Big Changes Ahead

Okay, so this has been a week of emotional roller-coaster riding in the extreme. Some of you may know that I'm in the process of applying for jobs for next year, and I've sent out about 5 or 6 applications for full-time teaching at community colleges here in Colorado. I have been pretty optimistic, have gotten plenty of great feedback on my CV and cover letters, yada, yada. So, I was pretty much counting on getting interviews with these schools and wowing them with my amazing credentials and experience.

In the meantime, I have been thinking strongly about going to Hungary again this summer, and this Monday I was supposed to let ESI know for sure if I was planning to join the trip - which my brother is also going on. Spending Easter Sunday with him just confirmed what a great time it would be together, so on Monday, I emailed ESI and said, "heck, I don't know what my job prospects look like for next year, but sign me up." At this point in time, I was still pretty optimistic about getting a full-time, cushy (i.e. - non meagre paying) teaching position next year.

Well, bring on Wednesday. I decided that I needed to make some calls to these schools and find out where they are in the hiring process. Not a good plan (don't go looking for bad news if you're not prepared to hear it). Both schools I had been really eager to work for told me that they were in the first round of interviews, and if I hadn't heard yet, then I could assume I'd be getting a "thanks but no thanks" letter in the mail.

Talk about demoralizing. I had a pretty difficult time getting much work done that day because I couldn't see what point there was in working on my thesis if it wasn't going to lead to fruitful employment. It also threw me into some really intense soul-searching about what is important to me. Do I want to be a career academic? That is, am I willing to move wherever is necessary to get this kind of job and support myself? The answer is, not really. I want to live in Colorado, near my awesome friends and family, and the beautiful mountains that I actually talk to most days. :) This made me realize that I've been pretty foolish to imagine that I'm going to be handed a full-time job, in my area of expertise, going up against much-older teachers, in my first year out of graduate school. Hello, reality check. As I was crying my eyes out about all this on Wednesday, I remembered the feeling I had when I lost all my stuff moving from MN to CO, and how the sooner I was able to open my hands and "let it all go," the easier it was to move on. I heard God telling me to do the same thing in this situation, and open up my hands and let these opportunites go.

Kel said to me last night that sometimes God can't bless us, He can't fill our hands with good things if we're still holding on to the old. And in the past few days I have really seen that. Immediately after hearing about not getting interviews, I started doing random web job searches, looking outside of academic jobs, on the possibility that I might need to consider other opportunities. This has led me to something really extraordinary... something I would never have found if I hadn't been forced to look. On the Christianity Today website, there was a link to a college that is looking for faculty members for their programs in English, theology, psych and business. This college just happens to be in Lithuania. Yup, Europe again. :) I took a look at the website, and felt my heart just welling up with excitement that I might be suited to do something like this. It's a four-year, Christian liberal arts college, based on the North American system, and it partners with schools like my alma mater, Bethel, plus Trinity Western, Westmont, Taylor, etc (top-notch institutions). I am really, really seriously looking in to the possiblity of teaching English literature over there next year... how nuts is that! I have no idea if this is even possible, and if they'd take me, and what this may mean for my plans to go to Hungary, but I covet your prayers and insights. I've included a link to the college on this page, so you can check it out if you want (anyone want to come along?). And I'm going to try and get a preliminary application into the North American recruitment office by Monday (as if I don't have enough else to do this weekend!).

I know this is crazy, but crazy also feels right sometimes, and I would love to hear what any of you think... I am always so thankful for the encouragement I'm given to do extraordinary stuff like this, and the fact that God places passions in us that we may not know what they're for until the time is right.