Looks like I’ve got five sections for Spring, plus any MW/MWF sections I want to pick up over in Tarrant. So that’s a success. The down side is that I can’t even begin to match my wife’s salary at this rate, and basically have to work a consistent seven sections or so in order to even come close — and this without benefits.
I may be changing careers again, unless I manage to hit the lottery and get into a full-time position within the next two-to-three years — difficult, since I’m a white male and have to be “supercandidate” in order to survive any stage of the process, and I still can’t work even as a part-timer on my hometown campus (not a whine: these are just the facts on the ground, just like it was a fact that the shit-ignorant fratboy investment bankers I used to work for ran a lily-white little operation within the office and weren’t shy about tossing around the kind of racist remarks that would get mere mortals like yours truly canned, and justifiably so, in a heartbeat). Teaching is nice, and I definitely enjoy it… but its sustainability on a part-time basis is going to be predicated upon an ever-increasing number of sections taught per semester, and although I’m handling seven right now, to match the Bunny I’d need nine, minimum, and I don’t think I can consistently get that many unless I’m very lucky. Seven is probably sustainable, and eight theoretically possible if I were to pick up dual-credit work again (though that raises timing issues, it’s a growth industry as we continue to replace the high schools/do their jobs for them).
Some hard strategizing is going to be necessary: I’m either going to have to manage to build my CV up to where I can hit paydirt in a couple of years (and that’s being worked on, since I’m on a committee and registered for significant additional pedagogical/classroom training this winter), or else start looking for a field in which I can leverage what I do into something beyond a menial position.
