On the Market and In a Job

In a comment to yesterday's post, Earnest English writes:

Dr. Crazy, I was wondering how you (anyone) handles having a job and going on the market. I too have a job and don't really want my current department to know I'm planning to leave. (The job is fine, but like the girly girl I've become, I want to go home to my boyfriend and have a chance at playing Suzy Homemaker at least part time. Isn't that disgusting? I can't believe I'm saying this -- in public!) So how do you handle it? For example, my chair has come from Department X, where they are hiring this year in my field, but if they see where I'm at now, then they'll surely get in touch with said chair and then said chair will know I'm on the market. So I figure I won't apply, even though it's a potentially good job in a location Boyfriend and I both like. Crazy, please advise. What do you do? Does it ever seem like a problem?

I started writing a comment, but it threatened to become a mile long, and so I've decided to do a full post in response. First of all, I faced the agony of wondering how to tell or not to tell my current department last year, and I came out on the other side, so anything I say now comes out of that particular experience. Second, a lot really does depend on one's specific situation and one's personal relationship with one's colleagues, so what I say here may not be advice that all should or could take. I should also note that I perused my "on the market" posts of last year, and I didn't really write about this aspect of my search, so a full-on post rather than just a comment is probably in order. What I wrote most about last year was the "why" of my decision to go on the market generally, and about points in the process, like telling Very Supportive Colleague, but not about the how I came to the decision to tell or not to tell. But so anyway, here I go.

First things first. I think that in fields like English, where the market is impossibly over-saturated, that one can feel (rightly or wrongly) like a traitor to one's current position if one chooses to look from a job. Moreover, one can feel like a traitor to all those folks who don't have tenure-track employment and who've been on the market multiple years. I know that I had those feelings last year. The thing is, it's stupid to feel that way. It's *normal* to keep one's career options open, and it's *not* a betrayal of one's current institution or colleagues to do so. It's a job, not a marriage. Taking a job does not include making vows of lifetime commitment and fidelity. Taking a tenure-track position is not the same thing as taking religious orders.

Moreover, pretty much the only way to raise one's base salary is to get an offer from another institution. Because of the realities of salary compression, it's likely that time spent on the tenure-track will ultimately mean that after a few years one is making below the market value in one's discipline, and it makes good sense to try to up one's base salary whether by getting another offer and taking it or by getting another offer and using it to negotiate with one's current institution. This is easier to do when one is looking at the assistant professor level, because once one enters the limbo of tenured associate professordom, one doesn't have as much capital with which to get an offer that will allow for such an increase. Particularly if one is at a teaching institution, getting tenure means that one is most likely going to fall behind others at the associate level in terms of research who would be competing for the same few jobs that might appear, and so would be much less likely to be able to move or to be able to get an offer. Ultimately, it's a good thing for one's current department if people look and get offers from other places because it can better enable the department to convince those who hold the purse strings to hire people in at higher salaries, to work harder to rectify inequities that result from compression, to deal with workload issues that might be making faculty look elsewhere, etc.

Finally, it's important to recognize that given the realities of the academic job market generally that most people's first jobs don't necessarily land them in a location or type of institution of their choosing. Your colleagues know this. It's not wrong to want to be closer to family, to be in the same place as your significant other, to be in a place where it's easier to have a vibrant life outside of your job, or to teach a different student population or at a place with a different balance of teaching/research/service. Those things, ultimately, can actually help you to do your job better, because a person who's happy is likely to be a happier and more productive colleague.

But so. If it's so great to look, why do people choose to search on the down low?

1. Fear of retaliation. The culture of your institution/department is such that looking for another job makes people think that you're not committed to your current one. People are suspicious of those who keep their options open, and this (potentially) could hurt your chances of getting tenure because people see you as a "bad" colleague.

2. Fear of embarrassment. You don't want to tell your current colleagues because you don't want to look like an ass if you don't get an offer.

3. Fear that if people know you're looking that they will then believe that you hate your current job/your students/your colleagues. If you're in a snake pit filled with conflict and mutual loathing, a decision to look will be rightly read as an insult to your institution and/or your colleagues. See #1.

4. You're not really committed to leaving the job that you've got should you get an offer. In other words, you're just testing the waters even though you're totally happy in your current position, but if you got an offer you wouldn't really take it. (I'd say if this is one's position there's no point in sending materials out, but that's just me.)

5. You're applying to a "dream job" (because it's in your hometown, because it's at your alma mater, because it's the top department in your specialty according to the rankings, whatever) and you feel like it's such a long shot that you don't think it's worth mentioning. See #2.

Now, all of these are real concerns, and they shouldn't be taken lightly. That said, the reality is that even if you try to search under the radar, if you get to the interview stage, people at your current institution may find out that you're looking anyway. My initial feeling when I decided to put myself on the market last year was that I didn't want anybody to know, mainly because of Reason #2. After discussing it with Job Search Mentor, though, and realizing that if I had any success that I'd ultimately have to come clean and that it might look even worse if I waited until later in the process, I decided that I'd rather be embarrassed than spring the fact that I'd been searching for months on them later in the process. For me, being up front meant not feeling like I had to live a double-life or fear being "found out" before I told. Now, I didn't stand up in a department meeting and announce my search to all and sundry, but I told the administrators in my department, and it gave me a sense of calm, and I think that they took my directness about my intentions as a sign of my professionalism. Also, telling meant that I could get a letter from a person in a position of power in my current department, which is really helpful if one is looking as an advanced assistant professor.

So, I've addressed some of this in the previous paragraph, but to be parallel, I should probably list the reasons to tell:

1. Being direct about your intentions can reflect positively on you. It shows that you trust your colleagues, it shows that you are professional, and it means that you get to control who finds out, when they find out, and how they find out.

2. A letter from your current institution will help in your success on the market. Especially if you've been out of graduate school for a few years, the people who can best speak to your collegiality and your teaching and service record are not your grad school mentors. Moreover, such a letter can alleviate search committee fears that the reason that you are looking is because you won't receive tenure at your current institution or that everybody in your department hates you.

3. You aren't unhappy at your current institution. This may seem counterintuitive, but I feel like if you're not desperately trying to get out then it makes it easier to tell. Everybody has reasons why they might want to send out a few applications. If those reasons are personal (relocation issues) or if those reasons are professional (hey, I do a lot of research and I'd like more support for that, for example), then you might as well just say, "look, I'm totally happy here, but jobs x, y, and z would be great jobs for me and so I feel like I should give it a shot." If your colleagues are reasonable, then they should be able to grasp the fact that looking doesn't mean that you don't enjoy your current position.

Now, this year, I haven't done any Grand Reveal about my intentions to look. I asked my colleague to update his letter, and that's all I'll do until I get further in the process (if, indeed, I do get further in the process). I'm pretty relaxed about looking in part because I am not using this search to do soul-searching about the state of my life in the way that I was last year. If nothing pans out, I know that I can be happy getting tenure and remaining at my current institution. I have great colleagues, I do valuable work, I feel like I have a great deal of autonomy that I might not have in another position, and I have been able to achieve everything I've wanted to achieve in this career right where I am. I'm looking because while I'm content here, I am not bound to this place. I don't have roots here, I don't have a family, and I don't have a reason to stay. And I'm ambitious. And hell yes if I can get a job that would allow me to do more in this profession, I want to see if I can make that happen.

But I don't care about the affiliation on my nametag, and I'm not just trying to get higher up on the food chain, not really. I don't think that any job at any "better" university or any more researched-focused university would necessarily be a better fit for me. My priorities right now are more about trying to find the best possible balance between what I want professionally and what I want personally. The personal in this location hasn't been exactly stellar, and so that's as much a reason that I'm looking as anything. The professional is ok in this location, but I wonder what I could do at a place that had higher expectations for me and more support directed at those higher expectations.

But to answer EE's specific question, I'll venture the following. Assuming that you're in a department without a lot of crazy political maneuvering and vitriol, I'd think that it would be ok to have a talk with your chair about the job opening that you describe. You might say something about having noticed the job ad and that you're thinking of pursuing it, but you want advice about what the chair thinks. Your chair might actually be an advocate for you and help further you in the process. I wouldn't couch the revelation that you might apply for a job or two as "I'm planning on leaving this job." I would say, "I'm keeping my options open, and one thing is that I would like to be in the same location as my S.O. and this job could potentially allow for that, but I'm very committed to this job and happy with this job should that not come to pass." Don't make your chair think you've checked out of your current position, if that makes sense. Not knowing more about your specific situation, though, means that I might be offering you bad advice. Is there a colleague in your department with whom you are friends and whom you can trust not to gossip with whom you can discuss your quandary? Ideally somebody who's been there a few years and has some historical knowledge about what's gone on in the past? You also might talk to other mentors that you've had from grad school about your options. I know that helped me a lot with my decision last year to tell. Basically, I needed somebody to tell me that it's ok to look and that I wasn't committing some sort of crime by doing so. Also, I should probably mention that I was a bit more confident about going to VSC about it last year because he had mentioned a year before that people shouldn't hesitate to ask for letters if they needed them, which did give me a sense of how he'd respond if I told him. You may not be in such a great position as I was regarding that.

