The Offer

So, true to their word, the private school called for me to meet with their headmaster two weeks to the day after my interview. I was prepared to regard the whole proceeding with disdain. And now I must eat tasty crow and pick my teeth with the quills.

Word must have gotten around about an inappropriate comment offered by one of the teachers when I was on the campus before, because the headmaster was prepared with a full-on demonstration, complete with charts (!), about how his school is progressive. Before he even showed me the contract or discussed the job offer in any detail, he gave me the full-court press. It was a private meeting, tete-a-tete, so it felt odd when he walked over to the easel and elaborated on their massive project ($5 million) to make the campus environmentally responsible. It was like sitting alone in the audience while a play is performed just for you.

Then came the vow that his school gives no merit-based scholarships (which I have always translated as affirmative action for white people)--only need-based financial aid, "because we have a responsibility to reflect the diversity of our city and open doors for the economically disadvantaged." I think that's an exact quote. They spend over $1 million a year on need-based aid, he told me. Holy crap, I thought at that point, now I can't just sneer and go home.

Next, we talked about my neighborhood on the West Side. He knew T's school. He knew it because his wife works with Somali immigrant women (some of whose children T teaches): she helps them to learn English and so become more independent in Buffalo. My head grew light; now I was taking the place seriously. We talked about other things, which I don't need to elaborate, but it was all extremely positive. Damn, he's a good administrator.

Then he showed me the offer, and I tried not to drool. The salary and benefits are as good as, and in some cases better than, the contracts for assistant professorships I've seen on other searches for college jobs. I mean, it's still a teaching job and not stock-brokering, but the numbers were a bit, well, startling. Somehow I managed not to sign it right then and there.

He said the Board wanted to "respect my Ph.D. and university teaching experience." Hell, the university didn't respect my Ph.D. and university teaching experience.

When I left that meeting, clutching the contract (which the headmaster had signed), two of the other teachers were there. They expressed their embarrassment over their colleague's remark at the previous interview and wished me a warm welcome.

Now the contract sits here beside me on the coffee table. T has joked that I should sign it before they take it back.

Yet, a passage from John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist keeps going through my mind. Gardner talks about a number of different jobs a novelist might take while writing--night clerk, forest watchtower-sitter, etc.--and then specifically names teaching as "too demanding" a profession and thus harmful to writing fiction. Hm. But then I recall that a very successful writer, some of whose work I admire very much, taught at this particular school once. Mm-hm.

Who am I kidding? I know I'm going to sign this thing. Crow is pretty tasty, and less filling than you might guess.

Carpe Diem?

I didn't tell you about the interview I had last week with the prep school. You may remember from a previous post that they had considered me (without my knowledge) for a teaching post a couple of years ago, and they tracked me down through the English department last month. Anyway, I agreed to go in for a series of interviews on Tuesday. It was weird.

On the way there I nurtured fantasies of a Dead Poets Society sort of gig (but without any student suicide and subsequent firing). You know, eating my lunches in a posh, mahogany-panelled room in between classes in which I found new ways to inspire my students by standing on furniture. That all seemed ok, I figured, if I got paid enough.

Well, I arrived and discovered no one had put much planning into my visit. The chair of the department had sent me an e-mail Monday afternoon--less than a day before the interview--informing me that I would teach a class on The Scarlet Letter. Good thing I reread it (a couple of years ago).

Because I am a bit of a planner, and because I did not care to look like an ass in front of a room full of students, I worried over the lesson. I spent the evening looking at crucial chapters and planning a discussion before going to bed. Then I awoke at 3 AM and neurotically rehearsed said lesson until the alarm rang at 6:30 AM.

So, after my unpleasant night with Hester Prynne, I arrived at the sprawling, 25-acre campus and jauntily strode to the main office--it was 8 AM, sharp. The chair of the department introduced himself and then promptly dropped me off in a colleague's empty classroom where I could wait. And wait. I guess they weren't ready for me.

45 minutes later, he retrieved me and thrust an itinerary into my hand. When we set up the interview, I was told I would be there from 8 AM until noon. The itinerary showed meetings until 2:30 PM. Sigh.

If only I had known that the itinerary was not real. Some of the meetings would be moved around, and one would be cancelled. I still had to roam the campus until after 2 PM, awash in confusion. I've seen more organization in single-celled bacteria.

Anyway, I met with the whole department for a chat in an enormous room which did, in fact, have mahogany panelling. I liked the younger people. There was an old-timer, as well, who has been teaching at the school for 34 years--after having a previous career at another school in New England! He is a great big guy, broad-shouldered and well over six-feet tall, but can best be described as doddering.

