As if in response to our incoming president’s call to commemorate MLK Day through service, I spent the evening performing an act of departmental service that doesn’t even count as service. That’s right: as much as I would have liked to stay home under a pile of woolly sweaters and eiderdown, sipping green tea, prepping [...]
Archive for the ‘to market to market’ Category
10 Dec
WWJD?
That is: What will Jane do? C’mon, you didn’t think I was really asking WWJD! I’m far from a New Testament scholar, but I’m pretty sure Jesus never got himself into such a ridiculous and trivial, yet nerve-wracking, predicament.
So I’ve been congratulating myself for not having been conscripted onto my department’s interview committee at MLA, [...]
14 Oct
Mental health days, false consciousness, and something approximating a recipe
Although I have grading to do and a talk to prepare for, I spent pretty much all day Friday in my beautiful, comfortable bed, where I read a couple of novels while sipping homemade chai from an enormous, insulated carafe.
Sure, one of the novels was one I’m trying to shoehorn into one of my chapters, [...]
7 Oct
So not Schadenfreude
In the course of a modern, nomadic academic career, one accumulates a set of far-flung, long-distance friends who used to be colleagues. Either that or I’m a special kind of loser who, in person but not via telephone or e-mail, has been alienating people at one non-tenure-track appointment after another. OK, just humor me.
When I’m [...]
4 Oct
A sign! A sign!
Should I stay, or should I (attempt to) go now? If I go there would be trouble, but if I stay it could be double. The Job Information List continues to offer little to tempt me, but it’s still just so hard to decide. Like the Puritans, I’ve been taking signs for wonders, and let [...]
1 Oct
Mystery!
For the past month or so, something strange has been happening to my department’s communal copy of the Chronicle of Higher Education!
By the time I’ve gotten to it, its job adverts have gone missing! Is someone trying to prevent the rest of us from finding out that there are other jobs out there? (That’s censorship!) [...]
17 Sep
Well, now that was easy
The academic job season seems to bring out my most rational self. Last week I posted about how, when I was on the market, I used to consult my Magic 8-Ball for news on my applications. Yesterday I posted about my ambivalence about going back on the job market. Now, however, after reading my horoscope, [...]
16 Sep
Listless about the list
So the online MLA Job Information List went live on Friday. I pictured millions of job seekers with their browsers pointed to ade.org/jil at the stroke of midnight and hitting “refresh” every other second or so. Stay on the line. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.
Out of something [...]
9 Sep
Better not tell you now
The Ivory Towered ghetto of the blogosphere is beginning to ready itself for the job season. Unlike normal people, we can apply for jobs only in the fall. Winter and spring are the seasons for waiting. That and rejection. If you don’t have anything lined up by the end of March, well, then April really [...]
13 Jul
Foucault’s bundt pan, or, the logic of selling out
Like millions of academics around the world, I am scrambling to publish at least one Least Publishable Unit by summer’s end. Like most humanist academics, I’m also trying to make headway on something less Least—namely, a book manuscript.
Though I say so myself, the project I’m working on has decent prospects as a (sotto voce here) [...]