The thing is, there's no formula for this stuff. Honestly, if I were in a different place in my personal life, I might not even consider sending applications out right now. If I were in a different and less supportive department, I might not be so open about the fact that I am sending applications out. The reality is that I really think it's most likely that I'll end up staying here. I feel like I'm applying out of my league this year, and I'm in no way confident I'll even make it past the first round of cuts. But you know what? That doesn't matter. It's not wrong to apply. It's not wrong to leave oneself open to possibility. And if people can't deal with that? Well, then that's really about them, and it's not about anything I'm doing.

To Market, To Market

Well, today was the big day for those of us in MLA fields. The list is now searchable (albeit very slowly, for apparently everybody chose to lie in wait and to attempt to access the thing at the first possible moment), the ads are now up, and the job searching season is officially underway.

I've decided I'm going to apply for three jobs. I don't feel confident that I'll get any of them, or even that I have much chance of making cuts for interviews given the fact that the odds with applying for only three seem not to be in my favor, but since I'm not so much looking to leave my current job as looking to remain open to the possibility for positive change, I'm not applying for anything that I don't feel sure I'd want. And so, there are three. I suppose I may add one or two more as more ads appear in the coming weeks, but that, again, is only if I'm particularly entranced by what I see.

So, what distinguishes the big three?

One would mean moving closer to my family and hometown friends; one would mean moving closer to my fake boyfriend; one would mean moving back to the east coast. All would mean more time for research but all would also allow me to continue to care about teaching. So I've sent off my requests to people to get letters of recommendations updated, and I'm looking over my own letter now. We shall see!

Thoughts on Job Talks

Ok, so my earlier post was all about me being disgruntled and stressed out, and I admit, I'm still somewhat disgruntled and stressed out, but I want to do a post that is a little less oriented toward whining and more oriented toward something productive. (Note: my greatest destressor of the day was that I left campus for a couple of hours, and I spent money I shouldn't have spent at Dillards - because apparently stress turns me into a shopaholic, but also a bargain-hunter, as it's 40%-off all already reduced merchandise this weekend, so I spent 30 bucks when I could have spent, at full price approximately $130 - and then I went to Panera Bread for lunch and I did some work there. I should always leave campus if I've got 2-3 free hours, as sitting in my office is not the ideal way to destress. I did this last semester a couple of times, too, and it was great. I must remember to do this in future.)

But so anyway, I had to attend a job talk this afternoon - my second of the week - and it's incredibly interesting to do this given my current situation. Whereas my first time on the market I only knew job talks from my R1 institution - and I wasn't in residence during my year on the market so I didn't attend any in close proximity to my own experience - now, well, I have the lay of the land a bit more as to what is required in such a talk (or so I think). Today's talk was incredibly interesting, but at the same time, I left the talk feeling like the candidate didn't really pay attention to us as much as he might have done. In contrast, the talk earlier in the week wasn't quite so interesting, but the candidate did seem to have a good sense of the needs of our institution.

Now, one thing that is true about my institution is that we require an unconventional job talk. And one is never quite sure what the candidate gets told beforehand, so the talks tend to be all over the map, from the traditional talk (which isn't really what we want) and a very loose kind of talk that doesn't really fit the bill either (an overcorrection on the part of the candidate based on really believing it when the person who tells them about the talk inadvertently says something about being "informal" and they don't further ask about what "informal" means). In other words, one might say that we set candidates up to disappoint us (which I do think that we do, incidentally). Oh, I should also say that candidates at my institution do not teach a sample class - the job talk is meant to be a two-for-one deal, in which we get a sense of their teaching while at the same time we get a sense of their research.

Now, I've got an upcoming talk to give, and I'm not claiming that I'm an expert on what that institution wants, but at the same time, I do think that my experience of having given a talk (and done very well at it) and of watching many job talks (both in grad school and at my current institution) has been valuable experience. And so, even though I may well not get the job for which I will be giving the upcoming talk, I'm going to go out a limb and give some tips about what to do in a job talk, whatever the institution.

1. The job talk is not about your research.
Not really. It's about how you fit into the institution. As such, your primary concern is in tailoring what you do to the institution at which you are giving the talk. This is true for all institutions, even R1 type places, though what it means there is something different from what it means at an institution like mine from what it means at a SLAC. The point is, your research is your research whatever way you slice it. But your presentation of that research is really the point in such a presentation. They've already seen your writing samples and stuff, or at the very least your CV. So what they're looking for is NOT to find out who you are as a researcher, not really. What they're looking to find out is whether you "fit in" with the department. It's not about whether you're interesting (though you have to be) or whether you demonstrate your knowledge of a topic (though you must). It's about how you organize that interesting knowledge into what the institution is looking for. Now, most grad students know (if only intuitively) what that means for an R1 sort of a situation. Don't bore people. Show that you've done your homework. But at my institution, it's not really about that (only). It's about how you show that you fit that into teaching. It's about being practical in your approach (talking about how things fit into specific assignments or approaches in the classroom, for example). It's about making what you do accessible, as if to students. This will be like nothing you've ever seen at your grad school when they've been hiring.

2. You can't know what the institution wants if you don't ask, especially since the talk really isn't about your research.
The thing that got me my job, aside from being my usual charming self and my cv, was, I believe, the fact that I hounded the Search Committee chair for more information about the expectations for the job talk. The first information that I got was that it "wasn't a traditional job talk" and that they wanted me to "talk about my research" but that I should also talk about how that relates to teaching. I responded with a flurry of emails requiring the chair to specify. First he said something about me avoiding the "narcotic effects" of just reading a paper. But that was not enough for me. So I asked more questions. And it was through asking those questions that I was able to come up with a talk that really did address the needs of my audience. I had a mountain of handouts - sample assingments for a range of courses, sample syllabi, sample approaches. Yes, I read for 10 minutes or so, so that they would get a sense of what I was doing in a traditional sense. But that was it. I moved on. I answered the question, "so how does this relate to you all and to the students at your institution?" I answered the question, "what will I bring to this institution, if you hire me?" And that's ultimately the question that all schools want answered. At an R1, the answer is "brilliance" and so it is about the brilliance of your work in a more conventional way. But elsewhere? It's about other things.

3. A job talk is not a conference presentation.
So this might be obvious, but it's not. One, people in the audience won't necessarily be familiar with what you're talking about. And I'm not talking just about the texts - I'm talking about even the discipline in which you situate yourself. Departments have many configurations - some are departments just of English and American Literature, but some are departments of Literature and Language (i.e., the foreign languages are grouped with English), or they are English departments but they also hire people who specialize in professional writing or creative writing or comp/rhet. In other words, if you give your talk as if you are giving a conference presentation, you're going to leave people out of the conversation. They don't catch the references. They've never even heard of some of the references. If you're not prepared for that, you're going to fail.

4. A job talk is not a conference presentation, part II.
When you read a paper for 15 minutes, people can pretty much follow it. When you are told that you will have an hour block of time, well, things change. When in doubt, go short rather than long. You can always elaborate in the Q and A. Be sure to state up front what you will talk about, and if possible give people an outline of your main points, so if they tune out they can tune back in. Aim for clarity over complexity, even when what you discuss is complex. This is true in all scenarios, because I'll tell you, even when attending job talks that were more traditional in nature at my grad institution, I valued these things. If they say that you have 30-40 minutes to speak, aim for 30. Take time of day into account - if the talk is at 3PM, that's naptime; if the talk is at 6PM, that's dinnertime. Take care of your audience by not going on and on, even if you are really interesting and engaging.

5. Technology is not always your friend.
In today's talk, the candidate used technology brilliantly. The candidate used images, and those images were essential to the candidate's presentation. The candidate did not just have main points on the screen as a power point. The candidate did not have a power point with points that didn't really add to the presentation, just looming in the background. The candidate did not have a picture of a labial flower on the screen to remind us of the candidate's personal sexual orientation (as a candidate in the past did). The candidate did not keep the images on the screen after they were no longer pertinent. I'd much rather see a presentation with no use of anything on a screen, particularly if things on a screen are not essential, than see a candidate put crap into a powerpoint that doesn't really help me as a member of the audience. Technology should be for the audience. I believe anybody can figure out how to put something up on a screen - if that's the only reason you've decided to use AV, then you should just say no. You've got (or are getting) a PhD - I believe that you can figure out a smart classroom, and I don't need to see an unnecessary demonstration of the fact that you can.

