TIRED OF BEING EXHAUSTED

This Saturday (4/25), I sent an email to my boss Mark Rentz saying I wouldn’t be requesting a renewal contract when my current one-year AECP contract at Arizona State U. ends May 15. A bit scary (since I haven’t received an offer from my job applications for September yet – that’ll happen next month if it does), but also liberating.

Nearly every day, overwhelmed with work and often several days sleep deprived, I find myself saying to myself, “I hate this job.” Now I won’t have to endure the grind after mid May. (Although I may do some PART-TIME teaching this summer till job #2 comes in.)

Meanwhile, I’m plugging away at my job applications when I can steal time away from my unending workload at ASU:

1) Kwansei Gakuin University, near Osaka, Japan, interviewed me at the Denver conference the end of March and has been fairly insistent on my following up, so I think they really are interested. One recent email said, “We are on tiptoe with expectation …” (which might be seen as sarcastic if written by an American! Or are they just being polite?) In any case, I hope they’re serious, since, by now, I’ve had to send them a photocopy of my dissertation (178 pages!), 150-word abstracts of all my conference presentations, and an 800-word Teaching Philosophy statement in addition to the usual university transcripts, etc. They're my first choice at the moment. Good salary. It's an expanding, innovative whole educational COMPLEX (K-12, university, Tokyo center, etc.) founded by Southern Methodist missionaries in the 1800s.

2) Higher Colleges of Technology, a consortium of technical schools spread around the United Arab Emirates, which I applied to via their website back in March. I’ve passed the initial vetting process of all my qualifications, and now they are planning to set up a videoconference interview with me sometime in the near future.

3) King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, set up right next to Dhahran, where I grew up. Just sent an application this weekend. I’ve pretty much avoided Saudi Arabian university positions (Jeddah in 1995 was a wretched experience), but this one is practically in Aramco’s backyard, so it would have some familiarity and the benefit of Aramco’s freer, less toxic social environment next door for church services, expatriate friends, etc.

LITTLE OLD LECTURER FROM PASADENA

Back last fall, in order to keep my CV current for the job hunt I was already planning, I submitted proposals for two conference presentations. Both were accepted. The most recent one – April 17-19 – was at the CATESOL conference in Pasadena, California. By then it was almost superfluous – I already had job applications in the works (that needed urgent attention the same weekend!) and didn’t need it so much, but I was stuck having to present (on the special writing challenges of Arabic speakers learning English). At least I got back to LA and got to stay with some old friends, the Oldson’s, whose son was a piano student I had when I attended St. Jude’s Episcopal in Burbank in the ‘80s. And AECP covered the trip: conference registration and air ticket, plus per diem. One positive among many negatives.

REFI REPORT

I have been looking into refinancing my 6.95% mortgage loan on my San Pedro condo since last fall, when interest rates started to tumble. My January refinance application (5.725%) with Chase Morgan Bank fell through due to “insufficient income,” but now it looks definite that I’ve been approved for a 5.125% refinance through a mortgage brokerage in Phoenix, and we’re moving ahead towards closing in May. With that 1.825-point savings, I’m no longer so upset my Chase application went sour!