When I started this blog, it was to keep my friends and family updated about my new adventures as a foreign language teaching assistant in Austria. That was in 2007. Ten years later I am living in Austria as a full-time English teacher in a higher technical college.
How did I get here, you may ask. I won't say it has been easy, but I am a firm believer in "everything happens for a reason." This is my take on the events that led me on this most amazing journey.
When I first arrived in Austria in 2007 to teach English language and American culture in an academic high school, it was an attempt to reevaluate some of my life choices. I always thought I'd end up as a classics teacher at a small liberal arts college. But decisions were not always made with that goal in mind. I guess you could say I drifted.
I did get a degree in classics with a minor in German from the University of Iowa, and pursued a graduate degree in classics at Vanderbilt University. Academically that didn't turn out so well. I discovered I was no longer a big fish in a small pond and butted heads with a couple of professors. I did end up getting an MRS degree and followed my new husband to the University of Missouri-Columbia. Soured on the whole academic scene, I worked at the veterinary library for a year, then was offered a teaching assistantship in Latin to replace a grad student who decided at the last moment that he wasn't coming back. I took graduate courses in classics and archaeology and was inspired by all of the wonderful professors at Mizzou.
But I made a decision to give up my last year of my teaching assistantship to my husband, and I went back to working full time for the American College of Physicians and the University Hospital. He ended up getting a job at Truman State University (then Northeast Missouri State University) and we moved to Kirksville. I worked for a couple of years for the general counsel of the university. At one point I was encouraged by colleagues at a private school in St. Louis to apply for a Latin teaching position, but they "lost my application" much to my disappointment. Then a position opened up at Truman for a residential college professor at the same time my husband and I decided that things weren't really working out. A clean break was made when I moved into Ryle Residential College. This was by far the most rewarding job of my life. I lived in a dorm with 500 young women for whom I was the only live-in female role model. I offered academic advising and taught German until the university decided to restructure the residential college program and I had to look for another opportunity.
Around this time, one of my professors at Mizzou who knew my interest in German told me of an archaeological opportunity at a Roman legionary fortress in Austria. I spent three summers digging in the dirt and making contacts. The director of the excavation was pleased with my work and offered me a dissertation project - Mythological Scenes on Tombstones from the Roman Provinces of Noricum and Pannonia (modern Austria, Hungary, and Slovenia). That was in 1998. I told the University of Missouri that I was going to resume my PhD studies. I had already completed the coursework, I just needed to write the dissertation, which I completed in 2003 under the guidance of Eugene Numa Lane and Lawrence Okamura.
Now, between the residential college and getting my PhD, I had met my second husband, a blues musician and English professor at Truman State University. And I found a teaching position at Louisiana State University, where I ended up teaching courses in Latin and Greek language and literature, women in antiquity, and Greek and Roman archaeology. I took students to Germany where I taught German, Latin, and Roman frontier studies. I thought I had it made. There were just two little problems. First, although I was active on the academic conference circuit, I never had the chance to follow up my dissertation with any publications. As soon as I finished my PhD, a colleague at LSU died and I was put in charge of his classes. I asked my boss when I would have time to publish and he said "If you can teach all of these different classes, you will be marketable everywhere." He lied. I was naive. Without publications, you can kiss a career as a classics professor goodbye. The most you can hope for is a position as instructor with the corresponding salary.
The other problem was personal. My personal and financial life was a hot mess, through no fault of my own. I now had a second ex-husband, a mountain of debt, and no way out of a bad career situation. I needed to get out and reevaluate my options. A colleague told me about the Fulbright Austrian American Commission teaching assistantships in Austria. I applied and somehow as a 42 year old woman I got accepted and assigned to an academic high school in the heart of Styria.
TO BE CONTINUED...
No comments:
Post a Comment