What's the dream?

[awdrgy]

At this point, after all of what I feel is the disheartening research I've done to attempt at getting into a program, I would say that I would be pretty satisfied with an adjunct position, ~20K, and a lot of writing and research time. A published book and/or a lot of published research papers would be good, but even just personal satisfaction with my own research could be all right. Anything is better than the job I have now, hahaha.

If I'm really lucky, just about any TT job, ~30K, and research time/publications would be amazing.

[greenmt]

I entered with the intention of returning to nonprofit-land, where I've been for most of my working life, to maybe narrow to a different level of specialization.  Already I can feel the pull of academia, because the rewards of landing a tenure-track gig are so great.  I guess I'm hoping for a meaningful gig in arts / culture / humanities, that would allow me to incorporate some of the research / writing / presenting that makes academia exciting.  And I do think, btw, that there's plenty of room in the Humanities, including Lit., for a generous, philanthropic, or plain old leveling-the-playing-field way of being.  I see it among friends, colleagues, and mentors.    

[WendyWonderland]

My dream is to help the world understand each other better by storytelling and teaching literature, especially Chinese culture. I want to do research on women of color studies and propose that what we share is more than what devide us. I want to translate and to write. I want to publish  and travel around the world by becoming a visiting professor in various countries. 

[Historiogaffe]

A salient detail for me is that both my wife and my closest referee have forbidden me from leaping into the adjunct lifestyle — so developing a Plan B has become a must!

So, my Plan A verse is the same as the first: I'd love to snag a tenure-track position at a research university. You hear me on this one. It'd be a dream.

Plan B emerged during my ill-fated, 2.5-year attempt to sell myself out — er, that is, sell myself ON corporate communications. That didn't work out in itself (good lord), but the organization I worked for (a corporate nonprofit, for that special kind of bleeding-heart) had an ongoing relationship with this really, really cool digital marketing/strategy agency. Y'know, the kind that works with multiple clients in brand strategy, web design, copywriting, what-have-you. I'd love to get a copywriting gig with an agency like that, potentially moving up to project management or content strategy.

And my two top-choice PhD programs do have co-op options...

But while I've grown pretty keen on that gig, it's not quite enough for me to give up the tomfoolery of a PhD in medieval literature. Heh. So I'm not quite in the "there's something I'd rather do" camp, just the "there's something I'd also like to do."

[persynanōm]

I tend to tether my dreams to my current situation as much as possible now, as I have had three separate academic focuses and their projected futures of cello soloist, professor, stage actor, and, now, simply any sort of life-long educator and theatre maker in Korea. Despite most likely being about to embark on a PhD in English (unless the Ethnic Studies apps pan out logically...), my dream involves my already planned future of living in Korea, becoming fluent, teaching rhetoric/composition and hopefully race/postcolonial/performance  theory in some capacity (though I think I would want the equivalent of a CC there... but perhaps not), trying to undermine global (racial/economic/political/lingual/colonial) inequality and the innate privilege it confers on me as a white American male in whatever I do, eating 파리바게뜨 and 한식 every day, and having the time to own a socially conscious (preferably youth) theatre company with my fiancé. 짱~! 

I guess that will shift dramatically once I get there. I have trouble staying invested in anything forever except, so far, my as of yet humble movement toward social justice. We'll see what turns up.

[CarolineNC]

I don't actually care whether I'm allowed to continue my own research. In fact, I'd prefer not to. I'd like to have a tt job at some regional school where I teach and don't have to constantly publish. Ideally, I'll work at a small school in the mountains of North Carolina.

 

Ahh... I can dream, right?