I have a REAL job!

So a week or so ago I mentioned that I had an offer from a pretty sweet job. Well as it stands right now I have the contract in hand and I'm going to sign it. Up, I'm about to get a real job...well as care to take.

See my idea of a real job is one where I don't really have a boss and I can do pretty much whatever I want, hence the desire to find a faculty position. But I don't kid myself in believing that it will be a cake walk, I know that I'm going to have to work my ass off to make things work out well, but I think I'm up for the challenge.

So at this point most of you are wondering what school would have low enough standards or is desperate enough to want me to teach and do research there. Well, in the southern California area it turns out that there are in fact two such schools. The way I look at it is one school was desperate the other has low standards, I'll leave it up to you to figure which is which. But I was actually offered jobs at CSU Dominguez Hills and San Diego State University (also part of the CSU system).

I chose to accept the SDSU job. Sure I'm passing up a job in LA proper, next to such appealing communities as Compton and Watts and at a campus with a world class velodrome (that part was hard to pass up). But the research potential and resources at SDSU (not to mention the crazy salary they offered me) will make up for whatever pains I have to go through with commuting from LA.

So that's that, I'm in a tenure-track faculty position, which means that in about six years if I get tenure I will have job security for life, it's a pretty sweet deal. What this really means though is that I get to move to LA and live with Deirdre again as well as being able to teach and pursue my own research, all things that I think are really worthwhile. And if I ever find the time I'll be in one of North America's best climates for bicycling...seriously, how the fuck did I manage to pull this one off?