Guilt free

I'm thinking about lots of things these days--my book, revising an article to resubmit, making sure the damned Norton Anthology reached the bookstore, prepping Beowulf, the pile of dishes in my sink, etc.--but it's nearly September, so the thing I'm thinking about loudest is the job market. I've been trying to come up with a justification for going on; given that my colleagues are so lovely and the College is so needy and resourceless and cute, it seems morally bankrupt of me to want to leave simply for monetary reasons. But let's obsessively review the situation one more time, shall we?

• I live in a teensy town that is a cultural sinkhole, even with a college campus in the middle of it. It is unreachable except by automobile, as the poor European graduate students who teach our language courses are inevitably shocked to find.
• The nineteen B.A.-granting colleges in this country at which assistant professors make less money either (a) are run by people in questionably legal compounds in Idaho, (b) have names containing some combination of the words "Bethany," "Wesleyan," "Bible," or "Our Lady of Painful Deliberation," or (c) are in Puerto Rico.
• The health benefits are so grossly dire that the diagnosis of an incommunicable, untreatable, harmless rash has cost me $400 this summer, of which the insurers paid $12.71. Of course, if I had a job at the U. of Chicago (average asst. prof. salary: $73,400) or even at another school that was interested in hiring me, this wouldn't be a problem. But $400 hits me pretty hard.

Okay, but do you notice how much of a whiny bastard I seem when I say such things? My department has the institutional equivalent of puppydog eyes when it comes to the question of my leaving or staying, and the joyous thought of getting another job always bears with it the anxiety of having to put a bullet between those puppydog eyes.

But thank goodness for relationships. Because the incontrovertible truth is that M. cannot and will not practice law in Nowhere, WI! So I have not only an excuse but an imperative to go somewhere that needs attorneys, which may also be a place that needs English professors, and might even be a city large enough to contain theaters and other such things necessary to someone who teaches drama. Heck, a job that pays better than graduate school would almost be gravy! So now I can just pet the puppydog and tell it I love it as I take it to live with a nice family in the country.

Of course, I also have to get a job offer, but after this moral quandary at home, that seems like a cakewalk.