in areas I am interested in and that I am skilled for. Like Jo mentioned this morning:

The writing center is my professional home now, and the work I have done there has been emotionally and intellectually fulfilling. However, I know that, for better or for worse, I will not find another opening for Graduate Writing Specialist in Houston. I’m focusing on the things I liked about my job, the things I excelled at in my job, and the skills I developed at my job, and using that as my compass while I search.

The Altac Chronicles, Episode 1: Job (In)Security

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Mid February, and Spring Training was days away.

He was in Houston, the day after the press conference that announced he was the new voice of the Astros. I went to work because, well, it’s what I do on Thursdays. It’s what I do Monday through Friday, actually. He didn’t know that I was getting increasingly anxious while he drove around Houston looking for a new apartment for our family to live in. I had revealed to my co-workers that he had gotten this unique, exciting opportunity, and that we would be moving to Houston. But when I was alone in my office my heart beat a little faster.

A lot happened in a matter of no time.

He would return that night, only to leave in the next few days for Florida to watch this new team try each other out before baseball season began. I don’t remember if he already had his Spring Training plane tickets, but it was around the corner and it was going to happen. I knew that this was that time of year when he had to leave. I’m used to that.

I’m never used to that.

There is a segment of the population that lives like this, with significant others who travel constantly for work. I’m sure any of them will say, you never get used to it. You tell yourself you are, but you’re not.

There’s always an adjustment period. Your sleep patterns change a little. Your routine changes a little. You have to remind yourself that your significant other won’t come home that night and so whatever dishes you left in the sink that morning are still sitting in the sink at night. You figure out what you’re going to do with the kids, if you have kids. You plan ahead to who is coming when and when you’ll go out with your friends. I can do it alone, I tell myself.

I can’t do it alone.

This time, though, I had to adjust to the thought that I wouldn’t seem him until after 90 days, that when I saw him again we would be in another zip code, months from now. I don’t know if he had to adjust to that idea, or to the fact that he will no longer call Kansas City home. Or that KCI will no longer be the end destination of his flights. Maybe he didn’t have enough time for that. Me, I started dealing with that the moment he asked me “what if I’m offered the job?”

This is not a post about regretting my answer to that question. (I said “we’ll go,” if you’re wondering.) I’m looking forward to the move, and I don’t regret my answer. This is a post about letting go. Letting go of a job and letting go of a city.

He was in Houston looking at apartments. I was jittery, in my office by myself. My anxiety medication wasn’t really helping, I felt. All of a sudden the flood of thoughts appeared from out of nowhere. Where am I going? What am I doing? How do I pick up and just go? I can’t. I can’t.

I have done this before. Leave one place for another. Leave one place because he had a job in another.  I know that some people judge women like me. This post isn’t about that. This post is about how someone who is as career-oriented as I am handles switching.

I did a PhD. I know what it’s like to commit to a career track.

You see, academia has always told us you go where the jobs are. Major League Baseball is like that. However, I decided that I was more comfortable being an alternative academic because I knew it gave me more flexibility, more options. I didn’t like the options the tenure track was offering me. (Or taunting me, your choice.)  But now, now that I leave a job that, frankly, I made mine, I feel the tug of that flexibility.

I broke down that morning. In the quiet of my office, a Thursday when no one was around and when we had no consultations scheduled, I broke down and cried. The anxiety of not knowing what my next step was crumpled inside that spot right in the center of my chest, and the tears came roaring upwards and outwards. I tried to be quiet, so I cried into my scarf. I texted him, barely seeing the letters on my iPhone’s screen. I didn’t know who else to talk to.

I texted him, asking him if he was around to talk. We couldn’t, not right then. He said he could call me later. I had a meeting in half an hour. I felt my chest starting to shake, tears coming up again. I eventually called my mom, the last person I wanted to talk to– I didn’t want her to worry.

She worries sometimes.

I talked through the feelings that were crumpling in my chest. I looked forward to moving to Houston, but I minded leaving my job and my friends, the things that made Kansas City a home for me. After years of frustration, of indecision, of anger, and of confusion, I was finally in much better shape, career-wise, and in a city I enjoy. I felt afraid of leaving that, of leaving that stable environment. I was afraid of going to Houston and starting from scratch. I was afraid of falling into depression again, the kind of depression that kept me wondering about what the heck I was doing with my life if my PhD doesn’t mean anything in the tenure track job market. (I blogged about that too.) I was afraid.

Nowadays I feel more comfortable with the idea, and I know that alternative academic careers are just that: careers. And careers are comprised of jobs. But I still won’t be entirely comfortable until I know where my career continues in Houston.

Thank you, mds, for encouraging me to post this. “You felt it. You meant it. Probably important.”

My Next (Writing) Step

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"Perfect Stranger" by Flickr user mezone under Creative Commons 2.0 License

“Perfect Stranger” by Flickr user mezone under Creative Commons 2.0 License

Lately I’ve been thinking a whole lot more about writing, perhaps because I’m leaving my job at the writing center where I have been for the past year and a half and I’m trying to figure out what is my next step professionally. This is one of the things I like about being an alternative academic: it’s not about a particular job but about career moves. Alternative academic is more of a career than a job right now. And so I’m thinking about my next career move. As a friend told me this weekend, this move to Texas has given me some freedom in a way.

