It's the corn heat. (or, If you're struggling to get an academic job, I think I know why)

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I think I was in hour four of the new faculty orientation when my mind started wandering, eventually landing on a thought that made me sit up in my chair. It was something to the effect of:

I think this country is in way worse shape than we’re really recognizing.

I’m a pessimist — I’ve always been a pessimist. Dark, gloomy thoughts are no stranger to me, and I generally regarded this country as teetering on the brink of falling apart way before Trump was ever elected. And yet, there really was something different I was seeing.

When I showed up at the orientation — at 8:45am, because the Midwest loves an early meeting and I suppose I’ll eventually get used to that — I was nervous. The nervousness hit me on the walk over, all at once. But it all came down at once, and I thought to myself that I was going to be the oldest person in the room by a decade or two, and for whatever reason, that was suddenly really bothering me in a deep way.

This is related to all sorts of things that have nothing to do with my job, where I’m living, or really anything else that I control. I made a series of decisions over the last twenty years to teach at my old institution that simply didn’t offer tenure or any kind of room for advancement beyond just teaching the same classes you always taught. I accepted this — hell, I embraced it — I honestly thought it was great in the beginning. All the faculty is treated equally, with no difference between tenure and non-tenure! No one has tenure — it’s great!, I thought. Except that’s not really the way things worked out.

Anyway, years later I find myself 52 — my birthday was earlier this week — and having never gotten tenure or advanced in rank as a professor. Who cares, right? That’s what I always thought. I was a good college instructor in NYC, and I made a difference and teaching classes I loved and that’s all that matters, I thought. I got paid and I could pay my bills, I was doing fine. But… oh yeah, my friends who jumped on board and did all the things you’re supposed to do with a traditional college teaching job — well, they’re making much better money now. They’re actively a part of a whole art-academia world that either didn’t exist when I first started, or I just had no idea it was ever there. And me, I feel left behind — I gave everything I had to an “alternative” school with its own system that doesn’t make sense to most outsiders. And then somehow, twenty years later, I’m here starting over again in central Illinois. (I know — there are terrible things happening in this world and if the worst that happens to me is my previous employer was a little screwed up, I should count myself lucky, and I do.)

So that’s what was swirling in my head as I walked in the room and then — instantly — everything just fell away. Instead of walking in and finding myself to be twice the age of most of the other first-day-on-the-job instructors like I thought I would, I was surrounded by people who looked like me. As we introduced ourselves (over and over and over, with every new speaker coming in every 20 minutes and asking us to re-introduce ourselves), I realized most of the people were at least my age, some of them older. It was wild. There were no newly minted PhDs or MFAs, no instructors who had only TAed a few classes here and there. Instead, I was surrounded by people with 20+ year teaching histories, who had given up tenure in some cases to accept this job. It took a while for this to sink in. (Also, if you’ve been struggling trying to get a job in academia, even an entry level one, this might be why! You are not competing against recent graduates for jobs. You’re competing against people who have been doing this for years and years. Makes the field much harder to clear. Meanwhile, while the Prager U’s of the world are waiting to scoop up right wing instructors, the rest of us are out here duking it out for even the most basic job.)

It didn’t make sense at first, but then it slowly did. One by one, little hints of things that caused people to give up what seemed like really fantastic circumstances to come here. People were talking in circumspect ways about cultural shifts in their old institutions (I’ve had to write and rewrite this section many times because in previous versions, I’ve given examples — but I’m very anxious about betraying anyone’s trust or revealing personal stories. Just please, take my word for it: they’re responding to their institutions shifting to the right). Or maybe they watched the small town they lived in tilt in a way politically that made them nervous.

Bear in mind, these are not purple-haired radicals (my apologies to purple-haired academics who are always taking the brunt of the culture wars) who specialize in Gender Studies or Middle Eastern Studies, two fields I understand are under attack now. I’m talking about Physics professors and Economics professors; nerdy folks in creased button-down shirts who built great careers in R1 universities, only to really wonder what the future was going to be like for them if they stuck around. These are people who are probably either moderate Democrats or liberal-leaning Republicans — and yet what they saw happening at their old institutions made them concerned enough that they were willing to pick up and move and take a new job, midlife, starting over.

Even as I’m writing this, I’m sort of struggling with how completely odd and also devastating this is. If totally non-radical — but serious and experienced — professors are feeling pushed out of their institutions, what does that mean for the climate at these places? What sort of brain drain is happening in this country?

The story of the brilliant professor somehow stifled because of “woke-ism” or political correctness — this story has been told in the media over and over and over. And to an extent — a much smaller, more subtle extent than I think has played out in the media — I get those concerns. But that’s not what I was seeing here. There’s a stark difference between talking to someone who feels as though their free speech was being stifled by their employer, as opposed to someone who thinks their gay kid might get killed because of the political rhetoric flying around. One of those two sucks and needs to be talked about and figured out so that all sides can work things out and we can makes something work so everyone feels heard; the other — well, it’s not an overstatement to say I’d grab my kid, pack my bags, and go running out the door the second I could. One is annoying and crappy; the other is sheer terror.

Or, for that matter, it’s different than the career state school employee who now wonders if their school’s budget is going to be cut to shreds because of how the winds were shifting in their state, wiping out their life’s work in the process. There were people I met during the orientation who simply fit that category as well — but that’s enough to terrorize any middle aged academic. Again, what an unthinkable and frightening situation — and what a brain drain away from an affordable education.

Look, all of this is great for me. It means I’m surrounded by incredibly talented, smart, experienced educators who I might actually be friends with because we have a lot in common. I’m happy to be living in an accepting community and teaching at a supportive school. But good lord, could anything be worse for our country?

