T-Minus Two Weeks to MLA and Counting

So I'm sitting here, eating cheese, because it makes me happy, and I'm currently in an upswing about waiting. For the instant. I swear, the job search makes me feel like I'm bipolar. And that is said only in the utmost empathy with people who suffer from bipolar disorder, not mocking or making light of it. This morning I got a call! ---- but it was confirming a dental appointment. In the space of 30 seconds I experienced the complete cycle from euphoria to despair, from planning the whole future to assuming nothing would ever work out in the future ---- basically the entire three-month or so experience on the job market last year, condensed into two rings and a hello.

But just before writing this (and after the commencing of cheese-eating) I checked in with Dissertation Buddy, who, while earnestly wanting to cheer me up, needs to grade all her students' research papers so that she can return them at the final tomorrow morning. I think she had just started. "Maybe it's just because I can distract myself with all these deadlines and you can't," she commented, "but I haven't really started to worry yet. I mean, look at what I'm doing; I assume that all the search committees are just as bad of procrastinators as me." That cheered me up. About half of my jobs on the wiki haven't posted much of anything, so I could see the rest running around like chickens with their heads cut off under grading, thinking to themselves, "I got in such shit trouble for not having the grades uploaded by the deadline last time --- we have next week to deal with all that committee stuff after grading. Now where the fuck did I put the students' participation grades?" At least I hope that's how search committee members talk to themselves, 'cause we'd get along splendidly, I tell you. I could pass them cheese and commiserate with them and mention that the vandals who attacked their office with a Bureaucracy Bomb (piles of forms and papers everywhere!) had hit up my office too. So, right now I'm feeling ok. Except for the part about talking to imaginary search committee members.

Today, in more boring non-news, I put clothes on and went into campus. This helped my productivity immensely. Not that I usually go on to campus naked, mind you; it's just getting out of the house, dressed nicely as if I have a plan or a schedule, really helped trick me into thinking there was something I had to do when I got there. And there was! I have this book I need to summarize and then explain why it's wrong. Well, not wrong in a bad way, but in a productive, totally interesting way that makes me have all sorts of new, fascinating discoveries about my topic. I want to sum it up in a couple pages or so and then extend out the argument, with some critiques, into my own argument. (I started this a couple weeks ago, or more? Anyway, I keep having to start over when derailed by a day of internet-watching and self-centered wallowing in despair.) So today I actually put in a full day of work and made it through the book! (again. This is at least the third time I've read it. First time creating a summary in my own words though.)

Unfortunately, the summary, with some incoherent, stream-of-consciousness objections on my part interspersed, is about 13 pages. Including a three-page long quote I lifted from the book. So, I made some progress, but I've got a lot more work to do in boiling down ---- and this slow, recursive, possibly redundant way of writing and organizing things is the way I write everything, which may explain my slow pace on the diss. And then there's the problem of how do you count this for my counter over there on the right? It doesn't make sense to plop it all in there and then count down, does it? And yet I never know when it's "finished" enough to actually put on the counter either. Ah well. Have some cheese; it's delicious.

In Lieu of Our Regularly Scheduled Job-Market Angst, We Present Cat Pictures

Aren't his little white eyebrows the cutest?

And in answer to your questions: no, no, still nothing, I forgot to sign up for one, 3300 words but I didn't even touch it over the weekend or today, yes I am going to lie around in pajamas all day feeling sorry for myself, and what? that's a coffee stain --- hey, what're you looking at my chest for, eh? Eyes up here when I'm talkin' to you!

I swear ---- didn't your mother ever teach you some manners?

Time for Mock-ery?

Er, mock interviews, that is?

Pseudonymous Grad Student over at A Philosophy Job Market Blog has been prepping for interviews and asking for advice for a while now (and I keep trying to be helpful and making everybody seize up with agony instead; I seem to be producing that effect inadvertently a lot these days. Maybe instead of giving Bizarre Metaphor Advice on the blog I should just STFU?). More recently, both Bardiac and Tenured Radical proffer their own helpful hints about preparing for interviews (TR even has a handy crib sheet for what to say when the search committee calls you!). I also just got an email instructing the grads to email all their job materials and availability for next week if they want to schedule a mock job interview with the placement committee.* I guess the time is ripe for me to create an interview parody. And apparently this is the time to start my preparations, run through my little diss spiels, practice answering stupid and not-so-stupid questions.

(I seem to be having the Battling Seizure Robots effect on people lately.)

Or is it?

I have had no calls, no emails, no interview requests. Nada. I have accumulated a nice little pile of rejection letters, though. (Wait, I mean crappy, puke-filled Letters of Doom. I should put them in the litter box and make the cats pee on them. Ahh. I feel better already thinking of it.)

