The Usual Angst

[dr_phil_physics]

Slow Time

I am in the middle of giving two Final Exams back-to-back... after a frenzy of activity as one class finished and the other one started, nothing is going on except the quiet desperation of first semester Physics students...

Whither Dr. Phil?

Naturally, even as I finish up this semester, grade everything, find all the loose papers and turn in the grades by Monday at noon, and then start a richly deserved down time for the second summer session -- I find myself in the usual arrangement of still not knowing if I have a job in the Fall. See, I'm part-time, my hiring is at the whim of the departmental need, plus the budget and enrollment numbers. Two of those are good indicators. The university's budget, however... I guess we don't start the new fiscal year until July, so my chair doesn't have the power to offer a contract letter or not.

Theoretically, if I don't get a contract for the Fall, then we're much better off than when I've been "underemployed" in previous years. And while I relish the thought of having "lots o' time" for writing, it really would be annoying to not be working in the Fall.

And lord knows I do NOT want to have to spend my summer off dismantling my overstuffed office and trying to shoehorn a ton o' boxes and extra computers into our house...

I hate the uncertainty of a fragile Michigan economy.

Dr. Phil

Comments

[burnt-njal.livejournal.com]

Good luck Phil. If you need me to put a word in, I'd be happy to tell them that you're the best physics professor I ever went a writing workshop with.

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Thanks. But they don't even understand this SF writing thing.

Nor do they know that my next published story, coming out any time now, is "Boxes" -- a story about what happens when a part-time physics professor loses his job and is forced to take all his boxes home and accidentally they collapse into a tiny black hole or wormhole or worse... and we're all gonna die! (whew)

Dr. Phil

Be scared...be very scared...

[wendyb-09.livejournal.com]

You know I've always worried about you and your packrat tendencies...

Guess that's what happens when you get the packratitious gene!

Yer Sis

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Wandered in via meritahut's journal and wanted to express good wishes. I did the adjunct thing for many years and the uncertainty is one of the stressfullest things about it. Hope things work out!