At Philosophers’ Playground, Steve Gimbel, of Gettysburg College, writes a funny but quite depressing sketch of the upcoming annual Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, which starts today in Baltimore.
Read the whole devastating post, if you want to feel a bit better about whatever other discipline you happen to be in. (Or does it sound exactly like whatever other discipline you happen to be in?) But here are some highlights, or perhaps lowlights would be the better term:
“The eastern meeting is where every philosophy department in the country that has a job opening and every philosopher in the country looking for a job come together in the world’s most uncomfortable and ungraceful dance. . . .
“You have grad students who haven’t worn a tie since the high-school prom trying to dress up and not look as stiff as they are, people who have been on the market for more years than they want to think about hoping beyond hope that the one or two interviews they have this go-round will allow them to step into the position they’ve been working towards for over a decade, spouses trying to do whatever they can to get that position that will bring them within a couple hundred miles of each other, and those who despite sending out dozens of dossiers don’t have a single interview and are plaintively searching every bulletin board and tabletop for the possibility of a last-minute interview with some department, any department. . . .
“And then you have the departments. Some are up to their necks in internal politics. Others are small schools now feeling the power that they are generally denied and enjoying their Napoleon moment. . . . All are exhausted from the process, the end of the semester, the holidays, the stream of nervous candidates blending into a blur, wishing that one of them will jump out as perfect . . . Of course, if the candidate is perfect, that candidate will probably have other offers and turn us down … again, so next year we’ll be right back here. . . .
“The tension is horrible and all-pervasive. The eastern APA is, simply, hell on earth. It is a sad, uncomfortable place.”
The season’s glad tidings appear to be doing little for Professor Gimbel’s self-esteem. He writes:
“It is a curious, curious thing to be disappointed by the fact that your philosophical hero, the thinker who holds a herculean place in your field, turns out to be the short, bald, Jewish guy with thick glasses that, of course, he is. And there you are realizing that you are halfway to looking like that yourself, but nowhere near halfway to writing like that.”
