This winter, I made a momentous decision, one that concluded a major transition in my life and the life of my family: I decided to become a New England Patriots fan.
Knowledgeable sports fans are rolling their eyes right now, skeptical at my sudden devotion to a team that has won three of the last four Super Bowls. But my conversion had nothing to do with the professional fortunes of the Patriots, and everything to do with what feels like the most important decision of my academic life thus far.
I have decided, after four and a half years as an assistant professor at my liberal-arts college in central Massachusetts, to commit myself to the campus, to its students, and to this part of the country (and its sports teams), for as long into the future as I can foresee -- and maybe even the rest of my career.
That last part depends, of course, upon my college granting me tenure next year, but my decision has nonetheless brought me substantial peace of mind about my part in the relationship.
It's funny how the world around me seems to have changed suddenly. So many commitments that I hadn't made, or had made only tentatively, have been falling into place. I'm cheering for the New England Patriots. I've joined the Worcester Art Museum and the Massachusetts Audubon Society. I'm collaborating on a new book with a local writer, a good friend of mine who lives a few blocks away, and we've been talking about pursuing other projects together.
In January I went to see the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the first time, and in the spring we are going to see a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at a Boston theater. My wife and I have taken more evening trips alone into Boston in the past few months than we have in our entire first four and half years here.
I'm wondering how much longer we'll take extended summer road trips back to the Midwest, to visit family and friends there; a long weekend here or there might do the trick from now on. I imagine we'll vacation more regularly on Cape Cod or the Maine coast, like the rest of New England.
One of the first warning signs that I was ready to make a commitment to my college came from the lone job application I sent out this year. A graduate-school friend of mine, who now teaches at a liberal-arts college in a Midwestern city that my wife and I had always imagined we would move back to, wrote last summer to say that her department had an opening in my field, and that she hoped I would apply.
I felt like I was a strong candidate, and I had a friend in the department, so I put together an application and sent it off in September. I thought for sure I would earn at least an interview at the Modern Language Association convention.
In November, as the date approached when departments normally call to schedule conference interviews, my wife and I spent a lot of time thinking about our lives here, and about whether we really wanted that job in the Midwest that we always thought we wanted.
"I feel like we have so many friends here now," she said. "And it's such a nice neighborhood, so many families."
I knew she was right, and I knew I felt the same way. The four and a half years we have lived in our home here has been the longest stretch of time we have spent in any home or apartment in our 12 years of marriage, and each year here has been better than the previous one. We finally decided that if that Midwestern college called, I wouldn't waste its time and money. I would say I was no longer interested.
(It didn't call, for the record. Briefly, I wondered why. But I have served on enough search committees now to understand the random and capricious nature of the market, and not to agonize over it.)
So lately I've been having lots of conversations with our neighbors about school choices for our children. I agreed to write the newsletter for a conservation group trying to preserve some public green space near our home. Last month my wife and I sat in the office of the bank around the corner and signed the papers to refinance our house; we're getting cash out to renovate, to settle down and build our lives in this place.
On the campus, I've been happy to see my two closest departmental friends enter into relationships with New Englanders, and I've been hoping that those relationships will help cement their lives here as well. Early in the spring semester, the college administration made a decision that seemed like a poor one to me, and to many of my colleagues; instead of shrugging my shoulders and pitying the lifers on campus who would suffer the consequences, I told my senior colleagues that I wanted to help them fight it. I feel invested in those decisions and battles in a new way.
Should my college decide to make a reciprocal commitment to me next year when I come up for tenure, my decision to stay would not come without costs.
I teach at a college that largely emphasizes teaching for its tenure considerations, and I am a faculty member who sees writing and publication as equally important to professional and personal satisfaction. We teach seven courses a year here, which is more than I would teach at a college that offered equal rewards for my teaching and my publication record.
Last year I used income from my writing to buy myself a course release, and I may continue to request that exchange in the future. But of course a more financially attractive alternative would be for me to find a job at a college with a teaching load of just six courses a year -- or maybe five or even four -- and receive a full salary for that reduced course load.
My best friend from college visited me recently, along with his wife, who is finishing a graduate program in English at a major research university. "I can't believe you have to teach so many courses," she said, shaking her head in wonderment.
I would have shared her sentiment in graduate school, when the balance of my time and my responsibilities were tipped toward research. I would have balked at the idea of slaving away at so much undergraduate teaching, to the neglect of my writing.
And I still would prefer to teach one or two fewer courses each year, if I could remake my world as I saw fit.
But I found it difficult to articulate to her that those seven courses -- which might seem like such a daunting workload to a graduate student -- have become only one smallish ingredient in a bulging sack of issues and concerns that jostle for attention in my life right now.
Indeed, when I take stock of my life, I realize that I am happy here -- happier, maybe, than I have ever been in my life. My wife feels the same way.
We live two miles away from the college, and my wife has a teaching job she likes. Within a half-mile radius of my home, I can walk to two parks, a wooded hilltop with walking trails, our church, my children's school, a grocery store and drugstore, a garden center, an independent bookstore, at least a dozen restaurants and bars, and the homes of most of our closest friends.
I like my colleagues both in and out of the department; the campus is beautiful, and gets more so -- and more technologically advanced -- each year; the students are friendly and smart; and the college is small enough that I feel like I can really make a difference here someday, perhaps with new courses or programs or projects I have yet to dream up.
This month saw the publication of my second book, a memoir of my first year on the tenure track. The book is structured chronologically according to the academic year, and one of the final chapters, in the summer, shares the title of a column I wrote for this space a few years ago: "Settling In, or Just Settling?"
Both the chapter and the column asked the same question: Would putting down roots here mean that I was settling for something less than I deserved -- settling for a seven-course load when I could have five? Settling for my modest salary, when I could earn more? Settling for this city in central Massachusetts -- a former industrial town which has been searching for a new identity for decades now -- when I could have Boston, or Chicago, or New York?
In both that column and the chapter, written at earlier points in my academic career, I concluded that nothing was settled yet, that my wife and I were still thinking about it.
But I think we're done thinking about it.
