Dreaming about my Dream Job… in Hobbs?

I’ve been sending my credentials and my hopes out into the void for quite some time now (ever since I graduated with my MFA, which is the terminal degree in my field), and I have been checking job listings and applying to jobs constantly for the past year.  I know that I have written before that my first priority is to work in a theatre and my second is to teach, but I just discovered a job listing that is very much both, and I have never coveted a job more in all my days.  I can remember coveting a job as much (the JET Programme job teaching at Tatebayashi Girls’ High School), but not more, and never with so many long-term hopes for the future.  I knew that the JET Programme was a short-term but wonderful way-station between undergraduate and graduate degrees.  Now I’m making plans for the long-run, and I am shocked to say that the job that has struck this chord in me is in Hobbs, New Mexico, at New Mexico Junior College.  What were the odds?  I just went through the rigamarole of moving to Texas after being a citizen of New Mexico for more than 20 years, and here I find myself counting chickens back in New Mexico before they’re hatched.  Life throws the funniest curve balls!

And a drum roll, please!  This job I’m longing for would basically make me responsible for the theatre aspect of the performing arts department, down to and including community and school-system involvement, and even recruitment.  The job description actually says I would get to “yearly, coordinate and host multiple performing arts productions” and that I would be expected to “develop a following of ‘Raving Fans’.”  Whoever wrote this job listing is clearly a person after my own heart.  I could use my skills not only in performance, but in production, directing, design, and technical theatre, and I could build a team of students and community members who want to make theatre happen and to make it wonderful.  I could spread my love of world theatrical styles to a new generation.  I could teach people about the glories of my favorite team art-form.  I would be on cloud 9 if I landed this job.  The funny thing is, I think several of my undergraduate professors would laugh at me if they ever read this.  I remember feeling even a little hurt once upon a time when (more than a decade ago, now) three separate professors my freshman year at TU expressed their “feelings” and guesses that someday I was going to work as a theatre professor instead of as an actor.  Well, now I am an actor (I even have a piece of paper saying I’m an expert actor), and yes I love it, but what was I thinking, way back then?  This professor position would clearly be the greatest job ever.  It would basically include a theatre company I could have at my fingertips for all the wonderful projects that percolate in the back of my mind every day of my life.  And really, I do find teaching extremely rewarding and fun.  I see no downside, even if it does mean another move.

What can I say, those TU professors were right, and it must have been strictly due to inexperience that I didn’t see it then.  I really, really, really want this job.  Of course, there is always a hitch (what would life be without its challenges?), and this application opportunity cropped up now, in the middle of the summer, when most of my go-to recommendation-writers are busy traveling, meeting publishing deadlines, and generally working very hard, long hours just to meet their own obligations.  I need four letters of recommendation.  Thus far, I have secured one.  Yipes!  Anyhow, I’m not going to give up.  Wish me luck, and if you happen to be someone who knows me who would like to write me a letter of recommendation, you will win my undying gratitude (granted, most of you already have).  Sending my hopes, once again, into the void- E.G.D.