Today has been lackluster until now: an email from the interim DEO of the Rhetoric department at the University of Iowa informs me that a VAP position will be posted in the next day or two. Why would this notice of a one-year position transform “lackluster” is a valid question.

Let’s put it this way. I’ve been wanting to get another crack at a job in this department for a long time, which is actually to say nothing about the hell that the last two years have been; I brought that all on my own. It’s not a high-paying job, either; it’s teaching. We are inherently a poor race. But it offers the best space to practice engaged learning—i.e., direct interactions between undergraduate students and the public. I saw this kind of learning first hand as a grad student. The department taught me about service learning and then later civic engagement, how they differed and why I’m drawn to engagement over service. 

I sit back in my wooden, swivel office chair, both hands resting on the seat, legs crossed. This is my skeptical posture. I study the email again to make sure I’m feeling the gravity of the moment correctly. “Lackluster” is more appropriate, I realize, than what I originally thought. The day—days, really—have lacked the sparkle I’m spoiled with. Or let me say it this way: I’ve had to work harder at finding meaningful ways to spend my time. I’m an instructional technologist, which means that I help faculty at the College of Charleston—CofC, for short—teach better. Sometimes, technology provides the more direct route to their teaching and learning objectives; at times, novel instructional practices. My job learns about both. Today, I’ve helped a German professor direct a student on locating an exam that wouldn’t show up; received news that a final grade integration between our LMS and MyCharleston isn’t working as it should; and gave time to my budding “instructional design” skills. 

It’s funny how many job titles for non-teachers have “instructional” a part of them. A former colleague, who earned a masters in instructional technology and then managed the particularly difficult feat of getting fired from a state institution, claimed to be an expert teacher. More like “almost-a-teacher” technologist is what I feel.  

For someone who loves the academic atmosphere without having to deal with students or worry about grading their almost mature thoughts, being an instructional technologist may be a perfect job. No piles of papers to grade, no class prep, no real time working outside of the thirty-seven and a half hours the state demands you give an account of. With COVID, it’s become ever flexible. Whenever you get your daily 7.5 hours in matters more than starting and ending at standard times. Hyper flexible, low stress. But for someone whose introversion transforms to extroversion for the duration of a class, the job has been hard. Regardless of the fact that I’ve been able to fulfill my duties in the most personally satisfying method possible with some of the best people to work with, I’ve felt like the sixth man on a basketball time watching the starters play and going in to give the real players a break. 

Papers of my trifling, summer projects litter my desktop. The question is whether I’ll continue charming my day with another foray into Adobe Animate or return to the course on an assessment strategy known as “leveling up” that I’m developing. They’re all sparkle, no shine, though, and I’ve got an open invitation to discard them for a job application I’ve been anticipating for a year and a half. That was before COVID hit, before we jumped at the opportunity to return to Iowa City. In the meantime, we’ve renovated outside and inside portions of our house in South Carolina, sold the South Carolina house and bought one on Iowa City’s west side, and had baby number five, all while working remotely throughout a pandemic as an instructional technologist for the state of South Carolina. 

I’m more aware of the light pouring in through the double window above my desk. Both sides are cranked wide open, emitting a litany of sounds that land on my desk: a murmur of the waterfall from Bob and Laurie’s fish pond, the caws of jays in the ash tree’s lower branches and crows on at its top, kids with water pistols on our trampoline outside. Are they therapeutic or just noise? Everything’s held at a distance for the moment.  

But only for a moment. I rock forward, shuffle the legal pad papers I’ve strewn about my desk into different piles that have some sort of organization—organization enough for me to return to later—and get to hammering out a reply to the DEO in which I’ll thank her for letting me know about the posting. I send another to Classics chair at CofC who was wondering if I were interested in teaching a class next spring. “Yes, of course,” I write, but the “tenuousness” of my time at CofC is “apparent again.” It’s a silly reply—feigning complexity—when all it means is that I’m applying for a job. I know the academic lingo. 

But it doesn’t feel like any job, if I’m honest. I’ve done my share of applying for “a” job because I didn’t have a shot at “the” job. The job search right after I completed my dissertation warrants enough evidence. I applied for jobs in New York, Florida, DC, Boulder, and elsewhere—all remain in my computer file “Jobs”—ranging from the one to three-year contractual range. We would’ve needed to move and then move again when it was over. Not ideal for a family with four kids. More accurately, cruel. We ended up returning to my wife’s hometown because a private preparatory school there hired us both. We left it after one academic year. To say, “It didn’t fit,” doesn’t say anything about the disappointment of this venture.

Moving back to Iowa City was a family-first decision, a deliberate reprioritizing of why we are going to live in one place over another. We missed the people and decided we’d find jobs that work. Quite frankly, it’s a job I care about in a town we’ve come to die in. Furthermore, it puts me in a position to snag a permanent lecturer position. Well, permanent needs qualification, but the point is that I could then renew as long as I wish or until a pandemic or some other notable catastrophe gives the administration the cajones to fire lecturers. It’s a foot in the door, I remind myself, if not the culmination of two years of planning. 

I notice my breathing’s more labored. My fingers are on the keyboard again, itching to tap out some part of the application process, while I stare out the window. Noah is chasing her dog about the yard. He runs like a goat, a bouncing prance on stubby legs. My younger son is dressed either as a ninja or a YouTube personality named “Dream.”

Something about their carefree behavior pushes me instead to thank the DEO for “letting me know” and that I’ll be “looking for it.” Two sentences. Brevity is best, I think. No need to sound desperate.