If the wiki of evilness is any guide, I'm out of exactly half of my prospective places already. (And a lot of the WS jobs left to hear from are not really what I do, on a humanities to social sciences continuum, unlike the one that requested materials). I'm feeling like the wallflower at the junior-high dance, watching everyone else get picked but me and my chances slip away.

(Not a dance scene, exactly, but otherwise apt --- I've never been able to finish watching this film, it's so painful.)

I'm just feeling like I was in exactly this same place last year --- oh wait, because I was! I didn't get any interviews last time and I really think that this year will be a repeat. (Side note: Dissertation Buddy is on the market for her first time out this year. She keeps saying that she will feel like an utter failure and total fuck-up if she doesn't at least make it to the interview stage ---- "Just one interview, that's all I really want," she says ----- and when I point out that I didn't get anything at all last year, she says yes, I know, apologizes, and then five minutes later is talking about how much it sucks to not even make it to the interview level on the first year out and she really hopes she will make it that far. She's great, but not always the most aware of others.)

So do I even bother with scheduling this mock interview shit?

Last year, I could tell I was out of the running everywhere and so refused to practice the interview (got shit for it too). There is something nice to being eliminated so early --- I spent the week leading up to christmas being sad and getting over everything, and then went home and had a nice visit with the family. I didn't have to spend any time prepping interview questions or frantically researching schools or writing out a job talk, just relaxed and then got back to my chapter.

Of course, that was my first year out, and there were definitely tears and depression before I got to a zen enough state to go back to my work. This year is my second attempt and the stakes are higher (thanks for reminding me, Dissertation Buddy!) --- as in I haven't been able to secure teaching and have been subsisting on loans and I have to file and walk this spring, have to. And who knows what I'll do to eat and pay rent next year? My dept. has told me I'm SOL for adjuncting next year and I just recently got some "favors" from my other departments; that makes me suspect I've been put on the bottom of the list and they'll want to spread work around to some of the others graduating with me.

But most important, everyone constantly talks about how "you're supposed to do better" on subsequent years out. Supposed to do better as in, this narrative of progress, or moving to the front of the line and getting your turn. I don't see why, though, if they simultaneously claim the process is "a crapshoot" or like a "lottery." I thought the whole point of gambling and probability was that past results have no relation to future performance.


I don't know about that; just that I'm feeling pretty shitty about now. So do I sign up for a practice interview run that I probably won't even need? Gah.




* As far as I know, this year's job placement committee excused themselves by moving to other countries, leaving everything in the laps of the previous year's committee. I have no clue if there'd be people in that mock interview room, or crash test dummies dressed up like professors instead.

I swear I didn't do it...

... even though some people have accused me. What?? Just because I (well, We) Await Silent Trystero's Empire and doodle muted post-horns on the margins of my course notes? I'm no Pynchon scholar; I just like conspiracies. And wicked parodies of Jacobean drama.

They do add a nice bit of grittiness to our obsessively clean and plastic campus though, don't they? There's another one on the university center building, but I didn't get over there with my cell phone in time. Yeah, sorry about the picture quality --- I also have some nice close-ups of the mute being obscured with my big fat thumb if you're interested. Stupid little camera phone.

The Political Animal (who swore it was me; he hinted all around it until I was sure I was guilty of doing something very bad and just didn't remember) liked it but found it very incongruous for our wealthy and apathetic campus ---- "Really, if it were our undergrads tagging the campus, it'd be paeans to Ugg boots or something---"

I cut him off. "I would sooo love some Ugg boot graffiti around here instead of just wanna-be models wearing them! That, I might do. Big ugly smears of graffiti --- with the circle A on them just to confuse people. --- Ugg Boots and Anarchy! Yeah, I'm down with that."

"It had to be English majors though," TPA mused.

"Yeah, it's nice to see the English club out there getting involved, " I say.

.



.


(and I just have to add that I've been having a running argument for some years now with another fellow grad student ---- I think that this campus is the setting for the campus that gets taken over in Vineland by the students and they secede and rename it The People's Republic of Rock And Roll, or the P R Three (not PRC). I haven't read Vineland in a long time, though, and S has some good arguments about why it's another campus. But still, I enjoy the connection, even if it's fictitious.)

I still don't know what academic blogs are

but evidently I write one (maybe). Sometimes I read them, though I prefer the ones that are more "abstract," paradoxically, because they are more personal.

Scott McLemee has a little article about academic blogs over at Inside Higher Ed, and asked certain bloggers for their favorites. I poked around in the list a bit. To tell the truth, audience matters way more on a blog than in our academic writing, and so many of those blogs are so focused on disseminating new research, or perhaps synthesizing disparate research, in their fields, that someone reading from a different discipline can be both confused and bored. So, go ahead, convict me: I'm a bad academic blogger. Or bad academic blog-reader. I want to hear about the types of things I can relate to rather than intricate details of, say, digital copyright issues or self-regulating feedback loops. You can try to tell me about your research project, sir, but what I really want to know is: did you have writer's block, and how many trips to the vending machine for Junior Mints did it take for you to clear it?

