"It would be far too depressing." That was our initial reaction when a friend suggested we document our academic job-hunting experiences in The Chronicle.
You see, it was all a matter of timing. Had our friend made the same suggestion a year earlier, we immediately would have shared her enthusiasm. After all, a year ago, the academic world was ours to conquer. Or so we thought ... until we began to follow the articles on this site written by Joshua Gordon and Kathleen Woods-Gordon, a couple who had shared their own heart-wrenching story about an academic two-body problem.
Tom: Last August, Helen and I were excited about the prospect of entering the academic teaching market. I had just accepted a prestigious two-year postdoctoral fellowship on the East Coast, and Helen, after completing a judicial clerkship, was slated to begin work at a law firm that had served as the launching ground for a number of prominent law professors.
In fact, the word "excited" hardly describes our feelings at that time. We were ecstatic, perhaps even a bit insane. We exhausted many hours dreaming about and discussing the possible outcomes of our future academic search. We made separate lists of our favorite law schools and universities and later matched them to create our "dream" list. We endlessly surfed the Internet to review faculty profiles at various universities and colleges and to examine the housing markets and costs of living in various cities and towns.
And to our minds, we were not being irrational. We did not expect an abundance of offers. Indeed, we expected no more than one (perhaps two), but we had somehow managed to convince ourselves that our offers would be in the same geographic area.
Helen: Then one morning, Tom forwarded Joshua and Kathleen's first article to me via e-mail. It was the sad story of two Ph.D.'s whose academic search had resulted in further extending their already four-year, long-distance relationship. It was a harsh dose of reality.
Yet, Tom and I maintained hope for our own search. We wrote off Joshua and Kathleen's experience as the bad luck of just one of many academic couples. Certainly, our experience would prove to be different.
Tom: Then we read Joshua and Kathleen's second article. It described how Kathleen had taken a leave of absence from her position as a tenured professor so that she and Joshua could put a temporary stop to their separation. Now, my dreaminess was starting to turn to anxiety, and Helen and I had not even entered the teaching market yet. We had already spent three years apart from each other when Helen was in law school, and neither one of us wanted to relive that experience. Also, with one young child and another on the way, our living in two different cities simply was not an option.
I just wanted to stop thinking about the job market altogether.
Helen: I shared Tom's feelings. By now, I had heard many more stories about academic couples living on opposite coasts. It was starting to seem like no couple had ever received offers in the same area, much less on the same campus. On top of that, we learned that a number of our "dream" institutions had recently hired new professors in our respective fields. Would they be hiring again? Would any colleges be looking for new professors with our specialities?
There was at least one glimmer of hope. Several of our friends had managed to successfully navigate the teaching market last fall, receiving at least one tenure-track offer. None of these friends, however, had spouses who were looking for jobs as well, much less professorships.
We were somewhat encouraged by Kathleen and Joshua's next few articles; their situation was beginning to work itself out, albeit with much sacrifice. At any rate, we had little time to fret. I had to solidify my scholarly agenda and line up recommenders for my search. I needed to prepare a job talk and practice it numerous times before my colleagues and peers, and I had to make arrangements to attend the American Association of Law Schools conference. Oh, and on top of that, I had to work at my full-time job at a major law firm and be a mother and wife at home. The list was endless, and Tom had equally as much to accomplish.
Tom: Our lives seemed out of control. For me, I was preparing for a conference, writing papers, conducting experiments, attending weekly appointments with an obstetrician, being a father and a husband, and trying to remain sane. And with a soon-to-be newborn, I did not expect Helen or me to get much sleep in the future.
Yet somewhere in the back of my mind, I believed that everything would work itself out. Was I crazy? Or was it really possible for me to feel both doomed and hopeful at the same time?
Helen: Anything is possible. At least, that's what we soon learned when a close friend called Tom to inform him of a good faculty opening in his field. It sounded like a great opportunity and it was in my hometown, so Tom applied. A few days later, Tom discovered that he was one of two finalists for the position. Great, right? Wrong. There was one hitch. Tom could be asked to come this fall, not next fall, and it was far too late for me to get a professorship, visiting or tenure track, at any law school.
What if Tom received and accepted the position and I failed to obtain a tenure-track job at one of the three law schools in the area (one of which had just hired five new faculty members) next year? Our academic two-body problem was already beginning ... and it was only July.
