Saturday, May 25, 2013
Any Way The Wind Blows
In our last thrill-packed episode, the Invisible Ben informed you, his ever-dwindling readership, about several promising events that had inspired a renewed sense of optimism about the job market. You might recall a mention of Skype interviews and campus visits, unprecedented events in the life of this aspiring academic. Two months ago, I hailed these events as turning points, glimmers of hope shedding light on to an otherwise dark employment horizon. There was never a full-fledged embrace of unguarded optimism. Indeed, the penultimate sentence of my previous post notes that there were no guarantees that these would lead to employment, but cracks had started to form in my cynical armor. Maybe things would work out. Maybe one of these interviews would result in a job, a career, or a future. Hope is seductive that way. Even the tiniest glimpse of it is sufficient to lead the mind down impossible roads culminating in some fantastic future.
You would think I would know better by now than to put any faith in such illusions.
Let me tell you how the story ended.
As I mentioned, there were two Skype interviews earlier this spring. Both seemed to go well, and I decided to put them out of my mind until after my in-person interview. Unfortunately, I made a mistake. During my campus visit, mere minutes before my job talk, I checked my e-mail and discovered that one of the Skype interviews had resulted in a rejection. I was not among the candidates selected for a second round of in-person meetings.
This stunk, but there was no time to really dwell on the matter. After all, I had a lecture to present. That seemed to go well enough. Granted, by the end of my trip, I was exhausted and uncertain about the job. (Without going into too much detail, it was a non-tenure track position with limited possibilities for advancement...) But if nothing else, the post remained a good backup option.
Until it wasn't anymore. A few weeks later, I received an e-mail informing me that the department had made an offer to someone else. But, they assured me, if that person refused, there might still be an opening. In some ways I'm glad I didn't have to make that decision. It would have been weird working someplace with the full knowledge that I was their backup candidate.
So that eliminated two of the options right there. What about the other Skype conversation? At a superficial level that one turned out to be the most promising of all. I apparently impressed my interviewers to such an extent that they flew me out for an action-packed two day visit, where I met with everyone from the president of the organization on down. I prepared another job talk that received rave reviews. Upon my return home, I remained cautiously optimistic until a few weeks ago when I received a request from their human resources department for a list of professional references.
This was when I think I made my biggest mistake. I misinterpreted this request as a signal that they were interested in hiring me. Telephone conversations with my academic and professional supervisors would be the final step--crossing the t's and dotting the i's--before they made me an offer. And when they sent me another note a little later asking if I was waiting on any other job possibilities, well, I started to actually believe things were working out.
At first, I was anxious. Getting this position would be a significant change, both in terms of what I would be doing and where I would be doing it. I have spent the better part of a decade living in and around one city. If I received an offer, I would have to move out to a whole new place where I had no family, no friends, and no history. How would I make this transition? Would I be able to find a place to live? How well would I be able to adjust to life in a different region of the country?
These sorts of questions twisted around in my head. My sleep began to suffer. I would stay up late browsing apartment listings or figuring out how easy it would be to visit friends or family who would no longer be within easy driving distance. After several of my references contacted me about their interviews and expressed confidence that I would be chosen for the post, my perspective shifted from being nervous about the change to assuming it was likely to occur and that it might in fact be a good thing. Maybe a move would be a positive experience. It would be a fresh start, a chance to shake off the past and forge something new. At some point I stopped being afraid of a new job and started to become excited about its possibilities. In conversations, of course, I always amended discussions of the matter with the caveat that nothing was certain and that it was still possible that the job would go to someone else. But somewhere along the line, I really thought that the brass ring was out there waiting to be grasped. It would only be a matter of time.
Of course, you can guess the ending of the story, can't you? The outcome is practically preordained!
