Service Counts! Who Knew?

Flavia commented on this recent Chronicle article about who gets hired where, and when. I have no statistically significant information to impart on this subject; however, I am moved to muddy the waters a bit by introducing some anecdata regarding searches at my new uni, including, especially, the one that resulted in my hiring.

First: I've met a good handful of new faculty at Idyllic State, and none that I know of is right out of grad school; a VAP position seems to be minimal (and there's a contingent of us in the Humanities/Fine Arts who were TT for five years or more prior to moving here). There is one person I've met whom I don't know to have had a previous position, but I don't know that he didn't, either. VAPs and moving from one TT/tenured post to another seems well within the pale, in other words.

Second: It's becoming increasingly clear that, while I'm sure that I wouldn't have been hired if my research hadn't been up to snuff, it's my undergraduate teaching and service experience that clinched my candidacy. Surprise! I genuinely didn't think that my service experience, extensive as it is (and frequently in leadership/chairing positions) would help beyond a certain minimal threshold. As it happens, there is a Service Gap in my new department, and also increasing pressure to grow undergraduate enrollments. My strengths, unexpectedly, were a fit for their needs.

Thus, my teaching award, years of positive evaluations with a 4/4 load, chairing of the curriculum committee and subsequently the division, and directing the Honors Program (which involved recruiting and considerable encouraging of students) made me a particularly attractive candidate. Presumably the fact that I continued to publish during this time helped, of course, but it's been pointed out to me since I got here that I have a lot to offer in terms of undergraduate education and outreach. I honestly didn't think that that would matter so much at what is a decidedly research-oriented university.

So...you never know. My research portfolio, on a more junior candidate, might have been much less appealing to the search committee (not that I know that, of course). The things that I emphasized on my CV because, well, why not? happened to respond to needs within my new department that I could not possibly have anticipated.

Good luck to everyone who's on the market. It sucks, truly. And "fit" is a real thing, even if it means a lot of different things; you really can't judge what a committee might be looking for, beyond, of course, what's on the job ad. (And there's always stuff beyond the job ad.) The only (rather lame) bit of advice that I can give is to 1) clearly note on your cover letter how you are the best possible fit for what the committee is asking for; 2) explain yourself if you're moving from a t-t or tenured position; and 3) play up anything (within reason) that may help you stand out.

Searches from the other side

That title sounds a lot more woo-woo than I meant it to. What I'm talking about is pretty pedestrian: the job search--from the committee's perspective.

I've been on search committees before, and this is in fact the second search that I've chaired. What makes this one different is that it's on the big-conference timeline and it's for a field that closely parallels my field in terms of the number and quality of applicants. I won't say what discipline we're searching for, but it's a tenure-track humanities position in a field saturated with high-quality Ph.D.s.

For a 4/4 low-endowment rural SLAC position, we received a staggering 139 applications. Of those applications, probably...well, let's be generous and say that 25 were eliminated immediately for not being in the right field (in English terms, think comp/rhet when we're hiring for literature).

That leaves 114. Of those, easily...80? 90? were perfectly fine. Good degrees, interesting-seeming research (this one is harder for me to judge, since it's not my field), solid teaching, strong recs.

We winnowed them down to 8 for phone interviews. That's 5.75% of the initial pool.

How did we get there?

Good question.

This search, more than any other I've participated in, brought home to me the issue of fit and the sheer injustice (no news here) of the hiring process. As I annotated my list of candidates, I found myself writing "Seems strong," "Seems solid," "Worth a second look" far too many times. Gradually, these changed to, "Seems strong but nothing stands out"--and that was that.

So--what stood out? Because we couldn't interview everyone with a good degree, solid research, and strong teaching; that would mean 80-odd interviews. The problem is that what stood out were things that weren't in the job description because they couldn't possibly have been in the job description.

For example:

1. Candidate A has some experience teaching in Z, and we have a part-timer in Z who might be retiring soon (and no budget to rehire).
2. Candidate B has some study-abroad administrative experience that would dovetail nicely with our program in Y.
3. Candidate C's service-learning experience would fit really well in this particular community.
4. Candidate D's research interests are close enough to those of a few of my colleagues to spark some interesting team-teaching possibilities, but not so close that they would duplicate our department's strengths.
5. Candidate E has high school teaching experience that might enable him/her to collaborate on developing a new secondary certification program at Field.

