My adviser always asks me what type of place I want to end up at (R1 or SLAC). Does it really matter what I want anymore? I'd go to whoever offered me a job first. I apply to them both in equal measure, firing my research CV to one and my teaching CV to the other. I used to get excited when they'd reply back, but now I know it's just the affirmative action form. When I was on the market last year, one school sent me a rejection letter first, with the affirmative action letter arriving the very next day. I threw them both in the trash.
I worked hard in graduate school. Publishing, teaching, a few awards. But I hate boasting about that shit. Every cover letter I write, I feel one part braggart and one part fraud. Sure I can teach that course (can I?) and that one too (really?). I'd be a good peer, teacher, researcher! At least give me an interview!
But I'm one just one of many faceless applicants in the pile. I know that. It's a game of numbers and fit, but I feel sick after every application I send out. I obsess over my materials. I spend days rewriting, crafting, and polishing. For what? So someone can take a quick glance at my CV, then at my cover letter, and toss it onto the reject pile? But hey! Don't forget to send back the affirmative action form, it really helps us out!
I read somewhere that the job application year is a time of fear, doubt, and extreme self loathing. Yeah, I have all that in spades. In between applications, I think about other jobs or careers I could have, where I didn't have to move, or live apart from my family, or take other gigs to fill this year. AT work I try to get out more pubs, do my other gig things, and write more applications.
When I get home, I drink (a lot), fill out my affirmative action forms, and wait.
- Bison
Oh, Bison. This is why we all come here, to share the misery. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteYour post makes me hyperventilate in retrospective panic; I had a very bad time on the market for several years for no intelligible reason before things worked out all right. It's such a horrible ego-pulverizing insomnia-inducing process-- keep your chin up.
ReplyDeleteThe thing with this esteemed blog here Bison, is that the vast majority of us are very well acquainted with the despair that comes from the very situation you describe. And your adviser's a completely out-of-touch moron to ask the question that prompts your post.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the search, and be creative and flexible about other possible career options that might still allow you to use some of the mad skillz you've honed through grad school.
I've gotten the R1 v. SLAC question from other folks in my field too, not just my adviser. I don't know what their job market was like 8 - 10 years ago, but I'm guessing it wasn't like this.
ReplyDeleteStill, it's always good to hear I'm not the only one feeling this way. I'll keep applying (and drinking) in equal measure and see what happens.
I know, it's so insane. My adviser won't engage with me about anything that has transpired since about 1990. (Except the Harry Potter series, he lurves the HP)
ReplyDeleteI get these kinds of questions and recommendations to present at conferences that may as well be entitled "Old-Timey Explorations of Old-Timey Ideas Long Abandonned by the Rest of Academia." Then when my papers are accepted by "Cutting Edge Explorations Conference" he sighs and tells me if I want to pay my own way there, that's fine, but it won't get me a job in "NO LONGER EXISTS IT'S 2011 DUDE."
I think that, in your original post and the above response, you've put your finger on what frustrates me most about the job market: everyone has advice to give, and most of it is ridiculously out of date. My advisers at the R1 where I got my degree naturally assumed that we all would be gunning for, and get, jobs at comparable places, because that was how it was done when *they* got their jobs.
ReplyDelete(How that worked out, of course, is a familiar tale of Misery: some at regional universities with 5/5 loads, postdocs for some, VAPs for some others, unemployment for still others, adjuncting for yours truly).
It's infuriating--really brain-bustingly so--to hear someone who landed their TT job 25 years ago say "oh, all you need to do is this!" and then relate something that worked for them in that previous quarter century, in a different world.
And of course conversing with those people who ARE actually in tune with what the market looks like today--the job seekers--quickly turns into a litany of further Misery.
I feel ya, Bison. I'm living through exactly what you are right now. But I can't really help you, since I suspect there's no help for us. Just one thing I've learned: voicing Misery helps. But it helps to an extent--the extent to which the Misery that you're expressing doesn't become the further Misery that you experience. If you want living proof of this, hang out on the job wiki (or rather, don't; for the love of God don't). Obsession will drag you down.
And of course, now I click over to the latest job application in the other window.
O Bison. I went out in the miserable mid-1990s and was on the market for 5 years before getting a sustainable job. Half a decade of my life wasted on The Misery. I got my job in that little uptick on the graph, and now it's below where it was back then. I am truly sorry it is so awful.
ReplyDeleteThis arouses a bit of retrospective (and possibly prospective) panic for me, too. I'm from approximately the same era as F&T, but took longer to defend, and missed the uptick, landing (still quite luckily so) in a multi-year, renewable, non-TT job (basically, the next best thing to TT, and probably better in some ways than some TT jobs). If it's any comfort, in the early '90s I was getting advice based on experience in the '60s and (when I was lucky) '70s. The only advice I can offer is to think of it as a marathon, not a sprint (the concept of a single "job application year" is way, way out of date; almost everybody will have more than one, either in sequence, or spread over time), and to keep working on Plan B(s) (maybe not right now -- the job hunt is time-consuming and it's always possible that lightning will strike and you'll get a job -- but once this academic job season is over).
