Vertigo on the Market

By Ann Harpold

My head has been spinning this fall. For a while the spinning was literal -- I had vertigo brought on by an inner-ear infection. It came on violently and suddenly, two weeks before classes began, and just after I had mailed the last of my job applications. I woke up and couldn't get out of bed.

Now, don't get me wrong, the emergency-room visit wasn't any fun, nor was the anti-vertigo medicine that I took for a day, before quitting because it made me paranoid and nauseated. It also wasn't pleasant to lose eight pounds in four days because I couldn't eat; and I did have a few panic attacks about how I was going to prepare for classes while unable to read or even sit up.

But, truth be told, it was nice to have an excuse to let things slide a bit as the semester began. This is my first semester back on the campus after having a baby. It's also my first semester ever as a tenure-track professor back on the job market. As I mentioned in my first column, I have a job that I love in the Los Angeles area but my husband and I want to move closer to family and I want a position with smaller classes and fewer commuter students.

The experience of incredible dizziness has served me well in the past few months, as I've been going nearly nonstop on my job search. So far, I've managed to keep my feet on the ground, my head on straight, and my breathing deep.

It is with considerable gratitude that I realize how lucky I've been. For some reason, there is a glut of jobs in my area of specialty in the social sciences this year. Out of nearly 45 potential positions, I ended up applying for 11 that seemed to be a good fit for me. Each of them have some of the key factors I'm looking for: a small-college environment, a particular emphasis in areas of my teaching and research, a proximity to wilderness or rural life, and a location close to at least one branch of our family.

Of those jobs, three in particular excite me. On paper, at least, they combine everything I'm looking for. So many jobs have opened up this fall that I didn't even apply for a visiting position that had seemed perfect in August. Instead, I began fantasizing about tenure-track life at a small college in a rural state.

I was also very fortunate that the people I asked for references readily agreed, even though they don't know me extremely well. When I chose to go back on the market, I also chose not to tell members of my department about my search. Who knew if I would be successful?

I have friends in the department, and colleagues I like and respect. I didn't want to jeopardize relationships by announcing that I was looking to leave. So I asked for letters of reference from people outside the university who are familiar with my work. I explained the situation, and we all resolved to be discreet.

I started classes with my list narrowed down, my applications sent, and my vertigo finally gone. But by the second week, I was feeling guilty and sneaky. At our first departmental meeting, it became clear how much our faculty had shrunk over the summer. We have colleagues on Fulbright Fellowships and otherwise abroad, one who has left for a different institution, one who has become dean, another who left for a different department, and the list goes on.

At that first meeting, I counted more departmental committees than departmental members. And as we discussed the two searches we were about to undertake (and as I was placed on the search committee), it became clear to me that it was only fair to alert my chairman to the possibility that I would be gone next year. That feeling was only solidified when one of my letter writers told me she would feel more comfortable, as well, if the chairman knew about the search.

So, with the baby on my lap, I went to his office and explained how important it was for me to live in a place I felt comfortable raising a family, a place where my son could ride his bike out in the country, a place where we could afford to buy a house. I didn't expect him to be extremely surprised, and he wasn't. I didn't expect him to beg to keep me, and he didn't.

Rather, I left his office feeling respected and valued as a member of the department, someone who would be missed but not mourned. I left with his good wishes, and with the feeling that I had a new ally in my search. The fact that he later sent me an e-mail congratulating me on my anonymously written column for this publication made me even happier that I had been open about my situation.

Not long after, one of the departments where I had applied called to arrange a telephone interview. It went extremely well, and during the course of it, two things became clear.

First, the hiring committee was moving extremely quickly -- perhaps too quickly. I hadn't really anticipated taking myself off the market before Thanksgiving, much less by the mid-October date the committee provided as its target.

Second, it was also clear that the department was searching for someone to take on a significant preprofessional advising role. In fact, that was the second question the committee head asked me (after, "Why do you want to come here?").

I enjoy advising students, getting to know them in my office hours, and helping them envision their future. But the activist advising role that the committee members described for the position made me extremely uncomfortable, as did the fact that I would not receive any extra release time from teaching. The advising role would be in addition to an already heavy teaching load.

By the time the phone interview was over, I was pretty certain I didn't want the job and I felt bitterly disappointed. The position is in a terrific and affordable part of the country, in an area that offers significant opportunities for my husband's career. But if the department called back to arrange an on-campus interview, I knew the only reason I would go would be to practice by interview technique.

When I called my husband to tell him how the phone interview had gone, he said I sounded as though someone had run over the dog. He tried to cheer my up by saying he doubted the department would even call. It was clear to him I would not be a good fit for the position, he figured it would be clear to the hiring committee, too.

When the department did call five days later, I politely declined the campus interview, hung up, and began to worry that the phone might never ring again.

Then it rang five times in four weeks, and I got busy scheduling two phone interviews and three campus visits. As I prepare to go on my second campus interview of the fall -- husband at my side, and baby in tow -- my head is spinning just as quickly as when I had vertigo. But this time I'm enjoying it.