20141117.0653

I am doing what I can to ramp up my job search amid the oncoming end of the term (only three weeks to go--frightening), my freelance work (another project due Wednesday, and I have hardly begun), and some service projects with which I am struggling (Travels in Genre and Medievalism--please contribute--and scouring journal articles for annotations). As part of that, I will be traveling to the MLA convention in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in January, where a number of the jobs for which I have applied will be conducting interviews. And because I am not wealthy, I am asking for help to support that effort.

It is not a thing with which I am thrilled. I dislike having to outright ask for help, to admit that the way I have done things hitherto has not sufficed to my needs and the needs of my family. And I anticipate objections, namely that my asking confirms the parasitic nature of my professional endeavors and that I am seeking too high a post instead of starting at the bottom and working my way up. I do not know how to address the first, except to say that a single instance does not a whole profession make; that I need to ask at this point in time, after having worked diligently in the field for many years and not at all often getting the "time off" which is thrown in the faces of those whose work is like mine, does not mean that I always do or that all do. Hasty generalization is a fallacy. But for the second objection, I do have a response; I did start at the bottom, first working as an adjunct at a two-year college, then earning a full-time theoretically-continuing spot there, then moving (slightly south of laterally, professionally) to a full-time contract position at a state university. If I am supposed to be moving up, and attendance at the MLA convention, despite financial concerns and the socioeconomic stratification they entail, is almost prerequisite for doing so (there are some jobs that do not oblige me to interview there, but many will only interview there), then it should not be thought odd that I seek to travel there. And I can but go where the work is--or promises to be. Or am I a serf, bound to a single place in the world and expected to toil on behalf of feudal/corporate masters and with few rights or hope?

As I note, I am not happy to ask outright for money. I am not happy to admit to my own incapacities of the moment. But I would be far less happy to "suck it up" and not make the solid, honest attempt to secure a better future for myself and my family. My own pride as a person is far less than my responsibility as a husband and father; I am annoyed and only annoyed at sacrificing the one--which has done me little good, I might add--for the other. And I would still appreciate the hand up--I am, after all, looking for a shot at work.