Tomorrow I'm meeting with Big Midwestern Underground Fungus to talk about going part-time. Right now I'm on 31 academic hours a week (an "academic hour" is 45 minutes, a concept designed so you can charge students for 3 hours and give them 2:15. A real hour is an "astronomic hour," don't ask me.) I'm hoping I can go down to 15, but I think the least he'll let me get away with is 20. He pays the same amount of tax on each teacher regardless of how much we work, so it's cheaper for him to have a few full-time people than a lot of part-timers.

They're hemmhoraging teachers though, which gives me some leverage. Pineapple gave her notice yesterday. Blueberry's leaving at Christmas. Artichoke is talking about leaving, but he's been doing that ever since I got here. Aubergine is starting his own company (he got fronted the money by a yogurt company or something, already bought property, offered me $70,000 a year to go with him, but I'm dubious and don't really want to teach much more anyway).

At first I was going to tell BMUF I wanted fewer hours because applying to grad school is so much work and I want to focus more on learning Russian and I couldn't possibly teach full time and do those things, when the truth was I mostly just wanted time for newspaper work (he gets snarky about his teachers taking other paid jobs, when it's him paying the taxes and sponsoring your visa and work permit). But the more I look into grad school apps the more work I realize it is (just unearthing all the profs around the country doing research in science policy, focused on energy and alternative technologies, is harder than I thought--it's so interdisciplinary that every school groups it with a different discipline).

I hope I'll have fewer hours by next week, the last couple weeks have been a bit nuts.