Any options? What subject?
I got my doctorate in Mathematics (Knot Theory) in '95. I thought I'd be able to continue doing research, but it never happened. I got one publication from my thesis (in the Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, no less!) and a few conference papers on a smattering of topics, none of which ever really panned out.
But I did it to teach anyway. The year I got my masters I got a one-year sabbatical leave appointment and was encouraged to go back for my doctorate by the department chair so I could keep on teaching, so that's what I did. And I'm good at it, too.
But being a good math teacher is like a relativistic snowball, it doesn't hit the student right away - sometimes not for years. And sometime in the last 20 years, university administrators decided that they
could should run a school like a business. They started making all their decisions based on customer satisfaction, including student evaluations of faculty.
I could write a paper about how fucked up that is, but no one would publish it, because it's gospel now. I've lost three jobs to student evaluations, because I keep my standards up and don't put up with bullshit. And each time I've lowered my standards some more, hoping to keep the job, and my peer evaluations all admire how well I do at keeping my standards high, and the students slam me for it. But it feels like I'm teaching half the material half as well as I used to. I love to teach, but I can't do much with those who won't learn. Those of you who are students, please, don't take offense, but giving you the power of who keeps their job and who doesn't is basically putting the asylum in the hands of the inmates. You are not in a position to judge yet, you are students, by definition you don't yet know what we're even teaching you. My stats classes all build up to a point, about two weeks from the end of the course, where everything is tied together. Evaluations are done two weeks before that,
before I can show you the power of my science. What the
fuck am I supposed to do?
As for prospects, it doesn't matter. I'm tied to the job, I have a very sick daughter for whom I need to keep my excellent insurance. I can't strike out and change career paths, or start my own business or any such thing if I want to keep her... I was going to say healthy, but that's never going to happen again, as long as she continues to live. And to keep that insurance, I took the one position that was guaranteed, the position at the outpost where the uneducable are educated. And just to get some of the better ones through the course, I've had to cut back
more.
Oh, god, I'm making myself nauseous. Or maybe it was the chicken wings...
Really, this should go elsewhere. I shouldn't even be reading this thread, much less posting in it. Sorry, everyone.