The Market, Part Three

Yay! It's part three of my posts about my experience on the job market. In Part One I discussed the realities of the academic job market in the humanities. In Part Two I discussed more specifics: the job sites I used, the types of positions I applied for, and the materials I used in my application. In this third part, I am going to talk about my specific search-- my application tracking processes and the three takeaways that I've grasped onto.

In the second half of this post I summarize my spring semester at Madison College.

Job Market Discussion

One of the smartest things that my friend and job market guru Dr. Kat O'Meara told me at the beginning of this process was to record everything. And so I did. The two documents that I used to keep track of my job applications were a Google Spreadsheet and a Pinterest board. These two trackers kept my information organized and also gave me visuals of the places that I applied, which I liked.

The job market spreadsheet was something that I went to back to time and time again. I color-coded the spreadsheet so that I could see, at a glance, where I was at with each application. On the spreadsheet I tracked details like, where the schools are, what they required in the applications, and most importantly, when I needed to submit the applications. In the fall of 2017, I applied to 21 schools and had a total of five interviews. The amount of interviews to jobs that I applied for may seem small, but I was actually very happy to get the interviews that I did, and I do feel like they were all good experiences. On the MLA JIL site that I discussed in the previous job market post, there were roughly 300 jobs posted this year. I would assume that probably at least 50 of them I was not eligible to apply for. So, as a very rough estimate, I applied to about 8% of the available jobs. I will discuss more about how I chose the jobs to apply for below. 

The Pinterest board served much less of a practical purpose, but I used it almost like the closing of the application. Once everything was submitted for a particular job application, I would pin the website of the school to board and try to find a pretty picture to represent it. That simple practice took me away from the minute and worrisome details of the application process and gave me something to celebrate-- another job done and added to the board! Even now, I like to go back to the board and take a look over the images collected and remember the effort put into the search. 

At the end of the process, just for fun, I also mapped out the places that I had applied to geographically. It is interesting for me to see the different places (literally) that my life could have gone based on these applications: 

As I reflect back on this process and remember the highs and lows of the experience, there are three characteristics that I think are worth making note of to hold onto during trying processes like these: 

1. Individuality: This item is both a strength and a weakness. One way that I think individuality must be valued is that each person must do what is right for them. I've heard of all sorts of stories of people on the job market. I've heard of people applying for one job and getting it! I've heard of people applying for 70, 80, 100 jobs to receive one or two offers. I've heard of people applying for maybe, three or four jobs, and getting offers from all four. There is no right or wrong way to apply for jobs; the job market must be approached based on the way that each person feels is appropriate. For me, my husband and I chose places that were either close to home or places to which we wouldn't mind moving. That eliminated some portions of the country just on that standard alone. In addition, I didn't apply for any jobs that I didn't think I would like. This may have been a mistake, but I felt like I needed to be comfortable with knowing I could do the job described in the ad in order to apply. 

On the negative side, individuality can also mean that a person becomes quite self-consumed. For a period of time, all I thought about was how to market myself in the best way possible, and that can be quite self-consuming. I just knew that once my applications were in I had to shake off that mindset. 

2. Tenacity: This is probably not a surprise to anyone, but this process was tiring. From the months of August to December 2016 I was, I felt like, constantly researching, writing, editing, or submitting applications. I don't think there were two applications that were the same. That meant that for every single application I had to research the job ad, the school, and the department and adjust all my materials accordingly. Though, I did spend more time on this process for some schools than for others. There is no one application to submit, and the constant changing was wearing. 

In addition, this process can be draining self-esteem wise. Like I said above, this is a very self-consuming act where a person tries to position themselves as the best version of themselves on a few sheets of paper. Because of that, this process can take a good hit on a person's self-esteem. While the job site wiki is helpful, as are job market groups like one I joined on Facebook, it can be disheartening seeing other people get a lot of interviews or jobs get taken that I may have really wanted. For me, sometimes seeing those things made me less motivated to work on my materials and get stuff out. Often I had to grit my teeth, push through, and just summon the tenacity to get it done. 

