Work Woes

While I've been doing my best to move on with my life after not getting the Loft directorship, I'll admit that I've been pretty down in the dumps so far this fall. It's seemed that everyone on the hiring committee is doing their best not to cross my path, and I've been trying to walk lightly so as to not upset anyone. Those committee members who I've seen have been cordial, but I've still been feeling sort of invisible. Until today, no one even acknowledged the awkwardness of the situation (not hiring someone with whom they'd been working for two years, then having to continue to work with that person). I had considered not going back to the Loft at all this fall considering the discomfort it would cause a lot of people, but in the end my concern for my students won out, and I decided to swallow some pride and return to the Loft. I don't regret that decision, because I think I'm still helping people by staying. However, my confidence has been severely shaken by the experience, however, and I've been trying to think of some way to ask some of the committee members exactly what went wrong. Am I simply not cut out for education? Am I a horrible teacher? Am I giving students bad advice when they come to me for help? Have I chosen the wrong career? Or was the person they hired simply superior? What went wrong? I've been plagued with doubts and uncertainties for the past couple of months, and over the past couple week or so, the spiral of self-doubt has been leading steadily downward as everyone continued to refuse to acknowledge the situation. I don't know how to approach the people who rejected me and ask them why--but it's driving me nuts not to know.

This afternoon, much to my initial relief, one of my Loft colleagues who was on the committee finally approached me and said, "Let's acknowledge the elephant in the room, shall we?" I can't tell you how good it felt to hear someone on the committee admit that it's been weird this fall. Unfortunately, her explanation for why I wasn't chosen fell a bit flat: they didn't like the font my CV is in because it's hard to read. THAT'S a reason to not hire someone? She couldn't remember any of the other things they'd said about me. But at least someone is admitting that everything isn't peachy, and I really appreciate her willingness to initiate a conversation that I know was difficult for her to have with me. However, her explanation shakes my confidence a lot more: the font of my CV was so bad that it overshadowed my qualifications? How bad of a font is it?! There MUST be a deeper reason than that. I suppose I'm going to have to go searching for someone who will be willing to share a bit more. I'm not sure who to go to though, since everyone else is still pretending I never applied for the job.

I feel completely stuck, as if my career has stalled and I can't get it started again. I've hit a brick wall at North, and I'm not sure how to find a door through to any sort of advancement. Even if I stay at Career Link for this school year, where will I be at the end of the year? Exactly where I was three years ago! Looking for a teaching job at a Seattle-area community college that pays me enough to pay my bills every month. After seven years of teaching, I'll still be working from quarter to quarter (if I'm lucky) without knowing if I'll have a job the following quarter. I'll have absolutely no job security, no guarantee that I'll be working three months after the quarter starts. Is this really how I want to live my life? Did I work so hard to earn an advanced degree that is essentially useless in the real world? What the hell else am I going to do with an M.A. in American literature? I still love teaching, but maybe I suck at it, and this is North's not-so-subtle way of letting me know. Anyone know how to grow back one's self confidence once it's been trampled?