Something Shiny! » Job Market

World of worlds

emily — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:57:35 +0000

One of my students contacted me about a week ago and asked me if she could send along a list of questions for me to answer about my career and about my life’s decisions. I told her that was perfectly fine, and I started answering them as soon as they landed in my inbox. But I quickly snagged on the first one: “In your world of worlds, what would you be doing?” I started giving my standard answer: I’d be teaching history at a liberal arts college, producing research and writing. Then I stumbled. I was in the middle of typing the sentence when it hit me: is that really what I’d be doing, in my world of worlds? Going to faculty meetings and dealing with departmental politics? Documenting cases of plagiarism? Perpetually answering the question whatdoIneedtodotogetanA? That’s what I’d be doing in my world of worlds? The problem, I realized, is that I’ve seen how the sausage is made, so to speak. I’ve seen the innerworkings of academic life, the seedy underbelly of the system. And it’s… surprising, in many ways. You enter academia with high flying ideas about pursuing your passion and engaging with students and colleagues who are interested in your work… and then you pull back the curtain and realize that it’s not quite what you expected. As I sat there, trying to form an answer, I imagined that politics would be much the same way. Or can the same be said for any career path? I forged ahead and answered the questions as best I could. But I couldn’t help but marvel at how such a seemingly simple question evoked such a complicated realization.

Back on the (job) market

emily — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:37:03 +0000

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be historians. I’ve come up with a whole shtick about how awful the job market in history is. It’s a way of deflecting, I guess, a way of not having to talk about the gigantic question mark that is my future (career-wise, at least). Of the ten jobs that I was qualified enough to apply for this year, I know that I’m not a candidate for at least seven. And so, two weeks out from defending my dissertation, I’m trying to think about what else I might do for a career. I could go into administration, for example, or I could try to be a freelance writer. I’ll have a manuscript (as opposed to “just” a dissertation) at the end of this month, and could pitch that to publishers. And I’ve got a whole list of other ideas. So I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve still. But in an economy that sees even the strippers struggling to make ends meet, I don’t mind saying that it’s making me nervous. And part of the reason for my shtick is that trying to explain to people just how desperate the job market is… well, that can be frustrating. I was at a board meeting on Saturday for an animal rescue group that I’m active in, and one of the vet techs sitting near me asked about my plans for the future. I responded by doing my job market shtick, then answered that I was trying to think more broadly about what I might do for a career. She said, in all seriousness, “have you considered community college jobs?” And I thought my head might explode. She doesn’t know, of course. You don’t know unless you’re in it: community college jobs are as hard to come by these days as jobs at state universities. People on the history job market are fighting tooth and nail for adjunct jobs– jobs without benefits that don’t pay a living wage. Of course I’ve considered community college jobs. It’s just that, well, so have hundreds of other equally-qualified folks just like me.

Cutthroat market

emily — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:10:40 +0000

I was reading Perspectives the other day and came across an obituary for a really fantastic historian. She died a few months ago and I had no idea. I read part of her obituary aloud to John and remarked at how shocked I was at her passing. John nodded and asked what kind of history she did. After I answered, he nodded and followed up with, “so [her school] might be hiring soon?”

Like a box of chocolates

emily — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 21:33:49 +0000

I’ve written before, countless times, about the vagaries of the job market in my field and of the ramifications they may (or may not) have on my (our) future. And I’ve written, too, about how I might go about creating the life I want and in a place where I want to be. On Friday, after I presented my paper at the Southern, I eagerly leaned over to the commenter and asked her about her life. She is an independent scholar who writes and teaches in her home state. How did she make that decision, I asked, how did she go about creating her life? She took a deep breath and answered. It wasn’t a surprising answer, but it helped to hear it from someone who knew. It wasn’t easy, she said. She and her husband knew that they wanted to be in a particular geographic location. And so they made that choice, bam, the first step. And it closed a lot of doors. But she didn’t regret it. Doesn’t regret it. It has meant making sacrifices, as all choices do. Sometimes she teaches. Sometimes she writes. Sometimes she tries to juggle both. But it’s the life she wants. And in an industry in which, I’d wager, many people are living a life they don’t want, that’s admirable.

Irreconcilable differences

emily — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:01:07 +0000

A life in academia is one that is full of expectations, by which I mean fulfilling that which is expected of you. You go to graduate school and it is expected that you get your PhD, not “just” your Master’s degree. You get your PhD and it is expected of you to go where the job is, not seek out the job you want. As I stand at (nearly) the end of my graduate career, I’m starting to wonder if the life I want isn’t necessarily at the end of that well-worn path. They say that the job market in history looks better this year than last and yes, in the strictest terms, it looks better. But the jobs that are out there aren’t, perhaps, compelling enough for me. Do I want to apply for a job in an area in which the principal occupation is something I find repellent? Ought I apply for a job in an area I already know I dislike? Maybe, just maybe, rather than thinking about what I ought to do, and what is expected of me, I should focus instead on what I want to do. Rather than the job driving what I do and where I go, what if I want to be in the driver’s seat? What would that life look like?

