State of Affairs

This semester had so much potential.  Knowing that my time at LSU was limited, I was going to spend this semester teaching my three classes and the rest of my time in the library working on publications.  It was a beautiful plan - if only it had been put into practice!

When 13 of my colleagues and I were fired on August 27, I figured "well, that's life." But the more I spoke with my colleagues, the more we couldn't understand why this was happening to us and why the administration thought it was acceptable What has consumed nearly every waking moment for the past two months is summarized at www.flxiv.blogspot.com.

I have been fighting this battle since May.  You can see some of my previous attempts to avert the disaster which has come to pass here and here and here.  At this point, we have exhausted all of our options.  And unless there is a deus ex machina, I will be officially unemployed in 89 days.

The worst part is that my marketable skills are limited to experience I obtained over 15 years ago as a legal and medical secretary.  So I enrolled in the H&R Block tax course.  The class meets 9 hours a week and has consumed the rest of my free time.  If I pass the class, I should have a job from January to April.  After that is anybody's guess.

I am spending the next 36 hours working on my CV so I can apply for jobs in the U.S. - jobs that won't officially begin until Fall 2011, but deadlines for which begin in November.  All that energy I channeled into the Foreign Language Fourteen is now shifted to salvaging my academic career.  The research component will have to wait until after my tax course, which ends November 23.

Not my normally cheery post, but there's really not much to be cheery about, my friends. I'll leave you with a quote that pretty much sums up the situation:

"A degree in classics teaches you how to live
without the job it keeps you from getting." 

- David Meadows