Beyond the Ivory Tower

Breaking the Spell

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By David L. Hoyt

In the first few years after I received my Ph.D. in history, my adviser would send me a little note in mid-August. Invariably it would read something like this: "You might want to take a look at this job at Up-State University; it's got your name written all over it."

In those days, the psychic momentum of that little note was sufficient to set in motion great inner flywheels of motivation, allowing me to prepare myself, one more time, to search for satisfactory employment in the history profession.

To my fiancée, on the other hand, my adviser's annual note was a sort of talisman, an electronic charm carrying a spell that erased all memories of previous disappointments, and whispered back to life those lingering hopes that this time, of the 200 applicants for the position at Up-State University, I would be the one chosen.

To her recurring distress -- she was gainfully employed outside academe and eager to move on with life -- it would take several years for me to overcome the persuasive force of that little note.

Usually my adviser's memo also included an inside tip on a hot new job not yet advertised, as well as hints at behind-closed-doors referrals and mention of hiring committees with lists of names to watch for.

All of that emanated like incense from the talisman. I felt better knowing it was sitting in my e-mail in box, for what was magic if not a highly refined way of increasing the odds in one's favor? Suitably inspired, I would then set about accumulating even more powerful magical charms in my job-seeking armory, such as letters of recommendation.

Although the power of the talisman was strong, it did not work in a vacuum. Throughout the decade of the 1990s, as I was pursuing my graduate training, demographers prophesied that a golden age of employment growth would soon dawn within the history profession, as baby boomers retired from the professoriate and hordes of jobless Ph.D.'s were finally welcomed into the ivory tower. Something similar was forecast for the humanities in general.

"Stay in graduate school as long as possible," my father counseled me several times a year. "Wait for the next big wave of jobs."

As it turned out, the hype about the "next big wave of jobs" coincided suspiciously with the hype about the "end of history" and the "extinction of the business cycle." By my third year out of graduate school, I began to sense that the stock market had not been the only site of irrational exuberance.

Still working as an adjunct instructor, and having received only lukewarm expressions of interest in each of the previous job seasons, I began to greet the annual arrival of the talisman with mixed feelings.

On the one hand, it was flattering to see that my adviser had not forgotten his fledgling Ph.D. halfway across the continent. On the other hand, I began to realize that his earthly powers were seriously limited. My mother crystallized this handicap for me when she asked, "Can't your adviser get you a job?"

Perhaps he could have, in that Arcadian time known as the 1960s. But things had changed much since then, and my adviser evidently knew from the start what I have only recently come to appreciate: that the so-called "market" for academic jobs, unlike authentic markets determined by the play of supply and demand, was determined entirely by witchcraft.

Or so it seemed to me. And so, in his sorcerer's workshop, perhaps with a copy of Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande before him, he had devised the talisman.

A few phone calls to friends in early September were enough to confirm that my adviser had sent similar notes to his other students, carefully matching job tips with candidates, sometimes sending the same talisman to more than one of us.

Not all of his students needed such magical assists, however. A few of them had struck pay dirt and landed desirable jobs in cities where people normally wanted to live.

The effect of those success stories was, of course, only to enhance the talisman's power to arouse hope and quiet despair among the rest of us. In the face of gnawing doubts that my continued efforts at publication and teaching would be rewarded, the good fortune of those few individuals proved at a stroke that there was indeed justice, even if the population of the elect was still frighteningly small.

Like those who return from a mysterious absence recounting their abduction by aliens, the lucky stars of the job market only made us believe in flying saucers all the more.

Then there were those over whom the talisman exercised no power whatsoever. They were no longer seeking work in academe, having instead, through some unfathomable transmutation, become anonymous data points in the statistical category of what the history profession in its surveys of doctoral recipients calls "Ph.D.'s seeking work outside academia."

These apostates were seldom invoked in professional forums or casual conversation, and even less often studied. They were only shades, moving about in a strange netherworld as if separated by an opaque and smoky glass. I happened to know a few of them, however, and it was largely through the inspiration of their examples that I eventually overcame the power of the talisman.

One such fellow had found work with the RAND Corporation, pulling in close to six figures researching white papers on military logistics. Another was in real estate, packaging deals for federally subsidized senior housing in New Jersey, with a postcard view of the Empire State Building from his living-room window.

Still others had gone into university administration, equity analysis, or community activism. Job-season talismans had lost all power over this group, unable to compete with the perks of real-world employment, such as home ownership, matched retirement-account contributions, and even the occasional windsurfing trip to Venezuela.

Talismans were rather more effective on the scholarly bohemians who, against all adversity, clung to the notion that the decade-long investment in their dissertation would surely be redeemed with a tenure-track job. Scattered about the country in an adjunct, short-term, part-time, one-year-reappointment-possible diaspora, a good number of my graduate cohort were still hoping to cash in on the promise of middle-class job security, though the struggle was grinding away at their endurance.

A postdoc and several comfortable short-term teaching assignments satisfied my ambition for a time, as did a reasonable publication rate. But what began to weaken my overall confidence were the utterly incomprehensible outcomes of the interviewing process -- my own and others' -- at the annual January convention of historians.

Positions advertised in one subfield wound up hiring in another; fun and friendly interviews led nowhere, while stiff and halting ones produced follow-ups. Some people were booked solid with interviews in a given year; some equally talented people were not.

It took a tremendous psychological toll to support this game of Russian roulette for four months of every year without crying uncle.

In August of my fifth year of job searching, I realized that repeated exposure to the talisman had finally freed me of its power.

The little e-mail from my adviser, with the hot new job tip and the aura of inside contacts, showed up as it had for four years previously. But this time it took no more than a few moments for me to compose and send my reply. "Thanks, but I'm no longer seeking employment in academe." Click.

With that stroke of the keyboard I had, as it were, come back up out of the rabbit hole. We'll see if the talisman shows up again next year. When and if it does, hopefully I'll be far away from anything resembling Russian roulette -- perhaps, if I'm lucky, windsurfing in Venezuela.