Honey, I Shrank the Job Market

It's almost been a month since my last post. C'est la vie. Phil Sr. and Ryan both had some excellent posts awhile back about the state of musicology (non)blogging, branching out into some interesting terrain. I'm a little behind, but I promise to join the conversation soon. One of my New Year's resolutions is to put blogging back into a more central location in my life. Really.

What else is in store for the year, he ponders?

*Teaching a lot. I'm teaching two sections of one course (1750-present for non-majors) at Widener, and two separate courses (Med/Ren and 19th/20th for majors) at the University of the Delaware. Luckily Widener is Tues/Thurs, and Delaware is Mon/Wed/Fri, but it does mean I am teaching five days a week. When I whine to friends and family that I have to "work five days a week," they are remarkably unsympathetic. There's an idea for a post: how to acquire adjunct work, since I seem to be getting better at its acquisition, if nothing else.

*Beyond the hectic schedule though, I'm really excited for all this teaching. I'm looking forward to the challenge of teaching more advanced upper division courses for majors, and also for the chance to teach twentieth-century music, my putative specialty. And having survived my first semester of teaching outside of my graduate institution, I'm looking forward to refining various pedagogical things.

*Another plus is with all that teaching, I know longer need to prostitute my appointment-scheduling and corpse-freezing skills at the veterinary clinic. Another post in the works is a compendium of pet related advice I have accumulated these past six months.

*Writing writing writing. Delaware doesn't start until February, so I have a month of fairly light teaching to catch up on a variety of projects. Watch out world.

*Cleaning. Oh dear god is our little apartment a wreck. The holidays were great, but exhausting. We managed four Christmases on the one day: morning in Philadelphia, with my visiting parents, late morning with mother-in-law in Washington, DC, afternoon with larger group of in-laws in another part of DC, then evening with father-in-law in Northern Virginia. Then a day later, up to the Poconos for a Gentry family reunion. Halfway through the reunion, Mary and I drove back to Philly to celebrate our one year anniversary. Mary then had to go back to work, so I drove back to the Poconos for the rest of reunion accompanied by her identical twin sister. This is beginning to sound like a bad sitcom, so I'll stop there. Suffice it to say, apartment is a wreck.

*The unmentionable. Rough year to be on the market, folks, rough year. I'm glad to have recourse to adjuncting for hopefully as long as I'd like. But the siren call of stability, well...she calls.