I found someone to pay me money to talk about math!!

Well, if you are a regular follower of this blog (and let's face it, who isn't?), you know that I have had some anxiety as to whether or not I would get a job. Well that anxiety is gone as I was offered not one but two jobs! One was at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith, and the other was at Georgia College and State University.

Now, I will briefly discuss some of the perceived negatives. Both are in regions that have bad reputations, both have an incredibly heavy teaching load, and neither has any sort of reputation as far as research goes. These are all things I have thought about, but I must say that they pale in comparison to this simple fact: I will have a job next year!!!

In fact, my visits to both schools were incredibly good. Both places had a lot of similarities, and, what is most important, they both had faculties where I could see myself fitting in well. In the end, the Arkansas job simply was a better position (Assistant Professor vs. Lecturer) that required three less credit hours of teaching a semester, and at UA Fort Smith there was more of an opportunity to teach upper level classes and be involved with undergraduate research. Oh, and they offered more money. That never hurts. So, at least for the next four years, my new home is in Arkansas!

This job has some other qualities that I really liked. One is that the faculty is very young, allowing me to relate to them easier. This is at least partly because the school has only been a 4 year college for the last seven years (before that, they were primarily a community college). So I have a chance to be a part of a department that is on the rise, and I may even have a chance to have a say in how it grows. The head of the department is very friendly, and there is even a Western New York connection; two members of the faculty earned their PhD from SUNY Buffalo! They aren't big football fans, but I will help change that...

All in all, this is a golden opportunity in what is an incredibly crappy economy. I have even said that this means that I beat the great depression, which is not that much hyperbole (not to be confused with equations of the form y=1/x). I have found over the last year that I really like teaching, even (and sometimes especially) when that teaching includes lower level classes. I have the opportunity to do something I love, which is talking to people about math, in what I think will be a fantastic environment. A gigantic weight is off of my shoulders; I have found a job in Academia.

The Doctor is in

The day that I thought would never come came, and I passed my defense! I will hereby only answer to Dr. Pragel! Ok, that last statement isn't true, since I am almost, but not quite, that pretentious, but it still feels good. I have gone through a lot, including the long hours of my first year, the dreaded qualifying exams, finding out in the middle that a big chunk of my thesis had already been solved, and losing my office, picture and funding. But I came out the other side ok.

Now, there is still the issue of finding a job, since it would not be fun to have a PhD and be unemployed. As I mentioned before, I had a phone interview with Georgia College and State University, and that turned into an actual interview. I have also interviewed at University of Arkansas, Fort Smith. Both trips went well, and I really enjoyed meeting both departments. Now I get to play the waiting game (the waiting game sucks, lets play Hungry Hungry Hippos!).

As much as I don't like waiting, I do like the fact that I now have options. For a while, I had gotten no responses, and now, to have these two interviews, plus an additional one later this week at Orange County Community College (New York, not California), makes me much more confident about my future. That is, my future as Dr. Daniel Pragel.