I have a full-time job this year. I love my school, my department, and my students. The work is not egregious. The administration is supportive. I am incredibly blessed in what I am doing.

However, as I prepared my request for classes for next semester, I realized that my teaching preferences will have to change. Most English folks are lit people and teaching two comps (or three) is a chore for them.

For me it is more the other way around. I am a comp person and teaching the lits is something so that I’m not teaching four or five of the same courses.

There are only five comp courses: two developmental, two freshman, and one technical writing. That’s it. I don’t really want to teach the lowest developmental. I could do the freshman but I don’t want to do all comps at the freshman level, at least not this next year.

So, instead of teaching two freshman, two sophomore, and two senior level writing classes, I will be teaching two developmental, a Brit lit, and a humanities class. Or perhaps two developmental, a fiction, and a humanities class.

I think the humanities class will be good for me. I think the fiction will be fun as well. And we know I like Brit lit….

So why is this schedule suddenly weighing so heavy on my heart? Because I realized that I won’t ever be teaching writing as my focus again. I will perhaps be able to teach online tech writing occasionally, but most of the time I will be teaching two writing and two lit courses. It’s not undoable, and in fact I am grateful for the opportunity to teach fewer classes in one place. It’s just that I will miss writing.

There’s a lecturer position open on the true other side of town (not the middle) that if it had been offered just a month earlier, I would have been thrilled to apply for. However, it didn’t open up until I withdrew from being an adjunct two weeks before school started because I had a full-time job and I didn’t think I could do that course as well. (I dropped that school two weeks before the fall semester started. I wouldn’t look at me for a full-time job under those circumstances.) The commute would be horrific, but the teaching would have been … in line with what I expected to be doing when I was working on my PhD.

My job is a wonderful one. Even if it isn’t what I was expecting to be doing, it is still a good experience. And I can learn and do new things. I’m glad for that. I can do that. So I am going to keep moving and looking for ways that my life can be a good one, while it is very different from what I expected.

It is possible that I will have an administrative position at my school next year. If I do, it will be a half-time job and I will be writing for it. So I guess it is possible that I am going to be teaching writing and doing work that involves writing instead of what I have listed. That might be interesting. It would be different for sure.

I like to learn and doing that work would help me to see a new aspect of the school.

God, please help me to be smart about what I do and how I do it. Help me to know what it is I should be doing and do it to the best of my ability. Please help me to get it together and get stuff done.

Also, please help me with the publication stuff. Help me get it done and make some progress there.