Fifteen years ago exactly, I was in the last semester of my MA program and writhing with anxiety about what came next. I had felt called into this field. After discerning the best I could I packed up my belongings and moved away from the big city to get a master's degree.
It seemed like a rubber-hits-the-road moment. Surely if God had called me to pursue this degree, it wasn't so I could be unemployed. My husband was in the middle of a PhD program in the cornfields, which limited my options. I interviewed for a job in a rural facility for people with developmental disabilities. Oooohhhh, I didn't want that job. I interviewed for a job in a dreadful nursing home even farther away. I really, really didn't want that job. I interviewed for a job in a local hospital but I knew I had done badly in the interview and it seemed like kind of a grim job anyway.
What was I going to do with my shiny new degree?
In the end it worked out beautifully. I graduated in January. I filled in for a bit at the hospital where I had done one of my placements, while someone was out on maternity leave. It was an hour away and I knew it was a temporary job, but it was a confidence-building way to start out: I liked them and I knew they liked me too. In February I interviewed for a job that sounded to good to be true, at the clinic less than three miles from my house. All of that practice interviewing for jobs I didn't want had paid off; the interview went really well. I almost didn't get the job because they offered it to a woman from a different department within the hospital who had three years' experience on me. At the last minute she decided she wanted to keep her old job after all. So it was mine.
If I had been designing a job for myself, I couldn't have come up with a better one. I started in early March of 1995. I wish I could tell the me of October 1994 that she didn't need to be so anxious.
I am thinking a lot about next year. Remember the faculty position I've been thinking about? It turns out that the teaching load in that college is higher than I thought: 3 classes each semester instead of 2. I will probably apply for it anyway, but more for the interview practice than because I really want the job.
Returning to grad school was a long-term strategy for me. I don't want to be sitting in the floor doing therapy when I'm 50 years old, but I could work clinically again.
The department where I'd like to work is looking for a chair, and I have a secret plan. There's an associate professor here in town who was my first clinical supervisor in my MA program. She teaches most of the classes that are a natural fit for me right now. My secret plan is for her to apply for the chair position, and then I can apply for her job. Wouldn't that be awesome? I already know what she's like as a supervisor (doesn't miss a beat, very fair).
My secret plan isn't very likely to work out, but I think I'm going to send her an email and ask if she can meet for coffee. There might be a way to work out a visiting faculty gig, or something like that. She would know more about the inside scoop than I can begin to guess.
One more thing, one slightly superstitious-sounding thing: last week I had coffee with a new assistant professor in the department that's actually searching for faculty. I didn't want to be late, but it was raining and our town was as trafficky as it ever gets. I was looking for parking, and still looking for parking, and finally I took a spot that meant I had to sprint through the rain for a couple of blocks. When I got to the coffee shop there was an open spot right in front of the door. It felt a bit like a message: Be patient. The spot you're waiting for will open up at just the right time.
Oh, I LOVE that last detail about patience and the parking spot.
I'm a few years younger than you and kind of sad that I never really had a job. I taught English in Brazil, during college and one year after, then we came here for grad school. 13 years later, husband in his second post doc (after the failed big pharma job) and in the job market. I don't have any professional ambitions right now, even having finished the PhD last year... But I know that the Lord has a plan for our lives, the hard thing is to have the patience to wait for it to unveil, step by step.
If you remember, please keep K's faculty search in your prayers...
Posted by: Lilian | October 15, 2009 at 12:32 PM