Action...

Things are coming to a head at work - focusing, in a sense. It is becoming increasingly clear that the department that I am in is a sinking ship, and that the time to move is fast approaching. My goal is to find another job before I would have to re-sign my contract next April/May.

Thus, I have started to take some proactive steps to make that happen. At the recent conference in Worst Conference City in the World, I spent quite a bit of time discussing my professional career with my former advisor. We were talking about the department that I graduated from at Huge Research University, and how they have basically doubled the undergraduate enrollment in the last 5 years, and are desperately strapped for people to teach classes. Add to this that their undergraduate education coordinator, a wonderful man who really cared about undergraduate education (a rarity at HRU), recently passed away. My advisor actively encouraged me to talk to the department head at HRU and see if I could come back to HRU full time as the new undergraduate education coordinator. While this wouldn't be tenure-track, I would get to do two of the things that I like most about my current job - teaching undergraduates and academic policy and administration. Plus, I would be back at HRU, which was one of the most stimulating academic environments I have ever been in. So, definitely something to consider, and I intend to contact the department head no later than this week.

My advisor (who really has been an incredible mentor) also passed along an email from a colleague at Giant Semiconductor Company, and they are looking to hire someone with experience pretty much in what I did my thesis work on, so I have a lot of the requisite skills. I sent them my CV, and got a response today, saying they would pass it on to the right people. So we'll see about that. (Though taking that job would require moving out of New England).

Lastly, I made an appointment with a Career Counselor. I figure that I need some help figuring out what I really want to do, professionally. I don't want to just jump out of one job and into another that I also end up not liking. This may end up being a complete waste of time and money, but if it has any benefits at all, I will consider it money well spent. I guess my problem is that I was so focused on being a college professor since about mid-college that I never really considered any other career options. I went right from undergrad to grad school to professor-hood. I haven't been off a college campus in 11 years, and I have no idea how to go about doing a real job search for someone with my background.

So, we'll see what happens. I just hope that I don't take all of these tests and they come back and tell me "You are ideally suited for a career in higher education or academia". That would be funny, in a very cruel sort of way...