I'm finding the job search to be a bit like an out-of-control campfire. One minute you're roasting marshmallows, the next your sleeve is on fire, and before you know it you're doing a stop-drop-and-roll routine in the middle of your adviser's office floor.
While searching for a job in sociology I've found myself thinking things like: "Sure, I may be teaching an upper-level sociology class to 60 students, conducting four to 10 interviews a week for my dissertation, using my meager statistical skills to analyze data from a national survey, submitting a paper for publication, and applying for a final-year fellowship, but in my spare time I'm just going to continually track job announcements online, whip out applications for postdoc and tenure-track positions, and incessantly stalk my e-mail and mailbox to see if anyone has gotten back to me with a life-changing offer."
But unlike the Hindu goddess Durga, most of us do not have eight hands with which to complete our tasks. Trade-offs must be made. Until quite recently, for instance, I considered myself a committed and caring undergraduate instructor. I eschewed the boring PowerPoint/lecture trap and thought of inventive in-class exercises and group work for my students.
But now that 90 percent of my energy and focus is dedicated to finely crafting cover letters and job applications, I have been wielding PowerPoint and producing mind-numbing lectures like an old tenured pro. I wish I could say that my undergrads hadn't noticed the difference. But in today's class, one of my mouthier students sang out, "Could we have less PowerPoints? My arms are about to fall off from taking notes." I tried to disintegrate her with my laser-beam gaze, but my superpowers have been greatly reduced by a succession of research all-nighters and application-writing benders.
To keep myself on task, I have a Post-it note stuck in my planner that dictates my working priorities. I change the note every week, but the top slot is unfailingly reserved for "JOB STUFF!!!" Every day I make choices accordingly.
My students recently had a paper due, and I begged a colleague to collect them and show a movie for me. Sometimes, you think, even an extra 75 minutes of effort could make or break an application. I let her know in no uncertain terms that if the papers somehow caught fire or were "stolen" from her arms on their way to my campus mailbox, I would totally forgive her. Sadly, the papers were waiting for me in an expectant stack. "Grade papers!" made it to the Post-it list, but never quite rotated into the top two slots. As a result, my student's papers sat untouched for two weeks before a spasm of guilt in Week 3 sent me into a grading binge that ended with my forearm muscles in knots and 60 papers graded in five days.
My body isn't the only thing feeling strained with overwork these days. When someone warns you that the job search may take a toll on your personal relationships, know that that is a gross understatement. Although no one in my social sphere has escaped unscathed from the flames of my employment quest, I do feel that some have suffered more than others. I barely see my girlfriends these days; many of them, too, are knee-deep in dissertating and job-seeking madness.
At least, thanks to modern technology, we are able to constantly text, e-mail, and IM one another about our angst. My friend Maria became particularly hard to reach for a couple of days as she struggled with her own avalanche of deadlines. I was on the verge of driving over to her apartment to make sure her cat wasn't eating her rotting carcass when she finally responded to my messages. "Sorry," she wrote, "I'm just in a bad, bad place called Why Doesn't It Ever Stop?" Her words stuck in my mind like a catchy if annoying country-western tune: a bad, bad place called Why Doesn't It Ever Stop. What a brilliant summary of the place in which I currently reside. I e-mailed her back: "Welcome, sister. It's a bitch living here, but you get used to it."
My office mate, though he may disagree, has gotten off lightly. Smugly ensconced in a postdoctoral position, he hears me sighing and snorting like a bull in the next cubicle. Most days I'm certain my depression precedes me like a foul odor as I enter the office. My usual routine goes something like this: Mutter to self while checking e-mail for job interviews and offers that never come; sigh heavily while browsing the American Sociological Association job bank one more time in the hope that my custom-made dream job has materialized; snort derisively at the glum Facebook updates of colleagues who obsessively read the job-market gossip blogs; weep silently as I peruse aforementioned blogs; realize I am late for a meeting with a student and rush off in a whirl of panic and paper thrashing. Sometimes I mumble in my office mate's general direction whilst coming or going, but in general, I surmise that he finds me a mildly amusing, mostly annoying ball of neuroses.
It could be worse. He could be forced to regularly encounter my unwashed, flannel-clad form as it inhabits the living-room sofa, my laptop nearby, surrounded by a rainbow array of application-stuffed folders, half-eaten sandwiches, student assignments, and stacks of books. However, that special privilege is reserved for my husband, William. I feel confident that, if there is a heaven, seven vaguely smart and very charming graduate-school virgins are waiting patiently for him. Until then, however, he's just got me, and a living room that currently resembles the inside of a recycling bin.
Through no fault of his own, William has witnessed the tension, the madness, the elation, and the depression that grad school has brought me for nigh on seven years now. I can't even type that — "seven years" — without screaming a little on the inside. For four of those years we have been married and shared a home and finances. When I recently told him of a postdoc I am actively pursuing he was, as ever, enthusiastic and supportive. But not even he could feign a happy face when I mentioned the stipend.
"So that means," he paused to perform rapid mental math, "that means that after taxes and once you start repaying your student loans you'll be making ...." He trailed off, losing the will to finish the sentence.
"Yes," I interjected, feeling like a wrinkled hag popping out of a young bachelor's birthday cake. "That means I'll be making just a bit more than I am now."
There was a moment of quiet as we contemplated our peeling paint and uncomfortable chairs. Then (and this is why I married the man) William smiled warmly and said, "Every little bit helps." And he meant it.
It would all be so much easier if I didn't have to deal with the specter of "Bartholomew," his name writ large on the cover of top academic journals, his voice pontificating profoundly on the sociological theory of blah, blah, blah to anyone within ear's reach. Bartholomew was our department's golden boy; a young white man fearlessly and unabashedly nurtured by older white men. Their mutual love and admiration was on constant display, and his achievements were held up to the rest of us as an example of what our paltry careers could be, if only we weren't so darned lazy. In the minds of the old bearded ones, he was the ultimate pupil — that rare grad student who, not merely content to attend a top-five program, cranks out publications, lives, breathes, and I suspect, makes love with sociology on his brain, thus receiving immediate and financially generous offers from all of the top 10, nay the top 20, programs in the nation.
But we can't all be like Bartholomew. We can't all have stay-at-home wives, family trust funds, and nimble brains that work with deadly efficiency at 8 a.m. We have to do the best with what we've got. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself in an effort to continue my achingly slow, but relatively steady forward movement.
I could make it stop, I suppose. I could exit the bad-acid-trip merry-go-round of graduate school and step back into normal life. But my normal life has been forever changed. No, there is no other choice. I have to finish what I started and find a job — if for no other reason than to validate why in God's name I decided to chuck nearly a decade of my life away living among tens of thousands of undergrads, making $14,000 a year.
My long-suffering and mostly nonacademic friends and family have started to wonder if I'll ever finish. I've even started to wonder if I'll ever finish. But something inside me says I have to. I have to fill out one more job application. I have to look at one more job posting. I have to try to picture myself living and working in cities I wouldn't have ever thought of as home. I have to stop resembling a stained flannel couch cover and start resembling a successful, job-getting grad student. I just have to.