6. Don't rely on your audience to ask questions that are central to your success.
This may seem to contradict #4, in which I say that you can elaborate during the Q and A. But it really doesn't. What I'm saying is that if you know your audience is interested in X, give them X in the talk, and let them ask questions about Y, even if Y is what your private passion is. Don't make me ask you questions that will save your candidacy. Specifically, if you're interviewing at a teaching institution, and you don't have a teaching demo to show your stuff, don't make the audience ask you about how what you do translates into your work in the classroom.

7. Don't evade questions about challenges to what you do.
Let's say that an audience member asks you about students who would resist your approach. Don't just say that "this has never been an issue for me" and leave it at that. Let's say an audience member challenges your theory in a section of your talk. Don't just say that what they have to say isn't really pertinent to your approach. ENGAGE. Give a REAL response. A CONCRETE response. Obviously, you need to be polite, and you may need to stall a bit if you've not thought the question through, but you shouldn't pussy-foot around a question and fail to answer it.

8. Don't expect the audience to connect the dots.
Make the trajectory of your talk clear. Make it clear where your ideas come from and why you move from point A to point B (or C or D or E). Make it clear how your ideas in the talk fit into your broader identity as a scholar. Make it clear how everything comes together. If you expect your audience to connect the dots, they may just not do that. They may just not see how it all fits together.

So these are my thoughts on job talks. We'll see how I do in my upcoming one, but the point here, is this is all I've learned from attending many of them, and I suspect that this information may be helpful to others.

Friday Morning

Ugh. I'm in the mood to write this morning, but I don't really have any material, if that makes any sense. I'm just exhausted from the week, I'm procrastinating about grading some quizzes that I've got to return this morning, and I'm feeling both disgruntled and stressed out.

Disgruntlement (and no, I'm not sure if that's actually a word)
I think that going on the market this year has made me a disgruntled employee. Not that I thought my job was all sunshine and roses before I did this, but going on the market, with the way that it requires you to get excited about other jobs in order to perform well, has kind of forced me to pick some nits related to my current situation. I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing, as in the long run, I think it's good if I stay here not to be mystified about exactly what this place is. That said, I fear that I'm expressing more disgruntlement than is wise because deep down I'm allowing myself to believe that I'm going to get another job, which is a really fucked up thing to allow myself to believe, even though believing that really is probably necessary to doing well at this final stage of the game. I won't get into all of the reasons why I'm disgruntled with my current job, but suffice it to say that I feel like any institution of higher education that uses the words "revenue neutral" and tries to pretend that those words don't mean "hey faculty, you realize that you're getting fucked over, right?" is a pretty sinister place. Oh, and in doing my taxes I allowed myself to realize that I'm actually earning LESS money now (even with my shitty raises) because of the huge increases that my institution has instituted in things like parking fees and insurance. Which makes me pretty disgruntled, you know?

Stressed Out
There is one particular thing that is generating a lot of stress, which is resulting in weird dreams that freak me out and some major exhaustion. The thing that is generating a lot of stress will happen very soon, and it will involve:

a. travel (which I hate)
b. teaching a class to a bunch of students whom I don't know
c. giving a talk to a bunch of colleagues I don't really know
d. meeting with various administrators
e. leaving my cat for 3 days
f. wearing a suit
g. having to be charming for three days
h. did I mention that I hate traveling? And that I particularly hate it when I have to be at the airport at 5 AM?
i. convincing myself that I really do understand the text that I will teach, even though it's not in my period or genre of specialization.
j. convincing myself that I'm not a total fraud as a scholar.
k. trusting somebody to care for the Man-Kitty, and I really don't like that at ALL.

The only things about the above situation that are not stressing me out are the fact that I've figured out what I'm doing to cover my classes when the above happens and that ultimately it doesn't really matter what happens because I do have a job. Except of course I'll be devastated if I make it this far and then can't close the deal, but I'm trying not to let that kind of negativity color my thinking.

I am also stressed out because while all of the angst of the above is preoccupying me, I've also got to deal with the following:

• a review essay that is due in one month's time for a friend's book
• wondering whether that editor will actually be interested in publishing my monograph
• activities related to the not one but TWO searches that my department is running at the moment
• grading approximately 60 papers over the next week
• conference week with students in my writing class
• revealing that I no longer want to do the quasi-admin position to the person who's the director of the program to which my quasi-admin position relates.
  
• review proposals for my MLA panel (the deadline is 3/1 or 3/10 - I sent out two calls because the CFP list has been totally lame lately and I thought they just weren't going to send my first CFP, so then I sent another one because it had been three weeks since I submitted the first one, and then both of them came out within a week of each other. Note to CFP administrators: you really need to get your crap together so that doesn't happen.)
• wonder whether I really have an interest in doing a collection out of the panel, and if so, wonder who would co-edit with me, because I really don't want to take on such a project on my own, I don't think.
• read many novels that I've not read/taught for two years or more.
• I don't even know what else.

So yeah. That's everything that's going on with me. I am disgruntled and stressed out. Not unhappy, just not exactly... relaxed. I can't wait until some of these things are no longer in play. I can't wait until summer.

More Weird Things about Searching While T-T

In our second year on the t-t, BFF sent out a few applications, and she got an interview at a Dream Job. I went for a drink with her immediately after said interview, and she knew, with implacable certainty, even in that close proximity to the interview, that she'd blown it. And this wasn't just angst talking - she really knew it. She said to me, at the time, that she'd forgotten how to think since beginning (at the same time that I did) at our current institution.

Of course, I said all the things you're supposed to say to a friend who tells you that. And then she recounted the interview to me in detail, and I said, "Wow. That really sucks. Let me buy your drink."

So flash forward to this evening. I've been working on preparing for my interview (rather than grading, natch). (Aside: Can I just tell you how much better I feel now that I'm no longer waiting? I'm so much better with controllable things, like going on the internet and finding lists of potential MLA interview questions and then typing out answers to all of them. Lest you think I'm insane, this is exactly what I did when I went on the market the first time, and I maintain that it is not procrastination but really quite good practice. You type them all out, and then you print them out and take them with you, and you read them over and over again - almost but not quite memorizing them, as if you memorized you'd sound like a fool - and really, it makes interviewing much more relaxing.)

So yes, I've been preparing for my interview by coming up with answers for potential MLA interview questions, and I think for the first time that I understand BFF's position at that Dream Job Interview That Went Awry. I'm finding it incredibly easy to answer questions that relate to teaching, that relate to institution, even the dreaded, "why do you want to leave your job," etc., but when it comes to the research questions, I find myself confused. And I've been an active researcher. And I've been through this before. This should be no problem, right?

I mean, last time out, when I was still finishing my dissertation, my experience was exactly opposite of this one, even though I'd done much less research-wise. I felt like I was bull-shitting the teaching stuff, and the research stuff came easily. "What theorists have most influenced your work?" No problem! "What critics do you engage and how does your work differ from theirs?" Easy as pie! "What is the intervention that you make in your field?" Child's play!

Strangely, these are now the questions that seem most opaque to me. In spite of the fact that I'm more respected now as a researcher, I have much more engagement with research in my field on a much broader scope, and I have more familiarity with what institutions seek when they look at somebody's research.

On the one hand, I think the problem is one of knowing too much. Last time, I was so green. I actually had utter confidence in my research the last time out - maybe because I had more experience with that than I did with teaching in my field - I don't know. Now, I've got a much clearer sense of the significance (or insignificance) of my research. I'm not saying that to be self-deprecating - it's just, well, I know that I'm not (yet) some sort of high-flyer. When I was in grad school, well, we were all made to feel like we were high-flyers or potential high-flyers or like we should be high-flyers. All of that can lead to utter confidence.

(Aside: this also explains a lot to me about some of my cohort from grad school who have as yet been unsuccessful on the market. They haven't figured out who they are yet - they still believe the hype. Apparently, though, nobody else is believing it, and that's not a recipe for happiness.)

On the other hand, what if I've forgotten how to think since I got this job?

Ok, so that's not true, and I know it. But I have forgotten the language of this stuff. (This was also something I realized when I attended a panel at MLA last year with people from my grad institution. I mean, I found it hard to pay attention, let alone to understand what the hell they were talking about.) Nobody at my current university has ever wondered what theorists I use in my work. I mean, hell, some of my colleagues don't even have active research agendas. (I'm not judging that - it's just a fact.) At my institution, a publication in a top-notch journal gets exactly the same praise as an encyclopedia entry. No distinctions are made, and no questions are asked. Any publication is good publication. Any presentation at any conference is as good as another. On the one hand, this has been very liberating for me as a scholar. I think I've come into my own here precisely because nobody gives a crap about what I do. I've been, dare I say it, "free." (Except from the voice of my dissertation director in my head, but that's my own issue, right?) But my point here is that people are happy here if I just do something and they don't necessarily have any interest in knowing the ins and outs of it. At my grad institution, people were always quizzing one about the ins and outs of one's work, and thus, one was quite prepared for being quizzed about such things on the job market. (No, this did not make for a "pleasant" or "enriching" grad school experience. But it did train me well.) And now, as I try to write answers to these questions, I'm rusty.

