Big Hoity Toity U

I met this woman at Will’s new preschool classroom orientation the other night who teaches economics with her husband at The Big Hoity Toity Liberal Arts University here in town. Although I live in the same city as BHTU, and my own campus is less than 30 miles from here, my beloved home town doesn’t really know My Teeny University exists, and we only see MTU in the local newspaper when our former student famous country music chick comes to concert at MTU. So she asks me where I teach and commences to rave about how good I must be since it’s so hard to get jobs at those “community colleges.” Now MTU is a small school, and we grant a only a few bachelor’s degrees every year and mostly give people their first two years of their coursework before they transfer to Our Bigger and Hoity Toitier U’s main campus. But we are most definitely not a community college. And I have been trained to shudder at the very words (although of course there’s absolutely nothing wrong with community colleges—it’s just MTU’s little bugaboo).

So I’m standing there in the Caterpillar Room at the Child Development Center trying to figure out if I’m being obscurely insulted purposely, or if it’s just the usual unintended insult, and can I possibly work up a book manuscript in two years and get a real job? This comes after I talked to one of my friends about whether I should apply to this journal that’s looking for editorial board members—I have some small expertise in the journal’s field (and yes, it’s fairly small) but I also know the editor. Worst case I was thinking maybe I could review some manuscripts. Good for the promotion file, you know? So my friend who also knows this editor says, well, without a book, you probably don’t have a chance. This rather floored me, seeing as I was thinking more along the lines of “is this a crazy time commitment” and surely I could at least review manuscripts. So I am feeling all fourth- or fifth-tier professionally, and I’m sure that’s probably not low enough. Good grief.

I actually have been working on this book idea (well before the BHTU I-have-a-year-long-appointment-but-my-husband’s-in-the-
tenure-track-and-I-am-an-insecure-mother-so-I-need-to-ask-
obnoxious-questions-during-orientation-about-the-classroom’s-
fostering-of-child-development-and-also-one-up-this-other-
mom-who-teaches-at-a-crappy-school-and-picks-her-kid-up-late-
so-I can-pretend-I’m-better-than-somebody woman). I am having some problems with the one of the basic premises of the manuscript right now, but I wrote a very brief chapter-by-chapter summary the other day and got really excited. I might actually be able to do this, if I quit giving conference papers and don’t do anything else for senate, and maybe drop every committee I’m on—and get a sabbatical in 2007. Whew.

So far this morning I’ve paid bills and figured out how much Laura’s tuition for her after-school program will be every month next school year (how much per week? and how many teacher workdays?) and balanced our checking account, and I think I need to eat some breakfast before it’s time to wake Will up and get him ready to go to the dentist. Probably I’ll just write the first chapter after breakfast while I’m at it.

What, me, insecure? Nah.