3. Perspective: The last item that was worth noting through this process was that of perspective. I've alluded to this point in the previous two, but I feel like it was very easy to get swept up into this world of "what will happen" and "where will we live" and "what if this is all for nothing." Even getting interviews was nerve wracking, as I'd research the school, try to brainstorm questions that they might ask me, prepare an outfit, and make sure my technology was working properly. There was a lot of energy put towards these steps, and it was easy to get lost in that. I'm grateful that I have my husband, dogs, and supportive community to help me take moments to enjoy the everyday, but I would say that during the fall semester the job market applications were never far from my mind. Keeping perspective is really important. Getting or not getting a job didn't mean that I succeeded or failed. Sending out just one more application didn't mean that I was any better or worse of a person. It was important to keep that perspective. 

This articulation of these three characteristics brought to mind one of my all time favorite quotes, which I may have shared before, from author J.K. Rowling in her book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This is the attitude that both myself and my husband tried to exhibit throughout all the work and stress and unknowns and possibilities of the job search, and I think it's what got me through: 

Semester Discussion

On that note, I'd like to wrap up this post by giving an overview of my past semester at Madison College. I taught a 7:00 AM Technical Reporting class to five engineering students, and I taught an 8:30 AM English 2 class. I also worked about 10 hours/week through the Madison College Writing Center, in person at two different campuses and online. I enjoyed my time in each capacity of this past semester. 

My time in the Writing Center was rewarding in ways that teaching isn't always rewarding. I felt like in that time I was able to give students concrete feedback on a draft or an idea and then turn them loose to take that feedback or not. During that time, I was invested in the students and in helping them succeed, but I didn't have the added responsibility of ensuring that the changes or updates were implemented. I enjoyed that portion of the work, as well getting to interact with a variety of students and colleagues and get to see some pretty cool assignment prompts.

My Technical Reporting class was great. I was concerned prior to the semester about having a class at 7:00 AM, especially one with so few students; however, the class couldn't have been better. Four of the students were peers in the same program, and the fifth student was also a science/ engineering student, so I was glad that they had some commonalities. We worked through four projects throughout the semester. The two main projects were a research report and a proposal. Two of the students liked the report best, and one liked the proposal best. We also did presentations for the proposals, which was the other two students' favorite project of the course. The students commented on learning about the intricacy of professional documents, and they also talked about learning how to differentiate between informative and persuasive communication styles. I enjoyed working with these students this semester. 

The English 2 class was the portion of the semester that was the most surprising. I've taught English 2 at three different institutions before teaching it at Madison College this semester, but I used a different course sequence than I ever had previously, and my students responded really positively to it. I still had the students complete five projects, but instead of having the projects connect via a theme or a text, the projects all built upon each other. In the end, the students wrote manuscripts for academic journals based on research both about the journals and the topic of their choice. Over half the class said they liked this project best, and over one third of the class said it was the most informative project. 

The final compositions showed the students interest in the project as well. The research, formatting, depth of knowledge, and personal engagement that the students showed was really exceptional. I was also genuinely interested in reading almost all of the manuscripts, which again points to the time and effort the students put into writing them. I read about the "Pacific Garbage Patch," the plight of sharks around the world, Middle Eastern architecture, and sexism in America, to name just a few topics.

Throughout the course we read the textbook Habits of the Creative Mind, which I really liked. Towards the the end of the class we watched Elizabeth Gilbert's TEDTalk, "Your Elusive Genius," and I asked the students: what does creativity look like or mean to you? The students came up with these answers, and I was glad to see them stretching themselves and thinking about the content that we had been discussing: 

So, at the end of all this, I'll leave you with this same question: What does creativity mean to you? May it take you wonderful places. 

The Market, Part Two

In February, I published the first in an intended series of three blogs about my experience on the academic job market. In that post, I discussed my journey through graduate school, and I outlined the general tiers of academic institutions. In this post, I will discuss the rankings of paid academic positions, and then provide templates for my own materials that I used on the job market. Again, I in no way claim to be an expert in these matters, and I explicitly say that not to devalue my own experience but to qualify it as just that-- experience. In many ways, the academic life can be somewhat bipolar in that it asks professors and students to choose areas of research and scholarship that interest them, but it also, often, pushes away personal time, agency, and care. I believe that scholars must and should work to claim and exercise their own agency through this journey, and that is grounded in experience.

So, this is my experience on the academic job market.

