I had this disagreement the other day with a group of friends at dinner when I told them that I "hustle," and that maybe in this day and age or in this 'academic climate' or whatever, maybe I am going to have to "hustle" for a long time.
This apparently was funny because to them "hustle" meant something like "be a prostitute"
(which while we're at it is not terribly inaccurate when it comes to some academic teaching positions but that's not my point), but really what I meant was that for years now, I've had to "hustle" as in obtain by force or sell (myself) aggressively for jobs. Small, insignificant jobs.
Not a year has gone by in the last ten years when I haven't applied for at least one job. Most years, I apply for three or four or five or ten. I get some of them. Actually, I get a lot of them. But "getting a job" doesn't mean I won't have to hustle ever again. It just means I won't have to hustle for a few months, maybe.
I'm not necessarily complaining. Usually I like the jobs that I do. (Usually.) But I get so tired of hustling.
On that note, Fair Employment Week is coming up at UBC.
2 comments:
Hey Joel! After reading this post and then combing through your blog to see if you wrote something more on the topic, I have a question: what jobs did you have and how did they relate (if they did) to your background in applied linguistics? In other words, I'd just like to know whether there's something out there for us who want to apply applied linguistics rather than pursue a career in the academia. Could you write something about that?
I know this is six years too late, but I fear the answer won't be helpful: they were pretty much all academic jobs.
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