Add to this the less practical issue that I don't think that my research fits into easily categorizable terms. (I know, everybody probably thinks this, but just stay with me for a second on this one.) One of the things that this "liberation" from quizzing has resulted in is that I've tended to branch out a bit in my approach to the combination of theory and literature, and what that means is that I can no longer consider myself a Theoristian. When I went on the market the first time, I was a Theoristian. Period. Sure, I nodded at other theorists, but they didn't make a crucial difference to my work. Now, the closest I can come to a One Thing I Am answer is a Not-Derridian, and that's not particularly useful. The thing that I think is most interesting about the work that I do is the odd combinations of theory that I use in order to read the texts that I study. (Incidentally, I'm not using odd combinations on purpose; I use the combinations I use because I think they are - well - the most useful for the questions that I ask. They don't seem "odd" until others comment on their "oddness" to me.) I suppose I'll figure it out. At any rate, at least I'm thinking about this stuff now, even if I've not thought about it since grad school, so I won't be blind-sided if they ask me these sorts of questions.

In contrast, the answering of the teaching questions is CAKE. How do I teach a survey? Well, given the fact that I've been teaching it consistently since 2003, I've got lots of answers for that. How would I teach an upper-level course in my field? Well, let me tell you about the three I've taught most recently. How do my research and teaching influence one another? I could go on and on.

So we'll see how I do. But I wanted to post about this because it's been a revelation. I never realized the way that teaching would dominate once I started working in this field. But it does, at least at my kind of institution. It's not that one stops researching, but one does stop thinking about it in the same ways. And one stops (at least in my case) talking about research in the ways the one did in graduate school. I don't think that this is a bad thing, actually. It's actually probably a pretty good thing. Just not good for the job search.

Night of Beauty/Dark Night of the Soul

Well, the agenda for the night was that I was going to have a night of beauty accompanied by a night of grading. I graded approximately 1 and 1/3 papers, and it became clear to me that I could not grade tonight. Lord. Why can't they just do what I want them to do? What I ask them to do?

So at any rate, once it became clear that the night of beauty could not be accompanied by grading, all that was left was for me to have a dark night of the soul, which included:

1) wine
2) the movie Bridget Jones' Diary
3) some episodes of Sex and the City
4) much writing in my journal
5) Damien Rice's new cd

The night of beauty included:

1) putting a mask on my face (not a halloween mask, though that would have been most fun, but rather a pore minimizing/wrinkle reducing sort of mask. Not that I really have wrinkles, but whatever. Never too early to start trying to minimize them, I suppose).
2) manicure and pedicure (although I did not polish my fingernails, as it's pretty pointless when I've got a lot of grading/typing to do, as I do now. But my cuticles are all nice and the nails themselves are buffed and awesome).
3) Nice hot bath with lavendar-scented bath oil.
4) Shaving. This is such a pain in the ass, the body hair removal.
5.) Deep conditioning of the hair.

But so now back to the dark night of the soul. (Oh, though I should mention that I polished my toenails red. How good does that make a girl feel?) I spent a lot of time thinking about what it is to want. I spend a lot of energy on not wanting things. Or, rather, on not letting myself want things that I want. This is all part of a grand plan to stave off disappointment, my least favorite of all of the emotions. The theory behind this is that if I don't want beyond my station, that I will not then be disappointed, and thus will not have as big of a hurt as if I wanted to the full capacity of my wanting.

But it's occurred to me lately that maybe not allowing oneself to want whole-heartedly may actually leave one open to greater devastation than if I just wanted in an all-in sort of a way. It's sort of like playing poker. I think I may have a habit of checking on big hands, which ultimately leaves me the big loser, whereas if I'd go all in, I could be the big winner. But going all in - that's scary. Especially when one is fully aware of the odds of such an enterprise. It takes courage. Courage which to this point I've not had, not in any area of my life.

What's crazy is that I know part of what makes it possible for me to try all of what I try (whether it's going on the market, sending the book proposal out, whatever) is that I stop myself from believing that anything good can come of any of it. I don't let myself truly want, and so that somehow makes it ok to do these things. The problem is, I think that I need to truly want. I think that by checking my desire, I ultimately foreclose the possibility of achieving it. But how does one free oneself from that prohibition? How does one stop the superstitious checking of oneself?

On the one hand, one has to make attainable goals in order not to feel like shit all of the time. And in order to achieve anything, really. But I fear that perhaps I can attain more than I think I can. And that my attainable goals have ultimately held me back. Ultimately hold me back.

I wish that I could let go a bit. I'm trying. I want to be able to. But I don't know if I can.

I'm afraid to want all of what I don't let myself admit to wanting. I'm afraid of allowing myself to admit those things because if I actually say those things out loud, and then I don't get them, then what do I do?

Remember: admitting is not only fessing up it's also letting in. That's what makes it so hard - that it means both expression and, I suppose, impression. I don't know which I'm more afraid of. I suppose it's the inward part more than the outward part.

All of this may seem strange, given the ways in which I do put myself out there - take what may seem to be risks. But every risk is a calculated and cautious one. A middle ground that stops short of the thing that I really want to happen. I go on the market telling myself all the while that it's just that I want to choose my current job. I do online dating telling myself that I have absolutely no expectation that I'll meet anybody who's worth more than a date or two. What I think I've decided is that this is no way to live my life. But if I admit to wanting more than the provisional thing - the thing that can't disappoint - and I don't get what I want, then I will have to deal with that. And that's a hard thing to take on.

Crazy and Stress

I've been thinking a lot lately about what stresses me out and about how I handle stress.

Yesterday, I got some marginally good news. Last night, I tossed and turned and had a horrible night's sleep. Racing mind. Freaked-out thoughts. It seems that I am most stressed out when good things happen to me. Unlike most people, who view good news, however marginal, as, I don't know, good, it sets me into a crazy spiral of freaking out. That's item #1.

The second thing I've been thinking quite a bit about is that I don't complain very much when I've got a lot going on. If a bunch of bad shit is happening, I go all pragmatic and calm, and really I'm good at handling things in a crisis. That said, when I'm stressed out (which of course happens when things are going well but have the potential to change and/or are in the middle of change, but because the situation would look positive from the outside people don't really understand that I will become stressed out in the given situation), I do tend to overreact to things and/or to be kind of bitchy. People don't know what to make of this because I don't really complain much, so then they think that the way I'm acting is about how I feel about them. (This goes a long way toward explaining my role in the demise of my last Super-Serious-Relationship, which, incidentally, was the last time I was on the market.) I suppose it's good not to spend one's life complaining, but I'm thinking that perhaps if I complained a little more then people wouldn't be so confused by my erratic and bitchy behavior. That's item #2.

Not sure what to say about any of this, but as I'm still feeling a little on edge this morning, I thought maybe posting about it would help.

The Grand Confession That Wasn't

I just had lunch with my chair, who is awesome. Yeah, so VSC had mentioned the whole "going on the market" thing to him, but that was ok. I still felt good telling him, and I think he was happy that I did.

I am very, very lucky to have this kind of support from people in positions of power in my department. I am very, very lucky to have the kinds of relationships with them that made me feel ok being open about my decision to look. I also feel like even if I do change jobs I will be able to maintain friendships with some of the people here and that they will wish me well, and that makes me happy, too.

I know they don't want me to go. Sometimes I think I don't want to go. It may be that I don't have to decide to go because nobody else will want me. But going through this process has made me see some really good things about this place, and even if nothing comes of going on the market, the fact that I can see the good in this place a bit more clearly is a really good thing.

What is not a good thing is the huge lunch I consumed and the fact that I did not remember to throw my gym bag in the car. Oh, and the fact that I saw what I think were snowflakes outside.

Dr. Crazy as Stress-Monkey

I don't really even know how to write this post. All I know is that I want to write, in an effort to expel some of the half-thoughts that are swirling around, to ease some of the tension. So what's the dealio with Dr. Crazy?

