Here it is, finally, The Big Day. Sent my notice to the department about 15 minutes ago, cc:ing all my faculty, and now I’m waiting for the reaction. If there’s going to be much of one, of course – I don’t necessarily flatter myself that much. I just hope the others are as relieved as I am, and if they’re not yet then they will be when they have a chance to think about it. Me being in this job has been an increasingly unpleasant experience for almost all involved and it appears I’m the only one able to rectify that and I don’t mind a surgical solution as long as it’s me wielding the scalpel.
Whew.
But no response yet. Most of the Shirts are in the conference room next door giving a series of poor graduate students the end-of-semester once-over, and in any case they’re not big on direct confrontation and might not say anything immediately if they think it might get stinky. Don’t know where the Skins are; YF has been incommunicado for days and Freya’s probably still stoned on painkillers from her series of hip surgeries this week (not that she didn’t know already anyway). Mostly it’s just another gray rainy Friday on the Forty Acres, everybody passing on the street below scurrying around trying to keep dry and wrap up whatever they were doing all semester so they can get the hell out of here for the summer.
Which is exactly what I’m doing. When not writing a blog entry, anyway.
It’s been awful sticky humid for days now, so bad that just a 2-minute trip to take out the garbage will leave you with a soaked shirt. I did several such trips last night – getting started in earnest on cleaning out the apartment, finally – and afterwards felt pretty damn good (again) about not subjecting myself to another summer’s worth of this particular torture.
The heaviest work of the procedure-writing is done, at least first draft. Doing the bulk of what remains will take up the rest of the day, and then next week it’s scrambling madly to finish up Nutjob’s site, redesign Freya’s project site, updating the Shirts site and putting all their documents on Blackboard, and doing a half-dozen other things to tie up loose ends and let me feel like I’m walking away and not leaving things in a mess I’d resent having to clean up if I were replacing myself.
With any luck I won't even have to fend off any panic-stricken demands from Cathy that I show her how to do everything for her websites she’s shown no interest in learning how to do herself for almost four years now. Not talking about coding or anything similarly intensive, just simple admin duties like adding users or generating canned reports or even just logging in – the sort of tasks that’ve been designed to be easy for the computer-illiterate but are beyond Cathy. If she does come to me I plan to tell her that she’s had almost three years to prepare for this – a quick look in my archives indicates I informed her in August 07 I wouldn’t be staying around long – and I’m not going to waste my time showing her how to do things she’s going to forget as soon as one of us walks out the door.
In other words, batten the hatches for one final round of warfare between me and Cathy. It just wouldn’t seem right to leave without it. But it’s true – showing her how to do anything is a waste of time. She likes to have people do everything for her too much and believes that’s the way it should be. Once again: fuck the Professional Tier.
Of course, if you subscribe to the concept that you get what you resist, by writing this I’m condemning myself to landing next time in yet another position slaving for members of the Professional Tier who will likely be equally unappreciative. So be it… some will go so far as to believe you become what you resist, but I don’t think moving up a tier in class is in the cards for this lifetime. I hope not, anyway. Those people suck. The only time I’ve ever liked them was when they were giving me money at the door for Greenpeace.
Anyway. While I’ve been writing this Nadine emailed that she accepts my resignation. So, it’s done. I realized when I woke up that I’ve been waiting for this day exactly three months - it was the morning of 2/14 that I first conceived of just walking away from it all. This quarter-year has gone by very quickly, the way time will when you have things to do and a goal to work toward. I’ve spent so much thought and energy on simply preparing to sever my ties with Austin that I don’t have anything approximating a firm idea what’s going to come next – but I suppose that will take care of itself once I’m on the far side of the Travis County line. It always does.
Forward, then.
[And now you faithful public Ear readers, if there are indeed any left, know why most entries have been only excerpted lately. You want to keep a secret, don't put it on the internet... even under an alias. Anyway, back to regular business from now on.]
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