Change: Hate it or Embrace it?

i'm not rare, i'm horrid.

my mother told me recently me that i caused her many tears when i continuously asked her if she wasn't bored at home. why didn't she go get a job cuz i'd be bored if i was home all the time? (i was in about grade 2 at the time). horrid child. i really was eloise - waiting to start room service life.

Hee hee!

I hope I didn't give the wrong impression -- there are many, many, MANY conferences around here, and in fact E.G. just made me blush by saying quite earnestly that if it wasn't for all of those conferences and the advice I dispensed therein, he would not be where he is today. And yes, I knew what I was getting into when I married him, and accepted that. And again, while I disliked each move very much at the time, each turned out to be a very good thing for different reasons.

The moving will hopefully hopefully fingers crossed stop after this one -- the jobs he is applying for are tenure-track professor positions, after a round of postdocs. (The process is: 1) undergrad 2) grad student 3) 1st postdoc [the position after you get your doctorate] 4) 2nd postdoc 5) professorship. There are sometimes more postdocs before professorship.) And that is another way that the hubby has done much to ease the burden, while paradoxically adding to it, short-term -- he's worked very very very hard so that he can find a good job that he can stick to, rather than getting a stop-gap professorship and then having to shop around for a better one. The one thing I have remained firm about is wanting the sozlet to be in one place for kindergarten through HS. (This was firm from before there was a sozlet...) If something wonderful presents itself, or she prefers to move, whatever, but I want that to be baseline.

I've had a bunch a change in my life mostly not-my choice. Going from being a superstar athlete to not. You've got to roll with flow, flexibility and patience.
At one job in the 80's and 90's(computer company) we went through about 35 layoff sessions. Onetime I happened to be in a management training class and I got a call to make a choice on whi I was keeping. I've got lots of books on change management, and been to plenty of change training classes. One thing is certains failure to adopt and adapt is certain..... change

soz - take a look at the stats on moving in america. Move and change are the way things are now.

Sure. Just doing what I can to plan. I'm a planner. I have plans A, B, and C up my sleeve if fate throws me a curve ball (can I fit any more cliches into this sentence), but I am a firm believer in planning. "Have a baby by 30" -- sozlet born 1 month before the big 3-0. Etc. Vast chunks of my life are like this.

I am pretty sure that the sozlet will be an only (plan A is only child, but plan B is definitely not ruled out), and one thing that was incredibly important to me was the community I grew up in; there are people I stuck with throughout my schooling who are almost like family to me. E.G., on the other hand, moved three times when young at really bad intervals, and found the whole thing extremely traumatic, with far-reaching implications socially.

A tenured professorship is one of the few things today that can be expected to be fairly stable.

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Sozobe, tenure is not the secure haven it used to be. When I retired from my tenured position, our university began a policy that all tenured profs would be evaluated every three years according to criteria that emphasized grant monies procured. Teaching and research were important in terms of the university's public face. I hope your hubby likes writing grants, almost enough to pay his own salary. That's the only way to have real security. Btw, my university's policy in this regard is a spreading practice. In my judgement, the most positive thing in your case--and I'm guessing and projecting here--is that, barring academic political tensions, you will be blessed wlith a happy husband. Most academics love their work (if not their jobs). And the security IS greater than it is working in industry...albeit the pay isn't.

Hey, Diane, congratulations!
Two happily married people (for 34 years!) is a rarity these days. Good for you!

Good points, JNL. (What did you teach, if I may ask?) And yes, congrats on 34 years, Diane!

Grant-writing is not a problem. He's already been asked to review million-$-grant proposals, and knows the game well. I know there are no guarantees, and am certainly ready to roll with the punches. Just, that specific circumstance (tenured professor in physics) is rather more stable than many other possible vocations.

[edit: names after my goof pointed out by the patiopup)

(That be JL, soz -- or be she Dianne as well?)

Am also curious what university this is, and what discipline. Here at the U. Wash -- or, rather, in this department -- tenureship is a sinecure. There was a prof who was allowed to stay at the associate level for thirty years before being promoted to a full professorship. Lots of heavy grant-writing (far too much, from the looks of my desk), but the only way that those who don't produce suffer is that they have to teach in the summer or only get 9 months' salary.

Of course, because they've no way to get rid of dead wood, as it were, they can't afford competitive salaries for the heavy hitters and the institution is suffering from serious brain drain.

But the point that academics are necessarily mobile, esp. for their first decade or two, is very valid.

Hopefully the mobility part is drawing to a close... (If you count grad school, E.G. has been on the move academically for over a decade already. Kansas-France-Madison-Pasadena-Chicago-?)

Just stay away from Washington State. It's commitment to education, already half-hearted, is rapidly evaporating. (Mixed metaphor, anyone?)

Embrace it while you are young as a necessary part of the life adventure because when you get older it gets harder and harder.

Patio
I don't know bout that, WASL politics are hugh.

JD, you certainly bring up a good point, as we get older we do seem to cringe at change. And, children are certainly more easily adaptable to it then we are. Its funny to think we are constantly thinking they are the worst off, when they seem to bounce back the easiest.

"boucnce back" - At what cost quinn?

Yeah, I'll be pleasantly surprised if the sozlet is unaffected, but really do want to prepare for the worst. I just saw a thread on the parenting site I participate in about how this person's 4-year-old is suddenly throwing screaming violent tantrum fits, which was brand-new, and in a parenthetical mentioned that since they just moved... And everyone was responding, well, if you just moved, that's to be expected. This comes up over and over and over.

-sigh-

It'll be fine. I've started talking about it in general terms... a new house is being built down the block, and when we walked past it today we examined it and I said, "I wonder who is going to move into that house? Do you think it will be a family of raccoons? No? A family of tigers?" Etc. Just to introduce the concept of moving.

Also, we're all going to the interview in March -- well, to Minneapolis, not the interview. We're going to do all kinds of fun things, see grandparents, etc., and hopefully if it does come to pass that we move there, we can use that as reference. ("We're going back to Minneapolis! We're gonna see Grandma and Grandpa and the zoo and and and...")

P.S. I feel like I have a big fat karmic target on my forehead since I made the planning comments. Of course only so much can be planned. Having already been whapped over the head by fate (bye-bye hearing), I prolly tend too much toward wanting control over my environment. While I do think I'm pretty good at adapting -- thanks, Letty -- it's awful nice when things go smoothly.

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Sozobe, I guess we must simply learn to swim with the tide (is that a saying?). Regarding planning, we must do so--it's too dangerous not to plan. But we must always take into account the reality of indeterminacy. There's a wonderful saying: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."
Patiodog, I'll answer your question to by "pm"--I don't feel comfortable revealing too much about myself to "everybody."

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BillW, you hit the nail on the head (is that also a saying?), it's a matter of cost. I can still do virtually all the things I did in my 30s, 40s, and 50s, but now it is more costly to do them (in my sixties). Ergo, USE your youth. Do all the things your youth enables you do to.

JLN

When I was 4 my parents moved us to a new house from the country to the city. They didn't really tell me about it, but when the packing started I knew we were all going somewhere. I sulked and then when we got to the new house I cried and cried.

Then my mother told me to knock it off and stop my blubbering.

She's young and she's not going to be happy. She'll cry and when you've had enough let her know it. I think it's easier if they're young. It would be much harder on an older child who had really close friends and was established in school.