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The Real World: Academic Job Search

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By Laura Kellerman

One day in November, as I was walking to the campus where I am finishing my dissertation, I saw a long line of eager undergraduates fidgeting on the sidewalk outside a local bar. They were waiting their turn to audition for the MTV reality series, The Real World. I confess that I observed this queue with a feeling of bemused superiority, until it hit me: My husband Ben and I were in a similar queue, only for a different reality show: The Real World: Academic Job Search.

In my first column, I wrote about the unsettling experience of waiting for job listings in English literature to appear, in anticipation of our first time on the job market. Now, our reality show has begun.

Ignore for the moment the abysmal ratings that Job Search would receive from MTV's coveted age-18-to-24 demographic. In our real world, routine and drama strangely coexist as we perform a mind-numbing array of tasks, including writing and revising, in a seemingly endless circuit; running manically around the English department trying to extract recommendation letters from overworked professors; obtaining the proper letterhead and envelopes; making a job spreadsheet; doing research on the departments to which we plan to apply; e-mailing our blessedly uncomplaining program assistant on a near-daily basis; and proofreading until we can't see straight.

The most time-consuming undertaking has been the composing of job materials: a two-page, single-spaced job letter, a complete CV, and a two-page dissertation abstract. In our department, we are lucky enough to get feedback on these items from a professor who acts as a job-placement coordinator and from our advisers.

And of course, we get some of the best criticism from our friends, and in my case, from my spouse. I can't tell you how many drafts of my job letter I have written; no, literally, I can't. I lost track at eight or nine. If you're tired reading about all of this, I don't blame you. I feel tired writing about it.

But perhaps most emotionally exhausting -- and full of drama for me as a job seeker -- has been the strategic and rhetorical decisions that I make, second-guess, and obsess over ad nauseam:

• Should the second page of the job letter be printed on letterhead or plain paper? (Plain was the consensus, I found out, after I had sent off my first batch using letterhead for both pages.)

• Is it OK to send all of your recommendation letters to each department, and should you send them even if they're not asked for? (Yes and yes, my professors say.)

• How much should you tailor the letter to the job? (Opinions differ greatly.)

As with so many other rites of passage, it turns out that in the realm of academic job applications, there are only a few things about which most people agree, and an awful lot about which almost no one does. So, I just make my best educated guess and run with it, realizing that if faculty members in our department hold such varied views, so, most likely, will the professors reading my application on the other end.

Despite these challenges, the biggest surprise has been how unaccountably cheerful I have felt, as I assemble my materials and make my trips to the post office -- in short, how good it feels finally to approach the end of graduate school and the beginning of something else. Sure, I have my bad days, but not nearly as many as I had expected. This state of affairs is especially surprising because I characterize myself as a highly realistic person. (Some Pollyanna types might say pessimistic.)

In writing my first column, I could taste my own apprehension of the job market, but anxiety has largely dissolved in the face of taking action and becoming aware of what that action symbolizes. I was so busy being "realistic" about the trials and tribulations of the job market that I forgot another reality, one that now seems increasingly compelling: I finally have the chance to present my research and teaching to the community that I want to join.

I have been using the pronoun "I" a lot because, while Ben and I go through this job-search process together, we each go through it on our own, too. Although we are still each other's most trusted and regular reader, the exigencies of the past few months have forced both of us to become more self-reliant in reviewing our job materials and making daily decisions.

We have had to institute some rules, principal among them: No talking about job stuff after 11 p.m. A few cranky experiences early in the fall semester -- when everyone was tired and not thinking clearly -- taught us that rule in a hurry. After all, we need a little space just to have a marriage.

Moreover, we are learning that the experience of applying for jobs is highly individualized. My reality right now is a little different from Ben's, and both of ours are different from those of other friends in the department.

For instance, Ben and I both decided not to apply to jobs with high teaching loads that would make it difficult to publish research or move to a more attractive position. But for several reasons, Ben has chosen to make his job search even more selective than mine. I have cast my net more widely, discovering that there is a considerable range of institutions at which I can picture myself thriving.

We don't yet have a clear sense of how this curious dance of priorities will affect where we end up this fall. We only know that our sometimes solitary processes will ultimately yield a joint decision. In this real world, drama pops up in strange little places along the way, even if the cast and location aren't exactly glamorous.