This is how I've decided to explain my decision to friends and family: It's like taking a short break in the shade, then putting on your heavy pack again and hiking another 10 miles on blistered feet.
I'm going back on the job market.
A year and a half ago I landed a good job at a prestigious university, after more than four years of unsuccessful searching. It wasn't the tenure-track teaching job I'd wanted -- the position was primarily administrative and offered the (uncompensated) opportunity to teach. But the prospect of an important, student-centered job at a top university was hard to turn down, especially after my other job interviews and campus visits were fruitless. Knowing that my only other possibility was a tenure-track slot at a two-year college, I accepted the administrative job, suspecting that I'd probably be back on the market in two or three years.
Upon taking the job I immediately learned two important things about myself: I'm not a born administrator, but I am a born teacher. Although romantic notions of a life centered on research and intellectual fellowship spurred me to enter academe, it was the teaching that I really loved.
In my first year in this administrative job, I taught one class, and the hours in that class gave me more pleasure than any of the personnel management, budgetary legerdemain, and administrative maneuvering I did in the office. And although my job will continue to offer the opportunity to teach regularly, the essence of the position is administrative. No matter how much cutting-edge research I conduct, no matter how many papers I publish, no matter how glowing my student evaluations, in this job I will always be judged by my work as an administrator.
So I'm headed back out on the job market, a sadder but wiser and perhaps even better candidate. Since my first job application I've racked up more than 200 rejections, 12 interviews, three campus visits, two adjunct gigs, one visiting-assistant position, and this administrative job. I've attended dozens of conferences, published a few papers, and met important people in my field. I'm moving forward on two book projects and might have a contract by the fall on one or both of them. My current job has given me some important skills in dealing with people professionally. I've taught two dozen different classes and have glowing evaluations from students and colleagues.
Over the years, I've glimpsed a vision of the life that I think I want, but that vision is different than it was eight, or four, or even two years ago. Applying to the top research universities and meeting young professors who teach at those institutions has convinced me that I don't want that life; I'm just not that high-powered of a researcher and networker and grant-finder. I've also realized that I don't particularly want to work in a large department. I've worked in several small (under 10 professors) departments and loved the closeness and sense of community engendered there; moreover, I've come to take pride in being a generalist in my field and the rigid delineations of territory inherent in large departments would make me feel trapped.
Limiting my choices even more is the fact that I now have a wife who has career goals and desires of her own. In my first few years on the market, I applied anywhere and everywhere, understanding that only the blessed few in academe can actually choose where they want to live. Now, I have to take my wife's desires into consideration, and she has very strong opinions about where we should or even can live. I'm willing to grant her wide veto power on location because, after all, I'm asking her to pick up and leave her job just because I want to start over somewhere else. But eliminating a good chunk of the available positions because of geography reduces my odds of finding a job significantly. I'm nervous.
I'm not nervous, though, about whether my decision to take the administrative position was the right one. I've continued to teach and do research and be involved in my field, and my job has given me demonstrable expertise in another, complementary academic discipline.
A few professors at my graduate institution were skeptical about my choice; candidates for tenure-track jobs who "left" the profession, they seemed to feel, bore the mark of Cain when they decided to return. If I tried to "go back" to academe, they implied, committees wouldn't take me seriously. There's one land of Canaan -- a tenured position at a top 10 university -- and there's one way to get there -- moving from tenure-track job to tenure-track job at successively more prestigious institutions.
When I matriculated, the faculty, my classmates, and I viewed grad school as a tunnel: everyone entered at the same place, everyone was headed in the same direction, and everyone exited going the same direction. But a survey of my graduate-school cohort would show that grad school is more like a shotgun, dispersing its ejecta on unpredictable trajectories. Of my entering class, less than half even pursued tenure-track positions. Several are teaching at private schools; a number entered the computer or publishing industries; a few are even, after eight years, still in school. One works as an assistant to a well-known Hollywood screenwriter. One has become a lobbyist in Washington. One struggles as a freelance writer.
Of the graduates who hold or are looking for traditional tenure-track jobs, some went about it in the "right" way, but many have gone through the kind of nontraditional routes that are becoming steadily more common. And the route through which each assistant professor obtained his or her tenure-track job seems not to correlate at all with job satisfaction or general happiness. I'm convinced that my "detour" was the right thing to do, personally and professionally. Over the next six months I'll see whether the job market agrees.
