Spring = Waiting

It's been more than a month since I updated. I can tell you that at first that was because I was crazy busy - March was nuts - and then because I keep thinking I'll have News any minute now. I do not have news. At this point I don't know when I'll have news. I thought I'd recap the job hunt a bit. See if I can figure out any lessons learned in case I have to do it again or so I can give others advice.

I also have some photos at the end because the job hunt is not a happy place, but the beach certainly is.

The stats of the job hunt.

• 27 applications submitted
• 6 schools that talked to me 
• 5 that brought me to campus for an interview
• (not 6 first interviews and 5 second interviews, actually 5 of each. One first interview school didn't invite me down, and one school skipped the first interview and went straight to the campus visit.)
• Cal State San Bernardino
  A state school with a big program in a general Comm department. A big percentage of first in their families to go to college, which everyone asked me about. Wanted someone to jump right in teaching advanced narrative and documentary production. The job sounded interesting, but very far from home and I don't know how long I would have stayed. They called with a rejection within a couple weeks. That was nice of them.
• University of Central Missouri
  Nice campus, ok facilities, friendly people. I got stuck there for 2 days after the interview in January because of snow back east. It gave me a good chance to look at the town, which was very small and surrounded by farmlands. The nearest movie theater was 40 miles away. I never heard from them again, which at this point is a no. I'm not terribly disappointed because I stood there thinking, who would I make my movies with?
• Thiel
  Putting the small in Small Liberal Arts College. The town of Greenville PA makes Warrensburg MO look big. They have a brand new building with all new gear - based on the last guy who had the job who was very newsy. So it's not the gear that I would have spec'd, but now he's gone so new person can make whatever they want out of the program. The dean and the president seemed very energized about bringing someone new in to get the program really moving. No one else had any energy at all. No one came to my presentation. No one came to the open drop in session. To be fair it was the first day back from spring break and the interview had been rescheduled twice because the first two trips had my flights canceled due to snow. It was that kind of winter. I managed to get there finally on March 16th and haven't heard anything since.
• Webster University
  Ok campus, decent facilities. Not a huge school, particularly at their local campus. Small enough to get to know people, big enough to get some good classes running. It's in St. Louis, which seems like a cool city if I can't be in New England. It's a film program within the department of Electronic & Photographic Media. The other programs are Video, Animation, Interactive Media, Gaming, Photography. I also met someone from Broadcast Journalism, but that might be elsewhere in Comm. It's been about a week since they interviewed their last person - I went first. The chair of the committee said that if I hear from anyone before them I should call. I sent 10 thank you emails from the airport on my way home. I really really liked these people. 
• Buffalo State College
  Not UB, BuffState. They're working on making the switch from Broadcasting to Media Production. It's a big ship though, so kind of slow to turn. It might be the biggest of the schools I talked to, though CSSB was probably similar. Only 4 hours from home. They were the only ones to actually say here's what you'll be teaching in the fall semester (though Thiel and Webster must have known since everyone is advising and registering by late March). Two sections of a media writing class somewhat similar to what I'm teaching at Fitchburg now, and an intro media production class. I had 3 different people here tell me to call them if I hear from someone else first. I was first to campus here as well, they only just finished interviewing a couple of days ago. 4 people here got thank yous. Just the committee. I met a ton of people. It was first day back from their spring break but absolutely everyone made sure to get at least a couple minutes with me. Apparently the whole department votes. So there was a lot of people I met, but not a lot that I felt like I had meaningful conversations with. 

The bureaucracy always makes these things take longer than you want. So all I can do is wait. Try not to think about it. Concentrate on my kids at Fitchburg. Take the dog to the beach. There's no more snow on the beach. It's not exactly warm, but at least sometimes it's sunny. I've started working again on Enid's Wall. I have a first draft deadline and the closer I get to moving the harder it's going to be to work on it.

Just after the sun went down at Paine's Creek last night. Not quite the 100 person viewing party that you get in the summer, but about a dozen. Not the first nice sunset since the snow melted, but one of, and possibly the first one on a weekend.

The gulls were out in force.

This is about a week ago at Cold Storage. The tide was going out and I had stepped across a 6 inch wide bit of outbound water. Louis totally could have jumped it, but he didn't realize he could. So he kept pacing back and forth trying to figure out how to get to me.

There's really nothing better than a dog on a beach.

I keep taking Louis to all the places I used to take Blue. 

Louis's new friend. He was very patient. He mostly just stood there while Louis jumped all around him and stood between his legs. Rottweilers can be really friendly dogs. The owner was friendly as well. Lives just down the street in a house he's had since the 70s. Was trying to sell me on Hendrick's gin with cucumbers being the best drink. He offered to let me taste his, but I passed.