And so on.

Fortuity starts to play a role. It's not the case that each of our finalists has some specific strength like this, but these were the kinds of things that started leading me (and the rest of the committee) to single out particular applications over the others. And you--the applicant--just can't prepare for that.

What you can do, though, is highlight interesting bits of your professional life that might cause your application to stand out, too. Conducted workshops for first-generation students? Mention that in your cover letter. Don't dwell on it, in case it's not relevant, but mention it. Organized or taught on a study-abroad trip? Mention it. Engaged in service-learning? team-teaching? curriculum design? Mention it.

There is one other concrete thing that I can mention, too. If you're applying for a job at a SLAC, somehow demonstrate that you're specifically interested in SLACs. Maybe this doesn't matter much if you're applying to the really top-tier elite schools (who wouldn't want a job at Swarthmore?), but, at least at a school like mine, a research-heavy cover letter that doesn't even mention the appeal of a liberal arts college pretty much gets you kicked to the curb--simply because there are too many applicants and we have to narrow the pool somehow.

Also: If you have a tenure-track (or tenured!) position and are applying out, EXPLAIN WHY. Give some explanation of the move, ideally one that makes you look good. Simply avoiding the topic in your cover letter counts as one big red flag.

Good luck, everyone.

Sisyphus's Teaching Philosophy Meme

OK, so there's this.

In the spirit of P, however, I've got to go for snark. It is April, after all, and I've got absolutely no patience left. At the moment, my real life teaching philosophy is DO YOUR GODDAMN HOMEWORK AND GET TO CLASS ON TIME, I AM TIRED OF YOUR BULLSHIT.

So here's my world-weary, when-will-this-semester-end version, born of actually serving on search committees that require teaching philosophy statements.

My teaching philosophy centers on students. I believe in a dynamic classroom where students learn actively. I eschew all forms of sage-on-the-stage, chalk-and-talk, rhymey-blimey-whatever teaching. Eschew it! My pedagogy requires students to talk, to discuss things, to actually participate in the learning process. In this, I am refreshingly newfangled.

In my student-centric classroom, we occasionally sit in circles. This radically disrupts the power structure of the classroom, enabling students to take an active role in their own educations. Sometimes we also do group work.

Further, I am committed to developing critical thinking in my students by getting beyond the notion that learning is all about memorizing facts and regurgitating them at the professor's will. I know that this is a new idea, but bear with me here--as it turns out, literary study is not just about plot summary! I ask challenging and innovative questions to connect the material to students' own lives. I also use PowerPoint sometimes, because today's students are digital natives who learn best through visual stimulus and are excellent multitaskers. These are all very exciting new ideas that I came up with myself while I was TA'ing that course that one time.

Hm. That might actually be too snarky even for me. And truthfully, I can't say that my real-life teaching philosophy was that much better (content-wise, anyway; I had very little teaching experience when I first went on the market). I've tried my hand at writing more original teaching statements, and they all sounded just a little crazy. But "student-centered" has GOT to be the tiredest classroom-descriptor in the book.

At one point in the last committee I served on, I started fantasizing about receiving a statement of teaching philosophy that embraced straight lecture; at least it would have been different.

If I'm in a better mood later this week, maybe I'll take Sis up on her challenge for real and write about what does bring me joy in teaching. Up until about a week ago, I had plenty to say. And, okay, honestly, my seminar students are rocking right now, so I'll leave you with that bit of positivity.

Annnnd not so much (the writing, that is).

School's back in session this week. Am I the only one who finds the post-spring-break re-entry hard?

Also we're hosting job candidates this week and next, so things are more hectic than usual. Mondays are my long days: I teach at 10 and then from 6-8:45, usually with a handful of meetings at odd hours in between. Today also included a teaching demo, a meet & greet with the candidate, and a candidate lunch. Whew.

There've been a lot of searches here lately, and one thing that I've become increasingly aware of is the following: When you're interviewing for a job at a small college like this one, where the faculty need to work together a lot, much of what the interview is for is to find out whether we like you. Like, as a person. Do we want to hang out? How will you be on a committee? Could I see having this person over for dinner, and enjoying myself?