The only remotely Dead Poets Society-esque moment came when I taught. I gave a lesson to a group of sophomores, and they were excellent. They were, in fact, better than any college students I've ever had. Of course, the tuition at this high school runs about $12,000 per year more than my former college students' tuition, so they'd better be good. In fact, the students should probably have valets following them around, brushing off their sportcoats and carrying their books for them.

Later on I met the Head of School. Apparently she had decided to hate me before we met. I sat down in her office, and, after saying "hello," she asked me what I could possibly know about teaching in an "independent prep school" anyway? The hostility in her voice was disconcerting.

I replied that I helped to design and found a high school in California. (A damn fine college prep school, in fact.) In the middle of my sentence, though, she waved her hand dismissively at me and muttered, "Yes, yes; I read your resume."

Okey-dokey.

Somehow, I managed to struggle on. It turns out she's moving to a new job in Southern California. To the same ultra-rich town in which I grew up, in fact. She started to warm to me, which made me feel creepy. The conversation got around to the California state senator who wanted to hire me as a campaign advisor and sent me packing for graduate school in terror over the offer. At this point, the woman seemed genuinely impressed that I'd turned down a political career for academics. Things were going swimmingly.

Then the chair of the English department walked in and said I had to get to another meeting. The Head of School made the same sort of dismissive hand sweep that she'd used on me just ten minutes earlier. "Get out," she said to him, "I knew you were lingering out there!"

Then, with him standing just outside the open door directly behind me, she inveighed against him. Railed against him, really. "I hate lingerers!" she said. "He's a lingerer--always hanging outside my door! Don't you hate that type?"

I thought, "What the hell am I supposed to say?" I said nothing. You might say I felt uncomfortable.

Then it was back to lunch, eating a prepared meal in the panelled room and listening to my potential colleagues making jokes about the students. This time, they were discussing the giving out of awards.

Again, I sat silently.

By the time I got home, I was sick. I mean truly, physically sick. I spent three days with the flu. Coincidence? You decide.

Well, there has been no mention of money--but it would have to be more than the typically poor private school pay for me to give up my writing life and teach there. Harumph, I say.

Saccadic Changes (without much of anything really changing)

What a difference a week makes.

On Monday, an English teacher at one of the country's most prestigious college-prep schools called. He left a message on my answering machine informing me that the faculty there had considered me for a teaching post last year. That was news to me. I had never sent a vita or anything. All I remembered was meeting him once in graduate school a few years ago. I called him back.

Apparently an old friend, now teaching at another prep school in New England, bandied my name about so much at this school that a contingent formed with the mission of hiring me. It feels strange to have been talked about for the last few years without knowing about it. Anyway, I'm going to visit the school—right here in town—in April. The chair of the English department asked me to give a lecture, tour the school, etc. I think I would enjoy teaching literature again, getting paid for it (not much, to be sure, but a fortune when compared with the near-charity wage of a college lecturer), and finding myself in a stimulating environment for my writing. Still, the whole thing is so odd and unexpected that I'm not sure precisely what to think. I told the chair that I'd also like to coach the cross-country team if it were possible (it turns out that it is possible). Sort of a Garp impulse on my part, I suppose. I've talked with B and my Prestigious Poet Friend in Japan about the job. I'm no less confused, but I am reminded it's good to have friends. (B is easy to talk with, since he lives across the street; conversations with my PPF cost 39¢ per minute because he lives in Kobe, so his advice is more expensive.)

We'll see.

Also last week, I wrote about 5,000 words of a new novel I'm throwing away. Yet another false start. The writing was competent, I think, but if I'm not interested in the protagonist, who the hell will be? I am slowly beginning to realize that writing a draft novel every few months may not be possible for this scribbler. One manuscript per year sounds more reasonable. But maybe not--now I have to consider teaching again, since I fell ass-backward into it. Hm.

Tuesday, I found a good university press that may be interested in the first novel, which is nice. It's a press everyone knows, so their interest strokes my ego just so. Ahh. They will take around six months to get back to me, but I am reasonably certain they'll read the whole MS, at least. And perhaps I can publish without an agent after all. Hope rears its ugly head anew.

And on Friday, I ticked off another year in my early thirties with a fine party. The people were dear, I sampled nine varieties of single malt scotch in a blind test and identified most of them correctly (excellent present B), and I enjoyed having attention and gifts lavished on me (the cake, once again, will live on in legend, M!).

Earlier on the very same day, I found out my nascent kid is perfectly healthy. He will be a boy, weighs the right amount, has properly developed internal organs, and all the rest of the developmental jazz. The temptation is there, of course, to say the news was the bestest pwesent I could ever wish for. Ok, it's true. But to temper the saccharine quality of the experience, I relate for the record: on an ultrasound he looks like Skeletor.