In my last column, I sketched a parallel between the humanities job search and the musical casting call. I want to update this analogy. What I've since learned is that looking for a job in academe is more like living in a movie.
The question is: What kind of picture are you in? Most candidates tend to find themselves in two distinct types of films.
First, there's the big-budget Hollywood movie. The protagonist applies for jobs, gets lots of interviews, gets invited to campuses, gets various offers, and gets his dream job. To increase dramatic tension, a number of obstacles are thrown in his path: the selection committee has a rogue member who opposes the protagonist's hire; or the main competitor in the final round turns out to be a daunting opponent.
These things are all resolved well before the credits roll, and the last scene depicts a quirky denouement: Our hero must defend his dissertation on the same day he is scheduled to move out of town. It's nip and tuck, but he will just make it, leaping into the cab of the moving van, diploma in hand, spouse and dog as proud as can be.
Then there is the foreign art film version, probably called something like Sehnsucht in der Dunkelheit, or better, Saudade. The action takes place entirely in a dimly lighted, claustrophobic two-room flat. The protagonist is seen clipping tiny ads from a newspaper, typing endlessly on an old manual typewriter, and addressing and stamping envelopes. The mechanics of this chore are depicted in realistic detail. A trip to the post office to mail a single envelope is shot in real time with a hand-held camera. A series of long shots through a kitchen window captures the daily routine of reading the mail. The film's last hour has no dialogue whatsoever. Soon it becomes clear to the viewer that the protagonist is waiting for a call that will never come.
It is a long second act. He smokes soulfully, silently, and alone. A nice tracking shot shows his patterned movement within the apartment; a tiger pacing his cage. In the last scene, the protagonist selects a record from a dusty collection and places it on the turntable. The viewer can neither make out the jacket cover nor hear any sound. The credits role in silence. The audience is palpably unsettled. What was the point?
Then there's the movie version of my job search. This is a project that no director on either side of the Atlantic would touch. Like the Hollywood version, the main character applies for jobs, gets the conference interviews, and snags a couple of campus interviews. After these developments, the story collapses. The protagonist is neither a hero nor a tormented, tragic figure. He does not beat the odds, and he does not get to wallow in the Zen of waiting and pondering. The story fails to satisfy on any level. This film will never be made.
Looking back on my quest for an academic position, which seems to have ended in conclusive failure, I am struck by how bad the story is. I have become so accustomed to the dramatic conventions of the cinema, the novel, or the sitcom -- indeed, even the dissertation -- that the protracted, unaffecting, and often petty chronicle that was my job search seems to lack every important feature of a meaningful saga.
Still, the experience was not without a number of lessons. The conference interviews, while prompting a certain degree of hope, exposed the blistering economic humiliations in a selection system that compensates only the finalists. By the end of my four days at the expensive conference hotel, I wanted a campus visit primarily as an itemized return on those self-financed plane tickets, rooms, meals, and even coffees. And in due time, I managed to get just what I wanted: two invitations to fly out for campus interviews.
What I never anticipated, however, was the way in which the campus visit and all its attendant amenities would signal a sharp and unrealistic shift in my own expectations.
And yet, how could any long-suffering graduate student fail to undergo a sudden, psychological transformation when finally offered the coveted all-expenses-paid, on-site interview? Looking back, the only thing more misguided than my self-indulgent lament about having to pay my own way to the conference interviews was my disproportionate confidence as I strutted through two campus visits.
To be sure, the psychology of the poor grad student was never completely superseded by that of the courted academic star. This duality could at times lead to moments of embarrassing excess. Let me recount, for example, a few episodes from my first visit. This took place at the flagship campus of a major state university in the Plains.
Upon arrival, I am picked up at the airport by possibly the biggest gun in 19th-century American Western history. I am mortified that this guru of academe has not only come to fetch me on a Sunday afternoon, but is soon asking to HELP ME WITH MY BAGS. It's one thing to talk of Ph.D. taxi drivers; it's another to bum a ride from one with two dozen books and 150 articles.
This moment signals my first leap forward, from my humble world of the last decade to this fantasy of the future. As we drive to town, I find myself rapidly settling into a role previously unknown to me, that of the recruited candidate. Indeed, I have practically forgotten the pathetic defeatism of my first three columns when suddenly the car lurches to a stop.
"This is it!" exclaims my host, gesturing towards a massive, ornate, turn-of-the century hotel, "one of the most elegant west of the Mississippi," it turns out.
Without even seeing the interior, I know this is the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. Don't forget that when I was growing up, my family never overnighted in motels, much less proper and fancy hotels. Mostly what we did was a lot of camping, often in places you might not normally associate with camping. Like Mexico City.
As I collect my key, the desk clerk informs me that anything I desire will be paid by the university. "Even room service?" I ask, immediately betraying my origins. "Even room service," he answers, with a strangely knowing glance.
To my utter shame, I must admit that before ditching the arrival suit -- before calling my wife, if truth be told -- I am knee-deep in that room-service menu, planning my three-day stay. None of the lethargy and procrastination that typified my dissertation work are in evidence as I prepare to tackle this 10-page baby. Working with a deft economy of movement, using nothing but hotel stationery and a complimentary pen, I compose a short list of the appetizers, entrees, and accompanying wines I'd like to sample during my stay. I am nearly finished with this ambitious meal schedule when I remember that the host department will be taking me out to eat three times a day.
In the morning I am fetched by another departmental representative, who takes me to breakfast. (In case you were wondering, I ordered fresh fruit waffles with extra strawberries and whipped cream, a large glass of orange juice, an enormous pot of tea, and a danish to go. Room service can stuff it.) I soon get a chance to look around the university in the light of day. It is a brilliantly sunny, bracing morning, and I am decked out in a crisp new suit, wool overcoat, and dark sunglasses. My confidence soars as we tour campus. In my wildest dreams, this is not where I envisioned myself. At this major research university, I would get a teaching load of two courses a semester, summer research funds, a wood-paneled office with a window, and reference librarians who seem to think I'm Alexander von Humboldt.
Things keep getting better. At a departmental party thrown in my honor, the same committee chair who months earlier had sent me a terse letter warning that my file was incomplete is now standing behind a minibar, mixing me a second martini. I am no longer the person I used to be. I'm now Keanu Reeves playing the role of Dan Kowalsky in Miramax Pictures' inspiring story of a small-town kid who becomes a professor at a venerated university.
And this fantasy continues during the next campus visit. Soon I'm back home, preparing for the triumphant third act.
Now a few weeks go by, then a few more. The letters of rejection stream in, two of which eventually come from the departments I visited. What seemed like the Hollywood version turns out to be a mediocre screenplay no one will option. My only consolation is next year's search. Maybe I'll end up with a hit on my hands. Think of the sequel possibilities.