Academic jobs in English, rhetoric, and writing come out one time a year, and they mostly come out on one list. This is so opposite of what normal people experience in the job market, but it's the reality of our field (and, I believe, many other academic fields). This list is called the Modern Language Association of America Job Information List, or the MLA JIL. This list is published in mid-September, and it contains the majority of the job postings in the entire field for the upcoming (read one year away) academic year. Now, there are some pre-JIL postings that sometime come out prior to this date, and those are usually on individual listserves or on the Rhetoric/Composition Wiki. Jobs are also continuously posted on HigherEdJobs and ChronicleVitae. One other place where job ads are aggregated is on Rhet Map, which draws the adds from the MLA JIL and shows them according to location. Jim Ridolfo puts this together, and it is a great service to job seekers.

I used all of these resources to search for job postings. From about mid-August to mid-December I looked at one or more of these lists probably at least four days a week. The Rhet/Comp Wiki is especially helpful/problematic to check because it can be updated by community members who log on and update the individual adds with the status of their applications/ interviews, etc. To the right is one example of a post on the site from my alma mater, ASU.

These job lists come out and they list a variety of items that you can also see in this example. Items like, the title of the position, the focus of the position, a description of what the ideal candidate will focus on and/or do, the deadline for submission of materials, and sometimes (not in this case) a list of materials that the committee would like to see from the candidate. To find that information for this position the candidate would have to click on the actual link where the job is posted, in this case ChronicleVitae, in order to see what materials they need to submit for the job. I will discuss those materials coming up.

One of the most important items that these job ads list are the title of the position. In this case, the title of the position is "TT Asst. Professor." What that means is this position is listed for as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor position. Here is a list of the different kinds of teaching positions that one will generally encounter at American institutions of higher education:

Now, there are, of course, exceptions to these rankings, contract, and promotion systems, which I why I labeled them all starting with "generally." While adjuncting is by far the most tenuous and underpaid type of professorship, some institutions, like Madison College, have built in pay advancement systems. One of the main issues with being an adjunct, though, is that one only gets work if there are classes available that full time professors don't want or need. Instructors or lecturers still generally teach very heavy course loads (as many as 5/5), but their contracts are usually yearly, so there is a bit more stability; some of these positions also have internal ranking and promotion systems. Assistant, Associate, and Full professorships are the types of professorships that are most generally known to the public and considered "tenure track," although there are exceptions to this system as well. An Assistant Professor, despite the name, is a full-time professor who is part of whatever type of promotion system (tenure or non) that the institution uses. In a tenure-track system, by the time one is an Associate Professor and almost always by the time/ as one becomes a Full Professor, they are tenured and no longer tenure track.

Clicking over to Facebook just after writing the proceeding paragraph, I see that Dr. Karen Kelsky of The Professor Is In has shared this article published today (April 11, 2018) in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which asks in its title "How Much Did Professors Earn This Year?" To find specific earning statistics at any given university, take a look at Chronicle Data. The article answers that question with the following statements:

"Full-time faculty earned an average of 3 percent more than they did in the prior academic year. But the salary increase was cut by nearly two-thirds, to 1.1 percent, after adjusting for inflation. The average salary ranged widely, depending on rank: Full professors earned $104,820, associate professors made $81,274, and assistant professors took in $70,791. The average pay for lecturers was about $57,000 while, for instructors, it was $59,400. The AAUP's analysis also found salary compression at 892 institutions" (June). 

Some other troubling findings published in this article are the fact that "93 percent of all reporting institutions pay men more than women at the same rank... on average women made 90 cents on the dollar compared to men at the same rank this year" and with "the average age of a Ph.D. completion at 32," career trajectory starts much later "than most white-collar workers" (June). This is the state of the academic world that hopeful applicants, like myself, are currently entering.

In terms of what types of documents that job search committees actually want to see, there is also quite a range. Each committee wants to see something a little different, so each application takes quite a bit of time to gather and send the specific documents to the submission portal for that school. I was lucky enough to have friends and colleagues who shared their materials, so here are some of my material templates that I sent out in my job applications this past fall of 2017:

• Cover Letter
• Curriculum Vitae
• Teaching Portfolio 
• Teaching Philosophy, Statement of Research, Sample Syllabi, Teaching Evaluations
• Writing Sample
• Statement of Administrative Philosophy 
• Statement of Faith 

Like I said, I had many friends who supported me in this application process. One friend is Dr. Kat O'Meara, an Assistant Professor Rhetoric and Composition and Director of Composition at Emporia State University. During her application process, she wrote a blog post for 4Cs called "Managing PhDTSD." This article was very helpful to me as I jumped into my job application process.

