Sunday, March 17, 2013
Hope Springs Eternal
Perhaps one day, I will go through the archives of this blog in a systematic fashion to determine how many of my posts begin with a comment about a recent drop in posting activity. During graduate school, I attributed such declines to the relatively mundane tasks associated with the academic lifestyle. The violence, profanity, and overall madness that characterized much of my teaching experience had been traded in for the far less exciting world of research papers and conference talks. After graduating, I had thought I might once again return to the blog, livening it up with regular posts and weekly features. I still think YouTube Tuesdays might have been fun...
But then the bitter realities of the academic job market set in, and well, I suppose you know the rest. My silence has spoken loudly in that regard. With the additional responsibilities of teaching a course this term--which has been proceeding relatively smoothly, by the way--my already slow pace became positively glacial. And why not? There was no exciting news to report. No thrilling anecdotes from the front line of academe. Just a so-so scholar running just as fast as he can to stay in the same place and hoping that somehow things would work out for next year. Not even a semi-promising job interview at a national conference disrupted this particular routine. The days would pass and I'd go through the motions: lesson planning, curatorial work, job applications, pub quiz hosting...all the while trying not to think too hard about the end of my fellowship in a few months and my uncertainty over my choice of profession.
Until this month. After basically two years on the job market with nothing to show for it, (NB: The lone interview mentioned above turned out to be a disappointment. I haven't been formally rejected yet, but it seems clear that the committee has moved on to other choices.) over the past two weeks I have had two extended Skype interviews for promising positions and I am traveling to a third, in-person interview this week. None of these jobs is perfect. Two are short-term posts and the third would require a pretty significant relocation. But at least this year there are people interested in what I do, who think I just might have potential, and that my work over the past five-plus years has not been a complete waste.
I realize that it is not healthy to base one's self-worth too heavily upon one's professional success. We are, after all, more than our jobs. Still, this recent burst of good fortune is almost enough to convince a jaded cynic like me that there might be hope for the future. There are no guarantees that any of these interviews will lead to a job, but at least the possibility for that option exists. It's a start.
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But then the bitter realities of the academic job market set in, and well, I suppose you know the rest. My silence has spoken loudly in that regard. With the additional responsibilities of teaching a course this term--which has been proceeding relatively smoothly, by the way--my already slow pace became positively glacial. And why not? There was no exciting news to report. No thrilling anecdotes from the front line of academe. Just a so-so scholar running just as fast as he can to stay in the same place and hoping that somehow things would work out for next year. Not even a semi-promising job interview at a national conference disrupted this particular routine. The days would pass and I'd go through the motions: lesson planning, curatorial work, job applications, pub quiz hosting...all the while trying not to think too hard about the end of my fellowship in a few months and my uncertainty over my choice of profession.
Until this month. After basically two years on the job market with nothing to show for it, (NB: The lone interview mentioned above turned out to be a disappointment. I haven't been formally rejected yet, but it seems clear that the committee has moved on to other choices.) over the past two weeks I have had two extended Skype interviews for promising positions and I am traveling to a third, in-person interview this week. None of these jobs is perfect. Two are short-term posts and the third would require a pretty significant relocation. But at least this year there are people interested in what I do, who think I just might have potential, and that my work over the past five-plus years has not been a complete waste.
I realize that it is not healthy to base one's self-worth too heavily upon one's professional success. We are, after all, more than our jobs. Still, this recent burst of good fortune is almost enough to convince a jaded cynic like me that there might be hope for the future. There are no guarantees that any of these interviews will lead to a job, but at least the possibility for that option exists. It's a start.