Yes, after dropping my defenses and finally yielding to hope, this past week I received the fateful phone call. The job had gone to someone else. The substance of the phone call reminded me of a breakup, complete with assurances that "It's not you. It's us." In short, although they thought I was a very strong candidate, they were looking for someone better suited to fulfill the institution's long-term needs. To be clear, they were very polite, and even offered to provide advice on how I might move forward in the future. But it was hard to think that far ahead. All I could think about was my failure and the stupidity of allowing myself to be caught off guard. It seemed like such a sure thing, which made the outcome all the more painful.
It still stings several days later.
Beyond the immediate pain of rejection, there is a broader issue, namely that at the precise moment that my postdoctoral fellowship is drawing to a close, I have basically run out of academic job options. It didn't help, for example, that in addition to the phone call referenced above, this week I also received an e-mail rejection from an Ivy League school and a typed rejection letter from a state school out west. A complete rejection trifecta if ever there were one. I still have one application pending for a curatorial position, but for obvious reasons I am reluctant to treat that as any sort of sure thing.
Given all that, what are my options? There are adjunct positions out there, but in most cases it is too late to roster a class for fall semester. Moreover, in the long run these are only stop-gap solutions. There might be more tenure-track job announcements over the summer, but those wouldn't begin until the fall of 2014. And the museum world? Well, that's a crap shoot, since there's no way to know what job openings will be available and in most cases those jobs require more curatorial experience than I have.
Of course, as several people have suggested, I could go back to teaching. Find a job at a private school and teach history or science. (Probably not history of science...) That is certainly a possibility, but not one I am eager to pursue, since it would essentially mean abandoning everything that I've done over the past few years. No more exhibit projects, no more research, and to hell with ever revising my dissertation into a book. I know better than most how much time teaching can consume, especially during the first few years. That's all it would take. One or two years of high school teaching, and then I would be an exile from the world in which I've lived for the past seven years. All of what I've done would be for nothing.
So what's left? I don't know. The disheartening truth is that I will essentially be adrift in the world as of next fall, and there is precious little I can do to alter that outcome without abandoning my identity as a scholar.
Needless to say, I'm far from pleased with this outcome, but at the same time I don't know how I could have done anything differently. I suppose the real lesson, which I have learned at last, is that it even if you do everything right--go to good schools, work hard, show a willingness to grow and improve--you can still lose the game. We can only exert authority over a small portion of our lives. We can no more determine which path our futures will follow than we can control which way the wind is blowing. Based on recent experience, I think it best not to place too much hope in either possibility.
You would think I would know better by now than to put any faith in such illusions.
Let me tell you how the story ended.
As I mentioned, there were two Skype interviews earlier this spring. Both seemed to go well, and I decided to put them out of my mind until after my in-person interview. Unfortunately, I made a mistake. During my campus visit, mere minutes before my job talk, I checked my e-mail and discovered that one of the Skype interviews had resulted in a rejection. I was not among the candidates selected for a second round of in-person meetings.
This stunk, but there was no time to really dwell on the matter. After all, I had a lecture to present. That seemed to go well enough. Granted, by the end of my trip, I was exhausted and uncertain about the job. (Without going into too much detail, it was a non-tenure track position with limited possibilities for advancement...) But if nothing else, the post remained a good backup option.
Until it wasn't anymore. A few weeks later, I received an e-mail informing me that the department had made an offer to someone else. But, they assured me, if that person refused, there might still be an opening. In some ways I'm glad I didn't have to make that decision. It would have been weird working someplace with the full knowledge that I was their backup candidate.
So that eliminated two of the options right there. What about the other Skype conversation? At a superficial level that one turned out to be the most promising of all. I apparently impressed my interviewers to such an extent that they flew me out for an action-packed two day visit, where I met with everyone from the president of the organization on down. I prepared another job talk that received rave reviews. Upon my return home, I remained cautiously optimistic until a few weeks ago when I received a request from their human resources department for a list of professional references.
