Two Bottles of Wine

It has been over a month since I last updated, and I have a couple of different excuses for this. The first is that I started this blog to wean myself off of my other blog, and unfortunately, I still have plenty of material for that blog, which I had not anticipated.

The other reason is that when I decided to start this blog, I really thought that it might help me sort out my feelings with respect to my job, and help me decide on a path for my future. As I once wrote in a research paper, my analyses would either "make the obvious obvious," "make the obvious dubious," or "make the hidden obvious" (Source: Michael Patton, Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods, 1990). I am not exactly sure which of these occurred while writing the few entries that I've written here, but whatever the case may be, I quickly came to a decision, and that decision is that I am not going to continue this job for much longer, which makes blogging sort of, I don't know, anti-climactic? Not that any of you were dying in suspense, lol, but still. So now it's not really a question of if I am going to leave this job; it is a question of when and how. And... what I will do with myself afterward.

I occasionally get cold feet about this decision, but I know it's the right one. In a way, I feel like it has been obvious for so long that there is no way I can do this job for the rest of my working life. On the other hand, I fear change, and as I've noted before, there are many positive aspects to my job that make it hard to leave. If I got just a little more (okay, a lot more) respect within my department and I made just a little more money (or knew there was at least a chance of me ever making more money without resorting to scamming), I could see myself languishing here forever, just because change is too difficult for me.

So I am now in the process of making some big decisions as to what the landscape of my Post University Life will look like, while at the same time trying to stay motivated enough to continue to do my job well. Admittedly, knowing that I'll likely be leaving within the next few years takes some pressure off me, but I know I owe it to my students to do a good job, and I also have a reasonable amount of personal pride. It is a challenge to try to find a balance between not spending ten zillion hours on a course I might never teach again, but spending enough time on it to make it worth the $1,000+ it costs to take it.

As for the title of this entry, the university sent us a message two days ago telling us that we should log on to the portal and review our pay advice, as it was the first payroll for the Academic Year 2014/15. I knew I had actually gotten one of the highest raises possible - around 3%. (Meanwhile the cost of a parking permit went up over 3%.) It turns out that this 3% raise translated into a $26/month increase in my take home pay. Awesome! But, as one of my colleagues told me, "Hey, that's two bottles of wine!" So as I sit in my office trying to work, I find myself humming, Two bottles of wine on the wall, two bottles of wine! Take one down and pass it around, one bottle of wine on the wall... Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself.