Alas, the first-semester freshman comp course I was scheduled to teach at Paradise Valley Community College this fall didn’t make. The other two sections—both second-semester comp courses—will fly, though.
The chair called and offered to substitute a Wednesday evening course. This presented a choice between collecting $2,400 this fall and rejoining the choir, which holds rehearsals on Sunday evenings.
Hmmm…
money – choir
choir – money
Well, I do need the money. We could go so far as to say I need the money a lot. On the other hand, I also need my sanity. Singing contributes mightily to sanity, whereas teaching tends to leach sanity from one’s life. Didn’t take much to come up with an answer for the chair: “no, thanks.”
Really, it’s a bit of a relief. I was starting to worry about how I was going to handle three sections, potentially as many as 90 students in two courses, while holding down a putatively full-time job and writing this blog and pursuing freelance editing work. I can teach two sections of the same course with my eyes closed. So this really will be a better arrangement.
How will I get by, after having diddled away seven grand of my back-up savings on the landscaping project? Remains to be seen, eh?
😉
Truth to tell, there’s plenty stashed in the credit union to serve as a cushion…something over 14 grand. As long as I don’t get sick, I should be OK. Obviously, if I thought I’d starve without that third section, I would have foregone the choir and applied my nose to the proverbial grindstone. But really, I think it will all work out.
Editorial work will not go far to replace this bit of the projected community college income: at the new client’s rate, to make up for this one section I would have to copyedit 480 pages of dense scientific writing between now and December 31. Obviously, that’s not going to happen.
However, we just learned that in January we will pick up a contract with a university press that publishes one of our GDU client journals. This press has a large book list, and it puts out a lot of scholarly periodicals, so I’m hoping we’ll soon be working on more than just the journal that has carried us in like so much flotsam on tide.
In the spring semester, no scheduling issues (except for choir) will prevent me from teaching sections that meet two or three times a week. Between the recession (Arizona’s jobless rate is now well over 9 percent) and GDU’s tuition increases and per-credit-hour surcharges, the community colleges are overrun with students. So there should be no problem filling the teaching dance card come next January.
i just ran into an acquaintance who teaches at a jr college. He was hired back 3 days before the semester started. So you never know; things may still change.
Things actually are looking up. The English chair at Phoenix College called to say the journalism class is one of the late-start sections, and it now looks like it probably will make. I could do without having to write a syllabus at the last minute, but what the heck!