First Person

Being Myself, Only Better

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By Steve Pink

In late autumn every year, my department assembles a panel of graduate alumni who offer advice to candidates new to the academic job market. As one might expect, these meetings sometimes repeat information we've all heard before, but in general the participants' comments are very helpful.

At one such gathering a few years ago, a woman whose scholarly work and professional integrity I respect listened intently as her colleagues described the various stages of the job search. When it came time for her to speak, she looked over her notes, pushed them to the side, and said with a wry smile, "Be yourself -- only better."

At the time, I thought her comment was overly trite, unworthy of the scholar I admired. Her remark seemed better suited to an advertisement for hair dye, or a brochure detailing the benefits of liposuction. My experiences on the job market this year, though, have forced me to reconsider the value of her statement.

At each stage of my job search, I have been keenly aware that who I am (personally, intellectually, professionally) informs the perceptions that hiring departments have of me. But I've come to realize that managing those perceptions is a responsibility that job candidates cannot take lightly. That understanding proved especially relevant during the stage of the search I've just completed: the campus visit.

After interviewing with hiring departments at the national convention of the Modern Language Association, I was invited by some of those colleges to visit their campuses for day-long interviews. I had been through this routine last year, so I was familiar with the expectations such visits typically entail: a scholarly lecture, meetings with the faculty members and administration, and, in some cases, a teaching demonstration.

I was particularly interested in one of the departments, however, and so the stakes attached to that campus visit felt especially high. To prepare, I spent hours combing the Web for extra advice on this stage of the search. While I learned that some candidates clearly aren't familiar with the basic rules of etiquette ("Don't chew with your mouth open"), each site essentially reiterated the suggestion I had heard at that departmental meeting a few years before: Be yourself, but be your absolute best self.

I'm a relatively outgoing guy. I enjoy meeting people and chatting about common interests. But by the end of these campus visits I felt as though the smile that usually came easily to me had been cemented into a grin that was a little too eager and a little too wide. Think Mary Tyler Moore in overdrive. I never felt the exhaustion that friends and colleagues had told me to expect; a healthy oversupply of adrenaline took care of that. But about halfway through each long day of being myself (only better), I started to feel as though I was performing that self rather than being myself. And it was difficult to stop the show.

That awareness only added to my anxiety. Like many academics I know, I am relentlessly self-critical. I replay personal gaffes and professional stumbles to an almost ridiculous degree. This trait is often helpful, since I tend to learn from my mistakes. I still cringe internally, for example, at the memory of falling flat on my face as I walked to the podium to give my first conference paper. (Lesson: Look out for extension cords.) At other times, though, this inner critique is a powerful nemesis, since it prevents me from shrugging off the stuff I can't correct and then moving forward.

During my campus visits, both features of this self-critique were in full swing. Because friends tell me I sometimes seem lost in my own world, I made a deliberate effort to be engaged at every point in the visit. I shook hands firmly, listened intently, and nodded politely -- and I found, to my surprise, that I was having fun. Just when I started to relax, though, that other voice began to chime in. Had I laughed a little too loudly during dinner? Was I overdressed? Underdressed? Did I forget to ask Professor X about her work?

The campus visit, I discovered, was the ideal breeding ground for my particular brand of social neurosis. While I ultimately enjoyed myself during these visits, I was left with no clear sense of how well (or how badly) my final interviews had gone. My inner critique prevented me from making any sort of objective assessment. I went home feeling relieved that the interviews were over, but also deeply anxious about my performance. I had tried to be myself during these visits, but I feared that my attempt hadn't been good enough. As you might expect, I tortured myself over the next week or so by replaying all the foul-ups I felt were obvious in retrospect.

It turns out, though, that things went better than I thought. After convincing myself that I had struck out at my campus interviews, I was stunned when I began to receive offers from those departments -- including one from the institution that most appealed to me. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world. I was thrilled, of course, to know I'd be employed next year. And I certainly never expected to be in a position where I'd have to make a choice among colleges.

My elation lasted a few days. Then an all-too-familiar anxiety began to temper my excitement. I've heard at least a few horror stories of offers being rescinded at the last moment, so I've now obsessively begun to check my mailbox for written contracts. My family and friends are convinced that the job market has forced me to manufacture things to worry about, that unless I'm in a constant state of anxiety I somehow feel I'm not doing the search correctly.

Their assessment is probably accurate. I am a Class-A Worrywart. I remain hopeful, though, that once those documents arrive I'll be able to relax a bit. Until then, as Yogi Berra famously malapropped, "It ain't over til it's over."