Campus Visits
It’s campus visit season for job seekers, so I’ve been busy with travel, writing and presenting job talks, and attempting to be dazzling for nine hours at a stretch. I got turned down for my dream job, which is a disappointment, but it was a bit of a reach for someone in my situation. Still, I really, really like the institutions with which I’ve been lucky enough to have visits — each, in their way, nationally known — but for very different reasons. Everybody always says the visits are grueling, which I guess they are, but there’s also something genuinely pleasant about talking to a bunch of super-intelligent people about the dissertation upon which you’ve been chipping away in solitude for so long.
(He says, crossing his fingers, knocking on wood, hoping they liked him.)
January 28th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Congratulations on just _getting through_ the crazy process — and I like the way you describe the visits as “genuinely pleasant.” That means, I think, they liked you. No surprise there!
January 28th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Thanks, Spencer. In some ways, I’m thinking your Nine Interviews project could be a useful preventative heuristic, kind of like the question about which Beatle one identifies most with — only you’d ask potential MLAers, “Which of the nine do you identify most with” and then use that answer to say: OK, here’s what NOT to do in the interview/campus visit.
(Behavior I’d most want to avoid: Mr. Peanut.)
January 29th, 2006 at 10:22 am
Ha! I like that idea — funny! In email I’ve received about the project and random blog chatter, the characters people seem to like most (not sure that’s the same as identifying) are: the singer, the comedian, and then maybe the trauma scholar.
I’m working on a script for the sequel: “Campus Visit.”
January 31st, 2006 at 11:07 pm
When you get a fancy job, don’t forget those of us in the Dumpster. Remember where you come from.
February 1st, 2006 at 7:11 pm
If it makes you feel any better, I had a sort of similar experience my first time out on the job market. However, I am very glad ultimately that I didn’t get the job in question. It was apparently something less than “dreamy” at this school.