Will Blog For Food

This week the Dowbrigade received two highly unusual and much anticipated
letters from the Personnel Office of the major metropolitan university
where he has his "cover" job.  The first brought the welcome
news that after three years without any faculty raises the first important
move by the incoming President (following the disastrous no-day tenure
of his predecessor) was to re-establish the pool of money for faculty
merit raises. Furthermore, the letter informed us that after exhaustive
evaluation the Dowbrigade was in the most meritorious category and thus
would receive the maximum raise (amount to be determined at a later date).

The second letter was to inform us that unfortunately our 15-year career
at the university would be terminated three months after the raise kicks
in in January. The reason is simple – enrollment in university-based
ESL programs is down 40% across the board, across the country.  Since
9/11 our students can’t get into the country, or at least its enough
harder that most of them are staying home or going to Australia or England
to study. We have lost over half our students since then, and now, with
15 years as full-time faculty, the Dowbrigade is the low man on the seniority
totem pole. So, at the end of the Academic Year, out he goes.

However, every cloud has a silver lining.  We should of been out
of there years ago, and would have been if it hadn’t been such a cushy
job with those long, built-in vacations three times a year for travel,
writing, presenting, blogging. But actually, we’re better off testing
the open market. People get stale when they spend too long on the same
job. There’s lots of challenging and interesting jobs we could do.

In fact, here is our Top Ten Advantages of Losing Our Job

10. We’re getting out just in time, before BU’s
$1.6 billion Defense Biolab (featuring the world’s deadliest pathogens) goes on-line

9. More time for Blogging!

8. We won’t have to pay those greedy bastards $80 a month to park our
car WHILE WE ARE WORKING, or pay the tickets and tow fees that inevitable
accrue when we eschew the parking sticker

7.For years now we have been embarrassed to say where we worked. It’s
worth leaving just to finally disassociate our career once and for all
from Long
John Silber, the Fidel
Castro of American Higher Education.

6. Maybe we can get a job at a university with a Football Team

5. We won’t have to swagger up and down the aisles once every semester
as a hired goon for the Education Testing Service during administration
of the Institutional TOEFL exam.

4. We won’t have to touch the Mac Performa computer in our office ever
again

3. No more endless and senseless meetings of the ultra-boring Faculty
Committee where all we did was institute meaningless change in a deteriorating
environment

2. My mother
keeps telling me its time to grow up and get a real job

1. We just know there is a MUCH better, more interesting, socially-valuable
and remunerative position out there somewhere with the Dowbrigade’s name
on it.