Snow day!

I'm 31. And still a snow day is just as fabulous as it was when I was 8. Long weekend!

--And this is an extra good thing because my inability to think beyond the current work week has, once again, led me into some real trouble in terms of getting ready for the next. At least now the stuff I had prepped for tomorrow (what little I've already done, anyway) will last through Monday. And I can think about getting ready for my Field College campus interview. You want to know what's weird? Having to schedule a formal, all-day interview at the college where you already work, with the people you see and talk to every day. Yep, they're even taking me to breakfast.

ETA: Annnd if you guessed that I'd spend my extra evening off getting drunk and watching movies, hooray! You win a cookie! Much like one of the cookies that's slated for my immediate consumption!

Aw! Sometimes they're nice to me.

Field College has begun holding campus visits for "my" job--or, rather, the tenure-track version of my job. (My interview/job talk aren't for two weeks, thank God--I need a break!) So in my survey class today I mentioned to my students that they should consider going to the teaching demo this afternoon; they need students to attend these things, and it might be interesting, and they'll have a say in who gets hired, etc. Now, they all know that I'm interviewing for the job too; the chair has sent emails to the campus about the search process. When I'd concluded my announcement, one student asked if I was going to go to the talk, and I said, "No, that might be weird," which provoked some laughter. (The survey is the fourth class I teach MWF, so by then I'm a little...looser? than I normally am when I teach. So far I think that this has served me well: they laugh at my jokes! And we all know that that's the ultimate goal of any teaching situation.)

Anyway, after class, as they were sort of wandering out of the room, one student remarked, "I think it would be cool if no one went to any of the other candidates' presentations but yours was standing room only. It'd send them a message about where we stand."

"Well, thanks," I said, "but you should go anyway."

And another woman came up to me after everyone had left and asked point blank, "Are you leaving?"

"It's all up in the air right now," I said (or something to that effect).

And then she told me that she'd switched majors (which I think she'd been considering doing anyway) so that she can take an upper-division course with me next year.

How touching! I was touched. And a little conflicted. But mostly that felt good--because I got my course evaluations yesterday, and true to my way of doing things I find myself absorbing the negative comments first (I'll get around to the positives in a couple of days and wind up feeling perfectly good about myself; no worries--this is how I process things, for better or worse), so it did make me feel that my teaching is actually meaningful and productive and that I'm not just on some endless comp-grading treadmill.

On the subject of course evaluations, though. I was struck by how well some of my students seemed to have me pegged, particularly in comp. The evaluations were generally positive, I think, the lit classes much more so than the comps (which didn't surprise me at all, and was totally in keeping with my sense of how the semester went). But a few of the comments from the comp evals were interesting. For example: that I seemed unsure of myself and afraid to stand up for my views. Or that I seemed nervous. And yes, I was nervous in comp, precisely because I was unsure of what I was doing and uncertain about whether I should agitate for my interpretations or just let the students talk (because the content of the course wasn't particularly interesting to me and wasn't actually relevant to the goals of the course, I thought). Fortunately, this semester is all about what I like, so I feel a much greater degree of ownership over the material and I don't think that uncertainty will be a problem. Plus I'm not scared of students any more.

Annnd on the subject of the Field search: It's a little awkward trying to avoid running into the job candidates, especially in SUCH a small department. All kinds of weird complications. Further complicated by some general weirdness surrounding the job search about which I'm not going to blog. It'll be nice when everything is settled--for a lot of reasons.

The Lull

I'm giving myself the morning off before I begin preparing Teaching Demo 2. Due to a variety of unrelated and incomprehensible airline delays, I didn't get home until about midnight; I hadn't eaten dinner, so despite my exhaustion I cooked up some pasta + parmesan and had a bit of wine whilst watching "Arrested Development" DVDs. Then I slept until 10. It was nice

Now I'm afraid of getting my hopes up and all, but before I firmly put School 1 (Miracle U) out of my mind, I can't keep myself from writing a few words on how heavenly it seemed. Great students, gorgeous campus and area, fabulous research support, all kinds of amazing opportunities. But enough! Wish me luck--I was the first of three candidates, so there's going to be a long wait. And I have this other school to go visit.

