The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs by George Singleton

Author:George Singleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

WHY I QUIT READING

I’d read something about a professor applying for a job elsewhere, though she didn’t really want the position. She liked where she was—this was in either Mississippi or Maine, I forget. It was one of the M states. It might’ve been Missouri or Massachusetts. I don’t think it was Montana. It might’ve been Maryland or Michigan. There are a lot of states that start with M, as it ends up. Minnesota. Anyway, she had a job teaching, if I’m not mistaken, sociology. She might’ve been one of the better-known sociologists in America. I didn’t read the article closely, but I know that where she taught they only paid her about poverty-level, even though she’d published two books—one about alcoholism rates among ex-circus performers in Florida, the other about manic-depression among ex-carnival workers in northern Alabama—and gotten something like a 100% positive rating from her student evaluations. I think her name was Teresa. Everyone liked the woman, Teresa, including administrators, which, according to this particular article, seemed to be rare. Again, I forget where she taught—probably not Mississippi, seeing as the poverty level in the South still works out better than poverty levels elsewhere, what with the low price of gas and tamales.

So Teresa went on the job market and got an offer paying twice her salary at the M state. Twice! And whatever college offered her the job was in a place that didn’t cost twice as much as where she lived. Let’s say she taught in Michigan, and she got a job offer teaching for twice as much money in Washington, or Wyoming. Not West Virginia, but I’m pretty sure it was a W state. There aren’t as many W states as M states. Wisconsin’s another. I’d have to go back and look it up, but I think Teresa had a choice to leave a college in Michigan or Montana or Maine or Maryland, and move to a college in Washington or Wisconsin. They offered her the job, and she returned to the chairperson of her department, who went to the dean, who went to another dean, who went to a provost, who maybe went to the president. As it ended up, about two hours after she came back with the news, out of nowhere, she got an email going, “We will match the salary you were offered, plus a dollar,” or something like that. It went, “We have been meaning to offer you a raise.”

It’s like the college just sat around hoping Teresa wouldn’t go out looking. Knowing that if she did, they had the resources to keep her there as a magnet who attracted sociology-interested incoming first-year students with an obsession in trapeze artists, minders of a tilt-a-whirl or Spook House, people hooked on anti-depressants and nooses.

This was in a magazine called True Employment Tales I found in the backseat of a guy’s Ford Taurus. He’d left the car in our parking lot and promised to get it towed. That never happened.

Reading might not be the healthiest thing for me to do in my free time.

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