These are the truly important questions for the age. (Well, that and, if your writer's block is so shitty, and your research so unacknowledged, and your institutional position so precarious, then why do you do it? What good comes of the whole enterprise?)

And oh, lookee here at this part of the article:

Scott Eric Kaufman, now finishing his dissertation in English at the University of California at Irvine, is probably better known as “that guy who walked in on two students having sex in his office,” thanks to a widely circulated post at his blog Acephalous. That was two years ago. The story will never die. Someday it will be adapted for film and shown at Sundance.

Kaufman cites Chuck Tryon’s The Chutry Experiment and Liz Losh’s Virtual Politik as blogs that probably have larger audiences than their comments sections might suggest. He says that Sisyphus’ Academic Cog is"the best barometer of job-market induced hysteria” he knows.

Aww, I've been recommended! How swee ---- hysterical? Hysterical??? Them's some mighty loaded terms for talking about a female writer. What, gonna suggest I take a rest cure to take care of that wandering womb? (the Silas Weir Mitchell money quote is in the last paragraph of the link.)

Hmph. I think I'm quite sane and level-headed, thank you very much. Besides, last night I was just reading through a long thread on The Chronicle about brand-new tenure-track faculty survival, and they've got waaay more intense freakoutery than anything I've got goin' on here. And, um, a lot more to do ... and higher stakes ... evidently higher levels of depression and stress as well ... ulp.

Excuse me while I crawl under the couch and hide. I'm not sure I actually want what's on the other side of the job search after all. If anybody calls, say you don't know where I am. And send cookies.

Seven Memes for Seven Brothers

So, memes, much like Ponzi pyramid schemes, evidently run their course a short while before crashing and burning and taking the general economy down with them. Maude Lebowski, Belle, and Adjunct Whore have all tagged me for the seven meme, along possibly with others that I can't remember anymore due to the repeated taggings to the head that have left me dizzy and gasping on the floor. You people sure like to gang up on a cog!


The rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

So alrighty then, let's see if I can remember what I've told you and what I haven't:

1. I'm overdue for a haircut. I have one tuft of hair that insists, when not properly coated with hair product, on sticking out from the side of my head at an exact 90 degree angle, and even, occasionally, further towards straight up. This tendency is exacerbated when I am in need of haircutting, and back when my hair was below my shoulders or even longer, this same tuft has done a pretty good job at the right angle thing --- think four inches straight out like a wing, then the rest limply drooping.

2. Back in high school I had a series of altercations with my parents (not to be confused with the even bigger shitstorms of junior high, which were even more traumatic) about going to college: I was intending to go to a music academy as a music performance major but my parents eventually declared that they would not pay for my college, would disown me, and would refuse to ever speak to me again. They won out, so I went to a big state university and majored instead in ... English. Yeah, big money-maker and secure major there. Every week I called home, for four years, my dad would rib me about not having changed to an engineering major yet. Ironically enough, my niece, who's a junior at a Cal State now, is majoring in music ed. They never said a thing.

3. My fourth toe (the ... ring toe? that just sounds weird) is bent so far it stays under the next-biggest toe. I fear that cute shoes are to blame, and that if I ever go get it looked at, they will make me swear to only wear unhappy orthopedic shoes of the grandmotherly sort.

4. I cannot roll my Rs, nor imitate my cats' purring. Made Spanish class hard, I tell you. I was never able to flutter tongue or growl a note, either, to go back to #2. Unfortunately, that sounds dirtier than it is. Don't worry, I can (or could) make up for that with the increased lung capacity and breathing exercises.

5. I'm pretty claustrophobic ---- had to be carried out of Carlsbad Caverns in full hysterics back in fourth grade, as a matter of fact. It's not usually that noticeable otherwise, but I've picked up on how my mom has to have the window cracked whenever she's in the car, smoking or not, and I wonder if she's got the same problem.

6. My biggest unrequited crush of undergrad was a poet in my creative writing seminar (oh, it gets worse) who somewhat resembled a cross between Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and Sick Boy, complete with hair that was either platinum or pitch black. We'd sit out in the sculpture garden, him smoking his clove cigarettes, and read over incredibly pornographic and self-indulgent poems about having sex with his girlfriend, who I, and I would have regardless of her relationship with him, hated with a passion. Painful --- in so many ways.

7. Related to point #6, I think I've been through every color on the manic panic rainbow and most of the natural ones besides. This was actually hell for my letters of recommendation requests as none of my professors knew me --- more specifically, they remembered me with totally different hair and didn't believe I was who I said I was.

Now somebody, anybody, step up and do this meme. There doesn't seem to be anybody left!