I can't think about this anymore. I need to read about what y'all have been up to, instead.

Um this is weird, a bit

I'm taking a break from my interview madness to remark on a sudden surge in blog hits.... Apparently my recent clothing query was linked in the footer of a Wall Street Journal "On Style" article. It's kind of a bizarre feeling, since I'm used to thinking of my readers as a relatively small group. I feel oddly exposed.

In other news, the interview is--well, okay, I'll say it--I love it, I love it! I shouldn't say this--the odds of disappointment are still so great--but the school seems terrific and lovely and argh. !!! But I need to stop and try to get a short nap in before dinner.

Light(er) Blogging Ahead

I'm off tomorrow for Campus Interview. I'll be back on Friday night; then I have all of two days to get ready for Other Campus Interview, for which I leave on Monday. About 8 days from now I expect to collapse.

I'm really trying not to count on getting one of these jobs. The search process is so fraught with disappointment that one can't rush headlong into every glimmer of possibility, you know? I am, however, allowing myself to mix metaphors, or at least metaphor-like things, as freely as I wish. One must cut oneself some slack. One must indulge.

Yeah, okay. In other news, I'll be guiding an independent study in Shakespeare this semester. That might be some fun. Since (honestly!) my preps aren't too bad this semester, and once the job search settles down I'll have a little more time. The papers should start rolling in right about then, though; I'm pretty much in denial about them. Let's see--rough numbers--I'll be grading and/or commenting on...1200 composition papers this semester. ?? Wait--can that possibly be right? No, actually, it isn't. Hang on. Let's do this again. 600 papers. There we go. Six hundred freshman composition papers will pass through my hands this semester.

Um.

All right.

This is why we're interviewing, see.

So here I go. Wish me luck.

Desperate Clothing Query

Okay, all you people with much better fashion senses than I, I have a question for you.

For this upcoming campus interview, I'll need two days' worth of suits. I have two suits; unfortunately, they are not of equal merit. The first is fine. Comfortable, flattering (I think), what have you. The second--well, the second was supposedly tailor-made to fit me, but the pants have never ever been comfortable, and they just look funny--they bunch up in the front, strain across the back, and are generally ill-fitting and cheap-looking. Can't wear those for the job talk. (The jacket is OK, if not as nice as the first jacket.)

The plan is to wear the nicer suit for the first day (when I'll be doing most of my interviewing and my teaching demo), and then Something Else for the second day (when all I have scheduled is a breakfast, a library visit, a lunch, human resources, and my job talk).

So here's my question. Or questions, I suppose; it's more of a two-parter.

1) Would it be okay to wear the solid-black jacket with a pair of black pin-stripe pants? The blacks in the two garments are close enough that there wouldn't be an obvious clash, but it would be obvious that these items didn't originally belong together (because, of course, one is pin-striped and one is solid).

2) If not, can I wear the better-fitting suit pants with the other jacket? They're both black, but not quite the same black, and someone might notice that I'm wearing the same pants two days in a row. Not sure if that matters. Or if anyone will be paying such close attention to an innocuous pair of black pants that they would detect the repetition.

Or life could be easy, and I could wear the same suit both days (with different shirts), but that doesn't seem right. (Or is it? Can I do that?)

Any other options out there for me? I am in possession of very little formal attire: I have some long skirts and button-down shirts and a variety of rather eccentric sweaters. Long skirt + button-down could make me look reasonably professional, but it isn't a suit. And none of my skirts go with my suit jackets. At all.

Should I switch things around, and wear the questionable outfit on the first day--when I'll be making first impressions and will generally be more visible (in the teaching demo)--and save the nicest suit for the job talk, when I'll be meeting the entire department? Actually, no, I'd rather not do that. I'll be writing on the board and gesturing a lot during the teaching demo, and the better jacket is definitely preferable for that kind of activity.