This is not a profound point or anything--obviously "fit" has a lot to do with whether or not one gets along with the department on a personal level--but it's much more important than I would've thought coming in. I suspect that it's especially important at colleges like Field, where being a cutting-edge scholar is less important than being able to engage students successfully and contribute towards the College's ongoing development.

Again, not profound. But at the end of my 13-hour day (on campus by 8am; off campus by 9pm), it's all I've got. (And yes, I know that I say "important" three times in the last paragraph, but I'm not going to revise it or anything.)

PTSD

I'm not even on the market and looking at the job search wiki (for like a second--to see whether a job that a friend interviewed for has been filled [it hasn't]) made me feel terrible.

Bleah.

Please Be Nice to Graduate Students

I just got caught up on the kerfuffle at Tenured Radical's. (Is "kerfuffle" now the official term for academic blogosphere dust-ups?) I read through the comments, of which there are many, and was struck--as most readers were, I think--by the animosity shown by various factions. In particular, there were some grad student commenters who were furious by what they saw as the tenured writers' disdain and disrespect for people of their status.

I do not think that tenured (or tenure-track) faculty are the appropriate target for such vitriol; they a) have almost no say at all in the structure of academia as a whole, b) mostly probably do in fact feel a lot of compassion for the disappointed job-seekers, and c) in TR's case, actually expressed little that I construed as disdain or disrespect in her post or in the subsequent comments.

However.

Remember what it's like, people--especially people who had a long period of not-having-a-job prior to having one. Remember that it is January, the time of year when you're not getting campus interviews, and have to give up on the thin hope that those schools that didn't interview in Round 1 will suddenly see your glory and give you a call. It's the time of year when you're realizing, really and truly, that those cautionary tales do after all apply to you, and that, even though you thought you knew that, you never really believed that you wouldn't be one of the Chosen. The time of year when the only person you hear about getting an offer is that asshole who irritated you with her pomposity at the grad conference two years ago. When the wikis are populated by a handful of delighted, crowing new faculty and your phone is silent.

It's the time of year when the friendly, encouraging queries by junior faculty at your institution about how the market is going strike you as hideously condescending, when your gut response is easy for you to say, getting an ivy job when you were still ABD. When the thought that you wouldn't care whether you got a job or not because what was really important was having 5-10 years to explore interesting ideas suddenly doesn't seem compelling, and you realize that you actually are basing your self-worth on something that is entirely beyond your control. When the encouragement that you've received for years--of course you'll get a good job! you're so well situated for the market!--sounds like lies (although they aren't) and you recall them with a bitterness bordering on rage. When the depths of your envy and self-loathing appall you.

So I can imagine how I would feel, when I was going through all this (for yes, the above is autobiographical! Why do you ask?), if someone said to me, Hey, you knew going in that the odds were slim; what are you complaining about? Maybe you just shouldn't have gone to grad school at all. And I can imagine how TR's post and the one at Dean Dad's could sound like that to a job seeker in this position, even though I--as someone a little more detached--can see that that is not what they actually meant.

So maybe some people are a little, well, tetchy. But hey, let's remember what a huge number of our fellow scholars are going through right now, and remember the emotional hideousness that is the unsuccessful job search (and even many successful job searches), and let us be, well, nice.

I didn't even know that I was in suspense

I just checked the medieval wiki for the first time since MLA. I've already been rejected by Big Scary (which was fine and unsurprising; I am not of that league, just yet), but I was pleased to see that none of the other schools with which I interviewed have scheduled campus visits yet. I'm surprised to feel a bit of relief, a sense that I'm no longer avoiding something dreadful.

My feelings about being on the market are ambivalent. On the one hand, it would be awesome to get a reasonably well paying 2-2 or 2-3 job in a cool(er) place. On the other.... Well, yesterday I found some pictures I took of my yard this summer [see fig. 1] and that got me thinking about how it would feel to be moving away from here. It would be exciting, sure, but sad, too.

[fig. 1: yard]

I don't have deep roots here. But I do have a great boyfriend, nice colleagues--a few of whom I see socially--and some students whom I'd love to continue to know. I have a sweet little house with a garden; there are farmers' markets all around (if you don't mind driving 20-30 minutes); the harvested cornfields are sad and gray and beautiful in the winter. There's a yoga studio a half-hour away--a little far for frequent trips, but at least it's there (and I did go this morning).

