Radio Free Newport

Thursday morning, I checked my final grades one last time before clicking “submit,” and closed the book on my my first semester as a professor. Overall, I’d say it was a very good semester. My chair and mentor both advised me to concentrate on settling in rather than killing myself to get journal submissions out the door right away. My initial inclination was to politely ignore that advice, but by mid-October, when I was feeling completely worn down by the crazy pace of the past year, I knew that they were right. I made time to start hitting the gym on a regular basis, and by early December, I started to feel reenergized.

My Race and Ethnic Studies class went exceptionally well. The students in this course were passionate, curious, hard-working, and funny. My student evaluations were outstanding, with two students writing that this was the best course they’ve had it in four years at Kent State. Reading through my the final exams actually made me weepy: students who began the semester telling me they had never thought about the issues raised by our readings and class discussions were now giving eloquent explanations about racial segregation and wealth, the social construction of race, and the how the various domains of structural racial inequality are interrelated. This is a very good thing.

But here’s the thing about working at a research university: being a quality teacher will not earn you tenure. I had just finished reading my student evals when, in classic cartoon-piano-falling-from-the-sky fashion, I learned that I did not receive an internal research leave award I applied for. The award would have given me a semester’s release from teaching during the next academic year, allowing me to concentrate on a new line of research. It’s an unusual program, and it is especially helpful to junior scholars such as myself. To make matters more interesting, three of my colleagues received the awards, and while I am genuinely excited for them (I count all three as friends), being the only one in the department to not score has me thinking about wearing an “L” the size of a Flava Flav clock around my neck next semester. That is silly, of course, as the academic life is full of rejection — grants not funded and papers not accepted — and perhaps I’ll receive the leave at a more appropriate time in my career. But for now, it sucks. And because research is far more important at this point in my career than student evaluations, it somewhat negates the thrill of reaching a group of students so successfully.

I had no sooner began processing that disappointment — with my door shut, lights off, a pout on my face worthy of a five-year-old, and Coltrane turned up really loud — when someone whose work I respect and cite asked for a copy of one of my unpublished papers. Who knows where that will lead, but it was nice to be asked. See what I mean? An oddly up-and-down ending to a good semester. I’m taking a few days off for the holidays, and getting right back at it.

np: Apostle of Hustle – National Anthem of Nowhere