Fingers Crossed

Definitely over thinking was not required.

I am not going to make predictions, but I have been killing time waiting for my flight by looking at real estate ads.

Anything could happen. They invited 3 people for campus visits and any one of us could get hired or they wouldn't have spent the money to get us out here. But if I don't get it it won't be because I screwed up. It was a long day. 12 hours of being "on". I think I had about 5 minutes of time to myself the whole day. And that's kind of exhausting, always trying to remember people's names and all. Always being on my best behavior, though that wasn't really hard, I was just being myself. And to be honest, I kind of had fun yesterday.

It started out with a lesson about sound design in an actual class of students who needed that topic covered. We listened to things and we talked about things. They were engaged. And they liked the fact that I was making my points by using things they've seen before but never thought about in that way. We watched a bit of James Bond, we watched a bit of Sherlock, we watched a bit of a local news fluff piece from their own local news. They recognized the host. Of course now everyone thinks I'm a sound guy, which isn't quite accurate. I do like thinking about sound, but it's not really my speciality, in spite of the fact that my 5 minute lesson for the first interview and my 30 minute lesson for the second interview were both on sound topics.

I met a lot of people - don't ask me to name them. People who, if I get the job, will be my colleagues. So they were interviewing me, but also I was trying to get a feel for them. If I end up spending the next 3, 6, 10, 20 years with them will I be able to find friends? Will there be people I have something in common with? Will a single woman in my 40s with no interest in having a family be a freak or be accepted? Do they seem like they get along with each other? Are they faking it or do they feel comfortable with each other? I can't say who among them would become my friends ultimately, but I did feel like I'd at least find people to have lunch with.

Everyone here is like, "And you'll get to be in Southern California." and I keep thinking, "You have to stop saying that, it's the thing I like least about this job." But apart from the location it seems like a really good job. A place I could have an impact, not just on the students, but on the department as well. It is probably not unique to this position, but since this is my first campus visit it's the first time I'm feeling it, I'm really enjoying being treated like a colleague again. One of the blogs I've been reading is frequently giving people advice on how to stop acting like a grad student and start acting like a colleague. That was never my problem. When I was at BU there had to be a separation. I wasn't a colleague and it would have been inappropriate for them to treat me as one. On the other hand, I wish they had done a better job overall of treating me like a grown-up. It's nice to be away from that and to be around people who assume I know what I'm talking about. I probably know more about some topics than they do and less about other topics and that's ok, we can learn from each other. At BU I frequently felt like they were dismissing me just to make sure they were proving that they were the experts. I had gone in assuming they were experts, assuming I had things to learn from them. Otherwise I would have chosen a different school. They didn't need to try to hard to prove it to me, and they didn't need to dismiss my experience to make it true.

So I'll be disappointed if I don't get an offer from this because I could really see myself here, but it won't be the end of the world if that happens. And in the meantime I can entertain myself with looking at houses in the mountains.