No, I would not want to live here forever. I would not want this job forever: it asks an awful lot and gives so little back, either financially or in time for research and writing. But I'm a long way beyond the terrible dissatisfaction I felt at this time last year (at that point I was staring down three 20-student sections of comp, for one thing; this semester I'll only have one!).

So, yeah. Job market = a thing about which to feel ambivalent. And then a part of me thinks that my very ambivalence will score me a job--kind of like how you're supposed to fall in love when you're not looking for it, as that wearisome advice-nugget goes.

I'm also meaning to blog about other things--the MLA and its meet-up (I'll probably not get to this one, but it was great to catch up with Sisyphus, What Now, Medieval Woman, Flavia, the Rebel Lettriste, Dr. Virago, and SEK) and new year's stuff--but that'll wait. Or, in the case of the MLA, be skipped altogether. Right now I think I'd like to take a shower.

Live from SF: Inarticulate musings at the mid-point

Yesterday on the plane I got to play the fun game: Who's going to MLA? Woman across the aisle from me reading Michel Houellebecq in French? Check. Guy in front of me in Ray-Bans with a word-find puzzle book? No. Tall guy from in skinny jeans and carrying a black bag? Could go either way...but when I saw him walk right past the ticket machines at the BART station, I concluded that he was a local.

It's Sunday, and I had my first two interviews this morning (the next two are tomorrow, also in the morning. I like this whole afternoons-free thing). The first one was The Big Scary; I was really glad to get it out of the way early, but given how much more together I felt in the second interview, I'm not sure that that was the most rational sequence. Essentially, though, I feel as if I've spent the morning re-defending my dissertation, only to much less sympathetic audiences than my actual committee. It's funny--the first year that I was on the market, every question was about teaching. Because, you know, I hadn't like taught anything. Now, when I have plenty to say about teaching, nobody wants to hear about it. Go figure.

I'm not going to say anything about how I think that the interviews went, because I know that that's futile. (Besides, in my pre-academia days, it seemed like every interview that went well went nowhere, while the ones I thought I'd bombed turned into jobs, so I'm not sure how valuable post-mortems are.) It was kind of nice to have people ask me tough questions about my work, however--even though I'm not sure how well I answered all of them. I miss feeling institutionally supported as a scholar, I think.

Another thing that's striking me about this round is how much better I am in the interviews than I was in my first year. I thought that I did well in my interviews my first time out, but looking back, I was vague and spoke in abstractions and didn't get very many follow-up questions. Last year, which is for some reason really hazy in my memory, was definitely better--but I hadn't taught a medieval lit course yet and my "future research" project was totally inchoate (and virtually indistinguishable from my diss). This year, I think that I'm being a lot more specific and concrete in my answers to questions, and I also feel relatively composed. None of this might mean a damn thing if I slip up and say something unreflected and stupid (which I think that I did in Big Scary--OK! No post-mortems!), but at least I have a better sense of what it means to be faculty than I did in the first year. Or the second, even.

Nonetheless, I am not loving the MLA, as I never have loved the MLA. I'm insecure about my lame-ass institution; I can't find anyone I know (nor did I do a remotely good job of setting up fun reunions, other than joining in on tomorrow's meet-up--my roommate, who was my social link to my grad school, bailed at the last minute); and, while I just had a nice lunch with a friend I hadn't seen in years, I'm likely to be eating most meals alone. Much as I love conferences--and I do!--they always make me feel kind of lonely and unsure of myself. And unpopular! Most of all unpopular. Maybe if I had some hipster glasses...?

Damn it.

Cool job that had asked for additional materials just announced that its search has been canceled.

On the other hand, I was much amused by the word "practacices" in a student's paper this morning.

Wiki Irritation, or, How Everyone Is Wasting My Time

Is it really necessary for us all to record every single EOE card and application acknowledgment that we receive on the wiki? Separately? With additional notes specifying whether we're in or out of the country?

It seems like it should be enough to know that a school is sending out acknowledgments. It does not interest me if one person receives an acknowledgment on the 14th and another on the 16th, and two more receive them--with EOE postcards--on the 17th. That information does not help anyone.

Okay. Done. Back to work.

What's with the Gouging, MLA?

So, in order to go on the job market, one must:

1. Pay an annual membership fee.
2. Procure a separate subscription to view the JIL (or poach one from a friend if one's institution does not subscribe to it).
3. Pay an immodest conference registration fee ($125!).
   
