There has been a lot of good news in my job search lately, but it’s the one bit of bad news that’s finally getting me to post about all of it. The one job that was posted this year for my exact area—the area I try to cover-up in most of my job applications, the area that freaks me out because no schools seem to recognize it as a legitimate area of study—did not ask me for more materials. “Really?” I think. Are there really ten other people out there more qualified than I for this position? I guess so, but I wish I had been one of the lucky few. I also suspect they are looking for a more advanced scholar, but that might be just me rationalizing.
Part of the reason I’m asking this and beating myself up over this is because I did get requests for more materials from two schools in the past two weeks. (Two schools of equal or greater caliber to the School that Doesn’t Care.) Between this and the interviews I’ve had/will be having, this year has been much better than the other two I’ve been on the job market. However, these two schools don’t really want me. Well, one of the searches has reached infamous status: it’s the fourth year they’ve run it since I started graduate school. I know what they want, and it’s not me. The other school might end up hiring me, I guess, but I am not a perfect fit. It’s a stretch, in other words. The School that Doesn’t Care would have required no stretching!
The On-Site Interview (past). The interview was very nice, but also strange. It is mostly Unbloggable, but suffice it to say I did not get the offer. And I’m glad because the school wasn’t a fit, and not for a single one of the reasons I was worried about.
Interview One (future).I had a very nice phone interview for a VAP, which has led to an on-campus interview in the winter. Yays! It’s a heavy teaching load, but not a lot of preps, and the school is almost ideal. If the on-campus goes well, this might become my first non-tenure-track choice.
Interview Two (future). I got an on-campus interview for a post doc at the R1 school in the neighborhood (the OTHER R1, not MT’s R1). The location is completely ideal, the post-doc is a good one, and did I mention the cheap, high-quality childcare? No pressure or anything. This is probably my first choice overall for everything except for one of the above mentioned tenure-track searches.
Needless to say, despite all the good news, I’m kinda bummed. This is my personality type.
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