Okay, so this might fit neatly into the category of insufferable advice. But since I’ve finally experienced the sensation of a successful tenure track search, I’m going to start a brief series of experiential narratives. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m really full of specialist knowledge on job hunting, since I firmly agree with the point of view of academic randomness. When 250 (or more!) people apply to each and every position, just making the first cut is akin to sliding all of your chips onto red. Preparation and polish matter in the bet (the academic, not the roulette), but luck and circumstance are certainly significant players.
Maybe most of all, I write to figure out. I’m not quite sure how I came to this moment in the world, a holder of a prime position that actually excites me. So I want to relive the process in text, to experience, filter, interpret just what the heck happened. I know, as well, that a lack of information generated the most anxiety during my job search, even though I had a doctoral advisor quite keen on search stuff and quite willing to offer input. Still, all of that material came from someone firmly ensconced in a named professorship, so despite generosity and knowledge, there was always a layer of separation even there. My writing, I think, comes from ground zero. Having just gone through the process, I’m hoping that my experiences might help relieve the information void in some small part for other searchers.
So, here are my intended topics:
I. Getting Started
II. Shaping Your CV — The Early Years
III. You Too Are An Academic, Right Now
IV. The Rhetoric of Job Letters
V. Apply, Apply, Apply
VI. The Wiki
VII. Conference Time
VIII. Wait, Wait, Wait
IX. Big Candidate On Campus
X. The Offer
*****
Without further ado:
I. Getting Started
My career in post graduate education did not follow a linear path. After my MFA, I left academe for awhile, took gainful employment elsewhere as a professional cobbler of words, got married, and eventually found myself drawn back in. I taught for a little off the tenure track and decided to get a Ph.D. I quit that program after one semester and fled academe again for several years. Though this might seem like an odd “start” to a fruitful academic search, I really do believe this is point A on the flow chart. So bear with the apparently non-search material to come.
Immediately preceding this failed re-entry into the academic life, I weighed three options for doctoral education. I had offers from a mid-ranked literature program, a highly-ranked creative writing Ph.D. program (which, as things went in those days, meant the school itself was a low-mid ranked graduate program overall), and a top-5 Rhetoric and Composition program. Each offered me assistantships, something every doctoral student should make an absolute rule at this junction in a career. Not having support means you’re not among the top dogs in a program. And that means spending a lot of time and energy trying to become a top dog, without much guarantee that will happen. The quick message here: if a place doesn’t offer money, just don’t go. Just don’t. Ever.
Having spent significant time away from the academic lifestyle, I decided to go into this process systematically. I researched the schools, and I actually paid good money we didn’t have to fly out and make campus visits to the programs. We lived on the East Coast. One school was in the Pacific Northwest, another in the Southwest, the third in the Midwest. But I figured it was a good investment, since I would be spending five or more years earning the degree. I wanted to know what was what. The schools, for their part, all seemed a bit surprised that anyone bothered to do this. But each was accommodating in its own way, setting up visits with students and faculty to help me get a feel for each place.
And these visits told me everything I needed to know…if I’d been paying attention.
Northwest lit program introduced me to students. The program director toured me around campus, bought me lunch, made me feel like he wanted me to join the program. Plus, I found the campus to be lovely, green, well-funded, friendly, in a cool college town.
Midwest creative program introduced me to students and faculty. The program director drove me around the city, showed me interesting sites, talked about the success of its graduates. A few students took me out to dinner at a local gigantic Serbian fish fry, then out for drinks in a parked rail car that had become a bar. After I returned home, the graduate director called and offered me a little extra grant money, to sweeten the t.a. offer.
Southwest, high-ranked comp program set themselves apart with the phone call offer. They had a place for me in the program, but they needed an answer in a couple of days so they could make an offer to someone else if I would’t come. I flew out to see the school, where they allowed me to sit in on a class. Where I had to introduce myself to some students, who were nice enough. The city was beautiful, though — sunny, warm.
After my visits, I drew up a detailed pro-con chart. The first two programs rated high in fit, feel, enthusiasm, my own academic interests, stuff I discounted as a bit flaky for decision making. The third school trumped them via its national ranking and, equally important, the near 100% placement rate for composition grads. Naturally, I accepted that post. Call it money over love. Call it pragmatism. Call it realism. Call it market awareness.
Call it a mistake.
Within a few weeks after starting the program, I knew I was doomed. I hated the field. I didn’t want to make composition my life’s work. And it was clear I was just another one of many graduate students in the department. Remember, the offer was as impersonal as they come: if you accept, you can come here. But let us know if you won’t, because we have other warm bodies waiting. Makes no difference to us.
I dropped out after one semester, which was the right thing to do. It took me many years to reconcile myself to actual academic desires. And on that re-entry, I chose a school for the “wrong” reasons: they seemed to want ME as a student, offered me a nice fellowship because they were interested in ME and my work, and the department seemed to get along with itself. It was a small program, without a grand national reputation, but the faculty were strong and approachable. And I liked them.
Truly, the choice of a graduate program is the first step to a tenure track faculty appointment. This is both obvious (duh!) and not-so-clear. Certainly, graduate program matters as a cv line, but in the end satisfaction and happiness, I’m convinced, matter a lot more. Certainly for life they do. But I think your quality of work is deeply affected by your quality of life.
Choosing a school based on its ranking is the worst possible thing to do. For one thing, ranking is somewhat irrelevant on the market. Sure, there might be some administrative pressure to choose folks with name brands (I’m looking at you, Christopher Newport!), but in the end “fit” comes about from interesting research agendas, good teaching, and hard-to-pin-down personal dynamics. Basically, a program has to be good enough to not be a deal breaker.
Academic work is a life thing, somewhat consuming and often isolating. Weathering through five years of doctoral work without a decent life, regardless of an institution’s rank, yields little. At the end, you come out on the other side unhappy, likely jaded, and probably without enthusiastic scholarship. The myopic choice I originally made was bad both mentally and pragmatically. It wasn’t a field of study I liked, it wasn’t a place that would make me the best me, and it wasn’t a place where I could be happy. If I’d stayed, I know the actual work — the dissertation, presentations, articles — would have been lifeless and disengaged. They might have been “good,” as in well-placed and effective for my vita, but they wouldn’t have been representative of work I actually cared about.
Many in academe will pooh-pooh the notion of happiness. They will extol the virtues of workaholicism, bean-counting, and exhausting focus. But I don’t think these attributes make for good professors. Instead, they make for miserable people, fractured departments, and all the horror stories we hear about institutional politics, back-stabbing, and careerism.
What I’m saying is kind of basic: when you choose a graduate program, you’re also choosing what kind of academic you want to be. It really does matter, because this is a human field. In the end, I entered my final (successful) graduate program with an attitude of personal commitment. I knew it was the right place for me. If the market didn’t agree, then I would accept the consequences of having no job and find something else to do. Selling myself short wasn’t worth it because, well, it’s me. I like me. And there are no market guarantees in the end, regardless of how great the Ph.D. program might be.
Oddly, in the end, the market agreed with this point of view. And I got the job I most wanted.