But I’ll miss my job at the writing center. Firstly, the writing center showed me that there was a life for me outside of the classroom. It also taught me that there were folks out there who appreciated the work I did, something I rarely got as a professor (and with no sense of whether I was doing well or doing not so well I always teetered over to “I could do better”–a vicious cycle). It felt good to be appreciated, to hear people say, “Wow that was helpful. Thank you.” And I needed that in my professional life. In a broader sense, the writing center opened up possibilities for me. More importantly, I like what I do: I like working with writers, talking with them about their writing process, coaching them to their finish lines, listening to their concerns, and sometimes even pointing out when they’re overthinking their writing and they just need to sit down and write. (Yes, I have been that person who says “you need to stop reading and start writing.”) In a way, this job appeared just in the nick of time, a time when I was floating around, unsure about this thing called academia, with half a dissertation left to write.

All of that to say, I’ve been thinking a lot about writing in part because I’ve been thinking a lot about my job and I’ve been thinking about what’s next and what I can do in Houston. And so lately I’ve also been thinking about my professional identity as a scholar, particularly about publications and getting my academic writing act together. (You may want to check out my latest at U Venus about academic writer’s block if you haven’t yet.) That leads me to think about the dissertation, that big manuscript that’s supposed to be the rough draft of the first book you’re supposed to publish when you enter the tenure track. (I say “the tenure track”  because I’m under the impression that alternative academic jobs don’t usually require you to publish a book the first four years into your job. Correct me if I am wrong. Seriously.) However, I am not on the tenure track so I’m not under the pressure of transforming my dissertation into a manuscript. That doesn’t mean I won’t, though. Seriously, I spent almost three years on the thing, and produced 200 polished pages. (Dear academics: don’t laugh at my 200 pages. You, in the corner, I see you snickering.) So I want to do something with it–and if you read my last post here, I confessed to wanting to write a book someday.

So here it goes: I have an idea for revising the dissertation. It probably will look nothing like what it looks like right now. But that’s okay; that’s what revision is all about. I want to weave in my own story as a traveling migrant with my research and analysis of representations of home. At this point I can do whatever I want with it, so why not do what I feel like doing, which is talk about what it feels like to have different iterations of home?

At this point I’m looking to read other kinds of intellectual narratives, whether tradebooks or academic publications. Any suggestions, readers?

P.S.: If you have leads on Houston jobs for writers, that works too. Joking. Kind of. Really, I’m joking. Unless you aren’t. Ok, just hit me up in the comments section. Let’s go with that.

Write, She Said.

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Photo: “8/26 Day Write-a-thon for 826 Valencia” by Flickr user Steve Rhodes under Creative Commons 2.0 License

I was in eighth grade when I considered becoming a writer. Not just any writer. I dreamed of becoming a rock and roll journalist for Rolling Stone magazine. At that age I read Rolling Stone religiously, and I loved music. Aside from my music journalist aspirations, I dabbled in different genres: I wrote poetry, fiction, song lyrics, you name it. I even attempted to write a novel, or what 13-year-old me thought of as a novel. It was a series very similar to the Real World but–get this–a lot more diverse. I remember writing Chapter 1 and part of Chapter 2…and that was it.

I always wanted to write, and if you are a regular reader of this blog this is not news to you. I don’t know why I was so enamored of writing, but I was. I wanted to put things down and share them with people. I would practice my witty explorations on the page. My brain loves descriptions, details, turns of phrase…no wonder I drifted to literature as a major. Even when I write for an academic audience, I can’t resist creating patterns and using different adjectives in my analysis.

The dissertation almost did away with that creative energy, and I was angry at academia for making me despise dislike one of the things I held closest to my heart: writing. But one thing I learned from writing the dissertation was to love the process: I embraced writing as a way to learn and not just as a product. Too bad that I’m no longer in the writing classroom because I’d be all about the process and only slightly about the product. (Or maybe it’s a good thing I’m not in the writing classroom.)

Now that I am sans dissertation and that I am off the tenure track, I write and I am not as flustered by deadlines. In a way, once you’ve faced the crippling deadlines of a dissertation that begs to be finished by the semester’s end (and that may or may not result in an anxiety attack post-semester), everything else fits. I must admit though that part of my relief comes from being an alternative academic.

I feel a sense of relief when I write. I also feel a sense of excitement when I sit down to jot down an idea that just came to me. The act of writing is cathartic but it is also stimulating. I feel present when I write.

And so I’ve been doing a whole lot of writing lately, some of it academic, some of it not, and some of it in a hazy, in-between place that I call personal because it belongs to me, not because it is overtly intimate. I write because I want to share ideas with people. In that sense, writing is a selfish endeavor–I write because I enjoy writing, and for some reason I feel others are interested in what I have to say.