This was when I think I made my biggest mistake. I misinterpreted this request as a signal that they were interested in hiring me. Telephone conversations with my academic and professional supervisors would be the final step--crossing the t's and dotting the i's--before they made me an offer. And when they sent me another note a little later asking if I was waiting on any other job possibilities, well, I started to actually believe things were working out.
At first, I was anxious. Getting this position would be a significant change, both in terms of what I would be doing and where I would be doing it. I have spent the better part of a decade living in and around one city. If I received an offer, I would have to move out to a whole new place where I had no family, no friends, and no history. How would I make this transition? Would I be able to find a place to live? How well would I be able to adjust to life in a different region of the country?
These sorts of questions twisted around in my head. My sleep began to suffer. I would stay up late browsing apartment listings or figuring out how easy it would be to visit friends or family who would no longer be within easy driving distance. After several of my references contacted me about their interviews and expressed confidence that I would be chosen for the post, my perspective shifted from being nervous about the change to assuming it was likely to occur and that it might in fact be a good thing. Maybe a move would be a positive experience. It would be a fresh start, a chance to shake off the past and forge something new. At some point I stopped being afraid of a new job and started to become excited about its possibilities. In conversations, of course, I always amended discussions of the matter with the caveat that nothing was certain and that it was still possible that the job would go to someone else. But somewhere along the line, I really thought that the brass ring was out there waiting to be grasped. It would only be a matter of time.
Of course, you can guess the ending of the story, can't you? The outcome is practically preordained!
Yes, after dropping my defenses and finally yielding to hope, this past week I received the fateful phone call. The job had gone to someone else. The substance of the phone call reminded me of a breakup, complete with assurances that "It's not you. It's us." In short, although they thought I was a very strong candidate, they were looking for someone better suited to fulfill the institution's long-term needs. To be clear, they were very polite, and even offered to provide advice on how I might move forward in the future. But it was hard to think that far ahead. All I could think about was my failure and the stupidity of allowing myself to be caught off guard. It seemed like such a sure thing, which made the outcome all the more painful.
It still stings several days later.
Beyond the immediate pain of rejection, there is a broader issue, namely that at the precise moment that my postdoctoral fellowship is drawing to a close, I have basically run out of academic job options. It didn't help, for example, that in addition to the phone call referenced above, this week I also received an e-mail rejection from an Ivy League school and a typed rejection letter from a state school out west. A complete rejection trifecta if ever there were one. I still have one application pending for a curatorial position, but for obvious reasons I am reluctant to treat that as any sort of sure thing.
Given all that, what are my options? There are adjunct positions out there, but in most cases it is too late to roster a class for fall semester. Moreover, in the long run these are only stop-gap solutions. There might be more tenure-track job announcements over the summer, but those wouldn't begin until the fall of 2014. And the museum world? Well, that's a crap shoot, since there's no way to know what job openings will be available and in most cases those jobs require more curatorial experience than I have.
Of course, as several people have suggested, I could go back to teaching. Find a job at a private school and teach history or science. (Probably not history of science...) That is certainly a possibility, but not one I am eager to pursue, since it would essentially mean abandoning everything that I've done over the past few years. No more exhibit projects, no more research, and to hell with ever revising my dissertation into a book. I know better than most how much time teaching can consume, especially during the first few years. That's all it would take. One or two years of high school teaching, and then I would be an exile from the world in which I've lived for the past seven years. All of what I've done would be for nothing.
So what's left? I don't know. The disheartening truth is that I will essentially be adrift in the world as of next fall, and there is precious little I can do to alter that outcome without abandoning my identity as a scholar.
Needless to say, I'm far from pleased with this outcome, but at the same time I don't know how I could have done anything differently. I suppose the real lesson, which I have learned at last, is that it even if you do everything right--go to good schools, work hard, show a willingness to grow and improve--you can still lose the game. We can only exert authority over a small portion of our lives. We can no more determine which path our futures will follow than we can control which way the wind is blowing. Based on recent experience, I think it best not to place too much hope in either possibility.
