First Person

A New Job and a Hurricane

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By Cyleste C. Collins

I moved to New Orleans one week before I evacuated the city for the approach of Hurricane Katrina. I had unpacked my last box that Saturday morning. I had no idea then that it would be the first and last Saturday morning I would spend in my new apartment for more than four months.

I went on the academic job market last fall for the first time while I worked on the final stages of my dissertation in social work. I was selective about where I applied because my husband is also an academic, and I wanted to minimize the chance we would end up in one of those commuter relationships.

Neither timing nor opportunity was on our side, however. Within a span of six weeks, we were both offered great jobs at great universities, but my job was in New Orleans, and his was in Ohio.

We tried to focus on the positive: We both had been offered fantastic jobs. We would be working on an academic schedule, so our vacations would mesh. And living apart, we could really concentrate on our new positions, me as a brand-new assistant professor and him as he worked toward tenure.

Although I lived in New Orleans for only a week before Katrina hit, I was familiar with the city because I have family there. My husband and I had visited frequently during the last four years that we had lived in the South, and we knew New Orleans well -- its mild autumns and winters, lovely springtimes, and hot, humid summers.

My husband and I moved most of my stuff into the city on a particularly sweltering day in the first weekend in August. We stayed only a night, and the very next weekend I helped him move to his new home in Ohio. After two weeks, I returned to New Orleans. I had much to be excited about. I would be able to experience New Orleans on my own terms, developing a relationship with the city as a resident. I was excited to have landed a job on my first try, and I was eager to start my career.

During that first week in my new home, I split my days between setting up my apartment and organizing my new office at Tulane. When I arrived on the campus to file my hiring paperwork, I was welcomed so warmly that I felt I had gained a new sort of family, or at least a community.

I met with the dean who, like everyone else, welcomed me with enthusiasm for what the future would hold for Tulane. It was a thrill to see my name on a placard across my office door, with the prefix "Dr." in front of it. It started to sink in that I was no longer a graduate student; this was what all of those years in graduate school had been for.

Living apart from my husband was difficult, but the momentum of the week carried me forward. As I went about getting my ID card, exploring the bookstore, checking out the campus recreation center, I savored the newness of it all, keenly aware that once I was settled, I wouldn't have time for such luxuries.

I looked forward, though, to becoming thoroughly engrossed in my work and being part of my department. I started thinking about my schedule -- when I would work at the office and when I would work at home. I was eager to set up my life to establish a sense of normalcy that had been absent for months as I finished two degrees and prepared to move.

Normalcy, unfortunately, was the last thing that I would get in the coming weeks and months.

The Friday before Katrina hit, I attended an orientation for new faculty members. We heard about various university policies and procedures and support services. We heard about the need for hurricane preparations (although at the time we didn't know a hurricane was headed for us), and were encouraged to enjoy and explore the city. We were warned about balancing our time and becoming aware of the tenure clock, and the importance of both serious research and high quality teaching.

Afterward, I went out for drinks with some of my new colleagues, and when we parted we said we would see each other at the faculty retreat we would all be attending on Monday. It's amazing how we took that for granted at the time.

I evacuated with my local family members very early on Sunday morning and Katrina hit that Monday. When it became clear that we would be unable to return to New Orleans for weeks or maybe months, I looked at the three days' worth of clothing and the small bag of class-prep materials that I had packed and felt foolish.

I learned later that my neighborhood did not flood, and that my apartment had suffered only a couple of broken windows. My neighborhood was lucky -- it had working electricity, gas, and safe water by mid-September and the National Guard was patrolling the streets. I returned to my apartment to pack some more clothes and some important papers, and then joined my husband in Ohio, where his university had given me status as a visiting professor. The title came with an office, a computer, and library privileges so I could continue my work.

Although it was great to have a place to land, I had trouble concentrating. I felt very lucky: My family, my home, my possessions, and I came out of the hurricane virtually unscathed. But I also felt disoriented. I hadn't had time to establish myself at my new job or in my new home before being forced to leave them and adjust to life in a different part of the country.

Friends who are academics have said they're a little jealous that I've been able to start my career with a sabbatical of sorts. Others have said how happy they are that I'm with my husband, "where I belong."

Such comments, intended to make me see the bright side of the situation, instead made me feel angry, indignant, and very much alone. Indeed, on some level, I should feel lucky that I had extra time with my spouse. I should be grateful that I could focus singularly for four months on carving up my dissertation into publications, thinking about where my research is going, investigating grant possibilities, and preparing for the classes I was supposed to teach at Tulane.

That's a lot of "shoulds." But only in recent weeks was I able to pull myself away from reading every article on the disaster, its effect on New Orleans and Tulane, and begin considering how I can move forward in my career.

By the time this appears in print I will be back at Tulane. We've been told to expect a heavier than normal teaching load at a much-restructured university. The president of Tulane last month announced a new round of layoffs that he said were necessary to keep the institution alive.

As a new, untenured faculty member, I felt vulnerable, but my department escaped the faculty cuts, in part because it and its students will play a major role in revitalizing New Orleans. I have been thinking about how I'll incorporate the impact and implications of Katrina into the courses I will teach this semester. It would be impossible not to; the hurricane has punctuated all of our lives.

I look at the last months keenly aware that I have lost only the experience of being a new faculty member in the normal way, and that I am lucky to have lost so little. I recognize that suffering is relative, and my feelings of frustration, guilt, and gratitude are ever-present.

The challenges of returning and contributing to a new New Orleans are daunting, as are the usual challenges of the tenure track. I hope that I will begin to feel less unsettled as I rejoin my new colleagues, my apartment, and my research materials, figuring out where I belong.