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fannie
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« Reply #244 on: December 12, 2009, 12:57:30 AM » |
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Well, I think this was the worst of the campus interviews. I can no longer recollect if it was my first or second or third...
I did a telephone interview with the school first. It went very well. They asked me to do a job talk and a teaching demo, obviously. I naively wagged my tongue during the phone call and somehow agreed to do a job talk on an area that I had just started to develop (I did a seminar on it two years later, but...for that interview...I was pretty much in Encyclopedia Brittanica land and a book I'd read) (We used the EB before wikipedia, youngins).
During the telephone interview they asked me if I had any training in the 'other subfield' of the field. I said I didn't but 'of course' would be pleased to acquire it. (Now, it takes about six years to do that...but I figured...who cares...if they want to put up with my learning it...)
It probably bears on the story that my grandfather had been the chair of the board of trustees of this small east coast slac. My brother graduated from the school. My uncle was also on the board of trustees. My grandfather had brought in some of the biggest donors that the university had seen before, or since. There are scholarships at the school named after my family. A couple of the star professors were personal friends of the family, if not of mine. I hadn't said one stinking word about this. In fact, I was sort of curious about when it would be brought up. Maybe they hadn't noticed the family name? Hmm.
So I stayed with my aunt and walked to the train station because I did not want to let the cat out of the bag that my family lived in the rather well known house down the street from the campus. I was picked up at the train station at the appropriate time for my 'train' to have arrived by the SC chair, a junior faculty member (I think she was up for tenure or had just gotten it...?)
She was the SC, not the department chair. Battering me with questions. All felt perfectly normal.
Interview started getting weird when we went into the departmental office. The department chair - who looked just like that fascist professor in the pink sweater suits from Harry Potter - she looked like a beetle toad lady in pink - comes barreling up to me and hugs me. (No mention of knowing my family). Starts chattering away. Invites me to her office. She is packing up. Says something about how her daughter is having a baby today and she will become a grandma. Tells me that I will be taking over for her when I start (yes, as if I already have the job), so would I like her books? Ok, so she is not exactly in my sub-speciality, but it's not the 'other subfield', so I really think I can grow into teaching that area. Besides, it's trendy now. Good for me, I think.
Pink Beetle Toad Chair drags me to a campus event where one of the star professors who is actually a personal friend of my family is being honored with something or other. We stand around and bask in his aura. (He's really a great guy, in many ways. He gave the eulogy at my grandfather's memorial service years later, and even though he projected a great deal of his theoretical perspective onto my grandfather, making me cringe, nevertheless, I still like him). No mention by Pink Beetle Toad Chair that my family knows him personally. No explanation at all as to why we are there, except that I guess star professor was on the campus tour. I guess I was supposed to be impressed? Ok, a little bit I was. I guess it was to impress on me that they had good professors here?
So after watching that for about thirty minutes, standing, we exit among a group of faculty. Pink Beetle Toad Chair and a colleague greet. She kisses him on the lips. They are not married. Chair has little conversation with colleagues. Then she links her arm in arm and pulls me close, excitedly, as if to hug me. As she guides me across campus, fondling my arm, she tells me, gleefully, that they had made an offer to So - and -so, in another discipline, and she was overjoyed because So - and - so was not only accepting but also he was Hispanic! So yea! They could nail their diversity requirement AND get that field area covered. Isn't it just remarkable that he could teach such - and - such and ALSO have the GOOD LUCK of being Hispanic?
So I recollect that next there was a campus visit by a student. I asked the student what she would like to see happening in the department. She said that she wanted it to be more like the junior colleague who I had first met, less like Pink Beetle Toad Chair.
A pretty normal student tour, otherwise. I really enjoyed her. Smart with a sense of humour. But then, I knew a lot of grads from this school. She made no mention of my family name.
Then it was the teaching sample. Now, I had spent all of my time prepping my naive choice of job talk in my new field - literally with the Encyclopedia Britannica. The teaching sample never really came together in prep. I was terrified. When I got in the room, I started to lecture and discuss extemporaneously, and it was still, hands down, one of the five best classes that I have ever taught in my life. I think I was channeling Socrates himself or something.
Then it was time for lunch. We went to the student cafeteria. Folks, I had never seen a campus student cafeteria. It was a din. I just ignored that. We all sat down and talked shop. This was in the most early days of the assessment craze. I was thankful that I actually knew how to talk about assessment. The junior colleague was really up on it, but she hadn't been trained on it yet. Clearly she was impressed with me.
Pink Beetle Toad Chair rambled on about something else, interrupting the discussion. She asked me if I would be willing to read a poem at the Multicultural Awareness Extravaganza that would be happening in the campus chapel building (this is a really gothic architecture kind of slac). The Extravaganza would have members of the press there. She was very proud of the Extravaganza. It was the culmination of all of her efforts as a member of the now trendy sub subdiscipline that is not mine. I said, sure, of course, I would love to, as of course one would. Then Pink Beetle Toad Chair says, in a musing way, "Yeah, I think I will cancel the class that I have right before that. All the students will have to prepare their readings for the extravaganza anyway. We are meeting in the chapel the hour before that."
I think over my schedule and realize that she has just cancelled the class in which I had been the invited lecturer to give the job talk. I don't know whether I felt hugely relieved about getting a PASS! on my lousy job talk or hugely enraged because she had forgotten entirely that she assigned one to me.
