Job Tracking - Week 14

I'm envious of all of you who are done with your finals and your grading. Oh so envious. Envious enough that I want to call you a choice word or two. But I won't. I'm fairly certain that earlier this term I knew grading would come back to bite me when I bit off an overload and kept assignments as they were set up before that overload. I've been fairly smart here at the end, having come up with a pretty well-defined rubric for the final project that will make commenting easier - and on this assignment I've got to because it leads into Senior Projects.

But I'm still envious.

Job-wise, things have been quiet. No new interviews set up, and one more rejection. We're at the part of the job process that is the worst for me - the part where there is possibility but not so much that it is safe to invest too much into thinking about things. I've largely handled things differently this year. Both phone interviews were with places that I know some folks, but this year I've decided no one outside of the blog and one or two friends will know anything about the interview process. This is because:

1. I hate explaining to people over and over again things like how I don't know when I'll hear, and I don't know if I'll move there, etc.
2. The more you talk about something, the more you invest in it, and I don't want to go through the wave of depression that follows the unsuccessful job search for me.

But that doesn't actually mean I don't invest. Both phone interviews went great, and I liked both schools and the faculty I talked with. But I REALLY liked one of the schools and the faculty. So much so that I've been trying to figure out the academic equivalent of having my best friend pass the department a note at lunch asking them to check yes or no whether they like me or not. If they say yes, I'll go to the dance but be too embarrassed to actually say anything to them until the last dance. If they say no, I'll go goth - so goth, film studies faculty would shun me if we ever crossed paths.

I hate the waiting.

This is the part that I need help with in the job process. I'm okay with the rejections now; there's a point where you numb to it because you've learned the numbers are largely against you. It's the near-misses that are fatal to me. And there's a lot of road left for those near-misses to happen all over again. These were just phone interviews, after all, so even if I make this cut, there's one more that has to happen.

One good thing that has come out of this process is an idea for a possible course that I proposed with one of the schools that will also work for an upcoming conference and for a recent call for papers I saw from a journal. It'd be nice to come out of this with a little evidence of research since I feel like I get so little done. In any case, enough of my angst (for this week anyway). There's grading yet to do. For anyone still making the comparisons, here's the link to last week's numbers. And here's, then, are this week's grand totals.

Total # of academic jobs applied for/# of jobs identified: 22/25
Total # of non-academic jobs applied for/# of jobs identified 0/0
COST OF THE SEARCH
Total spent in U.S. dollars on applications: $191.90
Average cost in U.S. dollars per applications: $8.72
Total spent in U.S. dollars on travel, etc: $0
Total amount in U.S. dollars reimbursed: $0
WHERE THE CALL CAME FROM:
The Chronicle of Higher Ed: 9
HigherEdJobs.com: 0
Other online service (listserv, etc): 14
Friend/Colleague: 2
Personal Research: 1
THE JOB IS IN THE DETAILS
Total number of paper submissions: 19
Total number of e-submissions: 3
Total weight in pounds of application packets: 22.13
Total number of recommendation letters requested: 45
Total number of requests for references: 5
Total number of "proof of teaching excellence" packs : 9
Total number of requests for Teaching Philosophy :10
Total number of research packs: 13
Total number of transcripts requested: 2
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING
Total number of acknowledgments of receipt: 17
Total number of confirmed reference contacts: 0
Total number of phone interviews: 2
Total number of conference interviews: 0
Total number of on-campus interviews: 0
Total number of offers: 0
Total number of rejection letters: 3
Total number of canceled or unhired positions: 0

Interestingly, I still have no word of any canceled positions, but I expect - as is the case at my current school - that some of those decisions are being held off until after the New Year and actual budgets are come out.

If you're still grading, stay strong. If you're done, be quiet about it. Seriously.