One day I want to publish a book. There, I said it. Maybe a revised version of my dissertation or something more in the realm of creative non-fiction–I feel drawn to that genre in terms of my writing. I’m putting it down on my list of goals. I don’t know the first thing about writing a book, but I know that the first step to writing is to just start.

Why write a book? The book market is saturated enough as it is. Well, again, it’s a selfish endeavor: I enjoy writing and I want to push myself beyond what I have already done. And like I said, I’m under the impression that there is someone out there–someone!–who would want to read what I have to say. But, to be honest, part of me wants to fulfill that childhood dream of writing a book and putting it out there for all to see. Although my dissertation would qualify as a rough draft of a book manuscript, lately I’ve been facing a wall in the “Academic Writing” department. (Fodder for A Future Blog Post: who coaches the writing coach?)

What would I write about? I don’t know, although my first inclination is to write something about home, about New York City, about migrating, about city life, about what it means to love another home. Maybe this will be my book for New York. Maybe I’ll interview people. Despite having written a whole dissertation on the subject, I haven’t yet fully established in my research what a home is, and maybe that’s the beauty of home: we don’t need to have all a common denomination of home. No matter how much I explain it, it will always be different for others.

In the meantime, I’ll be taking Anne Trubek’s course on Op-Eds and Essays, to start honing my craft. Sometimes the writing coach needs writing support and encouragement too.

Aural Memories (Or, My Husband’s Play-by-Play Voice)

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"Radio" by Flickr user S. Diddy under Creative Commons 2.0 License

I met my husband in New York. He was a play-by-play broadcaster for a minor league baseball team. I was a graduate student whose only connection to the sports world was through her father, a big baseball fan. I learned about the minutiae of baseball through my husband, not just through conversations with him but also through listening to him call games.

My husband’s voice is also the soundtrack of my academic work. It has kept me company through every major assignment of my PhD. Even when we broke up when he first moved to Kansas City, I still listened to his post-game show as I burned the midnight oil researching for my dissertation. I can still see myself in the corner of the dining room, with the paper lamp hanging over my head and over my iMac, the rest of the apartment blanketed in darkness, and his warm voice filling the corners. I would listen to his co-host and him online, this unfamiliar voice interrupting the soothing sound of my now-husband, then-ex’s voice. Even through the break-up, I found the sound of his voice comforting.

Listening to my husband back then was not about nostalgia or longing–ok, maybe a little, but not all of it. I started listening to him as a way to support his career; being a play-by-play broadcaster is his calling, and he has been after a job in Major League Baseball his whole adult life. When we first met, the regular minor league baseball season was over, and his team was nowhere near the playoffs in their division. That meant he and I spent a lot of time together…until college basketball season started a month into our relationship. I would listen to his broadcasts, and found it hard to follow along–basketball is so much quicker than baseball–but I tuned in anyway. Soon, I knew who he was talking about and what he was talking about, and I could tune in while doing other things.

When we started dating, the fall semester was halfway over, so when basketball season started I was nearing the time of the semester when I had to write papers for class. His schedule and my routine clicked. He traveled occasionally, and worked mostly evenings. That gave me time to research, read, write, and prep for class; and when he was at work I could stay in touch with him by listening to his broadcasts. Soon, I was so used to writing and listening to his voice, that it acted like a Pavlovian bell of sorts: I would plan my writing/research schedule around the start of the game because I knew I’d have a few hours where I could zone out and zone in. Hearing his voice on the radio wasn’t white noise, but instead kept me company while I wrote semester in and semester out.

Years later (after we got back together, after I gave birth to our daughter, after I packed up all of our belongings and moved to Kansas City), I found myself trying to get back into the writing and research groove. Tuning in to his post-game broadcast long after my daughter was asleep helped me get back on track. Once she fell into a solid sleep routine, as small babies sometimes do, I could plan my evening writing and research routine: I would listen to the baseball game and then his post-game broadcast, or I would listen to him call a basketball game from two or three states over. For some reason, listening to him soothes me and helps me focus. It might be his tone, it might be his delivery, it might be the familiarity of his voice…or it might be all three. When I was nearing the end of my dissertation, I remember remarking on Twitter that my husband’s voice has been the soundtrack to my work from Day One. I’m only mildly exaggerating.

Kauffman Stadium. Picture by author.

Today, February 23rd, 2013, was my husband’s first broadcast as a major league play-by-play broadcaster. I eagerly purchased my subscription to MLB’s At Bat for my iPhone just in time for the first pitch. I was working an event today, but when things calmed down and my students were hard at work, I put in one ear bud, tapped the headphones icon in the app, and waited for his voice to wash over me. The sound of his voice filled me with pride, with joy, and with relief. It had been years since I last heard him call pitches, catches, outs, swings, and misses. Hearing him today felt like putting on my comfiest sweater.

Like others before, many baseball fans will now associate my husband’s voice with summer, with afternoons at the ballpark, with the joy of a home run, with the bitterness of a tough loss on the road. He will become the soundtrack of their memories of baseball. But for me, listening to his broadcasts will always mean more than just baseball. It means he is here with our daughter and with me, even when he is away, through the sound of his voice.