That's it for my second market post! Now please enjoy these cute photos of my dogs because they are cute:

FINLEY

LACY

The Market, Part One

Snowy Day in Cottage Grove, WI

When I initially set out to write about my experience on the job market I figured I would do a quick blog, give some advice, and then wrap it up. As I sit in my office on this snowy day in late February, though, I realize that what I have gone through the past six months can't just be summed up in a quick advice blog. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on the job search or academia in any way; instead I follow the advice of those who are experts in the field, like Karen Kelsky, Ph.D. who runs The Professor Is In and wrote a book by the same name. While I don't claim to be any kind of expert, I do realize that the work and struggles I've faced over the past six months in my job search may be helpful to relay to others who are unfamiliar with this field or perhaps are starting on a similar journey to my own. As I reflect, I have realized that my current decisions do have a lot to do with decisions that I've made over the past ten years, opportunities that I've been given, and the realities of the academic market. So, in what I'm now planning as a three part series, I will begin my first post by giving some background on the realities of working as a Ph.D. in the humanities and discuss my personal journey that has gotten me to this point.

Here we go.

The Academic Market

Within academia it is no secret that secure jobs for Ph.D.s are few and far between. According to the most recent MLA Report on the Survey of Earned Doctorates, these are the statistics of job acquisition specifically of Ph.D.s in history and the humanities in 2014 (the most recent collection of data reported):

"Of the 1,533 doctorate recipients in letters in 2014, 1,293 reported their postgraduate status. Of that number, 47.1% reported having definite employment at the time of graduation, 7.1% had definite postdoctoral study, and 41.9% were seeking positions."

In a field where over 40% of graduates are looking for jobs, it is clear that a Ph.D. is no guarantee of employment. This issue is compounded by the number of Ph.D.s who graduate in a year. Professor Sharon O'Dair says:

"In its annual reports, the MLA separates doctorates in literature from those in rhetoric and composition, creative writing, and speech and rhetorical studies; if you total all of those, the current numbers are closer to 1,200 per year."

An article in The Atlantic discuss the amount of time it takes to earn a Ph.D. in the humanities. In this article, Laura McKenna says that data collected between 1994 to 2014 insinuates that humanities Ph.D.s are taking a median time of 10.70 years. McKenna goes on to say:

"Consequently, more than 12 percent of Ph.D.s complete their doctoral programs with over $70,000 of combined undergraduate and graduate student-loan debt."

Things aren't looking great! On top of these statistics, though, there are countless stories of fatigue, overexertion, and gendered, raced, and socially marginalizing realities in the academy. In her article "Why I Collapsed On the Job," Katerina Bodovski tells the story of working to the point of literal, physical collapse once she got a job. She writes:

"My job description stipulates that I should spend 60 percent of my time on research, 30 percent on teaching, and 10 percent on service"

Yet, Bodovski talks about a reality of spending nearly 100 percent of her working time on tasks that would fall under teaching and service, yet her job depended on her keeping up with the research component of her work. This created an untenable situation that she could no longer physically or mentally cope with prior to her physical collapse. She is back at her job now, but she says that she wrote this article because she "lost the ability to help herself" and she wants to warn others against that same silent, sneaky fate.

Now, I include all of this just to set the stage for the job market that I willingly chose to enter in August of 2017. I was made pretty well aware of these realities during my first semester of my MA in English Studies at Illinois State University. In that semester I took a required course called ENG 401: Introduction to Graduate School. My professor was Dr. Christopher Breu, and I have since called him "the professor that tells the truth." In that class, he told us, this work is not worth doing unless you love it. He, obviously, does love it, but his point was that the quality of life, return on time investment, and compensation of most jobs does not equal the time and effort put into obtaining the degrees necessary to do this work unless we intrinsically value the work itself.

My Personal Journey

Downtown Bloomington, IL

While I did not go into the field of Rhetoric and Composition unaware of the challenges that exist, but I probably did come in slightly naive. I made the decision to continue in my MA program even after taking Dr. Breu's class, and then halfway through I applied to Ph.D. programs. My decision had been made, but it was not always easy. I remember nights during my MA of sitting up late at my computer just crying that I'd never get my work done, let alone get through my program. I remember moments waiting by bus stops on ASU's campus choking back tears because I didn't know if this was the right choice.