ReplyDeleteAs far as the SLAC/R1 divide goes, I got that question, too, and even had the experience of having a SLAC interviewing committee tell me that one of my recommenders (someone who left my department after I'd taken several courses with him) had written such a research-focused letter that they wondered whether I'd be appropriate for their school (I made the best case I could, but wasn't hired -- since I did get the interview, being ABD probably played a larger role in that than the mismatched letter). While I realize that recommenders in crowded fields such as my own (I'm in one of those subfields of English that has a relatively large number of job openings, and an even larger number of applicants) can't write letters targeted to specific institutions, I really don't think it's too much to ask recommenders to write, and dossier services (in-house or commercial) to handle, two sets of letters (perhaps with some variation in writers as well as content). Realistically, while all of us have our strengths and preferences, most Ph.D.s are quite capable of being productive members of either SLAC or R1 departments, and if we want to stay in academia, the "I can be happy with either" answer -- perhaps even extended to include "or a community college" -- is really the only realistic one.
Does it seem like the advice for the '10s should be to apply wide, apply often, be flexible, and consider other employment?
ReplyDeleteI've been on many many hiring committees and I have to say it's always obvious when the person that wants a job at an R-1 gets an interview at my SLAC. I am usually not the one that urges interviewing them, but they're interviewed nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteWe're very, very gun-shy, because we really don't want someone to pick up and leave in two years. The fact that these days they probably can't leave even if they want to doesn't help. If a person really wants an R-1, they will not be happy here. They really won't. It's not that they won't be happy not having a job at all, or adjuncting. They won't be happy doing that either. But they will be bitter and feel like failures whether or not they are gainfully employed, because they have been denied what they feel is their due. I don't want my department to be that person's "sloppy seconds". It's my job to see that doesn't happen.
We want people that will come into our college, which is 4/4 really doesn't give a holy crap about scholarship, and say "You know, this is what I was meant for". We want people that will do scholarship because it keeps them feeling new and shiny, not because they see it as a big achievement worthy of lots of praise, because they won't get it here. Ask me how I know. Then ask me if I'm happy with my job anyway.
I don't understand how people who were hired in the past cannot give advice about being hired now. After all, the people who were hired in the past are the ones who are on the hiring committees now. They are doing the hiring for chrissake! If they think doing X works, they must be looking for X when they go through the pile of applications, right? If they think doing Y is not good, they must notice Y when they go through the pile of applications, right? Are they subconsciously using criteria they are unaware of? I don't get it.
ReplyDeleteI can give advice, and I do, lots of it. But the majority of jobs are non-TT and usually not full time. In the last pile of 700 applications I plowed through, easily 100 had what it takes. But there was only one job. So the defining feature became "fit," which honestly, you can't psych out ahead of time, or advise about in any but the most generic way. We hired the person with expertise in chinchilla-fur weaving who could also teach koala-fur felting and speak across disciplines to the gerbilologists. There was only one of her. But nobody else's contortions could have convincingly produced that combination.
ReplyDeleteAdjunct Slave, I think part of the problem is that the vast majority of us aren't applying to places like where our advisors work (if we have PhDs, particularly, at high level R1 schools)-- they are not doing the hiring at East Jesus State Junior College for the Hamster-Arts.
ReplyDeleteMy brain, first year out: "Oh, I wonder if I should deign to apply to 4-year lib arts schools? *2/3 course load*?! Monsters!"
Year 4: "Hmm, 'Southeastern Western XX State U'. . . this school only has 2 geographical qualifiers in its name rather than 3 or 4, and no reference to any *particular* denomination. Elite! Woo hoo, no statement of faith required! And it's only 4/4!"
@Bison: the only thing I'd add is that if you consider part-time or full-time contingent work, you set some clear goals and boundaries regarding why you're doing, how long you're willing to do it, under what conditions, etc., etc. In this market, it probably makes sense to gain experience at a variety of institutions, and, even after you've done that, it may make sense to take on one or two classes to keep your hand in, maintain access to university-level library resources, etc. What doesn't make sense is teaching 6 classes at 3 schools in a futile attempt to keep food on the table and a roof over your head when it might make far more sense to be teaching a little and exploring other equally or more lucrative employment options at the same time. And it may or may not make sense to spend every year for a decade or more job-hunting, and more summers than not moving to the next one-year post (rather than writing, exploring other options, or just recovering) if you could instead settle at least for a while in one place, try out an alternative career, and consider whether it's really worth it to teach a class here and there to keep your hand in.
ReplyDeleteOr, to put it more concisely: be conscious of the decisions you're making, and the assumptions behind them, especially when it comes to accepting non-TT employment inside the academy, and make sure those assumptions have some validity (unlike, for instance, the idea that non-TT work can be a "foot in the door," which rarely works out, if only because at this point many departments have 5 or 10 contingent faculty members qualified to fill any TT line that might be created or vacated).
Pro Tip: Make your application stand out by mentioning your lax views on sexual harassment.
ReplyDelete