She responds with a “no problem” and an invitation to ask any questions I may have. I decide to ask one about the “visiting assistant” part: is it a stop-gap measure until they can hire lecturers in the spring? But of course my question is more clumsily stated because it hopes to let her know that I’m aware of the fact that she’s an interim DEO, that I’m not expecting her to necessarily know the answer, and that I know institutions of higher learning are notorious for drawing out a long process only to change directions for no specified reason. She responds to my question quickly, and we’ll continue to correspond in short emails over the next couple of days, during which time Adobe vanishes from my attention along with “leveling up” as I turn to the application materials needing my attention.

I feel like my communication with references and friends is riddled with the warring parties of hope and doubt. One of my friends who’s in Rhetoric, Wayne, will let me know that he’s received word of a job being posted and be happy to hear Kristy—the DEO—is communicating with me. He reminds me of a young version of my Uncle Myrrl—even looks like him—and right now he’s in Minnesota visiting his dad. Over the next few days, he’ll provide much needed feedback on my teaching philosophy, CV and letter of interest. “Kind” doesn’t describe him: he’s been helping me prepare since November of 2019. 

Wayne even helps me choose my references. My first is a guy named Matt who has written my letters before. He used to be in Rhetoric but took a job in Pennsylvania. It takes him all of five minutes to let me know he’s received the request for a recommendation and uploaded it. My second is Andrew, the current chair of Classics at CofC who is certainly willing but then asks if the former chair—an archaeologist named Jim—ever observed me teaching. “Yes,” I respond, explaining that he observed a course on Cicero I taught back in 2018. Jim is the better option. Wayne helps me choose my third reference who is collaborating with me on a Chrome extension idea. Annie tells me she’s glad to but has never recommended a person to a faculty position before. We both know she’s capable of it. I just happen to be her first. 

All the variables associated with this process create doubt, but over the week or two that it takes me to complete the application my thoughts turn increasingly more pessimistic: why should I get this opportunity? Afternoons are the worst. They would usually offer the chance to research neuroplasticity’s contributions to education—an niche interest that touches on my studies in ancient philosophy and modern pedagogical practices—or become more familiar with Animate. Now, I increasingly find myself writing in my journal, wanting to begin a syllabus, decide on my course materials, transition to full-time teaching mode. The push to learn a new tool has vanished—as my mother-in-law says—like a fart in a windstorm.  

Self-doubt—the defense mechanism repeating “You won’t get this job”—is countered with a belief I have about myself that I’ve had since childhood: at some point, you’re going to get the success you’re after. I call it “finding my swing” and credit, or blame—I’m not sure which it is at this point—a baseball game I played with my cousins on a muggy summer day in eastern Ohio. I loved visiting my Ohio cousins, no matter how loud the conversations grew or how much they talked over each other. Having grown up on the Gulf coast of Florida, Christmases with them were the most magical: sledding, hot cocoa, and Christmas sweets plentiful enough to outlast sixty people for a full week in the merriest of spirits. Summers offered a chance to attend baseball games a Jacobs Field. I saw Ken Griffey, Jr. hit his 299th and 300th home runs there against the Indians. There was always something out of the ordinary to enjoy with my Ohio relatives.

The clearest image from this baseball game is of my cousin Danny rounding second base after smacking a home run, both index fingers pointing skyward, elated that he had joined the elite of our bunch. I am watching and not a part of the elite. Behind him in the distance is the “fence”: an arching row of plastic baseball helmets, each bearing the name of a major league baseball team and spaced every ten or fifteen feet. I’m completely oblivious to who is around me, who’s on whose team. I’m distinctly aware of my envy though unsure that I’ll ever homer. 

At some point—I don’t know if it was my third at bat or seventh—I find my swing and homer nine times consecutively. The memory isn’t my own. Occasionally, someone brings it up at a reunion. I remember the elation, smiling, jogging the bases, the admiration from others. An empty field turned arena. My own Busch Stadium.  

The afternoons truly are the worst now that I’ve completed the application. Every “ding” signaling an email summons the question, “Is this my answer?” The memory of this rag-tag baseball game in a field next to corn and Highway 619 comes to mind in times like these when I wonder if I’m going to get yet another “We regret to inform you” response or if my luck will turn and I’ll have a string of successes. What is the difference between the proverbial “glutton for punishment” and “the little engine who could”? Isn’t the outcome the only difference? Both believe that they can succeed, but only one has a children’s book about achieving. Whatever happened to the original glutton? I’m prone now to think back, stuck between hope and self-doubt, to the many at-bats I’ve whiffed or flied-out. I’ll then turn 900 and face my stained, built-in bookshelf, built with permanence and dreams, and wonder if it’s better suited for someone else, someone whose swings been found. 

It’s during these moments that I’m unsure whether the nine homers are a gift or a curse. When does someone say, “That’s enough,” and settle for something that promises less personal fulfillment? Is one homer worth a hat trick or two? All the inspiring statements about failure leading to success are stale beer in solo cups. I guess they don’t adequately address the anxiety. Maybe once the “We regret to inform you” has arrived and you’re wondering what to do now that you’re holding your rejection, maybe then Michael Jordan’s quip about missing however many shots and losing however many games and succeeding because he failed will make its intended impact.  

Are the nine homers the origin of my shame cycle—i.e., that tendency to base self-worth on others’ approval? 

I get the reply on a Thursday afternoon when I’ve pushed myself to ask a dean how a training session went, write a letter of recommendation for a student from last spring’s Classical Myth course, and give feedback on a letter to a potential keynote speaker for a spring 2022 conference. I’m terrible at this waiting game when it feels like so much is on the line. The subject reads “VAP,” and it’s from the office manager, Barb. I stare at the screen. Aren’t the office managers tasked with sending rejections? The DEO would send the acceptances, I think. Wha’ do I do? Maybe I should have Brooke open it for me. Screw it. Here goes. 

I guess I’ll figure out my thoughts about success later. I got the job.