Early in the 1996 film Swingers, Rob, a young alumnus of Yale’s drama school, frets about his first casting call in Los Angeles: “I was Hamlet two months ago off-Broadway. Now I’m auditioning for Goofy.”
His friend’s consolation, “Well, at least it’s Disney,” doesn’t help much. Toward the end of the film, after countless cigars, martinis, and miles logged driving to parties in the Hollywood hills, Rob learns that he didn’t get the part. “They went for someone with more theme-park experience. I would have killed for that job,” he sighs.
A few months ago, with a still-warm Ph.D. in hand, I was interviewing for a $15,000-a-year job at the University of Virginia, where I earned my doctorate in religious studies. Unfortunately, the position was far outside my academic interests. In fact, it was in the athletics department. “Well,” I thought, “at least it’s academe.” I was told by a friend on the hiring committee that I was “tops on the list” of candidates.
That was good to hear, even though the job was nothing like what I’d hoped to be doing this fall. But after getting the phone call in which I learned that the job went to someone else, I fell into the same kind of abyss that Rob had. I would have killed for that job, because it was my last hope for any kind of work at a university this academic year.
The next day, I returned to my old part-time job behind the sushi bar, slicing up tuna and yellowtail and trying not to roll my eyes at the customer who, assuming himself to be an expert on Japan’s national cuisine, boldly and loudly inquired, “So, what’s good tonight?” -- as if I had spent all morning on a fishing boat off of Yokohama. I bit my tongue to keep from bursting out with, “Look, pal, we have this thing now called refrigeration. It keeps seafood fresh for days, so it’s pretty much all good all the time. If it weren’t, we’d fire our fish supplier, and what kind of world is this where I work my tail off for seven years to get a degree that not a lot of people have, and I end up making California rolls for the likes of you, because I can’t get a teaching job?”
Yes, I am bitter.
In June, I accomplished the greatest goal of my life (so far) when I successfully defended my dissertation. I am not married or in any other kind of committed relationship, and I don’t have children. So my career takes on much more importance in giving my life meaning than it should. In the narrow mind-set of the tenure-track-job seeker, it’s all I have, so being frustrated with it makes me seriously question my self-worth.
This year will be my third go-around on the academic job market. So far, I have submitted at least 60 job applications, had four conference interviews, one on-campus interview for a one-year position at a nearby liberal-arts college, and zero offers.
But now, with three letters after my last name, I have something I didn’t have when I made my first foray into the market. Maybe that is all it will take. Maybe deleting “candidate” after “Ph.D.” on my vita was the single greatest thing I could have done to help me get a tenure-track job.
After all, with the number of job-seeking Ph.D.'s in my area -- modern religious thought -- outnumbering the number of open positions by about 10 to 1, nobody has to hire anybody who doesn’t have a degree in hand. Fair enough. Departments take a big risk in hiring anyone who is A.B.D.
Maybe this is the year that friends will stare at me in awe as I tell them I have 10 -- no, 11! -- interviews at the American Academy of Religion meeting, just as I have stared at colleagues with such good fortune in past years. Maybe, indeed.
The truth is, there is nothing I can do to guarantee that I will be ambling across a quad somewhere, in sunglasses and a blazer, on my way to teach REL 101 or 542 this time next year. It’s a truth that hurts.
But I won’t give up hope. This is my dream we’re talking about, and it’s hard to accept that I can’t make it come true by my own effort. So, through the cycles of feeling that dreadful excitement on the first of every month, when new job ads are posted on the academy’s Web site, I can do some concrete things that I hope will lead to better success this time around.
That is, more concrete than what I did last year, when I imagined shopping for a new wardrobe for that job in Minnesota or calculating how much money I would save when I cut out my car payment the week before taking the job in New York.
I can work on articles, taking seriously one committee member’s comment in my dissertation defense that my first chapter would make a great review essay. I can actually write the essay, and ask him to read it and suggest where I should send it. If I am going to be serious about feeling not quite fulfilled in my career until I land a full-time academic job, then I need to turn those “good ideas for articles” that professors have praised into ink-and-paper articles.
I can do the one thing that every career counselor and every departmental workshop on the academic job search and every book on how to succeed in academe talks about, but which doesn’t come easily for the many shy types like myself in graduate school. I can network.
To do so, I would have to give up my affected hipster attitude, which requires me to disdain the glad-handing done by the hipster’s sworn enemy -- the corporate sellout. I would have to realize that my disdain is just resentment talking. I can shake the hand and express admiration for the work of a scholar whom I legitimately admire, and if that person happens to be on a hiring committee or knows someone else who is, so be it.
I can broaden my scholarly focus to include the areas that departments increasingly want faculty members to teach. Islamic studies, for instance, is the fastest-growing area in religious studies. I’m not a specialist in Islamic studies. Few are. In fact, for the past three years, there have been far more job openings in Islamic studies than there have been Ph.D.'s granted in the field.
Biology may not be destiny, but I wonder, is dissertation topic? Could studying Islam over the coming months and years ever be enough to convince a department that I could teach an intro-level class on the topic, even though my dissertation was on Christianity? Just for good measure, and, indulging my bitterness just a bit, I can also wish for a spate of retirements in my field. The word “dinosaur” has been said under my breath more than once when I have scrolled through lists of faculty members in departments where I want a job, teaching their bright students and discussing research with their bright faculty members.
Hold on. Writing articles, talking to other scholars about their work and mine, learning more about the world’s religions, griping about the previous generation of scholars -- isn’t that my dream? It’s not ideal, since I won’t have any students to teach, an office, or, well, a salary with benefits, but I might actually enjoy the search process.
I hope I will, because as I said before, even doing all of thoese things won’t ensure that I receive a job offer in the spring. The best preparation for my new job search will be to take constant comfort in the first line of the Handbook of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus: “Some things are up to us, and some things are not up to us.”
It’s a tautology, indeed, but it is true nonetheless, and the truth of it is frequently hard to see when you’re ranting to a friend about how talented you are and how shortsighted hiring committees are.
Finishing my degree was up to me. Networking is up to me. Publishing articles is more up to me than not. Being honest and confident in cover letters and interviews is up to me. But the retirement of the senior prof whose job I want? Internal disputes within hiring committees? Not up to me.
It’s not up to me which job, if any, I will be offered. It’s up to others, and “up to others” is what Epictetus might call a matter of luck. I am trying to cultivate equanimity, so that I can be happy with any role. But with good luck, I won’t have to be like Rob auditioning for Goofy.
With any luck at all, maybe I can be Mickey.
Jonathan Malesic earned his Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of Virginia. He will be chronicling his search for a tenure-track job this academic year.