On the A.B.D. Track: Staying Afloat Without Drifting Off Course

By Brian C. Shipley

About a year ago, a terrible reality began to sink in about my career as a doctoral candidate in history: I was going to run out of money well before I finished my dissertation.

After four generous years, my fellowships had run their course, and there was no prospect of any further support either within my institution (a medium-size public university in Eastern Canada) or from my government sponsors. Only half-joking, my graduate chairman's best advice was to suggest going on a diet. A few months earlier, I'd been diligently collecting information about postdocs, imagining that I would somehow graduate on time. But now, an honest look at the state of my project made it obvious I was not going to be defending by summertime. Lots of useful advice has been published in these columns for those "lucky" people who are just finishing, or already have, their doctorates, and are trying to land a tenure-track job. But what are we A.B.D.'s who are at least a year (or more) away from completion to do?

My situation, of course, was exactly the one that all young master's students are warned about when they express an interest in pursuing a Ph.D. How can you justify a career choice in which your income is primarily borrowed money? I always swore that this would never happen to me -- after all, just about everyone else got through, one way or another, didn't they? True, many people seemed to rely on spousal support, not an option in my case because my partner was also an A.B.D., stuck in the same boat. And I had already missed the early fall deadlines for the doctoral fellowships offered at a few libraries and research centers. But I still had seven or eight months before my final check arrived. In the meantime, surely I could find work teaching as an adjunct, or with the government, or in the private sector, if all else failed. What impact this would have on my academic progress was something I would just have to worry about later.

Never having applied for a "real job" before, I started slowly. Over the course of the year, I applied for about 25 jobs, most in my home country of Canada, but some in the United States. It sure felt like a lot, though, after revising my newly constructed résumé 25 times, and struggling to write 25 cover letters that didn't sound completely anonymous, desperate, or naïve. I tried to restrict my search to advertised positions that overlapped in some way with my research areas, in occupations ranging from college teaching to governmental-policy analysis to publishing, editing, and communications. This was partly because I thought it would increase my chances of success, and partly because I didn't want to forget about my dissertation altogether.

My first surprise was that the private sector, which I had been thinking of a last resort, turned out instead to be a closed door. Corporate human-resources people didn't seem to think that a résumé summarizing my conference papers and undergraduate grading experience was what they wanted. Somehow I thought I could convince them with cleverly written cover letters that I had exactly the analytical and communications skills they needed, but it was all for naught. The most I got in response to any of my applications was an automatically generated acknowledgement. I never received so much as an actual rejection letter, much less a phone call.

With Canadian government jobs, it was at least possible to get an interview because the selection process was more inclusive: I had applied for positions that were advertised under a general graduate-recruitment program. The tradeoff was that far too many people were interviewed for each job, making the hiring process drag on for more than six months. The three interviews I had -- one for the National Archives of Canada and two for policy research, were by and large disappointing. The government managers didn't want to know about my research interests or teaching experience, they wanted to hear stories of how I could "negotiate with teammates" or "facilitate change." The questions were all pre-written, and we had to stick strictly to the script. Despite making it to the final stages of the process, the end result in each case was the same: no offer. The richest irony of my job search was that although the Canadian government had paid for a large part of my graduate education, it didn't seem very interested in putting me and my skills to work.

My conclusion was that the best employment prospects for A.B.D. students are, by far, within academia. No matter how bad the competition is in here, there are 10 times as many people applying for each job in the outside world, jobs that don't require an M.A. or A.B.D. status. Moreover, at least the people doing the hiring in an academic setting actually understand what it is that you've been doing with your life, and what your qualifications are worth. Not to mention that it makes for a much more supportive environment when your employer understands that you're working on a project of your own at home.

So what kind of academic jobs are open to the A.B.D.? Technically, many tenure-track jobs only say "Ph.D. preferred or near completion," but we all know that the market is much too competitive for that. I applied for only one tenure-track job, and that was early on in my search. The embarrassment of having to ask professors to write me reference letters for a job that I was clearly underqualified for, and would obviously never get, quickly cured me of this folly. I did, however, manage to obtain interviews for two non-tenure-track teaching positions. One of the positions was at a community college. It paid very well, but the campus was located in a small outpost on the road to Alaska, literally in the middle of nowhere. The interviewers seemed mainly concerned with how long I'd be willing to stick around. My partner and I, who had applied jointly (that's another story), didn't get the job, but we did get a lovely expenses-paid trip to northern British Columbia.

My second academic interview was to teach in the freshman Great Books program on my home campus. I knew a fair bit about the environment, the students, and the curriculum, and I had a good feeling about the interview, but those things didn't add up to a successful outcome. One problem was that a lot of jobs I could apply for as an A.B.D. were ones that required only an M.A. -- in other words, they were teaching-intensive, and put a high value on having extensive classroom experience.

Unfortunately, I've never been a lecturer; my teaching know-how is limited to running tutorial sections and doing all the grading. From this point of view, my best option would have been to spend the year teaching a course or two of my own, working for a small fraction of what my fellowship paid. I would be occupied at least half the week, and losing money fast. It's a very difficult choice, and luckily one I never had to make, because I wasn't offered any teaching within my own department anyway.

At this point in my job search, I was starting to lose faith. It was late July, the lease was ending on our apartment, and nothing had panned out. The much-joked-about idea of living in my parents' basement suddenly looked disturbingly likely. Most research jobs required a Ph.D., most teaching jobs required experience I didn't have, and most nonacademic jobs required me not to have spent my entire adult life as a full-time student.

I still had one interview left, though, for a job with a historical editing project, a kind of work that I hadn't thought much about before. But the position -- working on the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University at New Brunswick -- suited an A.B.D. well: It required more firsthand research experience than an M.A. graduate would have, but it wasn't tenurable, so a Ph.D. wasn't necessary. And it didn't require teaching experience. From what I had learned so far in my job search, this was not only my last chance, but also my best one. After the interview, I had a better feeling than I'd had about any of the previous ones. For the first time, the people I'd talked to had understood who I was and what I did, and they had wanted to know about my own research. The project had a successful history of hiring A.B.D.'s, and the staff members assured me that they would support my efforts to complete my dissertation as soon as possible. Although the financing for my position was subject to annual grant renewals from a state agency, the position carried a faculty appointment, a salary in the mid-$30's, and benefits. Not surprisingly, I accepted the job in an instant when it was offered to me.

Obviously, I won't finish my degree as quickly as I otherwise might have. But the reality is that I would be working full-time now in any case, if I were teaching as an adjunct, or doing anything else. When I eventually do finish (within a year or two, I hope), my CV will be more diverse, and when (or if) I decide to look for something new, I'll be in a better position from which to do so. For the present, though, I'm still a doctoral candidate, and I should get back to working on my dissertation.