ON TENURE

Today is officially my three-year anniversary at work. Why, it seems like just yesterday I spent the morning filling out forms with HR, then half of the afternoon reading the RD manual, then the rest of the day looking up funny videos on Youtube. (If I were a lesser man, I would make a smarmy joke here - something along the lines of "Oh wait - that WAS yesterday!" and the laugh track would kick in.) As it turns out, due to union rules, I received tenure today.

I'm not entirely sure what tenure is/does. I'm told that if I'm going to be fired, I have to be fired for cause (for example, the school can't just decide to not renew my contract). As I've gotten good evaluations each year I've been here, I wasn't worried about my contract not being renewed. I figure if I get fired for cause, it's going to be "for cause." I'm going to earn that firing.

I was actually unsure about working here in the first place. They said it was a one-year contract, and at the time I was still set on getting into a doctorate program after a year. I took the job and started looking for new ones almost immediately (about a week after I started here, a job opened up at UC-Santa Barbara, which seems VERY appealing when the weather turns cold). And despite my efforts to find another job, nothing has worked out just yet.

Not that it's been all doom and gloom. I've met some great people, both within the position and outside of it. Obviously, none of that would have happened had I bolted after one year. There would be no Bradley Stevenson jokes, the best man speech at Wes and Retha's wedding would have been a little different, and who knows what would have happened with improv stuff?

Aside from what-ifs, I never thought I would be tenured in an entry-level job. I had four years of management experience coming into the position, and saw it as a transitory thing, a brief stopping point before moving into a mid-level job. I'm ready to move on, as I wrote about a month ago, but today is a day of realization for me - that three years and one week ago, the Bears beat the Cardinals on a Devin Hester punt return.