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Lessons in Anger Management

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By Jon T. Coleman

I killed Lighty the penguin in a drunken rage at the conclusion of last year's job search. It wasn't his fault. He didn't choose to be standing on the porch that late in January. Between preparing for interviews and traveling to my profession's annual job mart, I hadn't found time to dismantle the Christmas decorations. Lighty paid dearly for my procrastination. I floored him with a sucker punch to the back of the head, throttled his beak, and sank my knee into his gut, shattering the bulb in his stomach. Inner flame doused, I punted the dead fowl across the yard where he skidded to a halt under a lilac bush.

Ever since that night I've been haunted by a question: What is the appropriate reaction to failure on the academic job market?

I'm pretty sure that fury, bourbon, and violence against plastic penguins rank among the least helpful responses to a professional setback, but after laying waste to Lighty I have auditioned several more-constructive coping techniques and found them all wanting.

I counted my blessings, adjusted my expectations, and refocused my life around processes instead of outcomes. I practiced yoga, hit the elliptical trainer, and lifted weights. I wrote an article, reworked my CV, joined an organization in a subfield I am interested in, and revised my dissertation for publication. I am fit, credentialed, and moderately well adjusted.

I am also still mad. The Christmas decorations continue to be in peril, and now I can bench press 350 pounds.

Over the past year I have endured a crash course in anger management and I have come to the conclusion that my madness cannot be willed away. I harbor no ill wishes towards any person or institution, but I cannot pretend that the job market does not piss me off.

I'm not fond of my one dress-up blazer, and my inability to knot a proper necktie causes endless frustration. I'm sick of flying to a conference 10 days after Christmas, and I gag thinking about the stench of menthol cigarettes that will waft from the only room I can afford. And those big hotel lobbies, I hate them the most. Hundreds of job seekers turn those spaces into gleaming cauldrons of hope, fear, and jealousy.

My peeves are hardly original. Every aspiring historian passes through this ordeal whether they land a job or not. It has been bad for a long time; it will be worse this year with endowments underperforming and budget crises gripping departments across the country. The market is an equal-opportunity bruiser, and the question is not "Will I get walloped?" but "How shall I conduct myself after being knocked down?"

I am making a pitch to include loud and fruitless expressions of anger among job candidates' repertoires of healing strategies. While I agree that acts of self-improvement mitigate the gloom of unemployment, I refuse to let wholesome behaviors like reviewing books and designing new courses completely dampen my antagonism.

My feelings are real, justified, and widely shared among the echelons of young scholars shut out of the tenure track. Collectively, our frustration would blow the lid off a Hilton. Exercise and attitude adjustments siphon off some negative energy, but the remainder needs to be expressed.

These emotions must gush forth to keep both job seekers and job finders honest. The seekers need continual reminders that, while academe remains a meritocracy, it is a sad and irksome one. For every position there are dozens of candidates who could perform the job equally well.

Confronted with a landslide of merit, hiring committees base their decisions on taste, fit, and departmental quirks. Job seekers have no control over this process, and they should not take rejections personally.

This goes for the successful ones as well. Job finders should not view their selection as a personal triumph. In a system bloated with talent, the line separating those with health care and retirement plans from those with hangovers and broken penguins is razor thin.

But this parity does not last. The hired soon out-distance their unemployed cousins. The lottery winners, those with light teaching loads, sabbaticals, and research support, will become exciting scholars while their cohorts languish as adjuncts or leave in search of happier occupations. This system of whimsical unfairness should be fixed, and scholars should work to alter the economic and political structures of modern universities that keep the system in place. But institutional change, if possible at all, takes time, luck, and huge organizing efforts.

I'm going on the market this fall. What can one job seeker do? Be honest. People who call themselves scholars need to tell the truth about the emotions swirling through the halls of higher education. Shouting "I'm mad!" will not change the system, but it will promote honesty -- the taproot of good scholarship. To perform their jobs well, to gather and disseminate the knowledge that changes people's lives, scholars must first be frank with themselves. Job candidates can help by expressing their true feelings.

In a few months, I will resurrect Lighty. I have a plan: I'll pop out his dents with a toilet plunger and extract the shattered light by jamming a raw potato into the socket and twisting. If it goes well, one night in early December, Lighty will emerge from the basement like Lazarus from his tomb. Standing in the yard, next to the lilac bush, will be an underemployed historian, trying to figure out if the incandescence ushering from his penguin's belly signifies hope or resentment.