The last time I sat down to write this column, my search for an academic position in history seemed to have ended in conclusive failure. I had applied for well over 60 jobs this year -- teaching and research posts at every variety of institution, including Ivy League universities, Bible-belt evangelical colleges, and urban community colleges.
To my surprise, I got seven interviews at the American Historical Association's annual conference, and out of those received two interviews for campus visits. But the high point of the search came and went in late winter. Both of the departments where I was a finalist offered the job to someone else. By early March, polite rejection letters were piling up, the mailman sometimes delivering two or three at a time.
Despite having struck out on the market two years in a row, I tried to stay upbeat. The good news was that my dissertation was finished, and I had a defense date set for early May. Whatever else happened, the milestone of completing the doctorate would buoy my spirits. With the Ph.D. in hand, I thought, next year I would clean up.
But the post-search pep talk carried me only so far. As I crossed off my list the last few jobs I still thought I had a shot at, a stark reality began to set in: I was about to become an "Independent Scholar."
Ah, yes. You know who I'm talking about. The Indies. You meet these types at public lectures and conferences. Sometimes they even manage to get on your panel. The Indies typically talk the talk and deliver as fine a paper as anyone else, but let's take a closer look. Notice anything strange about that name tag? There's no university or college listed. The Indies belong to a universal fraternity whose only membership requirement is the failure to gain academic appointment.
Granted, I know a few Indies who have gone it alone by choice. Some of them evidently completed their Ph.D.'s and then opted to pursue successful careers outside of academe. While making money hand over fist in the corporate world, they keep a foot in the door, delivering the occasional paper or contributing to edited volumes. Indeed, these sorts of Indies are some of the happiest souls I know. They have escaped the insular and petty world of the ivory tower while retaining the intellectual validation that the doctorate confers.
As for me, on the other hand, I have no illusions about becoming a happy Independent Scholar. The thought of having my university letterhead and official calling cards taken away leaves me shivering with fear and anxiety. If I become an Indie, what will my letterhead look like, anyway? Will it simply show my address? Is my "institution" the same thing as my house? I guess my business card would be the sort made in machines at airports. These can be spotted a mile away -- the black lettering neither embossed nor raised; the fonts looking like they're produced on a dot-matrix printer. And then, of course, the real giveaway: my apartment number written boldly below my name, a clarion call announcing that I work out of my home.
But the lost stationery is not the half of it. I would also be kissing goodbye the free office supplies, the use of a fax machine and photocopier, the office, and the free Internet account. Most significant, the loss of university affiliation would deprive me for the first time in 15 years of the campus community that I've come to think of as an inseparable part of my life. I would be like the astronaut in 2001: A Space Odyssey, floating around in space, connected to the university only through the umbilical cord that is a handful of professional memberships and a pending book contract with a second-tier press.
You can imagine how bleak those days were. Even then, my fortunes had not yet bottomed out. For me personally, there was probably only one thing worse than being demoted to an Independent Scholar, and that was simultaneously being married to a successful assistant professor on the tenure track at a research university.
My wife's job-search experience turned out to be nearly identical to mine, with a major difference in the final result. Whereas I parlayed my two campus visits into jobs for the competition, my wife came away from her two visits with job offers. Two campus interviews and two job offers -- the one at a Big Ten university, the other an elite liberal-arts college in the Northeast. A fantastic effort, by all accounts.
Earlier in the season, my wife and I had spent many evenings huddled around the kitchen table, drinking $6 wine and debating how we would handle various job offers in different parts of the country. I never anticipated the dinnertime conversations we were now having. There were offers on the table, of course, but they had nothing to do with me. Eventually we -- who am I kidding? -- my wife decided on the Big Ten school. We would be moving to a small town in the Midwest: she, to settle into her cushy, 2-2 teaching job (two courses in her first semester, two in the second); me to begin my career as an Independent Scholar.
Then the real humiliations began. We decided to escape the rental ghetto and finally buy a house. This meant taking some very adult steps, like finding a real-estate agent, hiring a building inspector, and, most painfully for yours truly, meeting with the loan officer at a local bank. Here's a snippet of the conversation with the S&L guy:
Him: "Okay, Dan. According to what you two have submitted, it appears that the family's income will be based entirely on Jen's salary. Is that right?"
Me: "Um, for the moment, that's right. I'll be revising my manuscript at home."
Him: (while writing) "Dan ... will ... not ... work ... outside ... home.
Me: (interrupting) "The revisions count as work, they just aren't paid work."
Him: (still writing, while smiling) "Dan ... freelancing ... at ... home.
That would have been quite enough, but there were plenty of other moments that hammered home the point that she got a job and I didn't. There was, for example, the letter that arrived from one of our parents:
"We all admire Dan's sacrifice in following Jen to her new job. This will surely be the best thing for the family."
Sacrifice? Who are they kidding? The most pathetic thing about the whole situation was that I had sacrificed nothing. I was holding no cards at all. I was not going to this small upper-Midwest town because I was a modern, enlightened spouse; I had nowhere else to go!
Then one day not long ago, during this awkward period of self-pity, the phone rang. On the line was the committee chair for one of the few jobs I hadn't yet been rejected for. He was calling to see if I was still on the market. It was only a one-year position, but at a very good institution in the Midwest, and the teaching load was a respectable 2-3 -- almost unheard of for term appointments. We set up a phone interview for the following Thursday.
After years of tortoise-like progress towards my degree, punctuated by only the most trivial sort of non-news developments, the week that followed would be the most eventful since the summer we were married. In the space of five days, my wife and I bought a house near her new job, I completed my Ph.D., and, at the conclusion of the conference-call interview, I was offered a teaching job.
I need hardly tell you how elated I was to be employed in my field, or how relieved my wife was that she would not have to put up with my tired poor-me routine for an entire academic year. Despite all the naysayers in the Underachievers Club (myself included), I had actually been offered a good job.
Our celebration, however, was not without some regret. Let's not forget that this is just a one-year fix. That means come fall, I'll be on the market again, duking it out with an ever-expanding Ph.D. pool. Sadder still, my wife and I have now become a typical academic commuter couple. She'll live in Michigan with our dog, Guinness, in the house we just bought, while I'll suffer through a year in an efficiency apartment in Missouri, flying back every other weekend to see them.
But there will be plenty of time later to lament those hardships. Right now, I'm just looking forward to that happy moment when I take up my one-year post, settle into my one-year desk, and gaze down at the biggest prize of all: my own one-year supply of letterhead.
