Monday Musings

I’m back at home, finally, and recuperating from what I am now calling the 2012 Summer of Travel. In eight weeks, I have visited four Canadian provinces, flown on four different airlines, and somehow only contracted one cold. And, just like that, summer is almost over.

Consequently, I was true to myself and who I am as an academic during the interview, so no matter the outcome, I have no regrets. I won’t know anything until at least August 14th (my birthday!) and as soon as I know anything, I’ll be tweeting it, and letting you all know, too.

Some comments on the comments left on the posts that went up while I was away. First of all, they were all written before I left, so more than three weeks ago, save for the one where I announced that I had a job interview. And that includes the one posted on Thursday. So, to the comment that asks what this had to do with my job interview? Nothing. I didn’t have a job interview when I wrote it.

But I do want to address the comments on that particular post (and other posts) that chide me for being naïve about “life”; I am well aware that life does not go as planned. If life went as planned, I would have two or three Olympic medals from swimming. But, physically, I was never built to be an Olympic swimmer, so I got over it, embraced the sport as something that I still loved and an important part of my life, Olympics or not.

Professionally, however, things are different. Part of the point of many of my posts is that there are systematic problems that cause people like me (smart, ambitious, talented, educated) to flounder in positions that do not adequately reward or utilize our talents. To say, simple, “that’s life, and you’d better just accept it” is to ignore and excuse the problems of our higher education system, one that needs to be reformed. I can’t control my genetics so that I can be a Olympic swimmer, but I can work to bring change to a system that marginalizes and exploits too many of us.

I know very well that life isn’t fair. Where I can, I want to change it.

I would like to thank everyone who wished me luck on my job interview. Your support means a lot to me. It also solidifies my ambition, ambition that in the next post people seemed to want to temper. I am grateful for everything that I have in my life, but I am acutely aware of how tenuous it all is. If something were to happen to my husband, I would be in big (financial) trouble. I could never hope to keep financially afloat on my current salary. The roof over my head would likely disappear, and I would find myself like millions of people right now struggling to make ends meet. If I am frustrated and angry, not to mention ambitious, it is partially because I realize how lucky I am, and how easily it could all be lost.