Bear in mind that it is, literally, impossible for me to procure any new clothing between now and the interview. Unless I make a run on the local thrift store on Tuesday morning, and I think it would be best for everyone if I didn't do that.

Help!

And so why are you interviewing me, exactly?

--is the question that I would have liked to ask about midway through last night's phone interview.

So this was my seventh academic first-interview ever (the other six were last year, ranging from MLA to eleventh-hour phone interviews for one-years), and it was by far, BY FAR, the worst. All the other ones seemed fine, actually, although five of them yielded nothing.

The Interview of Despair basically comprised a series of extremely detailed questions about how I would put together courses I've never taught before. A couple of the courses they wanted to hear about were entirely reasonable, and I was prepared for them. But then we went off down a Dark and Dangerous Path that actually crosses the Terrain of Another Field Entirely, Terrain that I in no way, ever, anywhere, implied that I knew anything about. I was able to wing the first question or two, but when we got into highly specific theoretical approaches, I had to say that I just didn't know.

In that moment, I smiled to myself and thought, Well, they can only keep me on the phone for another 10 minutes or so, right? And then I thought about the bourbon awaiting me in the kitchen.

I was also a little disappointed that I'd spent all afternoon rehearsing my research and teaching answers, thinking about difficult teaching situations I've been in and how I elicit discussion from recalcitrant students, and didn't get to mention any of that. No! It was all course planning. Very specific course planning. As in, Why isn't Author X on this syllabus? What is this book that you said you'd use about? Weird.

Oh well. I just wonder why they even bothered to call me--they can't possibly think that I do the stuff that they evidently want someone to teach, can they? Whatever.

Please to advise me, please

So for this campus visit I need to give a 30-minute-ish teaching demo, described as "a lecture with some interaction." I won't be presenting it to actual students, as the students have all gone home, but instead to some faculty pretending to be students. (I actually find this slightly less intimidating than real students, oddly enough.) I think I have an idea for what kind of content to cover--I've decided to pretend that it's the first day of a course, or a segment of a course, and give a kind of overview of a subject that (I think) is really interesting, tying in some relevant literary materials which we'll look at in class. But I've never done anything like this before, and I've never talked to anyone who's had to do something like this before, so my question is:

Have any of you done this kind of thing? Or talked to someone who has? Or seen a job candidate do a teaching demo? And do you have any recommendations, advice, warnings, whathaveyou?

Oh, and I should mention: The material that I'm thinking of using for the demo would be something that I'd probably not actually get to teach, at least not in the first year. There's a reasonable chance that I could get it into the early Brit Lit course I'd teach in the fall, but it's not guaranteed; however, my feeling is that I should do something that I'm comfortable with, rather than choose something just because it's what I think they'd want me to do. Agree? or suicide?

The worst interview ever

When I was in high school, I once had a (live) interview for an honors program at one of the colleges that had accepted me. And I had a terrible combination of interviewers:

1) a man with laryngitis who did a lot of talking;
2) a woman with an impenetrable Germanic accent; and
3) a perfectly silent man.

The only question that I remember them asking me is the following:

"Why are you interested in the story of Rapunzel, and what do you think the major themes of the story are?"

My mind went blank. What on earth were they talking about? Rapunzel? When in my life had I expressed any interest in Rapunzel? What kind of idiotic essay had I written for this school? Good lord. Rapunzel??

I managed to come up with some kind of answer about confinement and femininity or something. God knows. Later I realized that I had mentioned, somewhere in my application, having to perform a monologue about Rapunzel in an English class in the tenth grade, but their question reflected such a profound misunderstanding of that incident that I didn't even recognize it in their query.

I got into the program, though. (And I turned it down. It had nothing to do with the interview, of course; there was just another school that I liked a lot better.)