First Person

Have Baby, Will Travel

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By Ann Harpold

Before my husband left for work this morning, he turned off the fan by our bedside. In place of the white noise it had been providing all night, I heard the steady hum of the freeways, although they are at least 5 miles away; I heard at least two helicopters overhead for traffic reports and police surveillance. Through our open window I could smell jasmine from the garden, but also the scent of tar from the refineries in the port.

I rolled over to look at my infant son sleeping beside me and promised him, "We're moving." Then I got up to check the online job postings in my field in the social sciences.

It might be useful to understand how I got to this moment -- on the job market though I am nearly five years into a good job, nearly certain to get tenure, with colleagues whom I like and respect -- but the story isn't really about academics. It begins with meeting my husband 10 years ago, in New York City, in the year off I took between college and graduate school.

I was a bartender and waitress, he was a waiter and an actor, and we fell in love. Our marriage thrived even though we had to spend a lot of time apart, him in regional theater, me doing fieldwork for my dissertation. We decided that we didn't want a commuter marriage. So, as my husband's career took off, I made the commitment to him to narrow my job search to within 300 miles of New York and Los Angeles, and to a few select cities with good regional theaters.

As proof that miracles do happen, even in academe, I received two job offers -- one in New York, and one in Los Angeles. Given my intellectual and social fit with the department in the Los Angeles area, we decided to move to the West coast.

I spent the next eight months working feverishly, aided by a year-long fellowship, to finish my dissertation and develop new courses before starting as an assistant professor.

The last four years have been overwhelmingly positive. I teach three classes a semester, primarily first-generation college students, as I was myself. While a majority of my students simply want to know the right answer, get a passing grade, and move on in life, I have encountered quite a number who are extremely interested in the subject matter, enjoy the process of learning, and may even go on for graduate study. My colleagues have been ideal -- friendly, accomplished, and relatively free from neuroses. Some have become true friends and mentors.

Another great thing about the job is that I feel very little scholarly pressure; my chair has already told me to "relax" and "take a break." As a result, I feel free to do creative work, and to work outside the bounds of my disciplinary home.

My scholarship has thrived. My dissertation won a national award; I revised it in my second year and successfully negotiated a contract with my first choice publisher. I have an article due out this fall, and another under review after a request to revise and resubmit. Both of the articles go significantly beyond the theoretical framework of the manuscript, and incorporate two completely new bodies of work. Two years ago, I received a fellowship for summer study at a private collection, and I've made significant headway on a second project, with an eye already to a third and a fourth.

And my husband? He's not an actor anymore. Within six months of moving he realized his heart wasn't in it, and that it wasn't a healthy or sustainable way of life for him. He enrolled in community college to study a long-time love: gardening, and has worked for the past three years on the grounds crew of a local college. He has had internships and done volunteer work on local farms and botanic gardens, and wants to explore organic farming as a possible livelihood.

So, why leave?

Rereading the last four paragraphs, even I begin to question my sanity at being back on the market. But the truth is, there are just some things missing, and they are things that only a move will change.

On the personal front, both my husband and I would like to be closer to our families. He is from the middle South; I am from the Midwest. Our little boy changes every day, and keeping our families posted with e-mails and pictures isn't the same as being able to take a long weekend to visit them.

We also desperately miss what we call "weather" -- raging thunderstorms, white-out blizzards, tender spring rains on still icy lakes -- and things like crickets chirping, and the ability to take long bike rides without hitting a freeway.

Oh, yes, the freeways. We don't want to raise our child thinking the freeway is a normal or desirable way of life, or thinking that urban sprawl, Southern-California style, is actually a wise use of land.

And, although we're both employed, there is absolutely no way we will ever be able to afford to own a home here; we're even priced out of the condominium market. We have dreams of moving to the Midwest and buying 10 acres for less money than an apartment would cost on the block where we currently live.

Now that we've committed to moving, I also realize that there are things missing on the professional front, as well. For my undergraduate degree, I went to an extremely small liberal-arts college. It was an intellectually invigorating, rigorous, and challenging environment. By the time I was a senior, my largest class comprised nine people, and most of my time was spent in even smaller seminars and tutorials. I think the largest class I took in college had 25 students. I believe, without a doubt, that that is the best learning environment for the subjects I wish to teach.

At my current university, it is nearly impossible to have class enrollments below 45 students. And, though I do it, taking on independent studies and theses advising is a bit taxing when I'm already teaching a heavy load of highly enrolled courses.

Then there's the fact that my university is a strictly commuter campus. Students routinely schedule their classes on particular days to avoid coming in more than twice a week. It is literally impossible to require them to attend an on-campus event that takes place outside of class time. When we have outstanding speakers at the university, I have to offer extra credit to get students to attend, and then only a handful of students out of perhaps 150 will make the event. That means the events are under-attended, and we have no shared community of learning outside of the classroom to draw on in our discussions.

Reflecting on my own college experiences, I have realized that I desperately want to teach and live in a community where I run into my students on the way to class, where I occasionally sit with them in a coffee shop and talk about the art exhibit down the hall, where I can corral an entire class to see a guest speaker and most of them will stay after to discuss what we heard.

And so it is (with nods to Damien Rice), that I am back on the job market. It is an exhilarating and terrifying prospect.

Not too long ago, I wrote a paragraph describing exactly what I hoped to find this year: "My dream job would be teaching two or three small classes (5 to 25 students) a semester, focusing on upper-division courses in my subfield, as well as the ability to teach within a freshman studies or first-year program. I want to live in a college town either in the Midwest or on one of the coasts -- somewhere where we can live in a place with under 100,000 people, or buy land out in the country. Somewhere where my son can ride his bike along a river, and go to a Quaker or a Montessori school. Somewhere that my husband can either farm or have a job at a botanic garden or farm, or be a stay-at-home dad. I'd like to have colleagues who do interesting work, perhaps even in my subfield, and who are interested in interdisciplinary collaboration. And, we have to be able to go to yoga and find vegetarian restaurants."

Then I listed 15 colleges that I knew fit that description. Immediately after that, I discovered that one of the colleges on my list is hiring in my subfield. It is what I would consider the perfect job for me.

The only catch? It's a visiting position.