Be it ever so humble

emily — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:09:06 +0000

I’ve been thinking lately about home, and what home means to me. For the longest time, I’ve been convinced that where I am now isn’t really home. Florida has never felt like home to me. Home is, I thought, back in Kansas. I lived there for most of my life, it feels comfortable when I go back to visit, and nearly everyone I know and love is still there. And yet. And yet, we’ve lived in Florida for seven years now. And surely that’s changed us, changed who we are and what we want. We’re different people now than we were seven years ago, when we arrived in Gainesville and (no kidding) said, “what the hell have we done?!?” And that got me wondering: if, by some miracle, we’re able to get back to Kansas, the place we’re convinced is ‘home,’ would it really be home to us? Or have we changed in such a way that we would feel there the way we feel here, which is to say, as outsiders? Is it really true, as they say, that you can never go home again?

Waiting game

emily — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:44:27 +0000

One of my favorite quotes from a book reads, “it does not to do dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Lately, I confess, I’ve been dwelling on dreams. I try so hard to live in the now, as it were, but I feel as though I’m failing entirely. With my dissertation safely in the hands of my committee members, and the dissertation status meeting more than a month away, I’ve got some time on my hands. Sure, I’m working on potential articles and dabbling in dissertation-related work, but I also find myself dreaming a lot. Maybe too much. About where we’ll be a year from now, about what kind of job (if any) I’ll be able to land, and, mostly, about what our life will look like When We Get Where We’re Going (TM). It doesn’t do to dwell on dreams, of course, but I can’t help but dwell a little bit. Especially in the middle of all this waiting.

On priorities, the reshuffling thereof

emily — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:21:39 +0000

My parents came for a visit this weekend and it was so wonderful to see them. I’ve written before about how hard it is to be so very far away from home, but what has surprised me even more is that this hasn’t gotten easier despite the fact that we’ve been in Florida for seven years. (Which: seven years, GAH!) I guess I always thought that I’d develop thicker skin and the hurt would subside after a time and then, ultimately, disappear. But it hasn’t. It’s as hard as it always has been. Yesterday morning, after dropping my parents off at the airport, I felt like my heart was literally breaking in two. We get to see them for a grand total of about six days a year. And I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s just not acceptable to me. But I’m not supposed to think that (much less say that), am I? As an academic, I’m supposed to go where the job is. I’m supposed to be willing to sacrifice everything on the alter of publish or perish. I’m supposed to happily live hundreds of miles from the people and places I know and love, so that I can raise my flag in the ivory tower. But I want a better life than that, a fuller life than that. I want to have more than a passing relationship with the people in my heart. I don’t know how I’m going to make it happen, and I don’t know if I’ll wind up in academia on the other side. But I think it might be time to rethink my priorities.

NaBloPoMo: Pit of despair

emily — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:48:25 +0000

Editor’s note: Every now and again I fall into the Pit of Despair. I think we all have these black moments. They don’t last long for me, really, nor do they happen very often. (And I want to emphasize that point, lest I start getting concerned phone calls.) But here’s what goes through my mind when I fall into the Pit.

Well-meaning, good people keep saying to me, “I just know you’ll get a job.” And I love them for saying it, I really do. It means the world to me that they have such confidence in me. But at the same time, it makes me want to scream. Because the job market in my field is so very, very tight. (Literally, hundreds of people competing for six jobs.) And because if or when I don’t get a job, what are these well-meaning people going to think? What are my parents or John’s parents going to think? That I’m a loser? And, heck, forget about what anybody thinks; what am I going to DO for a living? I’ll have my PhD in May. And I’ll be overqualified for most jobs that I could have gotten straight out of college. (I don’t say that egotistically; rather, I will literally have become ineligible for most of those jobs.) And I’ll be 32 in December. When do I say, enough is enough? Do we stay in Florida until I can find a job? (Answer: NO!) Do we move somewhere and have a baby? What do I do? I have a million questions and not a single answer.

So there you go: my Pit of Despair. I flit in and out, and only every so often. It’s like a distant cabin off in the woods somewhere: I don’t go there very often, so it’s not well-appointed or furnished, really. And it sort of smells. What does your Pit of Despair look like?

NaBloPoMo: The Job Swap

emily — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:54:23 +0000

I can’t claim credit for this idea; it’s my sister’s. But I think it’s sheer genius. Academics often have to take jobs in locations where they’d really prefer not to be. People who yearn for New York City wind up in Nowhere, Wyoming. They are perhaps envied by others, who prefer rural life but find themselves cursing the congestion of Miami. And then there are those whose hearts are in Berkeley, but whose address is in Gainesville (which, no kidding, is billed as “the Berkeley of the South.” Ha. Ha ha.). So what if these people, disgruntled with their current locales, could simply swap jobs (within their fields, naturally) with other people who don’t like where they are? Job satisfaction would go up, certainly. And departments wouldn’t constantly have to initiate searches to replace people who’ve left for more appealing zip codes. It’s win-win!