Signs of Intelligence in the Field

There may be some hope for my field after all.

I just sat down to put together my now-annual job application requirement spreadsheet that helps keep me up to date on what I need to send to each job. I'm hitting the market hard, it seems, as there are already 10 schools on the list. That does mean I'm being a little less selective, but not much. So far, every job is in or very near a place I feel like I could live (except one where the city is entirely too large, but the job was sent my way by my adviser, so...), and they range from SLACs to Research I's.

What gives me hope, though, is the number of schools who have reduced their requirements for an application. And nearly all of them - including places I've applied before - have gotten more specific when asking for things like "evidence of teaching effectiveness" (a phrase and requirement that are the bane of my job applying existence).

There are still a few that are insisting on interviewing at one of a number of conferences, and that's frustrating because there isn't the agreement in my field about which conference this should be and so it may well require applicants to attend multiple conferences in hopes of getting that first interview. Worse, I'm at a school that doesn't exactly hand out the travel funding, so getting to conferences becomes a giant expense that I have to take.

When I can find an application that I like for it, I'll add a section to the page to keep track of applications the way so many people do word counts in their manuscripts. I think it'll be interesting to see what the process looks like.

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3 Responses to “Signs of Intelligence in the Field”
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LY said...

Because I am new to your lovely blog (and unfortunately haven't yet found the time to pore through all of your past posts), I am not sure if you've already mentioned what your field is? or if that qualifies as one of the "somethings" that shall remain anonymous about your Curmudgeon-ness?

In any case, as someone not-quite-yet on the job market... yeesh. I'm scared. And completely curious to hear how your search goes...

Best,
LY

September 8, 2008 at 10:18 PM
Sisyphus said...

You are a sick sick man, having fun doing job applications...

but if you find a little widget that shows job app progress or anything else cute that's job related, let me know cause I'll probably want to use it too...

September 9, 2008 at 12:57 AM
Dr. Curmudgeon said...

My field is one of the anonymous somethings (incidentally, a great name for a band) that swims the undercurrents of this blog.

As for having fun doing job searches, that might be a stretch. I could, possibly, make it more fun. Or at least informative.

I think I'm going to use a Google gadget to track things. I've got a few ideas of what to track, but I'll be opening that up shortly for suggestions.

September 9, 2008 at 11:09 AM