new job

Hi, it's Dan. Amanda suggested that I write in a different color on this blog so you know who you are reading. For today's entry, I have chosen this maroon color. I might also use a serif font to increase my ease of readability.

Recently, I accepted a new position, effective Jan. 1, as an Academic Advisor in the same department in which I already teach. I applied for the job while we were sitting in O'Hare on the way to our honeymoon, so despite my initial reluctance, I was glad I brought my laptop on the trip. I submitted all my materials online then went to Iceland, putting the job on the back burner of my mind.

Once we got back to the US, I had to start teaching again right away, but I kept checking the status of my application on the job website from time to time. Since the university where I work is rivaled only by the Social Security Administration in terms of bureaucratic prowess, it took a few weeks for the status of my documents to change from Application Submitted to Application Received to Application Referred. Then, the departmental committee assigned to find a new academic advisor reviewed the pile of Application Referred candidates. Finally, about three weeks ago, I was contacted for an interview via email by our department's HR rep, whose office is probably about 60 meters from my own.

It was a committee style interview, but thankfully I had worked with and knew all the members of the committee, so it made the interview much more comfortable than some I have done in the past (over-bearing problem kid middle school Spanish position last spring). At the time I felt like it went pretty well, and obviously it must have, as I was offered the position a few days later. I gladly accepted.

Since I got to this university, I have been teaching undergrad Spanish courses, and working with the students has been the part I have most enjoyed (apart from travelling all-expenses paid to exotic locals like Quebec, Boston and Champaign, IL for minorly relevant conferences). In this new job, I will still be working with undergrad students, but with a few differences. First and foremost, I won't be regularly teaching in the classroom anymore. No more lesson plans, no more working on Sunday nights to figure out what the hell I am going to do at work the next morning. Secondly, the students I will be working with will mostly be Spanish majors and minors, as opposed the potpourri of general education level students. Thirdly, I am pretty sure I will have my own office.

The job itself mostly deals with advising Spanish major and minors about their concerns with scheduling, study abroad and other stuff like that. It's an administrative job, but since the department has 800+ Spanish majors/minors, the faculty doesn't take on undergrad advising duties, leaving it instead to academic advisors (there will be two now). Here are the main job duties, copied straight from the job description in the posting:

Summary of Duties
Serves as an undergraduate student advisor in Department of Spanish and
Portuguese; advises Spanish and Portuguese majors and minors with
respect to Honors, transfer credit, and study abroad; assesses individual
major and minor programs, performs transfer credit evaluations; prepares
and disseminates information to prospective and currently enrolled majors
and minors; participates in ASC Arts and Humanities and departmental
committees; maintains open relations with other university advisors and
coordinators; conducts outreach including student recruitment, event
planning and publicity; performs assigned teaching duties according to
department needs. Reports to the chair of the department.

In all, I think this job will be a great fit for me. I got into post-secondary ed/academia because I wanted to work with and teach undergrad level students, but I got kind of turned off of becoming an Ivory Tower research jockey when I burned out of grad school. Since then, this is the kind of job that I have been looking for and applying to, so the fact that this one is in Columbus and at the same school where I already work is a dream combination (all the other ones were in Boston or Vermont...ie. moving far away). And because Amanda is already in a pretty good work situation here, I think this will make it easier for us to stay in C-bus for a while, without me looking for and dreaming about jobs far away. Eventually I think we still want to get back closer to our homeland, but for now Columbus will be a good fit.

Also, this new position has full benefits, so if any siblings/nephews/nieces would like a 50% tuition discount at this university, all he/she would have to do is move to Ohio, establish residency and legally change into our guardianship.

That is all. Hopefully your questions about my new job have been answered. Also, I will try to participate in this "blog" more often from now on.