I’ll just add to this: this isn’t really Trump. I mean it is, and he’s made things far worse, but no one in their mid 50s leaves a good job with good pay and a steady future purely because some guy got elected to office less than a year ago. You’d ride it out, if things weren’t already headed in a bad direction. Presidents come and go, but meanwhile this has all been many, many years in the making, and somehow we didn’t see it. Again, while the media has been caught up talking about oh won’t someone please think of the poor campus conservatives? the right wing has been taking hold, digging in, and making changes. Trump didn’t wave a magic wand and do something without a whole lot of help. This has been a lengthy process, and some of us — myself included — mostly missed it. We’re just seeing the fruits of it now.

Anyway. Get ready for a sharp pivot:

This weekend, we went to the Sweet Corn Circus.

It was really more of a street festival than an actual circus, although there were plenty of circus performers around. Now and then they’d spin some plates or do random acrobatics; I think we missed the main performances. We plan to circle back and catch an actual full-on circus performance later in the year.

But the event meant that there were street vendors selling all sorts of things and junk food and a huge line for roasted corn on the cob. It was just a fun, festive event — a way of supporting local businesses and giving local artists and entrepreneurs a place to sell their wares.

There were vendors selling “these colors don’t run”/”freedom isn’t free” t-shirts next to the Prairie Pride Coalition (an LGBTQ+ org), rainbow flags, and Wiccan vendors. “Jesus loves you” merch next to a shirt that read “I’m not much to look at, but I fuck like the government.” (Ok in case you don’t believe me on the latter, here’s a pic.)

Just wild stuff, in a weird mash-up of America.

Honestly, this is great — I have zero problems with people bringing MAGA stuff or rah-rah pro-America stuff if there’s other things in the mix to even it all out and everyone gets to say what they want to say and express themselves. I am not threatened by your “back the blue!” shirts, nor am I especially interested in your “God is a woman” shirts. Can’t I just be neither? Oh wait, yes. I’m glad they both get to live side by side. I’ll just happily buy the cheese popcorn in huge, $5 bags and go home in peace. (Seriously, the cheese popcorn is GOOD. If ever you find yourself in Normal, IL, get the cheese popcorn. It’s clearly terrible for you. But so delicious.)

I have to mention the weather: the temperatures here have gone down to the low 80s/high 70s, which is incredible. Because when we first moved in, we were dealing with what a lot of people here called the “corn heat” (my new home is surrounded on all sides by cornfields and other agricultural staples). Hopefully we’re getting a break from that — that would be great, because we don’t yet have a car, so I’m on foot for everything, in that blazing hot heat.

But “corn heat” is what some of our neighbors have referred to it as, and I don’t doubt them. The specific conditions it takes to grow corn — and other crops — is hot and humid, at least for a while. And that’s what we’re facing here in July and August. We’re talking heat indexes of 115 or so, day in and day out.

Everyone complains about the weather. Everyone. All the time. It’s a constant topic of conversation.

I find this a bit odd, given that it’s almost — almost — this hot in NYC, only in NYC we don’t all have central AC and a lot of people have to wear suits to work and have to take the subway every day. Also here there’s a lot of trees and greenery (I’m talking about the “city” part of this region, not the farms which I’ll get to in a bit) and I swear that makes a huge difference. Here, everyone has their central AC turned to 72 at least, meaning as long as you never go outside — ok that is a scary thing to consider, but it’s practical — you’re fine.

The previous owners of the house we now own let a pumpkin go to rot in the backyard, and now, magically, we have a pumpkin patch. Just letting a pumpkin sit until it breaks down into nothing results in it planting itself again, and then those seeds come bursting out into our yard. Every time it rains here — and when it rains, it’s nothing like out East; this is a torrential downpour literally every time, with crazy lightning and thunder all around you — the pumpkin vine grows another foot or more. I’m trying to train it to stay off our patio, but I’m losing to nature. We’re going to have so many pumpkins (if the rabbits and squirrels don’t get to it) because there are so many blossoms on those vines. I stuck a few kale and collard plants into the ground nearby, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they get strangled out by the pumpkins.

When it rains, especially at night (mostly at night), I wake up and watch it. It’s incredible. It’s like a hurricane would be on the East Coast. You don’t want to be caught out there because it absolutely pours like crazy. We’ve only been here a few weeks and there’s already been a bunch of times I wanted to wake Jeff up from a deep sleep to point out, Hey — this is an amazing storm. But I haven’t, because I know the next one is coming really soon.

A few days ago, we took the bus (they have a great local bus service here that for $1.25 will take you anywhere in the twin cities) to Walmart to buy groceries and other stuff you buy at Walmart. There, I caught sight of something I was totally unprepared to see: a wind farm, along with some kind of crop farm (I’m too much of a city slicker to know what kind — not corn; it was low, but I have no idea what was happening there).

I was stopped dead in my tracks. What art, what… anything… could compete with this? Just acres and acres and acres of fields with gigantic turbines and crops and… I can’t even find the words. It was jaw-droppingly beautiful, just these incredible machines, bigger than I ever could have imagined, spinning away in the wind. Why does installation art even exist? Why even art at all? What could be more impressive than this? I was totally awe-struck.

I don’t really know the controversy about wind farms vs nuclear or whatever — I’ve stayed out of all that and I’m totally oblivious, so this is no comment on Phil Murphy and what he’s done with investment in NJ and wind farms. This was just me, looking at some crazy ass windmills and being mesmerized by their size and shape and power. I just watched it, at the edge of the Walmart bus stop, with my week’s worth of groceries in tow and insanely lowly priced, and watched the windmills turn.

And then the bus showed up and I went home.

Anyway. We start school this week. I’m really excited.

xo — Amy