What do you MEAN it's not November anymore?

Someone told me that Inaweirdmo is over ... whaaa? Uhn? But I'm not done! Whaddaya mean pencils down? I haven't finished my chapter! Can't you stop the time there? Can I have an extension, a do-over, extra credit?

Well you all can think you're done with this challenge but I am different and I am on Cog Time. (You can see how well it has worked for the speedy finishing of the dissertation and other scholarly projects.) Deadlines and teaching mean nothing on Cog Time; only pushing the rock (I know I've seen this part of the mountain before). Therefore I hereby declare that it is still November ---- This is November: The Rerun, and I am still doing my inaweirdmo challenge with the same project and my current word count. Those of you who are behind on your Christmas shopping should be pleased; those of you who are sick of the semester may find it hard to take a mulligan and have to repeat it all (though I'm sure many of your students could benefit from redoing the last month's work). New Year's Eve will be broken up into four days for the celebration of Christmas and Express Chanukah and the following year will begin as normally scheduled. Naturally it will be difficult waiting for another month to hear about job interviews but on the other hand it means I got all my applications out way early.

So, to update: I'm still going to be plugging away at the chapter, and I hope to have met my goal by December November 30. I think I actually have about 2000 words now but since there are some quotes dumped and questions to myself interleaved in there I want to write for at least another day before I update the word count. (I had done a big dump of quotes a while back as a step towards boiling them down into a summary --- I think I had 5000 words but most of them were these quotes which I won't be keeping anyway --- so my writing methods make it very hard to keep track of how many words or pages I "have.")

And in related news I think I need less balance in my life. I'm spending too much time relaxing and napping and cooking weird food from scratch and going out and about with friends and generally taking care of myself ---- I need to just take a shitty month or three weeks or so to hole up and really power my way through all this crap I need to do. Perhaps I also need to consume much larger amounts of caffeine and wreck my health as well. But all this "balance" and "well-roundedness" shit's gotta stop.

For example: I did absolutely no work over the weekend. On Friday I went out drinking til late with Cool Scientist Friend and The Political Animal, which was fun except for the annoying matchmaking going on (let me know if you want to hear me kvetch about people who have an unstoppable urge to set you up with all sorts of strange and random people), then Saturday I sat around and did nothing for a very long time, maybe throwing some laundry in and getting some Christmas and blogger-present shopping done, and then Dissertation Buddy invited me over for a fantabulous multi-course dinner, which involved crepes. With goat cheese. Mmmm. And today I did nothing much besides more family present shopping and cooking immense quantities of food despite already having immense quantities in the fridge (I swear, I should never shop when I'm hungry, but also never shop when I have an ingredient list, cause I must have gotten enough fresh veggies to feed me for a couple weeks _plus_ all the materials for a big pot of soup. So soon I'm going to be throwing out leftovers left and right, and wasting food always makes me feel bad.) Not only did I not do diss work, I didn't do all my house work and crap that needs to be fixed. Meh. The one thing that has slid is my exercise --- I need to find something other than swimming since I can't bring myself to go when it's cold, and I think I'll just deal with the diss and freaking out more generally and leave the exercise until the new year, when I will turn over a whole forest of new leaves.

That's what I've been up to. And this makes me think about some comments profs and fellow grads say about "students these days": the ones who are doing a job (or two) and piles of stuff on top of their overloaded course schedule, and then look surprised when you tell them they need to make more time for the course if they want to pass it. "But I _really_ need the money from my job!" say students who own cell phones and new clothing. "How strange, the students these days," say the teachers. "Back in my day everyone understood that undergrad was a short time of temporary poverty; we knew to focus exclusively on our classes and 'the college experience' and not overload our schedules with too much, because we thought of our classes as our jobs."

Now I admit I have heard this and said this and even told it to some of my students (in the hopefully more positive framework of: you have three options and time to do two of them well --- classes, work, clubs/social. Be careful how you balance them from quarter to quarter and remember that if "classes" isn't on that list for an entire quarter you won't be here to worry about balance). But really it hadn't struck me how much I resemble the students or gen y/millenials or whatever it is. People who study today's current undergrad generation have noted that they don't see college as a "separate" time or transitional period of their lives at all, and the notion of giving up everything to narrow down to an intensely focused short period of time is foreign to them. Now that can be bad if they spend as if they were in their 40s and in an established job (which some of mine do), but it also marks a very specific relationship to time as well. The more leisurely pace, the trend toward coming and going from college and interspersing it with tries at various businesses or traveling the world or taking vacations, or alternately grabbing a bottom-rung job and working your way up through the company and the college together, running all the aspects of time and life together with no hard boundaries or transitions. It's interesting. And shockingly similar to my style, I'm noticing. I wonder why that is --- what larger forces are producing this trend?