4. Buy a passel of one-way plane tickets so that one can attend the conference and also visit one's family for the holidays. These aren't cheap in the best of times, and people, these aren't the best of times.
5. Pay for a hotel room in a city with which one probably isn't familiar, which often leads one to stay in one of the conference hotels ($$$$) rather than risk getting lost on the way to/from interviews, which one may or may not have.
6. Let's not talk about meals, or dossier processing fees (should properly blame my grad school for this one), or postage or copying fees.

Okay, not all of that is MLA's fault. But it struck me this morning that it's truly weird to withhold the job list from people who don't have subscription numbers. Seriously, does any individual pay for a JIL subscription? I don't even know how one would go about doing such a thing.

I haven't made any decisions about my own future, by the way. I'm just railing against the currently overwhelming expenses that I will incur should I happen to follow Option A.

It Ain't Over Yet

This is turning out to be an exhausting week.

First, we had two job candidates on campus this week. We have made a decision, and really hope that our offer gets accepted. Otherwise, it's back to the application pile.

It's been interesting being on this side of the search. One thing that surprised me somewhat--although it makes perfect sense--was how much personality mattered. Because we're a very small department, we work together pretty closely and see a LOT of each other, so trying to figure out how well we could all work with these people was a big part of the process. The results were pretty clear in this case, although they were both lovely people and highly qualified. Oh--that's the other thing. I already knew that billions of excellent candidates are still out on the market, but this process has confirmed it. We've received well over 50 applications (I don't have an exact count) and many of them were outstanding. Even the ones who clearly weren't a fit for us were, for the most part, very impressive. I'm surprised that I got this job last year. I wouldn't have hired me, given my criteria.

Second, I'm in the midst of the grading. I will not be finishing today, by the way. I haven't even started my survey papers because I have spent untold hours already this week dealing with my plagiarism cases. I met with three students in the last two days, and it was awful. Awful. This is the first time I've had students deny their plagiarism, and they all did it in different ways: flat-out denial; declaration of ignorance ("What, I didn't cite that right?"); desperate pleading. The pleading was the worst: I actually started to cry when s/he left my office (don't worry--the student didn't see that). And now one of them is threatening to bring in his/her lawyer. I keep telling Said Student to go to my chair, who is next on the due-process list, but s/he just keeps sending me pissed-off emails. (Well, okay, s/he has sent me two, but that's plenty.) The defense? "I cited an article, but I did it wrong--so you're failing me for making a mistake." Um. As I said about 25 times in our meeting, you cited a different article. You can't just drop citations into your paper at random--especially when much of that paper is cut-and-pasted off the internet--and call that "proper attribution of materials."

Ugh. I hate this.

Because then I start beating myself up about how maybe I didn't really teach them how to cite and it's all my fault, and I'm a horrible vindictive person and I'm ruining their careers, etc etc. But I've been talking about citation all semester. If they don't get it yet, well....

And I've posted my comp grades, which means that I now have a couple of disappointed/angry students emailing me to know why they did so poorly. Their grades are perfectly justified, but I have to go back and look them up and email them and just generally face a lot of unpleasantness.

At least the utterly lousy weather of the last few days is finally blowing over.

Okay. I need to start thinking about facing my final batch of papers (which should be better and less plagiarized, thank God). And I need to think about next week, when it will all be over and everyone will be GONE and I can think about other things.

Why I Am Drinking a Beer at 5:15, Even Though I Have to Go Back to Campus Tonight and Have A Lot of Grading to Do

1. Today I got a "rejection that is not a rejection" from Dream U. Goodbye, Dream. There will be others.

(May I also interject here a request to search committees? When you reject a person, reject her. None of this "Our search is completed! I'll bet your search is going well, too!" nonsense. Seriously. Dream U was absolutely splendiferous in all aspects of the process saving this one, so I'm really not too bothered by it and I think it just comes from an exaggerated anxiety about upsetting people--a misplaced courtesy, in fact--but it's not the first such letter I've received and I don't relish having to reread rejection letters two or even three times to figure out what the hell they're saying to me. It doesn't cushion the blow.)

