I told myself that I would start working out when I turned 30. However, it wasn't until I turned 34, and completed my doctorate, that I followed through on that resolve. I called my first few jogs around the campus "victory laps" in recognition of my recently completed degree.
Since moving to my new city, I've thought of my jogs more as training for the job market. As a runner, I'm very goal-oriented, constantly gauging my progress against my target and monitoring heart rate and pace in an effort to maximize accomplishment and conditioning.
So besides dreaming about a tenure-track job in English, I've been dreaming about an eight-minute mile. It became a symbol of personal excellence, a testimony of my inner resolve to give all of my activities -- my family life, my job hunt, my current job -- my best effort.
At this year's Modern Language Association convention, in between panel presentations and job interviews, I took time to visit the hotel gym. It was there that I realized that an eight-minute mile, literally and symbolically, was within my grasp.
I had only two fully fledged job interviews at the convention, both with large public institutions that have graduate programs. I had another informational interview with a comprehensive regional university that wasn't far enough in its review process to select semifinalists for interviews at the convention.
The calls for all of those interviews came in the last few days before Christmas -- the first of them less than 12 hours after I had emotionally thrown in the towel on this year's search. After recanting a few pathetic e-mails I had sent to supportive friends about my dismal failure on the job market, I began to investigate my options in depth.
Contrary to my expectations at the beginning of my search, none of my interviews this year were with religiously affiliated institutions. In my first year on the market I had made mention in my application materials of my nonacademic work in Christian organizations, and been rewarded with three job offers from religious colleges, all of which I turned down in hopes of landing a tenure-track position at a mid-tier research university.
This time around, in most of my applications I had abided by my principle of not including publications and work experience that revealed my religious beliefs. But one of my interviews resulted from an application in which I had thrown caution to the wind and included as complete an accounting of my background as could be related to the position's very unusual description.
Job A called for an interest in service learning and grant-proposal writing in addition to expertise in my area of literary study. There were significant areas of crossover between my outside work with religiously affiliated organizations and Job A's extraliterary requirements.
Had my relevant work experiences distinguished me from the other applicants? Or did I owe my interview to other factors, such as the strength of my recommendations or my more conventional academic accomplishments? I probably won't learn the answers to those questions unless I'm hired by the department, and even then, what I learn may not provide a basis for rethinking my personal version of "Don't ask, don't tell."
Unfortunately, I doubt that my interview for Job A scored me many points. The position involves a heavy teaching load of three courses in each of the fall, winter, and spring terms, so the interview focused mostly on my teaching ability. Despite the verve that I had put into my written application materials, I woke up on the day of the interview feeling more like a hacking, gasping, middle-aged jogger than a lean, mean running machine. I said nothing wrong, but I didn't say anything emphatically right either.
My other interview was for a position focused on research, and I had applied for it with a secularized version of my CV and cover letter. Job B boasts a lighter teaching load (two courses each semester) and is squarely focused on the time-period of my dissertation. The institution has students similar to those I've taught as a teaching assistant at large, diverse public institutions in the West.
While I left my half-hour interview for Job A feeling like a regular Joe, I waltzed out of my hourlong interview for Job B feeling like a rock star. The interviewers had carefully read my writing sample, asked questions that referred to my CV in detail, and engaged in intellectual and social repartee throughout the hour that made the formulaic structure of the exchange disappear.
I left the hotel suite winded, pleased, and confident that if I didn't receive a campus visit it wouldn't be because I hadn't run to the best of my ability.
My final "interview" was an intentionally casual affair. I attended the interviewer's panel presentation and joined him afterward for coffee. We chatted about Job C in general terms, about the schools and cultural life in the university's city, and about relatively benign topics of mutual interest.
I appreciated meeting this senior colleague and having the opportunity to hear his reflections on nearly 30 years of teaching. We talked for two hours, maintaining a leisurely pace and moving easily from topic to topic. Whether I'm eventually selected for a full interview or not, I enjoyed learning about Job C and seeing through my interviewer's eyes the best aspects of a teaching career in small-town America.
Now that I'm back home and running around the track on the campus of my current employer, I have a lot of time to mull over the process I'm going through. I feel lucky to have had the interviews I had. Each of them was attractive in its own way. However, I know that the likelihood of even one of those jobs panning out is very small, and so I continue to keep an emotional distance from them.
That distance, it turns out, is not so different from other detachments and patterns of belief that I have striven to adopt in my religious practice. In fact, my equanimity in the face of an uncertain future is due to an internal realization that the true stakes in this process are not the laurels at the end of the race but the motivation and ability to run.
When I first started running, my heart would quickly begin to race; it revealed only that I was out of shape. More recently, I have begun to take pleasure in the "thump-thump" of that muscle as it pumps the oxygen-laden, life-giving flow of blood through my veins from lungs to limbs and back again. In my dreams, I reach the eight-minute mile marker effortlessly, in full possession of my heart, ready to make it work for another mile, or two, or three. Even the idea of time melts away.
In waiting to learn if I will be invited to a campus interview, I've focused my energies on enjoying and excelling in my current post. It's a visiting position, but I was brought in with the understanding that I may be offered a tenure-track position here for the fall.
Although there have been a few bumps in the road as I've attempted to establish myself here and seek employment elsewhere, I have been blessed with understanding colleagues, satisfying work, and a happy home life. While my teaching focus here is far afield from the subject of my doctoral studies, I have found this to be a good place for running.
Perhaps because we share more than just an employer and disciplinary expertise, I've been able to discuss my job search with several colleagues. There is, of course, some awkwardness in knowing that I am in the midst of a yearlong interview for a tenure-track position here, but that has not been a barrier to lively discussions, helpful advice, and expressions of interest and concern. More than any other potential employer, the people here have the opportunity to observe my pace.
Job A, Job B, Job C, or this, Job D: Which, if any, of those possibilities would I select if the choice lay with me? Today, my heart is pounding in my lungs, not in the least tranquil. I have run my eight-minute mile, and then some -- 1.5 miles in 11:56 -- and I'm not dreaming.
