Northbound Newton Is Not a Rat. Do You Hear Us? HE'S NOT A RAT. We Mean, He Is Scurrying Away, But That's Not Necessarily Rat-like.

I am so angry that I can't even think straight. I went from the best day of my life to the worst in a blink.

Let me backtrack. I was hired by this cracker university 3 years ago with a ton of lies about how easy my time was going to be. I would get the classes I wanted, I'd have a nice office with a view of the quad, and my research would mean something. But it hasn't worked that way at all. Instead I'm asked to teach almost all freshman classes, while the deadwood professors teach mostly upper division. My office is on an inside wall, when the aged and nearly senile senior faculty luxuriate around the outside of the building with sky-high windows. And when I had three poems in a quarterly journal, not one of my "colleagues" said a thing to me.

But I just shut my trap, was very professional, and took their inconsideration because I knew that I was better than any one of them and that someday today would come.

Today I got a chance to jump to another t-t spot, at a garden spot, a truly beautiful campus, close to where I went to grad school. The people there, forgive me, wear shoes and have all their teeth. It'll be like sucking manna through a straw for me. There I will get to teach upper division courses, and everyone who interviewed me seemed truly interested in my writing, my teaching, and just accepting me for who I am.

So when I got the news I ran to my office building and started knocking on doors to tell my colleagues. Call me a greenhorn, but I thought they'd all be happy for me. But most just smiled and said, "Good for you," with about as much passion as deadwood can summon. In fact, after I left the faculty lounge - where I told a group of faculty from Political Science and Sociology my great news - I thought I heard someone say: "I sort of forget it's job season. I guess the rats are scurrying off the ship."

I couldn't believe it. I AM NOT A RAT, you ignorant cracker douchebag. I AM NOT A RAT. I'm a hard working and talented professor, one who has been ignored and lied to, disregarded and underused by this small time, small town ship of fools. (Ahhh, there's the ship imagery!)

I am going to turn my grades in, pack my books, and I'll be on a highway north before my former "colleagues" even know I'm gone. I would give anything if you would publish the name of my school so that when their job ad comes out next week nobody will get stuck like I did. I know you probably won't, but it's Xxxxxxxxx College. Fuck them. You're better off teaching where you are then coming here. You're better off being UNEMPLOYED than being here.

Sign me out,

Northbound Newton