[csaa-forum] Re: csaa-forum Digest, Vol 4, Issue 12

[Charles Fairchild]

Hi folks. I just wanted to drop my two cents on the pile regarding the 
whole 'having a job but its exhausting but I'm really priviledged and 
feeling a bit guilty' discussion. My experience is almost completely 
counterintuitive so it may not be worth anything. I'm an American, my 
partner is Australian. She got 'the job' here so over here we moved, 
last year. I had spent six years working for a foundation in the states 
doing writing and curriculum development for poor and disadvantaged 
grade school kids. It was ideologically satisfying, but mind dulling and 
frustrating; mindless bureaucracy is not confined to public universities 
in Australia despite what the Liberal Party tells you. I got the first 
academic job I've ever had here well beyond what I thought was my use-by 
date. In all, I had spent a total of seven years doing other things. It 
just so happened that the job I got described my background, interests 
and experience unusually well. Despite this, I think the important thing 
for me was that I kept publishing even while I was out there in the 
wilderness. Granted, it wasn't much, but I really like writing academic 
articles (I know, I have issues...). That might be what got me over the 
line. What really struck me about moving to Australia and working here 
is how much worse things can be in America; they were certainly very bad 
for me for a very long time. However, my partner went to a universally 
acknowledged 'elite' university. And in the States this is often the 
sole criterion on which your CV is judged, especially in the early 
going. Sometimes, a pile of applications of people who went to 'good 
schools' (i.e. 'Name' schools) is put on the table for consideration, 
everyone else goes in the circular file in part becuase of the massive 
glut of Ph.D.'s produced over there and the numbers of unhappy academics 
swells the number of job applicants immensely. So the way in which 
explicit criterion are applied to appplications in Australia did 
surprise me. Also, the idea of a document such as the workloads formula 
used to calculate some ideal level of teaching hours each week was 
unheard of to me. I know these agreements aren't ironclad to say the 
least, but still. I think we need to see what is working, too, even if 
its just in theory, despite all the crap the is being shovelled on us 
from so many directions at the present time. This way we can argue more 
specifically about what works and what doesn't and how to find models of 
things we would like to see more of.

Charles Fairchild
Lecturer in Music
University of Sydney