Bonjour la Classe

I never remember how much I keep people updated on my life and my lovely wife’s life, so here’s the rundown. Several weeks ago Depauw University, located in fabulous Greencastle, Indiana, contacted Indiana University about candidates for a French teacher position that they have open. My wonderful and fabulous in her own accord wife was the person they selected.

A few things happened during the application process that seemed like good omens. First before she had applied at all (which took the gathering of multiple things including her past teacher evaluations) the head of the language department at Depauw contacted Amy wondering where her application was. Being that most jobs don’t call you up asking why you haven’t applied we figured this was good news. Secondly when the position suddenly lost one class due to only a few people signing up (and thus lowering the potential pay) the head guy again contacted Amy and basically said that he would love to work with her but understood that these circumstances may keep her from being able to.

On Wednesday, Amy traveled to Greencastle for a full day of interviews, meetings with faculty and administration and teaching one of the French classes. This was the absolute first time Amy has applied and interviewed for anything within her field. Nervous is the word.

A quick word about the job. University hiring policies work pretty much the same everywhere. For those who have just graduated with their perspective degrees they are usually offered positions teaching lower level courses with a 1-2 year contract. Often they will travel about with similar contracts from university to university to build up experience. Eventually a university may offer them another 1-2 year contract when the first one expires and this may continue on for several years and if everything goes right then this person may be offered tenure, which is basically stay here forever.

The Depauw gig is a short time thing. Right now all we know is that it extends to the Spring semester. We are hoping it will travel into the next school year, but we don’t know about that.

I did, however, get word from Amy just now (she’s in Nashville for a conference) that she has been offered the job! Yeah!

We now have to decide if it is worth it to make the move up there, or just have Amy commute. Greencastle is about an hours drive from Bloomington. The problem is that the pay isn’t all that much, and we’re not quite sure if it will last past May of 2007. That’s a lot of expense for not that much. I think if we can get a guarantee that she’ll have the job in the next term, we’ll make the move.

We’ll see, and man am I ever glad she got the job.