Since my husband Damien is in the final year of his MA program at Ohio University, his thoughts are turning more and more towards his thesis, while our collective thoughts as a couple are focusing in on what we will do next year, after he graduates. Now that I have a book coming out, my friends and colleagues are urging me to begin applying for full-time teaching positions. After all, when I graduated with my MFA, I told myself that I just needed to teach adjunct for a few years, that once I got a book published I would surely be able to land a full-time job somewhere.

The things is, though, that I didn’t really expect it to happen so soon. I always thought that I would be something like, say, five years out of my MFA program before I finally got a book published, and by then I would have built up five years of experience and miscellaneous CV credits to really make myself a strong candidate for a full-time position. The book contract came so quickly—which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong—but now I don’t really know that I’ll stand much of a chance of landing a full-time job just yet. Right now I’m only one year out of my degree program. I have only one year’s worth of adjunct experience to add to my TA experience. Publication-wise, I think my CV looks pretty good. Otherwise, though . . . I’m not so sure.

And on top of that, I’ve learned a lot about my limitations as a teacher this past year. At the risk of sounding a bit over-confident, I think I’m a pretty good teacher—and I enjoy it—but I also love my writing time and am not willing to give that up in order to have full-time teaching work. I’ve found that my limit is three, or maybe four, courses at a time. I taught four last spring and was overwhelmed with all the grading—I can’t even imagine trying to teach five. And while four was possible—obviously, I managed it just fine—I hardly wrote at all last spring. I was just too busy. I always had several stacks of paper that needed grading, several student emails to respond to.

I do think that four classes on the quarter system is more time consuming than four on the semester system, because the quarter system involves the same amount of work but compresses it down into ten weeks (and then makes you do it three times for every two on the semester system), so I feel certain I could teach up to four classes on the semester system and still find time to write. Four classes maximum, absolutely no more.

Now I know that a lot of teacher/writers simply accept that they won’t have time to write during the school year; instead, they get a lot of work done during the winter and summer. But that’s just not the way I work. I like to keep a steady momentum going. I like to always be working on something, to have at least an hour or so to devote to my writing every single day. And I’ve found from experience that if I’m teaching more than three courses at a time, I have no choice but to push my writing to the side.

And so. What does that mean about my career as a college English instructor? Well, most full-time, creative writing positions don’t require more than two or three classes at a time. They have other requirements, of course, but those don’t bother me. I believe I can easily manage teaching three or four courses, plus all the other faculty duties and still have enough creative energy left in my brain to write every day. Teaching and other duties and creative writing are all different things, and I think I can fit a moderate amount of each on my plate at one time. I don’t think I can fit five classes, plus other faculty duties, plus creative writing on my plate, though. That’s too much.

But. The problem is, many professors had to put in their ten or fifteen years of a five/five comp teaching load before they were competitive as creative writing professors. It’s not that I dislike comp, or that I think I will someday find a job where I don’t have to teach comp (I expect comp will always be required, and I really enjoy the variety of students you get to work with in a comp class). It’s the five/five load that is the problem.

I’ve decided—and I hope this doesn’t sound bratty or naïve—that if my choices are teach a five/five load for ten years before I can finally land a good creative writing, three/three position, or stop being a teacher, my decision is that I will stop being a teacher. I will not continue in a career that forces me to push my creative writing to the back burner for several years as I slave away teaching five classes per semester.

I am going to apply for some full-time jobs for next year. I would love to continue in this field and am hoping that, with my book deal and what CV credits I do have so far, I might get lucky and find a job that affords me time to write on the side. However, as an alternate plan, I’m also going to apply for a few Masters in Library Science programs for next year.

I sat down for a chat with the local children’s librarian here in Athens—I’m interested, particularly, in becoming a children’s librarian if teaching doesn’t work out—and based on what she told me, I think I would absolutely love this field. I’m passionate about children’s literature, about fighting censorship, and about working with kids. Everything about the job seems perfect for me, and I think that, because my day-to-day duties as a librarian would rely on a completely different part of my brain than my creative writing does, I wouldn’t find it very difficult to write on the side.

So that’s where I’m at right now. I want to be a writer primarily, or at least keep writing on the same level as whatever day-job I work. If that means I can be a college English instructor, that will be great. But if I can’t find a teaching position that actually allows me to put equal focus on my career as a writer, then I think I’ll try to be a librarian instead. It’s as simple as that. I will give up teaching before I give up writing.