There may be no one as superstitious as a job candidate on the academic market. Immediately after I sent out my last packet of application materials, I realized just how powerless I was over the next steps in the process ("Will they call me for an interview?"), and, naturally, I tried to find order and cues in the universe: I began to look for omens.
That's when I learned the essential truth about omens: Once you start looking for them, they're everywhere.
I began to see license plates from every state with an institution where I had applied -- even from those located in sparsely populated states more than 2,500 miles from the West Coast city I now call home. I began to run into people who, in the course of normal conversation, would say, "I'm an alumni of University X," or "My daughter goes to College Y."
Everywhere I looked, I would see bumper stickers for graduate programs and law schools at places where I had applied; I would see people wearing sweat shirts and hats bearing those institutions' insignia.
I would take each new sighting, each new coincidence, as a sign. A sign of what? Well that depended on my mood. If I was feeling optimistic, it was a sure sign that the department would be calling. If I was feeling down, it was a sure sign that the department had overlooked my application.
After I turned down a tenure-track offer at University A and began to see signs of its name everywhere, I was sure I had made a huge mistake. After I was turned down for a position at College C, I was convinced, nearly each time I saw one of its sweat shirts, that the folks there would realize their mistake and call me back. On bad days, I figured that the universe was just taunting me.
Even in the midst of this omen-gazing, I was aware of what I was doing: attempting to find order in a seemingly random situation, attempting to assert some control where I felt I had none. My whole search was an effort to get control over my life: I am an assistant professor in the social sciences at a university in the Los Angeles area. I went on the market again because I wanted to find a position in a locale that was more family friendly than L.A. and that was nearer to my relatives. And I wanted to work on a campus with smaller class sizes and fewer commuter students.
After I managed to schedule some interviews, I assumed I would cease to look for omens and focus instead on the concrete facts of the place and the position. For a while, I did. Little did I know that omens would come looking for me.
During my campus interviews (five in all, accomplished in 10 weeks, with the Christmas holidays in between), the sheer number of coincidences left me rattled. One of the new faculty members at University A went to college with a new graduate student of my adviser; a second new faculty member knew a colleague of mine in an obscure part of the discipline, living in a small and underpopulated state. Another professor's ex-wife's brother was marrying an old friend of mine from graduate school.
Although warning bells rang out in my mind about working in the department, I clung to those coincidences as a sign that this was the job for me.
At College B, a third cousin of mine was an alumnus (which is actually a bigger coincidence than it may seem, given that the majority of my extended family did not go to college, and certainly not to private liberal-arts colleges like College B), and my mom had visited him there once in the 1960s.
Also at College B, a professor recognized my undergraduate alma mater and tearfully said, "Then, Ann, you must know my ex-husband, Tony. He made some very poor choices when he was a professor there." Yes, I thought, like sleeping with his undergraduate students.
For my interview at College C, I stayed at a small inn near the campus. At breakfast the first morning, I learned that the innkeepers were related to people in my hometown -- a town of under 3,000 people more than five hours away.
I have to admit that that was the only omen for College C, and it was not even directly related to the institution itself. I didn't get that job, and, with no feedback to the contrary, I must blame the lack of omens.
Finally, at College D, one of the professors told me that he entered graduate school the year my adviser finished, and that he had been the next to occupy her office cubicle. Mind you, they were in graduate school more than 20 years ago; and, though my adviser is quite well known in the field, I was surprised to hear what an impact she had made as a doctoral candidate. She was already so feared and adored that inheriting her cubicle was something to take note of and remember. I took heart: A connection that obscure had to mean something.
If it seems silly, my making big things of stuff so small, please forgive me. I spent the fall dragging my husband and small child across the country five times, in search of a tenure-track job with invigorating colleagues, well-prepared students, and an affordable housing market.
Grasping at straws and small signs not only seemed appropriate at the time; it seemed the only reasonable thing to do.
Which brings me to University E, where there were no omens at all -- no bumper stickers, former students, or license plates. The most anyone I knew could say about it was "I've never known anyone who went there." And my mom said, "I've never known anyone who lived in that city."
Nothing about the university jumped out at me, or at any of the relatives and friends I had look at its Web site. Indeed, it was the lack of omens, the lack of a hook, that initially led me to turn down an interview there in favor of seeing what College D had to offer.
Ultimately, it was the sheer lack of magical signs that made University E perfect for me. The job there became my position of choice, which I happily accepted just last week.
That, in itself, is its own form of magic. But the long road to that acceptance is another story.
