It is done. A decision is made. Dr. Jinx is leaving the world of non-tenure track faculty, and entering the world of tenure-track faculty at a school that emphasizes and values teaching, but that still has a scholarship requirement and encourages scholarship. May I find my way to productivity in teaching and in scholarship while I am there.

I am happy to have this decision made; knowing an 11th hour offer from another school with some really good policies was coming maybe on time and maybe not wasn’t helping matters. Talk about being pulled in multiple directions, wondering what the right thing to do is. It was good that I’d made a rubric for evaluating schools earlier; when my mentor told me to go home and apply it, it became clear that the 11th hour offer was unlikely to be enough to overcome the other issues that school presented. And it didn’t — the salary was barely above my other offer for a city with cost of living that is about 1.5 times greater than where I am or would be moving too. Not a deal.

I am sad that they scrambled to put the offer together when I had to reject it, but I did tell them what my other offer was and that the cost of living was comparable to my current home town.

Now I just hope that I can get some sleep and get started on the next things that need to be accomplished. Hopefully my anxiety and stress will go down now that I know where I am headed. Now maybe I can do a better job of concentrating on my teaching and research and do a better job with both. Oh, and all those pesky service tasks I need to chase after (ugh).

I am happy. I am scared. I am happy. Concentrate on happy. One foot in front of the other, one day at a time.