On the other side of the Ph.D., though, I've had time to reevaluate and really consider what it is that is important to me. Also, because of some wonderful advice and the amazing support of my husband, I have had the privilege to be able to consciously skirt around some of the time and financial struggles that many face. When I was applying for graduate school one of my professor's at Olivet Nazarene University, Dr. Rebecca Belcher-Rankin, told me that I should never earn a degree without an assistantship. I took that advice very literally, and I chose my schools based not only on where I was accepted and had strong programs but on the assistantships that they could offer. That brought us to the cornfields of Bloomington-Normal, IL and to the beautiful desert of Tempe, AZ.

I took one year off in between my BA and starting my MA. I had gotten married the August following my BA graduation in May, and I took that year to spend time with my husband, to adjunct at my alma mater, and to apply for graduate school. I applied to maybe ten schools' literature programs, and I was accepted at Illinois State University, University of Colorado-Denver, and Northwestern State University. I received an assistantship offer from ISU, so I went there. It was a fairly easy decision to accept the offer of a paid for, two year program. It turned out to be a great choice because after one semester in the literature focus of the English studies major I decided to switch to the Rhetoric and Composition focus, and I could do that without losing any time or credits. That made the decision to switch concentrations easy, and that is probably one of the best decisions I've ever made because it set me up to study texts and people that I am really passionate about and opened up more job opportunities than those that are typically available for literature Ph.D.s.

The decision to accept the offer to get my doctorate was a little more tricky. We were living in Bloomington, IL, and I applied to three schools for my Ph.D. This is far fewer applications than one would normally send out, but I only applied to schools in places that my husband and I both wanted to live, and I really had the sense that if I was meant to get my Ph.D. then I would be accepted at one of the three schools. During my final two semesters at ISU while I was taking classes, teaching, and writing my thesis, I was applying to these schools. I applied to the rhetoric and composition programs at University of Colorado-Boulder, University of Madison-Wisconsin, and Arizona State University. I was not accepted at Boulder, I was waitlisted at Madison, but I received an acceptance and full assistantship (i.e. I didn't pay tuition and was paid a stipend to teach) from ASU. I cried when I received the acceptance, and that reaction showed me that this really was what I wanted to do.

Outside of Phoenix, AZ

Wade found a job in Tempe, we packed up our house, and we drove out to Phoenix, AZ in July of 2014. We couldn't have picked a hotter time to move, and I began to truly understand the phrase "baptized by fire." I liked my program and started to feel at home on the campus but then about halfway through the fall semester I hit a wall. The temperature was hot, and it wasn't getting cooler, and I suddenly felt aimless and very far from home. I also felt pretty physically sick, and panic started to overtake me every night. At one point, I truly thought that by Christmas of 2014, we'd be packing up and moving back to the midwest.

This was a tough but necessary turning point for me. I had carefully considered my decisions and options up until this point, but these weeks of what I call my "Extensional Crisis 2.0" (the first one was in college in 2010) made me truly evaluate and decide what it was that I wanted. Wade was my rock. At one point he had to come home from work to literally help me get out of bed. That was how weak and anxiety ridden I was, but with his and others' help I slowly started to get better. I went to a naturopathic doctor, took a food test, and started to eat differently, which helped my body heal. I also started doing yoga everyday, and I began to use and diffuse essential oils, which helped my anxiety abate. These physical changes, coupled with the decision that I would finish that first semester and then reevaluate, got me to where I needed to be. In fact, by the first weekend of November I came home to WI for a friend's wedding, and though I enjoyed my time in the fall breeze and with family, I was ready to go back to the desert after the week was over. By then time my plane touched back down in Phoenix Sky Harbor I knew I was home, and I knew that this was really what I wanted to do.

Helping Myself

When I went through my first existential crisis in college, I needed a lot of help. I credit my then professor and mentor Dr. Kristy Ingram with being the lifeline that pulled me back. She offered me sage advice, gave me dinner when I didn't eat, and was a listening ear as I questioned and debated really, everything I'd known to be true. I will be forever grateful to her for that.