That is when I lost the adrenalin rush from doing my teaching sample extemporaneously. Socrates left the building. Rage took over. It was evident on my face. I stuttered, "Oh, but...I was to give my job talk in your class."
Junior professor gapes, and looks at Pink Beetle Toad Chair, "You asked her to give a job talk? There is no job talk on the schedule."
I was speechless. Incapable of making words. I made utterances.
Pink Beetle Toad Chair really had forgotten the momentary lapse into professionalism by asking me to do a job talk as an invited guest in her subspeciality class.
As the red miasma dimmed, I realized that I was the winner here. I could throw away those Encyclopedia Britannica photocopies that I had pondered over during the train ride down. No intellectual sham was I!
We went back the department - I need to gather my things to go to the Provost's office. While we are there, Pink Beetle Toad Chair gets a message from the admin: her daughter is in the hospital! She babbles her way out the door. No word on what to do about the job talk, the cancelled class, the Extravaganza.
I meet the Provost. A personal friend of my grandfather. Well. He asked me, is there any family relation to the 'so-named' family related to the university? I say, yes, and explain who I am.
So that is when I find out that not even the Provost of the university knew that they were interviewing the granddaughter of their most significant fundraisor and yet-to-have-endowed-the-university-with-chair-or-written-out-a-trust-former-chairman-of-the-board-who-was-worth-millions-to-them, who was only years from expiring at the time.
Yes, the Provost hadn't bothered to follow up that little detail.
And for the record, my name is not Smith. It's really unusual. The only people with my name on the East Coast are my family. You would be a fool not to have researched that one out.
Or he was playing his cards really close to his breast, like I was.
Anyhow, that was a fantastic interview. He knew the strengths and weaknesses of the school, where it could go (and did - it's made some smart choices in the last decade and made a lot of money). Said they needed more faculty like me on campus.
Then it was over, and my student guide reappeared. I was escorted to the aforementioned chapel. Apparently, somehow, it had been decided that I was going to work with the students - maybe meet them again? I dunno - and help them with their readings for the Extravaganza. I was assured that Pink Beetle Toad Chair would be there shortly.
Someone hadn't told the students that Pink Beetle Toad Chair was at that moment at the hospital helping her daughter to give birth to another little tadpole.
At that point I was so beat down with nerves and hormones that I didn't bother to enlighten the students. Just went with the flow. Helped them all with their practice presentations. Learned more dirt about the student dissatisfaction with the department. Gave a little advice on dating, as I recollect. An hour and a half later, the press and the public started to arrive.
I am sure that another faculty member arrived from the SC. But I don't have any recollection of that. I recollect that a graduate assistant came, and he marshalled the students into some sort of order. Up until that moment, I wasn't even sure if I would have to run the Extravaganza myself.
Yep, no other SC members or faculty. Just the press and the public.
So I gave my poetic reading to a packed chapel with pictures flashing. I sat through the rest, looking for all the world like the professor who had organized the Extravaganza. I have a vague recollection of having to give some comment to a member of the press afterwards about how happy I was that the university was so supportive of Multiculturalism.
We are not done yet. Then there was the meeting with the dean. The dean, another beetle woman, tells me that I will have to reform the entire program of my subdiscipline. It had gone to hell in a handbasket for years (no surprise to me, hearing the student dirt). I would work a 4:4 load (this was the first it was mentioned). Plus I would coordinate the section, supervise graduate assistants, hire adjuncts, run clubs, and all this on a salary that made living in the local community an impossibility, la la la. Basically, she was interviewing me for a chair position. So it dawns on me: Pink Beetle Toad Chair is packing up her office for a reason. She wouldn't just be loaning me the books. Um, no one had mentioned this before.
I was pretty sure I had blown the interview after the dean colloquy. I knew damn well I wasn't ready to chair or co-chair a department. I had just turned in my dissertation, for gods sake.
Then it was dinner with the SC. This was at the faculty house. It started out nice, low key, chatty. But then a member from another department started to ask me how I would go about expanding the department's programs to third world countries, marketing the university as a sort of satellite thing in places like India. I recollect making vague gestures to the Economist, which seemed to impress them. I noticed, then, that this colleague was holding hands with the SC chair, under the table. They are both married to other people.
After dinner, I was brought to the station to catch my train. On the way to the station, I am again alone with the SC chair. She starts the peppering again. In the process, she tells me that she is now the department chair.
It's at the very end of the interview that I find out who is calling the shots in this process.
Well, I am not particularly displeased about this. Pink Beetle Toad lady was leaving. The young just-tenured or soon-to-be tenured hotshot prof that all the students liked would now run the department. Only...the dean had just told me it was in shambles? Was this new chair aware that I had just been interviewed for her supposed job? Or was it going to be some sort of co-chair thingie?
For a last moment, I had hopes that I might actually get this job.
Then the SC said it. "So, you really aren't a specialist in 'other sub field'? Well, that's just too bad. We really need someone with that 'other sub field'."
I get out of the car and make my train.
I spent the two hour ride back to my home on the phone with my advisor, in total shreds. By the end of the conversation, it's become apparent to me that I was in utter dread that they would actually make me the offer. Since I was jobless, I would have had to accept.
A week later, SC chair called me. She said that they decided to go with the other candidate. Since the job really WAS going to include teaching in the 'other sub field', they thought it would be better to take a candidate who had training in that field.
Anyway, so.
I hesitated about telling my grandfather about the experience.
They never got the endowed chair. Never got the trust. It all went to another university.
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