FIRST PERSON

Back in the Saddle

His tenure-track job is in the middle of nowhere, but he loves it anyway. So why is he going back on the market?

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By MARK SAWYER

I am not a cowboy, will never be a cowboy — not even a singing cowboy — but I live on the range (more or less), and some of my students wear spurs. I grew up where East meets Midwest meets South, so I can drop the g's from my gerunds when I need to get my car fixed and I can discuss the finer points of the music of Hank Williams.

But I miss things like being able to go out for good Italian food on a whim, having my choice of artistic events on a Friday night, having access to a good public library, and trees. My wife is freaked out by the rattlesnakes, but they don't bother me much. Friends tell me to think of the constant smell of animal waste from the meat-processing plant as "the smell of money."

Fifteen months ago, I was a newly minted doctor of musical arts who had been turned down for teaching positions at colleges great and small in 34 states and four Canadian provinces. I had gone to graduate school after spending a few years teaching in the public schools, and I was beginning to wonder if I had made a mistake.

I had started to apply to public-school jobs again, using my still-valid teaching credential, but was making no headway. Why pay a teacher with a doctorate when you can have one with a bachelor's degree and no experience for half the price?

Then, when I returned home from a particularly depressing interview as a part-time music director for a children's chorus, there it was — a message from a well-spoken dean of liberal arts at a state university in the West asking whether I would be interested in an interview. It was only the second call I had received from anywhere, and the first offer of an interview.

Two weeks later, my wife and I had quit our jobs, packed up our apartment, and moved 1,200 miles away from home — truly, because my graduate institution happened to have been in the town where my parents live, and my wife's parents live a mere 70 miles up the road. As we drove through some of those big, flat states that many of us would rather just fly over, my wife in her car, and me in mine, the land got flatter and browner and scrubbier, and I watched her taillights through my windshield and prayed that she wouldn't divorce me and drive right back. That would make a great country song.

My current job is in a tiny music department; I handle the instrumental side of things. To say that I am the latest in a string of faces who have come and gone from this position in the last decade is not an understatement. I tell everyone here that I am planning on staying, that this job is not just a steppingstone for me, and I feel a little guilty, because I'm not being completely truthful. In all honesty, I'm not being at all truthful.

On the other hand, how honest are they being with themselves in thinking that a music person could be happy here?

The nearest symphony orchestra is 120 miles away, and the nearest bookstore is 80 miles away. This place is, frankly, in the middle of nowhere — even by Midwestern standards. Napoleon Dynamite would be bored here on a Saturday night. The two favorite sports are rodeo and unplanned pregnancy. Add to that the fact that my wife is working a job that is far below her training and experience, and I've been realizing that my adviser was right — no one will ever wonder why I'm looking for a new job.

So I'm going back on the job market, which I find to be a nightmare, at best, but it is a slightly different nightmare this time. Since graduate school, I've published, and my creative works are cooking along, so I'm hoping that my CV will not only find itself in the top pile of "doctorate with experience," but now land toward the top of the top pile.

There are new questions to answer: Is it worthwhile to spend hour upon hour polishing my new Web site? (I think it is; my wife isn't so sure.) Can I ask my dean for a recommendation without risking my job here? (I think so.) Should I apply for that position at the school where I was a graduate student, knowing in advance that it will be a departmental shooting gallery once I get there? (But it's home!)

And the worst question of all: What if I'm wrong?

Unlike any job I've ever had — my career before graduate school consisted of public-school teaching and retail — this is one I could actually see myself keeping. I look forward to going to work almost every day. My students aren't at the highest academic or artistic level (our only admission criterion is a heartbeat), but they are respectful, enthusiastic, and positive; they make me want to teach. My student evaluations have been strong, as have those from my dean. I've had the opportunity to teach a variety of courses and get involved in running the department.

To cap it all, I feel like I'm needed here. Our university has great difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified faculty members, and if I leave, it will only do further damage to the department.

On the second day of fall classes, I had a flash in the car on the way to work: Staying here would be alright.

I envisioned myself building up a respectable band program, founding and directing a series of chamber-music concerts, developing a summer contemporary-music program, training future music teachers who could get the local public-school music programs back on their feet, making this department tick and hum like a well-oiled musical machine. This is the kind of opportunity that could end with a music building named after you some day ...

But then, reality. Music programs in high schools are being cut, not revitalized, thanks to "No Child Left in Band." I'm spending big money just to get a string quartet to play on the campus, and going begging to get it. If I stay, I would be in a constant search for new faculty members for the department. I could wear my tires bald traveling to local high schools to recruit students, but our university's reputation is still questionable (although gas prices have kept some local high school seniors close to home this year).

I don't want my children to have to attend the public schools here, let alone this university, and deans don't get music buildings named after them these days, donors do.

That's why I'm looking this year, even though I love my job. I just don't know that I would love it once I got tenure, once my kids were teenagers, or once I realized that there isn't going to be any new music building.

I have to do this because it isn't just about the job: It is about life, and living a life that you love and allowing my wife — my wonderful, beautiful, patient, underpaid and underappreciated wife — to love her life as well. In my second year at my first college teaching job, I owe it to us to see what else might be out there, and I can't let my fondness for my students, my little ego and power trips, or my enormous personal inertia get in the way of it.

I'm sick of bouncing around, but maybe one more bounce will get me to a place where I don't have to teach random courses just to get students through, and recruit next year's entire freshman class to boot. Maybe I can find a place where I can focus on my area within music and teach the subject about which I am truly passionate. Maybe I can find a place where my salary is commensurate with my academic and artistic contributions instead of with how many warm bodies the university can round up. Sometimes, though, I'd really be happy with just a nice hot plate of gnocchi.

Mark Sawyer is the pseudonym of an assistant professor of music at a college in the American West. He is chronicling his search for a new tenure-track job.