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Free Fall

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By Hillary Jack

When trapeze artists swing from one bar to the next, they often prepare to let go of the first bar just as the second one approaches. In especially thrilling shows, the artist lets go of the first bar, then sails through the air while the audience holds its collective breath, fearing that she might fall the long way down before a second bar will swoop in to swing her safely back to the platform.

My job search this past year was a lot like that.

Back in November, though, trapeze artists were far from my mind.

I had been standing for an hour at the counter of a shipping store in Podunk, Flyover State, with a foot-high pile of job applications, waiting while the clerk entered the mailing address of each into the computer. She worked at a pace that suggested someone had rearranged her keyboard while she wasn't looking.

As an urban transplant to Podunk -- where I was doing a clinical internship in psychology -- I found such slow-paced scenes occurred with maddening regularity. The applications were my ticket out of there.

I had no illusions about my chances, but my mentor showed unflagging confidence and urged me to apply for tenure-track jobs right out of graduate school. I took her advice. She had never steered me wrong, and the one time I veered from the path she had shown me -- well, let's just say that's how I ended up in Podunk in the first place. To get out of there, I was going to need a pretty compelling application package.

In those days, I would work from about 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., come home, throw a four-for-$5-caliber frozen dinner in the microwave, and eat it at my computer, where I would write, revise, scrap, and rewrite my cover letters, statements of teaching philosophy, and statements of research interests until around 1 a.m. That routine went on for weeks, during which time I repeatedly relived the aforementioned scene at the shipping store.

Most people, I imagine, try to distract themselves after they send out their applications, so they won't feel too stressed. Not me. I like to reread my materials ad infinitum -- or at least until I discover that in a brilliant display of subconscious self-sabotage, I have incorporated into each application at least one error. Sometimes it's a typo and sometimes I've misnamed the college or misspelled a committee chair's name.

After one particularly stellar episode, I wrote a letter to an administrative assistant practically begging her to destroy the evidence of my blunders, replace my application with a new version (enclosed), and please, oh, please, keep this little incident to herself. No invitation to interview followed. Coincidence?

Over all, I had one telephone interview and three campus visits, two of which resulted in tenure-track offers.

Unfortunately, the two offers did not arrive at the same time, so I was not in the happily powerful position of deciding between them, playing one against the other to maximize salary and start-up money. No, my offers came one at a time. From two entirely different types of institutions. With no overlap in the window of time I had to make a decision on each.

Both interviews had taken place in January. My interview at Quaint but Competitive College was preceded by several very warm and friendly phone calls. The department head gave me her home phone number. A department secretary was in frequent contact with me, made all of my travel arrangements, and sent me a detailed itinerary. I knew well in advance of my trip which faculty members I would be meeting and exactly what was expected of me in the way of a job talk.

By comparison, my interview arrangements at Prisonlike State University involved the committee chairwoman's persuading me to drive five hours instead of flying in (she could drive it in four, she informed me) and my having to call the day before to find out where I was to stay (it turned out to be a 1970s-style dormitory). I had no advance itinerary, and a sinking feeling that I might arrive to find that everyone had forgotten I was coming.

As it turned out, I really liked the people (if not the laboratory space and facilities) at Prisonlike State. My research interests fit quite well with a number of others in the department, and I had engaging discussions with many of my would-be colleagues.

What I wasn't sure I liked was the gig. Research was far more important to the department than teaching, which suited me just fine, but since it had a graduate program in clinical psychology, I would also be expected to teach clinical classes and provide clinical supervision. But my internship in Podunk had convinced me that the clinical life was not for me. Despite the many benefits of a research-focused university (e.g., prestige, time for research and writing, graduate-student assistants), I was slowly realizing I had no interest whatsoever in being a clinical supervisor.

The people at Quaint but Competitive College were great, too, and so were its facilities and location. My research interests filled a niche in the department, and I could see myself functioning well there.

That job, too, had pros and cons. Research would be important, but only as a close second to teaching, with service a distant third. The absence of graduate students would mean no clinical supervision and no time spent serving on dissertation committees, but it would also mean no research assistants, no teaching assistants, and no seasoned junior collaborators. The teaching load was somewhat unnerving, but it was growing on me, and my trusted graduate mentor had once told me she thought I'd be a good fit for a college with bright undergraduates.

In the end, I decided I would prefer the job at the small college to the one at the research university.

But it was the university that called first.

The head of the department offered me the job in early February and explained that a letter would be arriving to make it official and that I would have 14 days (from the date the letter was written) to make a decision. Outwardly, I feigned enthusiasm. Mentally, I was calculating the time difference. I wanted to call the department head at the college to find out when and if it would be making an offer, too. But was it too late to call that night? Would I wake her infant son?

Long story short: Despite my attempts at negotiation, the university needed an answer by February 17, and the college wouldn't be making its decision until February 24.

You see the dilemma. The second bar wouldn't be rising up to greet me. Let go and hope? Or hold tight to the first bar? "To thine own self be true?" Or, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?"

Instead of holding her breath like a circus audience, I thought my graduate mentor would choke when I told her I was going to let go of the bar, sail through the air, and see what happened.

Once I had made the phone call and let go of the first job, though, it didn't feel much like sailing. It felt like free fall, with no safety net. Just because you're true to "thine own self" doesn't mean your hopes won't crash and burn. The idea of emerging from the process with an offer but no job left me nauseated.

Finally, with the angst, doubt, and self-loathing threatening to turn into a monster-size dose of regret, came the phone call from Quaint But Competitive College: "I'm calling to offer you a tenure-track position," the chairwoman said enthusiastically and without the smallest hint that the position, as I would later learn, had first been offered to someone else, who had declined. A fellow trapeze artist, perhaps.

So far, being at the college has been great, although it's hard knowing that the job was first offered to someone else, and there are consequences to having accepted it under those circumstances.

When the second bar swoops in to save you after you've been in free fall, you grab onto it relieved and grateful, winded and exhausted. You're not in a position of power at the negotiating table. You take what you get, thankful to have a job. If my own experience is any indication, it takes a while to catch your breath and get ready for the next circus show -- teaching, research, and service, in that order.