The Job Search

It's about time to start sending things off. Job Search Mentor has reviewed my main materials - twice - and once I make the last set of changes, they'll be ready to go. On the one hand, this is good. As soon as they're sent, then I can stop worrying about it. The weird thing is I haven't really been worrying about it on the surface. Unlike my initial time on the market, this time around the prospect of the whole thing hasn't been all-consuming. It's not the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, nor is it the last thing I think of before I go to sleep. But at the same time, it's been hovering in the background for months now, so while I'm not overtly stressed I've been feeling a kind of low-level stress ever since I decided to do this thing. Now, the thing that is leading me to make this run at the market is still true: I do still think it's the right time to do it, and I do think that I am as strong a candidate as I can possibly be right now. But that somehow doesn't make it easier or better. In some ways it almost makes it worse: if it is true that I am as strong a contender as I can be at the moment, and if nothing comes of this effort, then it's going to be really hard for me not to feel like shit about it. When I went on the market the first time, I went in expecting to fail - I was ABD, and while I was an ok candidate, I really thought that it would take a couple of years to land the elusive t-t job. The problem, to some extent, is that I succeeded. I don't know whether my sense of it now - that I thought I would fail - is really true. That is the story that I tell myself, and it's to some extent the story that I'm trying to tell myself now - that I won't be surprised if I don't get any interviews, that I won't be surprised if all of this is an exercise in futility. Except this time, I don't actually think I believe that. I think that I will be surprised if nobody is interested. And I think that's dangerous. But as much as I tell myself the story that I don't expect anything, I can't seem to make myself believe it, not as I think I did succeed in making myself believe it four years ago. So there's that.

Then there's this thing I'm doing, where in order to repress potential hopes about success on the market I'm telling myself another story, the story of how I really have the Greatest Job in the World at the Greatest University. Part of that comes from guilt - I don't want to want to leave. This place has meant a lot to me, and the people here have been fantastic colleagues to me. But the problem is, clearly, that this isn't enough for me. If it were, I wouldn't have considered doing this for real. I would have maybe sent a few things out without thinking about it, thinking that it was a good time to do so, half-way to tenure, etc., but it would have been half-hearted. The problem is that I don't feel half-hearted about this. I feel like I'm in it, and like I really want for it to happen, to get interviews, to get an offer. That kind of wanting, given the state of things in my field, is dangerous.

And if things don't go my way, I don't want for that to make me feel like I suck or like I'm stuck with what I've got. I don't want for this to make me the sort of person who doesn't try for things. I'm afraid that could happen.

Maybe that's what this whole thing about: fear. I'm afraid of not knowing what's going to happen, and I'm afraid of not having control over it. I'm afraid of screwing up, but I'm also afraid of doing well. I'm afraid of being out of my comfort zone. I'm afraid of disappointing people (my dissertation adviser, for example, if I get nothing; my colleagues in my current department, if I do, and if I take whatever it is I get; my family, if I end up moving significantly father away; my family, if I end up here and unhappy and ALONE and I never have a kid and whatever).

But all of this is dumb. All I'm doing is writing some letters, printing out some cv's, and sticking some stuff in the mail. This is not that big of a deal. Except, of course, it feels like a big deal.

Once again, I wish that I could see the future, just so that I could be more prepared for it, you know?

And I haven't felt all of this particular stuff since grad school, and I hate feeling it. I hate that it all comes back the minute that you put yourself out there. I think it's the feeling that I'm going to be judged, scrutinized, and that's horrible, and yet I'm asking for it. (You might think I should feel that at my current job, what with being evaluated for tenure, etc., but I don't. I feel entirely comfortable about how I'm doing at this job and with how I'm regarded in my institution. I never feel judged or scrutinized. I never feel so fucking potentially inadequate.)

And you know a weird thing that has been stressing me out? I'm kind of freaked that I'll interview someplace where somebody on a search committee or in a hiring department reads this blog. I've been thinking about this, and considering different scenarios for how to deal with it if it should come up, more than I'd like to admit.

So I'm applying for eight jobs, at least 3 of which are probably total long-shots that will realistically result in nothing (and I'm not being modest in saying that). So that's five maybe-chances. I just hope I get at least one interview. Otherwise, well, I'm going to be disappointed. But whatever. Whatever will be will be. I'm going to send all of my stuff out this weekend. Maybe once that's done I'll have the sense of "it's out of my hands" complacency that would be a welcome relief after all of this worrying.

The Actual Job

I'm also feeling a lot of stress (less under-the-surface than the job market stress) related to my actual job. More and more responsibility keeps landing on my shoulders, and while I'm handling it with ease, it means meeting after meeting (and I hate meetings), and more and more smiling and making nice with people, and more and more productivity on all fronts. What all of this reminds me of is not graduate school but of what it was like in my junior and senior years of undergrad - when I was working like 20 hours a week, in the honors program, editor of the literary magazine, double-minoring, taking credit-hour overloads so as to finish in four years, etc. One of the things about me is that I'm really good at handling a lot of different tasks simultaneously. I'm really good at being involved in projects and in having a vision for things and having my hand in a lot of different activities. This is a strength. But it also leads to stress, as much as I'm good at doing it. Because part of me doesn't like that I'm this way - I wish that I could not want to do as much as I do want to do, and I wish that I could say no to things that I want to do more easily instead of just adding another thing onto the already full plate.

So it's weird, because all of this makes me feel competent and confident and proud of myself, and I like that others then view me as being confident and competent, but then I also feel like I lose myself in all of the to-do lists that I make and all of the moving and shaking that I do. I feel like I lose myself, and yet then I think that maybe this is really who I am. Maybe I want to be a "scholar" but what I really am is a worker-bee. (And yes, I realize that those things need not be mutually exclusive, but whatever.) I don't want to be a worker-bee. I don't want for people to respond to me based on my personality and my Grand Ideas for Improvement and not for the more... backstage stuff that I think about. I guess that's the thing: because this stuff comes easy for me, I don't really value it. And yet, because it makes me feel good to get acknowledged for things and to see myself taking care of business, I do it, and it feels like a cop-out in a way. It feels like I allow this shit to take over, not because I really care about it but because it gives me a kind of superficial high. If I believed in the outcomes of all my projects, I think it would be one thing, but sometimes I think I just do it all for praise or attention. And that's not the same thing as believing in something.

But then I don't know why I run myself down because of it. These things that come so naturally to me are necessary to making institutions of higher education run, and the particular quirks of my personality that allow me to have strong opinions without alienating people are very useful tools in negotiating the politics of higher education and actually making things happen. But I don't want to be this person. I don't want to be a born administrator. I fear that I am. (It all goes back to the fact that I like to be in charge - and that's also a thing that works for me in the classroom. The problem is that this liking to be in charge does not serve me in other areas, and those are the areas that I care more about, maybe because they don't come naturally? Who knows.)

And the Area in Which There Is No Stress, As It Barely Exists

So I've got no personal life, unless you count talking on the phone, writing emails, and hanging out with my cat. All of these things are pleasant, but a personal life they do not make. But do I really have the emotional energy for more than that right now? No I don't. So thank god I don't have personal life drama to add to the mix. That is, actually, a bright spot, as when I went on the market 4 years ago, I had TONS of personal life drama, and it all ended in tears. Much better to subject no one to the me that I am right now.

In Conclusion

(I had to include this last subheading in honor of my students - hee!) But so yeah, that's what's going on with me right now. I apologize for the long, self-indulgent, whiny nature of this post. But I actually do feel better for writing it, so I suppose that is good. I think this also means that I need to make a commitment to write in my diary more regularly, because it is wrong to subject an audience to much of this stuff. That said, I wanted to post this because it's been a long while since I've written anything that's really about me on this blog. And I wanted to post this because I think there's some value in having an account of how it feels to be mid-tenure-track and in this particular position.

Quality of Life (A Job Market Post)

Bbound asked, in response to my post yesterday about the MLA Job Information List going online, "Out of curiosity, how much did quality-of-life issues narrow down your choices to those six?"

I thought that this was a good question, and one that might be of particular interest to the grad students (particularly those in English) who read this blog, and so I figured I'd post my response rather than burying it in the comments. So, to begin:

First, before we can talk about how I arrived at my list, we've got to talk about what we mean by "quality of life" issues. A lot of times when people in academia talk about these, "quality of life" translates into "I must be in a major metropolitan area on one of the coasts where everyone is a democrat and life is sweet." Or, when people in academia talk about these, they often talk about something that roughly translates to, "a place where I can be near to/live with my spouse/partner." Or, finally, they might mean something like, "a place with decent culture and where it's good to raise children and we can afford a house and there are good schools."

Now, I'm not questioning the validity of any of these, but these are not my issues, or at least they aren't entirely my issues. According to the usual measures of what gives a person good "quality of life," I should probably stay in my current location.
a. The cost of living is such that one can live on a professor's salary in the humanities.
b. I am in a metropolitan area, with an international airport that is a hub for a major airline.
c. The location has good museums, a nice symphony, a Shakespeare company, etc.
d. There are many fine restaurants, good local music scene, etc.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The point is, none of these things ultimately matter if you don't have a reason to go out and to do these things. Well, maybe b. still matters. I think that the first time I went on the market I equated "city" (even if it is a small, midwestern city) with "quality of life." I think I was wrong. I think that, perhaps, I had a bad attitude about a few of the places that I interviewed, and I wonder now whether, had I been more open-minded, I might have found that I did like it there. Because here's the thing: I am not the sort of person who's going to the symphony for every performance, and I think I've been to the various museums maybe once since I've lived here. While I do go to dinner fairly regularly, I'm not out trying each hot new restaurant. Part of this is because I'm a creature of habit. Or maybe I'm even a little lame. But that's real life, and so really, how much does it matter that I'm in this city-like location?

