Introduction

I've just finished my second year at this university, which is a former teacher's college. Like many schools of this sort, the workload heavily favors teaching: My standard teaching load is 4/4, plus service, plus thesis supervision, etc.

Like several other folks (hi, Mel!), I strongly feel the disconnect between the training I got at my PhD program ([edited to avoid possibly identifying someone]) and the career that I have embarked upon. Perhaps unlike some others, I am the son of a lifelong community-college professor and administrator, and so entered graduate school with a clear-eyed understanding of what life could be like outside the research institution. (That 4/4--some mixture of composition, general education &/or honors, and an upper-division course in my specialization--feels pretty good compared to 5/5 or 6/6, with all composition.)

Not sure if there's much more of interest to say: my teaching focuses on Victorian and early 20thC British literature; my theoretical obsession is psychoanalysis, which, perhaps quixotically, I'm convinced is in the first instance a theory of temporality and history; my book is done, and goes to its press's editorial board next week; & my partner and I have just bought a house a half-mile from campus, which we think is good news but which we worry also means we'll be absorbed into the university.