I shouldn't admit this in public, but here goes: I have often felt socially awkward around other academics.
I'm not going to pretend that I am the belle of the ball when I'm with my nonacademic friends, but at least I never have those horrible moments where I feel like I speak the wrong language.
In the six years I spent in my Ph.D. program in the history of science, I racked up a string of graceless, awkward, and uncomfortable social encounters. They provided a wealth of material for entertaining my nonacademic friends, but the downside was that I increasingly found myself dreading departmental social functions, because I knew I would just end up stammering and feeling stupid.
I have, at times, felt close to despair over this problem. I love my research, I love teaching, and I know that a faculty career is what I want to do with my life. But then I think about spending the next 40 years perpetually feeling like the kid who gets picked last for the kickball team, and I think, Is it worth it?
I suspect that part of the problem is that I am a relative newcomer to academic culture. Many of the people I met in graduate school grew up in an intellectual environment: Their parents did things like teaching at prestigious universities, advising the World Bank on economic forecasting, serving as the ambassador to Venezuela. (I exaggerate, but only slightly.) My mother is a dental assistant and my father is a defense contractor. Growing up, I didn't know a single person who had a Ph.D. I went to an Ivy League university for my undergraduate degree, but somehow missed being indoctrinated with the social norms of the academic world, perhaps because I spent all of my time with the computer geeks. If social interactions are a kind of dance, then I think I learned a different set of steps.
During the past year, just as I was finishing graduate school, I finally started to feel better. Maybe I was finally acclimating, or maybe I had devoted so much mental energy to finishing the dissertation (and worrying about the job market) that I didn't have any left for social anxiety. Whatever the reason, I started to feel for the first time like I could fit in comfortably here.
That feeling crystallized for me at a major annual meeting for historians of science. I had attended that conference in the past, and it had never gone well for me. This year, everything clicked. I spent the entire conference in engaging conversations about interesting research and teaching, I met a lot of great new people, and I got valuable feedback on the paper I presented.
It was a brilliant success, in terms of assuaging my fears about fitting in with my academic community. But it was much less positive in terms of my job search. I had three experiences over the course of that weekend that served to significantly diminish my confidence in my own employability.
In the hotel lobby, I ran into a friend who I hadn't expected would attend. When I greeted her in surprise, she explained that her trip was a last-minute thing: "Two days ago, I got a call from Professor K. at College X, asking if I'd be available for an interview on Saturday. It's a great job, and it was only a three-hour drive to get here, so I figured I might as well say yes."
Of course I was thrilled for her, but I could almost feel my hopes and expectations fizzling away. I had applied for that job, too, but no one had called to arrange an interview. I realized at that moment that I had secretly convinced myself that the department just wasn't doing interviews at the conference. (Don't roll your eyes. It was almost plausible -- I had heard a rumor that a number of search committees were waiting until the annual meeting of American Historical Association to do interviews.)
The proof that the department was interviewing -- just not me -- hit a little harder than was perhaps warranted.
The second confidence-shaking experience was less clear-cut. At the reception after the keynote address, I spent some time talking with other graduate students. One mentioned the book she was reading, Air, by Geoff Ryman, and I asked if she was enjoying it, since I had been thinking about picking it up. Her face lit up, and she said it was one of the best things she had read in years.
"I'm about halfway through it," she said, "and I really wanted to bring it to read on the flight here, but then I was worried that someone on the search committee would be on my connecting flight, and they'd catch me reading science fiction."
We all laughed, but it was also kind of depressing.
On one level, we all know that search committees don't actually expect us to be soulless automatons devoid of style, personality, and eccentricity. But that's the front-brain talking. The nervous, paranoid, feral brain that sometimes takes control in times of stress sees danger around every corner.
Those paranoid tendencies are only reinforced by the way in which information flows, or not, on the job market. We're flooded with advice -- much of it contradictory, some of it downright weird. And everyone traffics more in gossip and speculation than in concrete fact.
Graduate students at conferences often find themselves standing in small edgy clumps, talking about whether or not it's true that you need to have a book contract in hand before University B will even consider your application; discussing the potential pitfalls of socially interacting with committee members after you've already been interviewed; trying to figure out whether there's some secret coded meaning to the time of day an interview is scheduled for.
In that situation, it's almost inevitable that we end up grasping at straws, half-believing that we really could win or lose a good job based on what we're seen reading on an airplane.
The third incident? On the opening night of the conference, I went to a reception in the book room. I showed up with another student from my program, and we spent a pleasant half-hour or so wandering around with our little glasses of wine, looking at all the new books.
Then my colleague noticed someone browsing at the next vendor table. "Oh! That's Professor P!" We both had a moment of thoroughly unprofessional awe; not 10 minutes earlier, we had been talking about how much we loved one of her books, which we had agreed was a brilliantly constructed and very engagingly written treatment of a subject relevant to both of our dissertations.
We composed ourselves and went over to say hello. My friend introduced himself first, and told Professor P that he was thrilled to meet her, and that he had taught her book in a seminar the previous year. She smiled and thanked him, and then it happened. She glanced at my nametag, did a double-take, and exclaimed, "I was hoping to meet you here! I love your blog."
That particular compliment from a respected scholar, rather than being reassuring, filled me with terror. Many bloggers choose to remain pseudonymous because they fear that having a blog will kill their job prospects. The professor's remark was a jarring reminder of how exposed I am in my field because I am not a pseudonymous blogger. But that's a topic for a future column.
For all of the pleasant good will I felt at that conference, the sense of doom about my immediate job prospects proved mainly justified. Twenty-eight applications and two major academic conferences later, I had failed to secure even an interview, much less a tenure-track job.
As graduation approached and I was starting to seriously investigate other options for paying my rent (temp agencies looked promising, as did copyediting), a great opportunity opened up at a nearby university. It's only a one-year position, so I'm right back into the search, but it's teaching work in my chosen field, which should make me a more attractive candidate. I hope.
