While you’re waiting for that call/email…
"Autoanswer-1" by Kitsya (Creative Commons license)
If you’re not holding on until the last possible minute to mail out your job application packets, you should pat yourself on the back. And if you are procrastinating, you have about a week to get those November 1 applications in, so get cracking. Anyway, those of you more or less done with your end of the bargain are entering various stages of waiting, depending on how much you were asked to send in for a given call. We already addressed what you should be doing to be prepared for a secondary request for materials, but there are those ads that ask you for everything at once, leaving you hanging until you get the call–or not–for a MLA interview. And since MLA is in January 2011 this go-around, I’m not sure if that also means you’ll find out news–or hold onto to false hope–later than ever. Though knowing that university bureaucracy will dilly-dally as long as possible, I hope they either put the candidates out of their misery for the holidays or let them use the time to prepare.
I know, I know, you should use your time productively–like getting ready in advance for possible interviews or working on your diss to knock out two birds with one stone–but it’s much easier to fritter hours away online, which you are, of course, welcome to do so here. Below are some of the not-so-productive activities I found myself engaging in while playing the waiting game.
Cybersnooping: I know I shouldn’t and I know it’s undignified, but I have become quite a good cybersnoop, starting from MLA season to campus visits to finding out who landed the positions I applied for. The academic jobs wiki makes this way too easy to do; once the first notifications for interviews are posted, the dang site becomes pretty much like crack, which gets all the more addictive once the x2 (by phone) and x3 (via email) notes pop up, while you’re making sure your cellphone voicemail works and checking that there’s nothing in your spam folder.
More on cybersnooping, below the fold…
The MLA JIL Cottage Industry
I promise that this is the last post you’ll see from me about the MLA Job Information List — at least until I actually log on to it, either through buying my own affiliate account or poaching off the UCI English dept whenever it decides to renew its account. But you’d be surprised by all the stuff you can find online typing in “MLA JIL” or “JIL MLA” or “ADE JIL” (which includes one of our very own posts near the top of the Google search list). So here’s what I found searching for the JIL and trying to backdoor it and not being able to do so.
"Cottage Industry!" by Colin Smith (Creative Commons license)
The mlaconvention Twitter account: This is where all the action is if you want to find out all the JIL news, even if you’re not actually able to get on it. We’ve linked to and been linked by the MLA’s Exec Director Rosemary Feal’s Twitter before responding to a call about reforming the dissertation, but who knew she would give a play-by-play on the status of the JIL while hosting and responding to comments by MLA members? If you dig a little into the older Tweets, you’ll notice that the JIL had a very shaky and frustrating launch. We’ve dogged the MLA quite a bit on this blog, but you can’t beat their customer service when the Exec Director responds to pretty much anyone who Tweets @ ’em.
MLA JIL LOLCAT: And to keep the restless natives entertained while they’re in the virtual line trying to get onto the JIL on the geeks’ equivalent to day-after-Thanksgiving shopping, the MLA has created its own gallery of…LOLCATs: “This #MLALOLCat is for all you patient #mlajoblist users!http://cheezburger.com/View/3977057024“. You gotta give the MLA credit for trying to amuse the unamused masses, though isn’t “I Can Has Cheezburger?” so 2008 — which is also around the time the job market plunged and we probably needed the humor the most.
The Academic Job Wiki’s Una74: One of the best things about the Academic Job Wiki was the virtual community aspect of it, where people shared job info, advice, and a feeling of doom. Those of you who are on the wiki might have noticed that many of the early listings have been put up by a user named Una74, who describes her/himself as a “Professional Lurker, Part-time Administrator of Academic Jobs Wiki.” On the one hand, you wanna thank Una74 for the thankless job of posting all the job listings as they come up, especially when you, ahem, don’t have access to the JIL. On the other, you wanna ask who made Una74 the boss of the Job Wiki–I mean, could we have applied for this position and can Una74 put it on a CV? Considering that the Wiki has always been a communal effort, we’ll see if the presence of Una74 as a shadowy majordomo will change the dynamic of how folks contribute when we really, really need to find out about interviews, campus visits, gossip, and job offers. (Seriously, I’ve been thinking about that!) I imagine probably not, if some of the frustrated jobseeker posts already up on the Wiki are any indication: As one Wiki commenter noted, once the JIL technical problems were resolved, “yeah, now all we gotta deal with is how sh*tty the list is so far. at least in my field”.
Chronicle MLA JIL sites: I didn’t want to link this Chronicle message board, since we’re going head-to-head with it to see who’s higher on the “MLA JIL” Google search, but to heck with it. All these message boards and Wikis do serve the function of being online support groups for those who need the support, even if you’re just lurking. The we’re-all-in-the-same-boat gallows humor does help, like the shared experience of not being able to explain how the profession works to people outside it, as in this case:
A couple of years ago I was visiting my mother and told her there were only X number of jobs out there in French and she didn’t believe me. I popped open the laptop and went through the MLA JIL with her. When she saw how many Francophone jobs there were she said, “Well, you must be wrong about what ‘Francophone’ means.”
Right mom. I was totally mistaken and am indeed a Francophone specialist without my knowing it. Thanks.
There’s also a breakout message board about “Predictions for 2010-2011 job season”, which is good vicarious viewing for those without proper JIL access. While the numbers seem *relatively* encouraging — how could they not be after the worst market ever? — the comments are still caustic: When someone queried what the growth fields might be, the two sad-but-true replies were “adjunct studies” and “administration”. Just because it’s depressingly true doesn’t mean it isn’t still kinda funny…
Academia, I wish I knew how to quit you!
Or perhaps the better overused, overwrought movie quote to describe my situation would be: “Just when I thought I was out…you pull me back in!” Or, more accurately, “Just when I thought I was out…I pull myself back in!”
Here’s a real-time example of just how easy it is for me to talk myself into keeping on holding on to academia, despite what my experience and better judgment tell me: A few days ago, I spied a plum job opening that’s kinda-sorta in my field, which is a big shock and a really pleasant surprise because postings for the tenure-track run mostly dry after the Fall and Winter. This position would be one of the better jobs I’d have applied for this year (or really, any year), at a top-notch R1 public university with a strong graduate program. And then, maybe my chances for the position would be better than they normally would be, since the applicant pool should be smaller due to the late date, compounded by the possibility that the job might not be so widely advertised and fewer folks will be on the look out for it. And maybe the most attractive candidates–even though I do regard myself as a strong candidate!–have all been placed in tenure-track jobs or postdocs from earlier in the cycle. I start to think about going for it, since, as my friends who are gainfully employed in the academic world like to tell me, it only takes one application and what do I have to lose anyway, except maybe a few bucks in postage and couple of hours of my time?
The problem is, I’ve been on this hamster wheel before and before that, and a few hours putting together an application can end up being a few more months waiting to hear from someone, obsessively checking the wiki, and investing some psychic energy that could be better used elsewhere. The reality of the situation is that it would still be quite a stretch to make myself appear like a good fit, no matter how well I can sell it in my cover letter. Plus, I whiffed on a postdoc at the same institution (which probably passed my application on to the department in which the tenure-track position is housed), so maybe that should be a big red flag. And the job ad is written in such a way–it asks for two not-necessarily connected specializations in a sneaky “and/or” way–that suggests this could be an inside hire, which might also help to explain the late posting and the relatively short period to turn around the application. There are some obvious warning signs to foreshadow where this story is going, and I think I’ve seen this movie enough times to know that I don’t like the way it ends.
So should I apply?
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