2. People were crying in this afternoon's faculty meeting. Crying. Obviously I can't and won't talk about why--and honestly I haven't been here long enough to know what the real deal is--but suffice to say that there is Drama. And I will be accepting the Field offer in the next two days, so. The Drama will soon be mine.

3. In the last three days, I wrote up extensive comments on 47 drafts (10 to go!) and conferred with 18 students (2 to go!). So there's cause for celebration + lobotomy.

4. Hey! I have a job! It's almost official! So, in spite of everything, I get to have a small mid-week celebration. Right?

Job Search Update

I know what you're all thinking. You're thinking, "Heu! What the hell? You never tell us anything about your job search! In fact, are you even on the market?"

Well, grieve no more, for here's the current state of things.

Field College has made me a tenure-track offer. I've hemmed and hawed about whether I would take this offer, should it be made, and decided that yes, I would--unless Dream U (still silent) comes through. So I'm feeling moderately good about this offer. It means that they like me; it means health insurance; it means the most minuscule salary hike in history, but oh well. Maybe I'll get an office with a window once I'm on the t-t.

Meanwhile, I have emailed DU to let them know what my situation is and to (re-)express my deep and abiding interest in their institution.

I've also had a conversation with the other u's search chair. I was pretty nervous going into this conversation, as I was afraid that her advice/impressions re. my interview skilz would be less than flattering. But honestly? It was really helpful, both practically and psychologically. One of the things that swayed the committee against me was something that I suspected had been a problem--sort of an intellectual-fit issue, which I didn't help by not answering a couple of questions particularly well (and I was aware of this as the words were coming out of my mouth, unfortunately)--and the other was an easily-fixable issue regarding how I present my professional range. Finally, though, the major deciding factor was my relative lack of experience. The winning candidate has been out longer and has accordingly more teaching and publications. So...that's it. No big deal. My degree will only get older; with luck, I'll go on to teach and publish more, and then I'll be the annoyingly experienced candidate who bumps other people out of the running.

So it's not that I'm a dismal interviewee, or have horrendous interpersonal skills, or whatever--it's all stuff that I can address or that the passage of time will address for me.

In short: I feel better this week. Much better. And while life might not become perfect for a little while longer, that doesn't mean that I'll never get where I want to be. As a friend reminded me this afternoon, "Academic careers are really long."

Not Looking Good

I'm getting used to the idea of becoming resigned. No Dream U for me. There hasn't been word either way, so "who knows what might happen," but realistically? It's getting to be a little late in the week.

All is not lost. Other possibilities in the works.
But none are quite so exciting.
And..........it was such a good year for medievalists.
And yet I didn't....................

Ah, there you are, old friend!

And the old friend--let's be clear--is that omnipresent job-search sidekick, Self-Pity.

Yep, I've started skulking on down that thoroughly unpleasant path. I got a post-campus-visit rejection today. Not from the Dream Uni, but from the other one (visit no. 2), which I liked and thought seemed like a great job but where I didn't get that real sense of fit--so no, this isn't a devastating rejection, but it's still disheartening. It's disheartening because it reminded me of what it feels like: that sudden drop in the stomach, the evaporation of a particular set of daydreams, the clipping-off of one possible path that the future could take. Nope. I'm not moving there. Those will not be my colleagues. That isn't my office.

It also signaled the dramatic reduction of my chances of getting an offer from either place. Weirdly enough, if the selection process were totally random, my odds of getting one or both of these two jobs would be 5/9. Two jobs, three candidates--5 to 9 odds that I'd get something out of that. No, it doesn't seem like that should be right, but there it is; probability makes absolutely no sense. So now that I don't have one of the jobs, my chances have slipped back to 1/3. Right? Or is it still 5/9, only...no, wait, that can't be right. And of course this is pretending that the selection process is totally random, which it isn't. I could be a secretly toxic candidate. I could be juvenile and naive and admit way too much about myself too soon. Was I too forward? Am I too comfortable with my own shortcomings? Was that comment that I made about my hair taken as a sign of frivolity? Did anyone notice when I dropped that glob of hummus at the dinner? Oh dear God. Oh God. I want to crawl up under an afghan and weep. I want to crack into that bottle of bourbon over there. I don't want to grade, I don't want to prep two classes and a teaching demo, and what's this about a mandatory campus event tomorrow afternoon? I need to hide. I'm inept, I'm absurd, every hope has been dashed--dashed, I tell you.