So, in looking at the list, I did not limit myself by location, other than that I do need to be within 1 hour of an airport. No truly middle-of-nowhere locations for me, as even I am not that open-minded. I have no ties to anyplace in particular, and yes, my family is all in one place, but the reality is that I only go visit a couple of times a year anyway, and you know what? I can afford the airfare. Sure, it's nice to be able to jump in the car and to go to them, but that's not a necessity.

So how did I get to the six? (Which is actually now 7, since I heard from a person about a search that is more fit for me than one might think upon looking at the ad.)

1. Well, to be blunt, there were only like 14 jobs total in my field. a) I am in a small field. Most universities only have one person - at most 2 - to cover my country/century. b) There isn't a lot of person-retiring-need-to-replace-position hiring in my field. c) Many places try to combine a position in my field with something else, which sometimes works for me, but more often does not because I don't really do the "hot" thing people often seek. d) I really am defined within this specific field as a scholar, which is a good thing in many ways, but it also means that "stretching" is less easy to do.

2. Even the year that I did the full-on assault on the market, the year that I got this job, when I applied for many jobs I was barely qualified for, I only was able to justify myself for approximately 50 applications. I know people who have sent out close to 200 in a season, so clearly I'm not in a high-demand field.

3. Quality of life also relates to one's professional life. My main criteria for narrowing my list was lighter teaching load. If I'm going to move just to be in the same job, my life will not demonstrably improve.

4. I zoned in on applications that really sounded like me. This is a luxury that I have precisely because I have my current job.

5. I think that one of the things that I am looking for is more campus life at whatever institution I might be hired at. I remember in college my professors being around at big events on campus, and I remember seeing my professors at the local coffee shop or restaurants or bars or whatever. I liked that. And I think I imagined that I would step into that role when I became a professor. My current institution, because really there is no campus life, doesn't have that. It's changing and moving more in that direction, but faculty seem very disconnected from the campus, and by extension students seem disconnected from the faculty. I'd like to be at an institution with a culture that's different from that, I think.

Having Perused the Job List....

1) I have found 6 positions that are a possibility.
2) Of those six positions, I am fairly certain that I have an actual shot at perhaps four of them.
3) The reality is that probably I think too highly of myself, and I really only have an actual shot at approximately two of the six.
4) Even still, the likelihood is that I can really only reasonably expect an interview at maybe (perhaps) one place.
5) And I've got to remember not to fret should even that one interview not come through, as the job market in my field is not wide open, and I know at least one person (but really more like 25 people) with whom I will be competing for these six jobs. And they're all really, really smart, and I need to remember that, too. Not that I'm not smart as well, but it is important to give props to one's competitors so as not to be too full of oneself and to come crashing down when one's bubble bursts and one has to face the reality of one's own position.
6) And so why go through all of this? Because I've got to know. I've got to know whether I can do it or not. And if not? Well, what the hell. You've got to put yourself out there in order to do anything, right?


So now it begins in earnest. The obsessive compiling of the materials, the checking once and then twice to make sure everything is right, and the obsessing over paper and envelopes and things. Oh, and maybe buying a new laptop because there was a tragic accident last night involving one idiotic (although lovable, but I'm mad at him) feline (who weighs more than my colleague's 2-month-old baby, incidentally), a glass of wine, and some very ill-advised attempts to mop up the keyboard without having turned off the computer. Of course, I do hope that maybe the computer fixed itself while I wasn't looking, but I'm not entirely hopeful, especially as this laptop is from like 1998, it weighs like 45 lbs., it's kind of stolen property, and it never worked very well to begin with. But I wrote my dissertation on it, and it has sentimental value, dammit! Oh well, I guess I'll find out.

But I digress. I really need to get back to obsessing about the six (or really 1 or 2) potential futures that I might have in various locations across these great United States (2 in the South, 2 East, 1 West, 1 Upper (and I mean Upper) Midwest). We shall see!

Suspicious Minds (A Job Market Post)

Since the new semester began, I've felt a subtle shift in colleagues' attitudes towards me, a shift that directly correlates to the fact that I've had a bunch of publications accepted/come out in the past couple of months. (By "a bunch" I mean around 5, and no, not all of them are fancy, but in English that's a lot of productivity, especially at an institution like mine, as we don't do collaborative work. I should note, too, that in some respects the fact that all of this is happening right now is the fruit of the labor of like 2 1/2 years, of waiting on things to appear, etc., and so it's not like I have this kind of a burst regularly. Oh, and the colleagues know what's going on with me research-wise because we're supposed to tell an administrator in our department who sends acknowledgment of accomplishments out to our dept. listserv and to administrators higher up. I suppose I could just not follow that convention, but it does help the department to seem like it's productive, and I want to be helpful.)

In a few cases, the shift is entirely positive. Excitement that I've been able to achieve so much. Pride that somebody like me is in our department. Interest in what I'm actually working on.

In other cases, the shift is kind of positive, or even negative, but always characterized by suspicion. "Wow, you're really getting a lot done," said sarcastically. "I'm actually surprised that you're going to stay here," said with a raised eyebrow. Or then there's the worst, when they say nothing at all, but somehow are a little less friendly, a little less likely to chat at the copier, a little less likely to pop their head in my office door and say hello.

Have you ever been in a romantic relationship where the other person goes on and on about not being good enough for you? Where that person sees anything positive that happens to you that is unrelated to him/her as evidence that he/she can never make you happy? Where the person is always wondering if you're cheating on them, asking around to people who might know to try to get inside information? And then you begin to believe them - you begin to believe that you can do better, and you begin to resent their insecurity. You begin to wonder why you cared about the person in the first place, or whether you ever really were happy with them.

That's how I've been feeling lately. And it sucks.

I want to work at the kind of institution that regards productivity or success not with suspicion but with excitement. I want to work at the kind of institution that sees what I'm doing as a model for faculty achievement instead of a threat. I want to work at the kind of institution that believes it deserves me, that believes it is worthy of me.

That is how it is with some people at this institution, like Very Supportive Colleague, and Really Wonderful Mentor. The problem is, those people feel few and far between right now. I feel like if I stay here, I'll always be with the insecure boyfriend that can't realize that my success is a good thing not only for me but also for our relationship, that I want my success to inspire us to greater heights and not to threaten him. You know what? I've had that relationship. I lived in it for three years, from ages 25-28. It ended. Thank god. I've been in this relationship with my institution for three years as well, from ages 29-32. Will this relationship go the same way? Who the hell knows.

Community, Isolation, and Socializing

I'm inspired to post about this in response to New Kid's recent post about her own tendency to isolate herself in her current location and how that relates to conducting a long-distance marriage with her husband. When I read the post yesterday, I immediately related to everything that she was saying about how isolating oneself can be an easy thing to do, and in reading the comment thread to her post today, what struck me is the range of people who identified with what NK wrote, whether married or unmarried, gay or straight, whatever.

As you all know, one of the reasons that I have decided to go on the market this year is in part because of this very issue - because of the fact that I don't feel like my "life" is here, or like I have a life here. As many (both on the blog and in my real life) have noted, moving may not be the answer to this, but the decision to try, to look and see what's out there, is very much connected to the fact that I have tried very hard to do things to make a life in this location and all of those efforts haven't resulted in me feeling rooted here. I've connected this failure to feel rooted at least in part to being single, to the fact that I'm not even close to dating/being in a relationship with anybody, but in reading New Kid's post it occurs to me that a relationship alone doesn't necessarily make a person feel rooted - particularly when one can't live in the same place with his/her partner.

See, this is the thing: this profession is pretty universally isolating. In part, we have to isolate ourselves in order to do our jobs. Grading is not social. Research is not social. Service commitments infringe on our weekends and evenings. In choosing this profession, we choose a lifestyle. But whereas making this choice may not seem very dangerous to us in graduate school, when we have a cohort of people to hang out with and who understand our experiences, or when we begin to think about joining this profession, when we probably still live in or near our hometowns, and have strong networks of family and/or friends who are geographically convenient to us, the reality is that most of us don't get jobs in our hometowns or in our grad school cities. We get jobs in places where we probably won't know more than one or two people if we're lucky, and we need to start from scratch. (And even if you did get a job in your grad school city, you're still weirdly isolated because your friends leave, or those who stay are still in a different life place from the one you're in, or whatever.)