When I hit my second existential crisis, I definitely still needed help. All of the things that I listed above were life savers and really shifted my daily routines and habits in positive ways that I still practice today. What I learned, though, was that I could either let this Ph.D. eat me alive, or I could begin to help myself, like Bodovski suggests above. I knew that I needed to find and then stick to my own path to be able to finish my degree.

My Meyers-Briggs personality is ENTJ. Now, I know some people (including my husband) don't see a lot of value in tests like these, but I love them. I think they reveal so much about myself and other people, and even more interestingly, the way that people react to one another. ENTJ stands for Extrovert, Intuition, Thinking, and Judging, and together that reveals the following:

Based on this personality type, it's clear that advocating for myself is not a struggle. It is actually something that comes pretty naturally to me, and something that I am not afraid to do. That being said, it wasn't something I'd ever really realized that I could or should do, specifically in a Ph.D. program where the path was seemingly already predetermined for me. I think it is no coincidence that this revelation came to me just as I was being immersed in feminist theory and pedagogy. I think that one of the reasons that feminist causes and discussions are so close to my heart now is because I saw the efficacy and necessity of them in my own life, even in a very privileged setting.

Once I realized that I needed to start acting on my own agency and as my own best advocate, I started to prioritize what I really wanted. The first thing that I knew that I wanted was to graduate in three years. My assistantship was for five, and I had up to ten (I think) to finish but based on goals that Wade and I had together, I wanted to finish coursework and my exams in year two, and I wanted to graduate at the end of my third year. I did do these things, but they would not have been possible without the help and input of Demetria Baker, the Writing Programs administrator, Dr. Maureen Daly Goggin, my chair, and Drs. Elenore Long and Patricia Boyd, my committee members. Their support and willingness to help me get through on that timeline is really what made it possible.

Next, I had to decide what type of institution I wanted to aim to work at. In higher education there are general tiers or rankings of institutions, which has to do with reputation, funding, and the research versus teaching expectations of the professors. Teaching load is assigned by how many classes a professor teaches in a semester, i.e. 2/1 means teaching two classes in the fall and one in the spring. The rankings draw upon The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education that lists institutions according to the highest degree level that they produce, as well as the annual (since 1983) publication from US News & World Report that ranks the top 200 or so schools of the approximately 2,500 accredited institutions of higher education in the United States. The rankings of higher education are somewhat debated, but Dr. Karen Kelsky breaks them down this way:

One academic reality is that scholars are never hired at a school that is ranked higher than the one where they earned their degree. ONU falls somewhere between a middle ranked SLAC and regional college. ISU has recently moved into the rank of an R1, and ASU is an established R1 school that is listed 60th overall on the Best Graduate English Programs list in the 2017 US News & World Report. If I had wanted to aim for a job at an R2, I would have needed to spend a significant amount of time and energy on publication. If I wanted to aim for anything below an R2, I felt that I could move more quickly through my program and focus on teaching certificates and experience.

After my long, rambling discussion, it's probably fairly obvious what path I chose. Though the market is getting more and more competitive and often even the middle ranked SLACs require multiple publications, on the advise of my chair and in alignment with my gut feeling, I decided to move quickly through my program and put publications on the back burner. I did keep up my conference activity, which is another component of scholarship.

Views from Fem/Rhet in Dayton, OH

I had two basic reasons for this choice. The first reason  boiled down tremendously to my undergraduate experiences at ONU. I've written in this and many other posts about the impact and influence that my professors at ONU had on me. My college experience was so exceptional educationally, socially, and for the work that I wanted to do in the future. I knew that this was the kind of place that I wanted to teach.

Secondly, while I do like to research and study, it is not my primary passion. I can do research, and I do like to learn and grow in new areas and ideas in my field, but researching is not what gives me energy and fuels my drive. At the Feminisms & Rhetorics conference this fall, one of the most influential moments was in the feminist workshop where they asked us to identify our feminist superpowers. I identified mine as "facilitator," and since the conference I have often thought of how much that rings true. And when I teach, I get to facilitate. Every new semester I get excited about putting together syllabi and preparing the classes for my students. I also like the energy of being with my students in the classroom and sharing ideas with them and truly learning from them. Teaching energizes me. Talking about ways to teach better and instruct better energizes me. I love to teach. And after all this, I know it's what I want to do! Thanks, as always, for reading.