The Academic Job Market--One Thing I Wish I'd Been Better Prepared For

(originally written 10/11/11)

I'm watching several friends take on this year's academic job market, and having just come off the market myself, I have one bit of advice I wish had been shared with me earlier in the application process.

The job market is likely to be one of the most emotional years of your career to this point. One reason is that being on the market is so drawn out. You spend the summer waiting for ads to be posted, you spend September-December writing and sending applications, you spend the same period waiting for requests for more information or invitations to interview, you spend winter break waiting for MLA, you spend the few weeks after MLA waiting for invitations to interview on campus, you spend time after that waiting for additional information and/or an offer. If you get a job, you have to wait 3-4 months for it to start; if you don’t, you start the process again. In short, you spend a year of your life in limbo, just waiting for some resolution.

At every step, you will likely experience incredible highs (“Hinterlands University emailed to ask for my teaching philosophy!”) and incredible lows (“Hinterlands University emailed to say they received 400 applications and do not intend to interview me at MLA.”) In fact, it’s quite possible that on any given day you could experience both peak and valley, maybe even several times over.

The emotional rollercoaster is compounded by any number of other factors: noticing a typo in a job letter that’s been replicated dozens of times, seeing a job posting that seems to describe your exact qualifications, not hearing anything from anyone for long stretches of time, being invited to interview, reading job wikis (avoid this if you can—they can be poisonous), getting unexpected encouragement, learning that a position (or positions) was cancelled, getting helpful or enthusiastic feedback on any of your job documents. The list could easily extend for many more pages, and while the factors may change from candidate to candidate, it’s unlikely that anyone, regardless of qualifications and preparation, will avoid the job market ups and downs.

There are as many ways to meet the emotional challenges of the job market as there are causes of potential emotional swings. I relied heavily on chocolate, meals with close friends, and regular contact with people who could put my “plight” in less emotional contexts; other people pour themselves into work or monster movie marathons. Whatever your preferred method, knowing that your emotions are likely to be running high, and preparing ways to meet those emotional challenges, is nearly as important as any other action that you take during your time as a job candidate, especially if you’ve done a good job of preparing to be a candidate during your time as a student.

Summer Writing

This summer session is the first extended period of time I've had free from teaching or taking classes since the summer of 2007. During that summer, I graduated from my masters program, moved my family from California to Arizona, and had a three-week teacher training session to attend. Realistically, this is the first extended period of time I have had in better than three years to simply focus on my own research and writing, and it has been eye opening.

The major problem, a not uncommon one for most people faced with unending "free time," is that I have been having real trouble motivating myself to work. It's not that my time has been unproductive, exactly, but my production has been otherwise directed. I read a novel for two days straight, then wrote a 4-page, single-spaced review of it. I've completely rebuilt my website. I have establish a new blog (thank you very much). I also set up profiles at LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, WordPress, and some other ones I can't think of right now. I've been reading every day, so that's a check in the positive column, but I haven't been reading the books on my comprehensives list. So, reading academic literature? Yes. Reading academic literature I'm going to be tested on in the next 6 months? Not so much.

Of course, I know that the main reason I can't focus is a distinct lack of responsibility. That is, no one is expecting me to be to work every morning. No one is expecting work from me. That's kind of the idea behind self-directed time, right? But without the structure of classes to teach, meetings to attend, and coursework to complete, I'm finding it's much easier to take the intellectual break I've convinced myself I really need to get my batteries recharged (actually I'm not really convinced, but as when my wife overlooks some mindless indiscretion on my part because she loves me, I'm pretending to buy my own line out of pity and love).

Now that I've managed to waste yet another small chunk of my day writing this post, back to some other mundane, unproductive task that I'll scold myself for later when I rise from my desk and wonder where the day went.