Chapter Twenty-Six
I don’t get the grant-writing gig, but in the first week of February, I pick up ten hours a week doing digital archival work for a museum in Boston.
It’s a temporary hire for not a lot of money, but it’s enough to get my budget on track, and it’s really interesting work, tracing Boston family histories through old photos and documents, finding links and patterns that help illustrate what life was like in bygone eras.
It’s the kind of history I love best, small scale and personal, and it’s eye-opening to get paid by the hour rather than working a job that never stops expanding.
In the second week of February, Dylan and I write our steamiest sex scene yet.
I still get the giggles when we debate the best way to refer to a nipple or a penis, and Dylan still blushes as though we haven’t spent the last month and a half ravaging each other, but somehow, we get the words on the page, and the story continues to take shape in ways I think Grams would enjoy.
In the third week of February, I fly to Wichita for my two-day campus interview.
And I completely blow it.
They throw me into the classroom first thing Monday morning for my teaching demonstration, for which I’ve carefully prepared a lecture, slides, and discussion about textile production in the colonial US, the topic I was told to teach as per the syllabus of the course I’m stepping into.
The students are highly engaged and demonstrate strong critical thinking during my guided discussion, so I think I’ve done well, but right after the class, two members of the search committee pull me aside and ask why I didn’t teach about my primary area of expertise.
I explain that I was given specific instructions about teaching within their syllabus.
They tell me I should’ve disregarded the instructions since this was my chance to demonstrate who I am as a scholar, and any candidate would be expected to show off their strengths.
The conversation gives me major flashbacks to my last job and how often I took the blame for anything that went wrong, even when I was following Carl’s explicit directions.
I’m left reeling as seven years of terrible memories surface, throwing me off my game for the rest of the interview process.
I blunder my way through my research presentation, which only three people show up for, even though it’s scheduled in a lecture hall that seats five hundred.
I muster polite enthusiasm no one else even attempts to mirror during an agonizing formal interview with all five members of the search committee, one of whom doodles what appears to be some sort of cat/vampire bat hybrid for the entire hour while another never looks up from his phone.
I chat with the only two students who show up for a “meet the candidate” session, who also head out after about ten minutes, leaving me alone in a sparsely furnished break room that has a sink full of dirty dishes and a blurred sign on the fridge that says Anything without a name on it will be discarded immediately.
A quick peek inside the fridge suggests this policy is not being upheld.
Philippa: You ever hear anything back about UKW?
Amelia: Sorry!! Thought I replied about that ages ago. Hang on. Incoming . . .
A minute later, I get a link to an article about a student walk-out when six consecutive sexual harassment cases were disregarded without an investigation or any follow-up from the university.
I’m reading paragraph two when a second link comes through, about a professor who posted on social media about the dean’s anti-LGBTQ comments and was then summarily fired for defamation, even though the fired professor had only shared word-for-word quotes that were backed up by several witnesses.
Predictably, no one took action against the dean.
A third article comes through just as fast. A Black female ex-faculty member’s op-ed about her denied tenure file compared line for line with those of her white male colleagues, all of whom sailed through the tenure process despite having a fraction of her professional credentials, publications, and positive teaching reviews.
Her byline says she’s now teaching at Harvard.
Philippa: Wow. Thanks. Guess I shouldn’t feel so bad about blowing this one
Amelia: Are you there right now?
Philippa: Yeah. I’m alone in a shitty break room. It’s the highlight so far
Amelia: I can imagine. Does this mean you’re moving to Idaho?
Philippa: It means I’m not moving to Kansas. I haven’t heard anything from Idaho
Amelia: They’re probably stalled on a Doodle poll trying to schedule a meeting
Philippa: If I never see another Doodle poll . . .
Amelia: Have I mentioned you should seriously rethink returning to academia?
Philippa: About 3567889792 times. But it never hurts to say it again
Amelia: You should seriously rethink returning to academia
I laugh under my breath, looking around the bland room with its bland furniture, every piece of which probably required a twelve-page equipment request with a full budget breakdown and rationale for the expense. I’d be happy to never write another one of those.
Though I did make that promise to my mother.
And two years isn’t that long.
Or so I keep telling myself.