Fear of the Unusual

Well, for one thing, many of your readers have invested large amounts of effort in more conformist and traditional paths that have not worked.  To seriously consider your advice they have to seriously consider that some fraction of their time has gone down the toilet. 

Others are people with hiring authority who may find people coming in through alternate tracks to be painful because it’s not neat and orderly and it doesn’t involve people just standing in line, receiving a “No,” and replying with “Thank You” and vanishing.

And also, many, many people are in education because they really like school, sometimes to the point of being miserable anywhere that is not school.  School is about following the rules and taking your turn and being rewarded for following directions correctly.  You are suggesting that not following the rules might work better.  That seems very unfair to the rule-following turn-taking direction-adherers.  (I suspect this is part of why it’s very, very difficult to get successful businessfolk and teachers into the same room with each other and have them agree on anything; the ethic of Get’R Done v. the ethic of Complete Every Step).

Actually now that I think about it, I don’t know why you’re not getting more hostile responses.  Maybe you’re being obscure.

Isaac,

As a person with private-sector and teaching experience seeking at F/T CC position, I can totally relate to your understanding of fear in the academe. We claim we want to foster a community where students think differently, but we all seem to have the herd mentality ourselves. Having taught K-12 for the last several years, with a little adjuncting on the side, I know how easy it is to get comfortable in a teaching job. We are risk adverse, which makes sense when you have bills to pay and an office that is your own, but those of us in the humanities/liberal arts are one of often hundreds of applications who cover letters and materials often look like carbon copies of the other candidates. 

What we do to stand out hopefully will get us that golden interview where we can shine. And, I dare add, a place that would respect our individuality is more likely to be a place we would want to work for the long haul rather than only 3-5 years until something better comes along.

Then again, I already have been chided recently as being just another adjunct with stars in his eyes but not much sense in his head. I would contend, radically I suppose, that if you are a long-term adjunct bitter about your prospects for full-time teaching work, then perhaps it is time to realign your goals in your current profession or pick a new one. To some that may seem harsh. Perhaps it’s just the stars talking.   

Some are afraid in any situation. Others see possibilities. I think a measured approach includes reasonable cautions and deliberate steps into new territory.
Bear in mind that the letters you write are not being read by a policy, they are being read by a person. If your correspondence insults the person’s profession or professionalism, it seems reasonable that it may inhibit their decision to hire you.
Well, duh.
Beyond that, there’s the pragmatic approach: I see this as a problem. Here is my proposed solution. What steps can we take together to solve the problem? Here’s my plan…
In short, if we expect people in hiring positions to be receptive to our ideas when we don’t even work for them yet, it seems reasonable that we reciprocate, which can be done without kowtowing. It’s a fine line, but we’ve all trod it before in one way or another to get this far.

Here, here! You offer advice about following an alternative route to the same destination. How is considering more options a bad move? Your readers surely have the choice and hopefully the intellect to choose whichever route works best for them. I think it’s worthwhile, however, to ask why so many academics seem to think a one-size-fits-all standardized approach is the only way to go.

I suspect that academia’s noble drive for excellence leads to something like a field-wide obsession with excellence and rank that undervalues anything that is not “top-rank.” In this thinking, teaching at a community college or teaching exclusively lower-level courses is equated with failure (and radically underestimates how difficult it can be to find a permanent community college position, which it turns out are not just available for the taking). You’re either top-flight, or you’re nothing.

As a graduate student this wasn’t communicated to me directly, but it’s something I sensed, so perhaps it’s just me (but I think not!). The message I perceived was that if you’re the best in your field, you have nothing to worry about. And if you show any signs that you’re worried, say by inquiring about non-traditional routes or pursing jobs at non-research universities or community colleges, then you’re pretty much admitting that you don’t think you’re the best.

Such thinking ignores the problem that there are too few jobs for far too many qualified applicants. When I applied for creative writing poetry positions, I applied for jobs where there were as many as 900 applicants for the same position. How to be “the best” in that pile?

I realized on my own that I needed a job. Period. I needed a job. Yet, I really wanted it to be in academia. After umpteen years of grad school, I wasn’t ready to bail on academia yet. I realized if I wanted to stay in academia, I needed to broaden my search, so I started applying for community college and composition positions, positions that as a first-year PhD student I was pretty sure I’d be above come graduation. I still feel incredibly lucky to have landed a tenure-track job in my first year on the market, ABD to boot (I have since finished the PhD! yay!). But I significantly increased my odds when I started applying to jobs that I had been socialized to shun. When I was interviewed for my current job, the chair of my department revealed that he had an unprecedented number of applications—an all time high of 16!—for 3 openings. Sure, I teach a 4/4 of freshman comp, so it’s not all that different than my pre-PhD work as an adjunct, but I get the pay and benefits that come with the rank of being an assistant professor.

I cannot fathom why only 16 people applied for 3 openings for a tenure-track position with competitive pay and benefits. Except, perhaps, they’ve been socialized to be above such jobs. Admittedly, I was initially worried that by accepting such a job I might be trapping myself. But I have to give my faculty mentors credit. When I asked them whether I should accept this job, they reminded me of two things. First, I’d be a fool to turn down any tenure-track job in this market. Second, if nothing else, I could continue to build my vita to apply for jobs with more glory later on.

Indeed, my job readily enables me to do my own work—or to build my vita in more aspirational terms. Teaching the same classes all the time means my prep work is greatly reduced, and I can still get my own work done. I finished my PhD and increased my publication output last year, all while teaching a 4/4 of composition, and I still had time to watch all the Doctor Who I wanted.

Kudos to you for illuminating a worthwhile path that is too often left unmentioned!

Iconoclasm != problematic advice. Alternate route to a TT job – great. Putting the word “desperate” in a cover letter – maybe not so much. You do have your fans, and that’s great. But the average Joe or Jane Adjunct looking to get a TT job are not posting job advice columns under the CHE imprimatur, and would thus not have your (relative) notoriety. This has been my only sticking point with your advice.