For job seekers in those fields governed by the Modern Language Association, there is no "cruellest month." The cold weeks stretching from late November to early March provide almost an entire quarter's worth of anxiety and disappointment.
Our cautiously enthusiastic scanning of the job listings gives way to disappointment when the calls for interviews fail to materialize. As our families prepare for holiday gatherings we sink into self-contemplation, emerging only to answer their inevitable question: "Why do they have that MLA conference at such a terrible time?"
Sometimes family members even get a view of the nastiness of the process, as when a few years ago I received, on December 23, an invitation for an interview with Boston University's writing program. My wife had to track me down at my grandmother's house to tell me. When I called the search-committee chairman back to schedule the interview, he snarled at me for calling him on Christmas Eve.
I've been on the job market five times and have landed 13 MLA interviews -- 10 of those, including that Boston interview, in one memorable year. Most years, then, I'm just one of those bitter-looking young attendees, rushing from a panel I don't really care about to a publisher who doesn't really want to talk to me, trying to avoid the little knots of grad students whose relaxed postures and freakishly tiny eyeglasses advertise their double-digit interviews and dissertation advisers whose names merit immediate call-backs from search committees.
Like Jean Valjean I draw my coat around me (blessed be MLA meetings in Toronto, New York, and Chicago), put my head down, and skulk for the exit. A grad-school friend of mine with whom I often attend conferences tells me, "I've never seen you look so unhappy as you always do at the MLA."
Last September I convinced myself that this was not going to be another one of those years. My last experience on the market -- the 10-interview year -- had been so positive that I had actually turned down a tenure-track job at a small branch campus in order to accept an administrative job at a large, prestigious private university in a big, exciting city. That job has been very interesting, but ultimately unfulfilling: It made me realize that I want a job that combines administration, teaching, and research. So after two years, I headed back out on the market, certain that my stellar CV and unusual professional profile would make me this year's hot candidate.
I was wrong.
I applied for 15 jobs; this year I was very selective, considering only those places where my wife would consider living. Even applying cold-eyed realism I judged myself a shoo-in for 5 of the jobs; many of the other 10, I reasoned, would see something interesting in me and allow me to audition. That didn't happen.
In early December I received one call for an interview, from a small Southern college that was low on my list, and weeks went by with no other word. I was especially concerned that I hadn't heard from "Pioneer U.," the campus that I had already informally visited and whose faculty members really seemed to like me. (In my previous column, I told about how I'd had a day of reckoning with that job. The department wanted someone to start in January but I felt I could not leave my current employer in the lurch with my sudden departure. In the end, the department extended the search because the candidates who could start in January didn't meet its needs.) Finally Pioneer called, but December 23 came and I only had two interviews at MLA.
So be it. I prepared thoroughly for those interviews, but also resolved that I was going to go in there confident in the fact that I would be perfectly happy to stay at my current job at a great college with interesting colleagues and challenging responsibilities. I wouldn't exude the D.O. -- "desperation odor" -- that followed me in the past.
Both of my interviews seemed to go well, but I could tell that the Southern college and I didn't hit it off. My idea of teaching a course on Reconstruction and popular culture produced nothing but an uncomfortable silence in the room. I left New York knowing that I would probably be called in for an on-campus at Pioneer, and very likely would not hear from the Southern college again.
A week after I returned, the head of Pioneer's search committee called and told me that it would be necessary for me to have my current supervisor provide a reference before my application could go any farther. I had been avoiding this; I didn't want anyone here to know that I was looking around, both because I didn't want to jeopardize my job and because I genuinely didn't want to offend my co-workers.
My boss, though, was gracious and understanding and gave me a glowing recommendation, and Pioneer called me that afternoon to ask me to come out. I did, and the whole visit was actually a pleasure. I could tell they liked me, and I liked them. Feeling confident in my chances but also being perfectly willing to stay in my current job, I was able to really evaluate how Pioneer and I might fit each other. All of those boilerplate questions a committee asks a candidate -- How can you contribute to our department? How do you see yourself fitting into the culture of our university? Do you have any questions for us? -- suddenly became meaningful to me.
Pioneer offered me the job and I accepted it immediately. I knew it was right, because for the first time in five years I hadn't felt like I needed to make myself into something different than I was in order to land a job. My wife, with the kind of generosity that I find it difficult to understand, has agreed to be uprooted for the second time in the past few years, give up her job, and start a new life and new career in Pioneer's city.
I don't want to overstate things, but this success has made me feel like a new person. For years I've defined myself on good days as "struggling academic searching for that first real job" and on bad days as "abject failure." No longer.
I've adjuncted, I've had a visiting gig, I've worked in administration, but now I've reached what I've always seen as the Promised Land. It's particularly satisfying that I've accomplished this because of the winding and often frustrating job path I've taken. Now, when I see the cadres of Yalies and Dukies at the MLA with their designer committees and interviews with Big Ten flagships, my amusement won't be outweighed by my envy.
I should probably end this article with self-deprecating equivocation, and say something like "Even though getting a tenure-track job had always been my obsession, now that I have one it doesn't give me the tremendous sense of fulfillment that I thought it would." But that's not true. It does.