The problem is, the vast majority of grown-up people don't start from scratch with making friends. They just don't. At a certain point, as Oso Raro noted in the comments over at New Kid's, friendships happen more organically. It's not like being 14 on the first day of school and having an expectation of making new friends. For grown-ups, the expectation is that you've got the friends you've got, and while you may meet new people, you most likely will not become "best friends forever" with most of them. But as an academic, uprooted from the social networks one builds over a lifetime when people ARE making their best friends forever - from ages 0-25 or so - what is a person supposed to do? Because when you move to a place, you NEED to make BFFs, whether you're married or single or somewhere in between. Because people need friends.

And the thing is, it's embarassing to say that as a 30+ year old person. It is embarassing not to have friends. It is embarassing not to know how to make friends.

What's funny about this is that I had a conversation with my best friend here about this very thing a while back. And it was like we were revealing a dirty secret to one another just in admitting that it sucks not to have friends here. (This is also ironic, I suppose, because we do have each other, but at the same time, having one friend is almost as pathetic as having none, you know?) At the time, I remember thinking that it was so good that we'd finally admitted this to each other, that we'd finally talked about it and stopped acting like the fact that neither one of us has been able to get it together to make friends is not a huge problem. And I had that same feeling when I read New Kid's post. It's important to shine a light on this. It's important to recognize that no matter how many friends a person has all over the country (and even the world) that a person still needs friends who are just down the street.

An Awesome Lunch, An Awesome Colleague, A Weight off my Shoulders: The Market

I just finished having lunch with Very Supportive Colleague (VSC), a higher-up in my department. I scheduled this lunch (an entirley uncharacteristic sort of a move for the non-ass-kiss-y me) with the purpose of revealing my plans to go on the job market this year and to ask VSC for a letter of recommendation.

What I said (basically): I am very happy here, I have felt very supported in my work, but I'm not place-bound, and at this juncture - midway to tenure - I think it would be good for me to see what else is there because if I choose to stay I want to really choose this university. I want to be excited about moving toward tenure here, and I want to be excited about the role that I would play in the changes happening at the university. I don't want to be embittered the way that some people at the university are.

What the colleague said (basically): I'm happy to write you a letter, I'm so glad that you have decided to tell important people in the department about your decision, I want you to choose this place, too, if you stay, and of course this is a smart thing to do at this point in your career.

And lunch was delicious.

Colleagues like VSC are one of the best things about this job.

Deja Vu All Over Again (a post about going on the market)

Last night I began working on my cover letter. I dusted off my letter from the last time around, and I set about trying to turn it into something that actually shows who I am now. See, this is the weird thing about academic job searching. As you compile the materials, and as you look at old versions of the materials from searches of yesteryear, you're really looking at a version of your self, and you're attempting to construct a self to send out into the world. I suppose this isn't unique to academic searches, but because the materials required of us are so detailed, because one can be eliminated from consideration for the smallest misstep, it's a rhetorical situation that is incredibly fraught from even the moment of deciding to go on the market.

And perhaps the worst part of it is the cover letter. It inspires you to tell lies (like that one about the "next book project" - not that you won't have a next book but that at least if you're me you haven't really thought about the work you're doing right now in those terms until you were forced to do so by the letter) and to have a big crazy rush of productivity so as to be able to put things in the letter. The CV doesn't inspire the same kind of fretting - does my personality come through in the letter? How can I make this thing shorter? How do I include the most possible information without boring the committee to tears? And at this point, the writing sample doesn't inspire the same kind of fretting, or even the statement of teaching philosophy or of research plans. But the cover letter? Well, sure, I do know how to write one now, but it's still tricky.

I suppose that's the strange thing about embarking on this process right now. It's that I know how to do it because I've done it all before, but at the same time I don't entirely know how to do it in light of who I've become as a scholar in the past three years. I'm not the same person who was finishing up her dissertation in 2002, on the market for the first time. My research has moved beyond the tiny little area on which my dissertation focused; I've taught like 7 different literature courses when then I hadn't taught a one on my own; I've done so much service you'd think that I never say no to anything, even though I do, except for when I'm too flattered to remember about the saying no. In other words, I'm a very different candidate than I was then, even though looking back over the past three years I see how I grew out of that candidate that I was.

I'm not entirely sure how to conclude this post. I suppose suffice it to say that this decision to go on the market has really made me look carefully at how I've developed since getting a tenure track job as a member of this profession, and I think that even if nothing comes of this search, going through the rigamarole of putting together the materials has made me acknowledge what I'm achieving as a professional. That's a good thing. Feeling like a professional - instead of feeling like somebody who's knocking on doors and begging to be allowed to become a professional - at this point in the process is a really good thing.

Arrogant, Selfish, Job-Searching Me

I was going to dump this in the comments, as a response to the comments some people were making about something that I'd said over there, but I feel like it's useful to put this in a real post that isn't buried in a comment thread from days ago.

In a comment, I said this:

"Personal happiness and satisfaction is infinitely more important to me than 'changing the system from within.' Wrong or right, that's my position."

In response, Liz Ferszt says the following:

"Given this admission, which I find arrogant and selfish, if I were one of our current colleagues I'd just say, "Good luck on your search."

I might even find some boxes for your books."

Another commenter (Terry Porter) expresses concern that I am going to "regret" leaving my job for "purely personal reasons."

Well, first, I'm not really surprised that Liz would respond negatively to anything I might say, as she seems to take pleasure in thinking that I suck. Otherwise, why would Liz keep reading this blog when clearly she thinks that I'm so reprehensible? If it were me, and I felt as Liz seems to feel about Dr. Crazy, I would stop reading. And stop commenting. Because life's too short to be so irritated by the likes of a young whippersnapper such as Dr. Crazy.

But, because I'm a good sport, I'm going to respond. Also because I want to answer this for once and for all, and to assure my readers that I am being thoughtful and careful in my considerations about my professional choices, and that I do not enter into this - or much else in my life - lightly.

First, when I say that I put my personal happiness before my institution, that does not mean that I do not have a strong commitment to my institution or to my work as a professor at this institution. All it means is that I believe that it's important to prioritize things in life, and I believe that is important and sensible for me to make myself a priority in my life. My institution will pay me, but they will not take care of all of my needs. While I could sacrifice my needs for the greater good of my institution, ultimately I think that this would make me a bitter person and an angry person, and I think that this would be bad for my teaching, my research, and my service to the institution and to the broader community of which this institution is a part. Taking care of me doesn't mean shirking my responsibilities or treating my colleagues unfairly. It doesn't mean "dropping a bomb" on them by doing something for "purely personal reasons," as if those reasons, because they are only personal, are somehow criminal or at the very least illegitimate.

Let's think for a minute. Let's say that I were talking about deciding to go on the market for any of the following reasons:

• In order to relocate to be nearer to my husband/partner.
• In order to relocate in order to accommodate my husband/partner's career.
• In order to facilitate the happiness of my children (better schools, being nearer to extended family, etc.).
• In order to be nearer to an ailing parent or other close relative.

I suspect (though perhaps I'm being cynical) that everyone who has wondered about whether I'll "regret" the decision - not to take another job, mind you, but just to look for one - just to consider whether there might be something out there that would perhaps make me happier than my current position - would be the very vision of support of my "difficult decision." They would say things like how some things matter more than this profession, and they would even commend me on putting "what really matters" ahead of my stupid little job. Because, of course, for a woman, a stupid little job is just a purely personal thing that really has to go in the service of taking care of other people, right?

But, see, I don't have any of those "good reasons" to consider other employers. I'm single and my parents are in good health. I had the great good fortune to have my grandmother die during my second month on this job, so I don't even have an ailing grandmother potentially to validate going on the market. And, in fact, the thing that I probably devote most of my time/energy to is to my institution. So, many would say, it's just plain wrong for me to think about looking elsewhere.

But here's the thing. I don't plan on stopping being good at this job because I'm thinking of looking at other jobs. I care about my institution and my job. There are a great many good things about this institution, and I've gotten as much accommodation as is available to me at this institution (though often at a price in terms of service commitments, etc.). But the fact that I might consider my own happiness as part of the equation in my professional life does not strike me as "arrogant and selfish." Not at all. And I wonder whether anybody would chastise me or offer well-meaning advice on this issue in the precise way that has been done here if I weren't a single woman. Perhaps people would, but I wonder, only because I've never noticed anyone responding to a male blogger in this particular fashion.

(But then, what do I know? Because of course arrogant and selfish people don't generally recognize themselves as such, and maybe my questions about how people's responses to Dr. Crazy Going on the Market are gendered somehow show me to be even more arrogant and selfish than everybody already thought I was?)

But to continue. Let's go back to Liz's comment. She concludes with the following:

"I can't help but think a few more years in the profession will help you and give you some perspective. This discussion has been so similar to discussions I've had with young faculty over the years. "I just want to write." "I just want to have time in the summer to get away from the college." "I just want my books."

