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[PF]

I've been reading the previous thread about not talking about job market woes with interest, and it struck me that the language we job candidates use to generate the various narratives we do about our job interviewing experiences is a learned one.  I realize that the search process is genuinely a stressful activity, but what I feel the author of the article is honing in on is not that we shouldn't talk at all about our experiences with the process but that we shouldn't use a particular type of language, narrative, and scripted behavior that only contributes to the stress.

Ultimately, there seems to be a culture of being stressed out about job hunting that compounds an already stressful situation.  I was told by someone in my social circle of MLA'ers that another person (who is only a distant acquaintance in that social circle) remarked that I seemed overconfident, arrogant, and full of myself because I wasn't reacting in what was a culturally-sanctioned way of performing insecurity and performing anxiety even though I was--of course--feeling those things.

And if performing insecurity and performing anxiety is a learned behavior and a learned language, might there be other behaviors and languages we could adopt that may allow us to cope with an already stressful situation in a more constructive way?  I don't know....  I'm just throwing this out there for discussion.

Again, I don't want to come off as overconfident or full of myself because that really is the last thing I am.  I am just as insecure and anxious as the average person in this position, but I'm also not invested in venting about those insecurities and anxieties every time I have a conversation with another academic because that venting only adds to the anxiety.

[Waxwing]

Thanks for the extremely interesting post.

The imperative to  perform job anxiety means that people are using it not only to communicate information, but also as a social behavior that creates group solidarity.  

So if you don't vent, and as you say, contribute to increasing the overall level of anxiety, you also will be unable to participate with or bond with the group in the same way that others do.  Thus your distant acquaintance may well draw exactly the wrong conclusion about your behavior.  You're not one of us.

So there's a dilemma.  It looks to me like someone who doesn't want to buy in to the culture of anxiety, but who still wants to have a connection with the  cohort will have to find something to substitute for that behavior (sounds like an account of neurosis, doesn't it?), whether through repeated explanations of her/his antinomian behavior, or whatever.

Obviously that's a lot more important for communicating with a wider circle of friends than it is for the people with whom one is intimately associated.

WW

[THANK you]

This is so sane---I feel that all the MLA insanity is a self-feeding phenomenon that in fact makes things worse.  SO true that the social expectation is that one perform anxiaty (whether feeling it or not)--I feel like Hamlet, "I have that within which passeth show---these but the trappings and the suits of woe"---and the social sanctions against being calm and pleasant there are just ridiculous.  Thank you for giving us "permission" to act in whatever way we wish---for me, all that drama only makes it worse, and the degree to which I can act calm and happy and comfortable and NORMAL is the very degree to which I can get through that difficult experience better.

I would like for us to develop a better language about the whole thing---the danger is that positive-thinking-and-talking can become its own repressive expectation-set (this happens in cults, un medical settings, etc--my surgeon tells me I will feel "discomfort" when I will be in screamin' agony, for instance).  

Anyway thanks for your liberating post. *I* don't think you're arrogant---I think you're mature.

[Fiona]

Agreeing that "performing" job hunting anxiety is a cultural norm used for bonding. It's like women talking about dieting all the time and calling themselves fat. In both cases, the conversation can get repetitive and boring, but I think job candidates do need to vent. Those who think they're fat should stop whining and go get a pizza and beer. Which I think I will do right now.

[%sig%]

[readymade]

Boy PF, are you ever right.  When I went on the market years ago (not an MLA field), the department had a pre-conference workshop for us new grads with the recently hired faculty.  They all warned against discussing our interviews with each other.  I have since seen this repeated many times.

What a load of hooey.

We all had a great time comparing notes about various interviewers, making fun of the bad ones, laughing about our bad responses and bragging about our good ones.   We had a lot of the same discussions seen on these boards.  In short, we were all a major source of support for each other.

Maybe this was an anomaly, but I think it's this "culture of anxiety" that makes people so paranoid that they think they can't talk to their friends about what's going on.

[Waxwing]

It sounds like this worked out well for you--and one hopes for the others in your cohort as well.

You seem to be arguing the precise opposite of PF, however, who is arguing against buying in to this type of culture.  

However, since you mention her/his post with approval, I am confused

WW

[PF]

I think readymade was actually concurring with me by providing an alternative language with which to engage the job search process.  Rather than a pattern of interaction that runs along the lines of "Gosh... I'm so stressed out.  Did I do this right?  I really blew that!  Why did she get more interviews that I?  Can't they see I have more publications?" the language and means of interactions in readymade's  graduate program seemed to be more cooperative rather than catty and competitive.