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Finding a Tenure-Track Job -- and Losing It

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By Michael Loyd Gray

Finding the job had become an obsession. Every waking moment seemed devoted to it, and I chronicled my job-search exploits in a series of articles on this site. When I finally landed that tenure-track job, I figured my troubles were over. In my articles for The Chronicle, I even advised readers what to do once they landed the job.

And then I lost the job.

After years of expensive trips as a finalist in a dozen searches, I had nabbed a tenure-track English position at a small private college. I had applied to virtually every job ad I saw -- hundreds listed here and in other places, and I told myself I'd take the first decent offer and count myself lucky.

Now I know I should have turned it down.

It was a poor fit, and I knew it as soon as I moved there. I didn't like the town, which lacked cultural opportunities, and the college was conservative. I was not their first choice, and they weren't mine. To make matters worse, in my role as faculty adviser to the student newspaper, events compelled me to first fire the student staff and then to eliminate the paper altogether to create a new, better one. Such steps might seem dramatic, but I acted only after the student staff members declined my instructions to write stories with bylines and were instead content with a paper that mostly printed the cafeteria menu, a few sports scores, and an occasional college press release.

Initially, the administration was supportive. Local newspaper editorials also backed me. But the fired students and their supporters protested. They handcuffed themselves to a flagpole and kept up the pressure with the administration throughout last fall's semester. Soon even some alumni expressed disapproval. At a college of fewer than 1,000 students, which lacks a large endowment, and is hypersensitive to losing even a handful of students for whatever reason, I became expendable, despite a good evaluation from my department head.

I had deluded myself into believing I could go to a place that didn't appeal to me. I would have a real salary and real health insurance and it wouldn't matter where I was. Believe me, it does matter. You're eager to say yes, yes, yes when opportunity finally arrives, but consider that there are times when you should instead say no, no, no.

Here are a few things I learned the hard way:

• Be honest with yourself when you apply for a job. Can you really live in that place? Do some research about what life would be like there and then decide if you can hack it. I'm talking about the weather, the social and political climate, the cost of living, cultural opportunities, and anything else you have come to realize is important to your lifestyle.

I did once follow my good instincts and turned down an offer to teach in the Caribbean. Crazy as it sounds, I realized it wasn't enough to have palm trees, gentle breezes, and those drinks with little umbrellas in them because I knew I didn't want to live on a tiny island isolated from the United States. For a two-week vacation? You bet. But not for life. Not even for a few years.

• Study how the students and the administration will interact with you. Those things are not so difficult to evaluate. During your on-campus interview, for example, take advantage of every chance to meet with students, especially the ones who will be taking courses you will teach, and find out whether their views on education are compatible with yours. Do they expect a rigid, lecture format that is just not your style? Are they meek? Will they shrink in fear if you put them in peer groups -- or even just a circle of chairs -- and give them free rein to explore and challenge? Find out if religious-based attitudes will derail your ability to conduct uninhibited discussions.

• Re-evaluate your teaching style when considering a job that might be a mistake. Do you sometimes use colorful language? That plays OK in some places and not at all in others. Are you liberal and the students conservative? Is it the other way around? Find out. I had a student complain that I must surely be advocating alcoholism because I pointed out that alcoholism was a common thread linking Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and other writers. It was a ridiculous complaint, but it contributed to my downfall at the college, and I might have become aware that such traps awaited me if I had made more serious inquiries. I certainly had the time because I was offered the job eight months before I was to start. Shame on me for not checking it out.

• If you have had conflicts with students in the past, determine whether you can survive them in the future. I taught at a community college for a year and had a student complain to the dean about the language in readings I assigned to the class. The dean told her that with all due respect, she should reconsider taking a class if she found the readings offensive. He stood behind me and rightly so. You need to find out how the dean at your school will react to a similar situation. Will he or she support you or abandon you?

• It's not just students you have to co-exist with. Your new colleagues will present challenges, too. You have already learned a few things about them through the interview process, but by digging deeper, into their research interests and teaching views, you can get a better idea of whether they will accept or reject you. If they're postmodernists and you're not, for example, then you either have to embrace a philosophy you don't really believe in to curry favor, or risk being isolated and have your chances for tenure diminished.

• Learn from my experience: If you aren't the department's first choice, then you probably will have some colleagues who will be lukewarm toward you at best. They will be distant, formal, and will frankly expect you to convince them that you should be there. They may not give you much chance to prove yourself. They might not even come by your office at all to get acquainted and will be content to let you drift without offering valuable advice on getting along with them as well as the students.

  In fact, if you are offered a job and it's made clear you are not the first choice -- that others declined it first -- I recommend you give serious thought to declining. The others who said no might have done their homework and know something you don't.

Don't learn the hard way. Do a better job of knowing what you might be getting into than I did. But, if the job doesn't work out, re-enter the job market again, this time wiser, more determined. Remember that you can still find another job. At the time of this writing I'm a finalist at a state university in a town I believe I can enjoy, and with colleagues who are friendly and helpful. Life goes on.