Change of Life, part 1

I've been trying to figure out for a while how to write this post. There are some things in life that feel so momentous that it is hard to know how to process and articulate them. There are pieces of this that are like that. And while this is not a political post, it is grounded in a political-based reality.

The simplest way to say it is that I am changing jobs. But it isn't that simple, for me. Since my very first job shelving books in the children's department of the Freeport Public Library (back in its original space constructed with the help of Andrew Carnegie), I have been a public employee. Okay, I did have two summer jobs that weren't public--one as a camp counselor at my church camp and one as a receptionist for a title insurance company. I worked at the library and then at my community college as a student worker, a state university as a student worker and then as a graduate assistant, then at a community college as a professor, then at a two-year state college as a lecturer.

Although I haven't often thought of myself as a public servant, it has always been part of who I am professionally. I've known that my salary would be limited, since my institutions were accountable to taxpayers. It has always mattered to me that I am part of the army of public servants trying to make their place in the world a better place in some small way.

I've been a teacher since 1988, when I first stepped into a college classroom as a graduate assistant in charge of one writing class. After 23 years, the line between what I do and who I am has blurred. Being a teacher is part of my identity. Even during the five years I did part-time administrative work, I was still a teacher.

I have been very committed to the access to public education afforded by two-year colleges. Having started my own college experience in such a place, I have seen the transformative power of education for those who are unable to go to a different school due to financial reasons or a need to be placebound. People's lives change when they have the opportunity to explore who they are and what they think in the context of guided and structured scholarly work.

A change of jobs means, on one level, a change of self. I am staying in higher education, but it is a very different kind of position. I will be coordinating the Academic Resource Center at a private women's college. It will be a major shift in many ways: teacher to full-time administrator, public school to private school, co-ed to women's school, two-year associate degree to bachelor's and master's degrees.

I start my new job tomorrow. I don't know who I will be. At the age of 46, such a new adventure is a bit exciting and quite terrifying.

People in faculty-type positions tend to think of their careers differently than do people in many other kinds of positions in higher education. Many of my friends in student affairs work talk about building a skill set and gaining experience and then moving on in five to ten years. Faculty-type folks talk about tenure and the long haul and being in an institution over a period of their professional lifetimes, building their career by participating in important committee work, engaging in scholarship, writing grants, and getting better and better at what they do. It's a different mindset, so even I am a bit shocked that I am making this change.

So why on earth am I making the change? This is where the political-based reality comes in. As an employee of the state of Wisconsin, I was about to get socked with an extra $300 in deductions each month. Now, if I were one of those high-paid employees, I might not be able to muster much sympathy for myself. But I'm not. I'll spare the details, but my position pays less than $35,000 a year. I live in a county with a fairly high cost of living, yet this is the same salary as people in my position in other counties around the state had--so my salary has gone less far than it has for my peers in, say, Baraboo or Manitowoc.

Despite the claims that public employees haven't been affected by the economy, my husband is in an industry that was hit hard. After three job losses in two years and an extended unemployment, he is finally in a job in his industry again--but only part-time, so he continues to look for more work. Our family's finances have hit rock bottom, and we simply don't have any place in our budget to cut $300. I already do some online freelance consulting work, and I was starting to look for more.

The bottom line is that I knew I had to be open to possibilities, because Scott Walker's policies were about to have a serious negative effect on my family. So I am changing my life, and while I think it will be a good thing for me, I wouldn't have done it without his policies. So now there is another state job open (the one I just vacated), one I'm sure he'll take credit for creating.