See? This is what happens. This is what that damned rejection has done to me.

And oh yes, I remember it well. I remember last year, when I actively avoided junior faculty at my grad uni because of course they got fabulous jobs at GradU when they were ABD, and while I'm sure that their queries into my job search situation were wholly sympathetic, I was too bitter and wrecked by my failure to even get myself a campus visit to even look at such people. Oh yes. I remember all of this--the anger I felt at ABDs who got tenure-track jobs, the startling depths of my jealousy. It all passed, of course. It usually passed pretty quickly, like within 24 hours of each major disappointment, but when it was there, it was there. And I don't want to swim in those waters again.

But. It did pass, every time. And I know that disappointment is only disappointment, and I can handle it. It's just that awful feeling--that wrench, that deep desire to withdraw and hide and close oneself off from everything else until one has adjusted to the new bad news and everything is okay again--that's not something that I want. And I'm afraid that, by the end of the week, I'll have to absorb the fact that Heavenly U doesn't want me, and all that background hoping and wanting and imagining what I could do there will have to be abandoned, forever, and I'll fall back down to the dusty reality of not having found my job just yet.

Or, if not forever, at least until next year's JIL comes out.

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This post nominated for age of perfection self-indulgent post of the year. Thanks for reading, guys.

Suspense

I just got an email from a search committee. Yeep. No--don't get excited; there's no news yet. It was strictly of the "we'll be meeting soon and let you know what's going on" variety. But my God--it's been several minutes, and I'm actually kind of shaking. I feel woozy. Wow. This is nuts. And here I thought the weekend was safe from drama?

Speaking of drama, we just had a big flash snowstorm (is that a term?) accompanied by thunder and lightning. It was thrilling. And I thought: Snow day, take 2! But no, that likely won't happen, and really it would be kind of a pain if it did because we're already behind--but who doesn't love a snow day? And it would give me a further 24 hours to come down off of that adrenaline hit.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must commence living in fear of my email.

Bon Blogiversaire a Moi

I started this blog a year ago today. While I was swimming yesterday--or maybe it was the day before--I thought of some things that I could say about that: mainly concerning how this blog isn't quite what I envisioned it to be, but has become a much more sort of frivolous and largely silly blog with the occasional desperate cry for job-related reassurance. I'm perfectly okay with that. I think it suits me.

But I don't remember exactly what I was going to write, and I'm starving and also need to head back to campus in just over an hour to show a movie to my students, so I won't try to reconstruct my thoughts. Instead, and true to the above-stated theme, I will only say that today is the EARLIEST POSSIBLE day that I could POSSIBLY even DREAM to IMAGINE hearing about either of the jobs for which I have had campus interviews, and I am, accordingly, a wreck. (Never mind that this state could last weeks and weeks--I know the process--I will proceed to fret in an undetermined fashion, fraught with self-loathing and despair, until everything is settled and/or I've resigned myself to my fate.)

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.

All Hail Moe, for Moe is a Benevolent God!

Okay. Could my rampant superstition get any more encouragement?

I knock on wood; I admit it. In fact, if I say something that warrants wood-knocking, and there's no wood present, I feel a very real anxiety and wish that I could take back my words.

There was a time back in November when I lamented, on this very blog, that I was anxiously awaiting calls about interviews even though it was far too soon to expect to hear anything--and within 15 minutes I got a call. Last May, I was on the verge of lamenting, on this very blog, that I would never ever get a job when I got a call scheduling a campus visit for Field College. And now, withing a couple of hours of my latest lamentation...I was called about a campus visit. At one of the schools that seemed great in the interview.

Too-ra-loo! I say. Too-ra-lay!

So here's the scoop, y'all: If you complain in earnest, then the Job Market will hear you. It's kind of like the Secret: Failure is all your fault; you weren't whining hard enough. (I'm kidding. I hate, loathe, and despise the Secret. It represents all things deplorable. And I think that I should stop whining.)

And now I need to figure out how I'm going to pull off canceling three consecutive days of classes this month. Because Newest Interview is next W-F, and then Already Scheduled Interview is the following M-W (M being a holiday, so no worries there). My carefully crafted syllabi are falling apart and my students will feel betrayed. Delighted, but betrayed. Perhaps I can do something about comp, though.... Agh! This is a problem I was hoping to have!