posted 2007/08/09 at 22:18
Yesterday I drove up to Michigan to check out where I'll start teaching later this month. (Monroe County Community College, for the record.) I had to do the whole employment paperwork thing, and even though I could have mailed the forms in, I decided instead to go up there so I could get a feeling for the campus. The good news is that the campus is easy to navigate and quite lovely, although it doesn't look like I'll be able to rearrange the desks and such so that everyone sits in a circle, which I find to be more conducive to my pedagogical approaches. The bad news is that the trip up was not exactly that fun.
You would think that after Yahoo! Maps led me astray so many times before (most notably underestimating the travel time for my trip to North Carolina last year by three hours each way), but I trusted them with directions again for some unknown reason. (I think that sometimes my loyalty to other Yahoo! services gets in the way of my good judgment about their other services.) Not only did they say the trip would take much less time than it actually did, but at one point they said one road became another road, when in reality the roads intersected, so I didn't know which direction to go. Of course I went the wrong way and didn't find out until the road turned into a dirt road, which caused me to be even later than I already was because I didn't know it would take so long to get there.
The other thing that bothered me about the trip was that I had to take a lot of backroads to get there. I have nothing against backroads, and I've always said that Michigan has the most beautiful scenery in the world. However, for one thing Michigan's roads aren't that well designed, and also, for nearly the whole trip after I got off of the highway I couldn't find a speed limit marker anywhere. Judging by the other drivers around me, though, I was supposed to floor it and go as fast as I could get the van to go, even over uneven railroad tracks and in the places marked by signs as areas with deaf children. Also, I passed more than a couple of houses that had signs up front that made it clear that the family inside were a bunch of fire-and-brimstone types, and I shudder to think what might happen if I were to have a car break down in front of one of those houses. Looking at a map of the area, I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't be better served by cutting over to I-75 to go up there instead of using US-23; it looks like it would add more distance overall, but it would mean fewer backroads and it looks like it might even save time. I guess I'll figure it out soon enough just by trying it out.
Congratulations! Do you know what subject you'll be teaching?
Will you be moving to Michigan or commuting from your current home?
Thanks. I'll be teaching composition, although I'm only teaching part-time right now while I continue to take on freelance writing work. Eventually I'd like to make the transition to full-time teaching, but right now I need to be more concerned with making the money I need to pay off my student loans. (Once I get the loans paid off then I'll try to move out of the house.)
Ah, I didn't realaize that the college is only 20 miles from Toledo.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon