Things Have Changed

Well, I know many of you read this to see the latest pictures of the kids, but I haven't taken many good ones lately. I am working with the video function on my digital camera, so I soon hope to have a video clip of Annelise waving (she started doing that two weeks ago). Danny continues to battle his cold, and Randy tries to balance work and his recovery from pneumonia (which I hear can linger a while).

I wanted to write about how things have drastically changed for Randy and his career in the last few months. Today he is doing a talk at a university in downtown DC. Randy and I have had some good laughs over this the last month or so. Last year at this time Randy was applying for assistant professor positions and even did a phone interview for the American Studies department of this school. He ended up taking the position at University of Maryland (English Department) before hearing back from this school. Then he found out that they didn't complete the search because they weren't sure what kind of person they were looking for. Randy enjoyed the people he interviewed with, so he contacted the chair of the search and told her that he was moving to the area if they ever needed anything. About 6 weeks ago Randy got an e-mail that they were going to do a similar search again, but in a different department. They would like him to be part of a symposium to educate the faculty on the different recent developments in latina/latino studies. That way they will be prepared for what they may come across in interviews and can have a better idea of what they are looking for. Randy and I get a kick out of this because just 12 months ago he was at the other end of this equation. We also laugh because in the e-mail they offered him "the small amount of $250" for his time. First of all, this isn't really a small amount to us coming off of the graduate student lifestyle. And second of all, when I read that I looked at Randy and said, "You would have done it for free, right?" "Of course," he replied! Things have changed.