The Heat of Summer
As the Steve Miller Band song likes to remind us, “time keeps on slipping, into the future…” This past year was no exception.
It feels like just yesterday was the summer of 2018. My life was consumed with worries about finishing my PhD dissertation, trying to hold a relationship together, and feeling like a restless country boy trapped in a city too big for me.
I still remember the beginning of last summer. I had been home visiting family in Ohio when out of the blue a teaching offer appeared in Michigan. After an interview and visit I took the job offer–my first gig teaching Global Studies full time.
In a few short months my whole world was turned upside down. A decade of living in NYC came to an abrupt end. The relationship I had been struggling to hold together fell apart. My dissertation moved into a six month period of do-or-die writing and revisions. And so I packed up half of life and jumped full steam into teaching.
For the first time in years I was living alone, literally and figuratively. But I was so busy with adjusting to a new university and town and schedule that it hardly mattered–I was also doing what I love, teaching.
And now a year has come and come.
I completed my doctoral dissertation and graduated, finally bringing to an end a decade of work and struggle. The sense of relief having completed my PhD was not as great as I had expected, but this may in part be due to the immediate void of PhD work being filled by worries about future employment and the seemingly endless rounds of job applications that defines the period of transition in academic life all junior faculty endure.
Packing up for yet another move.
And so I sit here in the July heat, degree in hand, gainfully unemployed, hoping that one of my job applications will land something permanent, or at the very least, put off for another year the quest for permanent gainful employment.
Once again it’s the start of summer. Once more I’m back with family in Ohio, except this time my entire life is in boxes, with no next destination having appeared on the horizon.
Listening to the daily news this week, the Fly Like an Eagle song seems to be just as relevant as when it was first written:
But this summer heat is not really conducive to deep and sustained political reflections, so I’ll have to delve into the issue of American immigrant concentration camps, geopolitical uncertainties, and climate change chaos in a future post.
For now it’s enough to reflect on how quickly a year can go bye…