Well, get a library card, I say. Get a tiny room above a garage and wrestle with your thoughts, your cat, your literature.

The rest of us will be college professors (taking care of the students, the curriculum, being there for more than a brief visit along the way) while you're getting satisfied."

Where even to begin. Just for the record, I'm not going on the market because I just want to write (I don't), because I have some fantasy about having summers off (who, exactly, gets that luxury? I know people at RI institutions, and I think they're more crazed with work than anybody), or because I just want my books (what does that even mean?). I'm not an idiot. And I've been teaching for over ten years, and an assistant professor for three, so I'm wondering how much time I need to be in this profession before my sense of it has legitimacy.

I expect that if I am offered a position - which is in no way a sure thing - to make a basically lateral move. I do want a lighter teaching load, and I would like either to stop teaching composition or to teach it only one semester per academic year. I'm not trying to get away from teaching or from service in order to bury my nose in a book One of the reasons why I'm good at this job is that I'm really good at balancing the demands of all of the parts of it. I do take care of my students - who incidentally often ask what in god's name I'm doing at this institution - and I have made more of a contribution to the curricular process in my department in the three full years that I've been at this job than many of the tenured-and-inactive members of my department. I'm not here for a "brief visit," and longevity does not necessarily equate to productivity or utility within a department.

This is the appropriate moment to go back on the marketto have a look-see before going up for tenure. I will not make a decision to leave this institution without a lot of agonizing, because I do, ultimately, really care about this place. But you know what? Caring about a job is not enough in life. I want more in my life than what this particular job has to offer. That isn't wrong.

That's enough for now. I'm sure that Liz is rocking back and forth and humming in a corner somewhere in an effort to come to grips with my audacity in responding to her, and I'm sure many others are shaking their heads at what a stupid, selfish, naive girl I am. I'm hoping, though, that this clarifies my position, if it needed clarifying, and that this post can be the last in this vein. Really, the reason I posted the LAST post about going on the market was to try to head off this kind of bullshit at the pass so that I could get into the actual nuts and bolts of what it's like to go on the market at this point in one's career. And to talk about things like my class background in relation to the academic job search, and I don't know, other stuff that's infinitely more interesting than all of this.

And I'm tired and cranky and hungry. I spent all day shopping, and I really had hoped to write about that. I suppose that will have to wait until tomorrow, though, because I've blown my wad on this crap.

On the Market - The Why of It

I just finished having a conversation with Job Search Mentor (JSM), and it was good. I want to write about this decision of mine, to go on the market, and I want to write about it in relation to what I've experienced in three years on the tenure-track at a regional comprehensive university in a metropolitan area. I'm not sure how to do this. I had toyed with the idea of starting a separate blog for posts related to the job search, but I'm not sure that a) I want to compartmentalize in that way or b) that I could compartmentalize in that way if I tried. The truth of the matter is that this decision to look - and that's exactly what it is, a decision to look, not necessarily one to leave - feels like it's imbedded in my professional life at this institution, and it doesn't make sense to separate it out.

So I think that this will be the first in a series of posts in which I try to be reflective about all of this crap.

Why Go on the Market?
A lot of people would say that I should be happy in my current position. And you know what I'd say? I'd say that I am. I am not in any way "unhappy" with my current job. Dissatisfied in some respects, yes, but that's not the same thing as "unhappiness." Let's list the positives of this job, just to show you that I'm not delusional in claiming happiness:

1. I am in a small-medium city. This means that I have good libraries (research and public), good museums, and good restaurants.
2. I am paid a good salary for my field and my area of the country. Since leaving graduate school, I have been able to live like a grown-up and to buy things without thinking about it first.
   
3. I have a great deal autonomy in all areas of my job. This can be annoying sometimes, but for the most part I would rather have complete control over things like the courses I teach, classroom practices, research agenda, service I choose to do, etc.
4. My department is collegial and friendly, without too many weird factions or points of tension between people.
5. People seem to think that I'm doing a good job, and I've received a number of opportunities that confirm the high opinion of my colleagues.
6. I've been able to maintain an active research agenda, in no small part because I've had good support in the form of travel money, as well as some awards from the institution that have helped.
7. I like teaching first-generation college students.
   

I could list more, but these are the main things. And so, those of you who have been on the market multiple times with no luck, or those of you who are stuck in horrible departments or geographical locations or both, or those of you who are in long-distance relationships, etc. might want to tell me to fuck off and to be happy with what I've got.

Part of me thinks that I should fuck off and be happy with what I've got. I feel guilty for wanting more or better or different or whatever. But here are the reasons why I don't listen to those nagging voices of negativity in my head.

1. Whatever good things there are about my job, it's a job with a 4-4 load which includes 2 composition classes each semester.* I have absolutely no passion for teaching composition, and what passion I have for teaching literature is sapped both by teaching composition and by the sheer amount of teaching that I do.
2. Socially, this is a very hard place for a single person to live. People my age in this location are married. Shit, people 10 years younger than me in this location are married. I feel like a freak. At nearly-32, I should not feel like a freak and like I'll be barren at any second, and intellectually I know this, but emotionally it's hard to remember.
3. While I feel appreciated at this job, I don't feel like real value is ascribed to some of the activities that are most important to me.
4. There is no reason for me to stay here. No reason for me to leave, but no reason for me to stay.
   
5. I am ambitious. I believe that I could do better. I'm not saying that I am so awesome or anything, or that there wouldn't be trade-offs, but ambition tends to make one a bit restless, tends to make it tough to settle for the "ok" thing when the "great" thing might be around the corner if you try.
   
6. I don't like when people judge me negatively based on my institutional affiliation. I don't like when people pity me because of my institutional affiliation.
7. As much as I like the kind of students I teach and believe that teaching them is really important work, I also wish, sometimes, that the level of preparedness of my students was just a little, teeny bit higher. I'd like to teach students who have read an entire novel at least once in their lives before they find their way into my class.

And so today I talked to JSM about all this and more. She was totally great, and she seems to think that I'm in as good a position as anybody to try to do this thing, although, of course, a lot will depend on the job list (in a discipline where job pickings are slim generally, I'm in a specialty that's pretty small, as things go), and a lot depends on things beyond my control. But you know, I don't want to look back and wonder whether I could have ended up someplace else if only I'd tried. And I don't want to lock myself into tenure at this institution without making sure that I wouldn't rather be someplace else. It's so hard, though, because one of the things that attracted me to this profession is the security of tenure, so why does it now feel like a life sentence? And will it always?

So, now that I've listed all of my reasons, for and against, you may still think that I should fuck off and be happy with what I've got. Or you may think that this is the "problem" with kids coming out of grad school today, that we don't commit to a job and an institution for the long haul, that we're always looking for something better. Or you may think that the "negatives" or reasons for wanting to go on the market are bunk. But you know, it irks me that people only grant legitimacy to the decision to go on the market if candidates are in some way miserable (unemployed, away from spouse/family, in horrible location, at horrible institution). Maybe complete misery shouldn't be the only thing that drives us to make changes in our lives or situations.





*I realize that with the new Administrative Gig I'll have just one writing class a semester and a 3-3 load, but I'll also have to do the Administrative Gig, right? And what I'd really like more would be a lesser load without an added administrative responsibility. I'd like the lesser load to equate to a heavier commitment to research, which isn't really what I'm signing on for with the Administrative Gig.

We Interrupt the Navel-Gazing of the Previous Post....

Because we (well, I - I'm not sure why I'm using the royal We, especially as I'm not wearing my tiara) just received a call from a colleague who is the director of a program to which I am connected through a committee on which I serve. The colleague has offered me an opportunity that would guarantee me Reassigned Time (ala the title of the blog; you will notice I've been pretty quiet about the fact that the title of the blog seemed to have become obsolete) for Fall and for Spring. This would mean I'd have a 3/3 teaching load instead of a 4/4 teaching load. And I'm sure I'd get some sort of title, too.

BUT. With Reassigned Time comes Obligations, too. On the surface, these seem to be relatively small. No more, surely, than the obligations related to teaching a class. But this would not be a free ride. My instinct is that I need to think carefully about this "opportunity." I have said I'll get back to him on Monday. I don't know what I want to do.

Initial thoughts:

• If I wanted a future in administration, this would be a good thing to do. I don't at all want to be an administrator right now, though, so this plus isn't really all that enticing.
  
• I loved teaching just three courses last Spring. But if teaching three courses would mean that I had to teach 2 writing and only one lit course again I might kill myself. Am I living in a fantasy land if I wonder whether it would be possible to state that I would do this job if and only if I were guaranteed that the course that would be dropped would be a writing course?
• While this would be a good thing at my current institution, I fear that it could become a total time-suck and wouldn't do me any good in contexts outside of my current institution (i.e., the job market).

Ok, my wise readers, taking all of this into account, what would you do?