MARTIN CHAMBI

The first pictures of Machu Picchu were taken by Latin America’s first Native photographer, MARTIN CHAMBI.

And I have not met my InaDWriMo goal. I have been unquiet this month. I am more calm now. I am extending InaDWriMo through December and I intend to meet or exceed my original goal.

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I lost sight of my InaDWriMo goal because I made it my goal, forgetting my deeper goal which is a SECRET on this blog but which is my deeper goal.

I lost sight of it because of my Achilles heel: being nice to junior faculty and understanding both their enthusiasm and their desperation.

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Dear Junior Faculty: I have heard what you are saying many times and I have said it myself. I have put aside my own goals before to help people like you attain theirs, because these are valid goals and I wish someone had helped me attain them when those goals were mine – the several times they were mine. I have other goals now.

I have explained this to you already, Junior Faculty. Your response, “But you have not attempted these goals WITH ME, perhaps it will be better WITH ME,” is also one I have heard before. Dejame en paz, vos, te lo digo con la cansada voz de Gardel, que hago mi trabajo y no me opongo a tus proyectos, pero voy a lo mío, ¿entendés?

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And since we are in the MLA season and we will all see each other soon, let me give out one more piece of sage advice, on the question of what kind of job one should want. I do not know what one should want, but I know what people do want: a job at an institution like the undergraduate institution they enjoyed and which convinced them to go to graduate school and beyond.

Whatever that institution was like, find job announcements from similar institutions and apply there. It is a fallacy that you will find you like something else. You are not a child and you already knew yourself well enough when you chose a college. You have not changed so very greatly – unless you have, of course, in which case you are already aware of it, nobody needs to convince you. Ho detto.

Axé.


2 thoughts on “MARTIN CHAMBI

  1. So true about the job… I got mine at the place where I spent my whole undergraduate and graduate education. I went away for a while after my Ph.D., and chose to come back. It was my home.

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