The Job Market Flashback Part 2

This post is a continuation of my reflection on my time on the job market.  If you haven’t already read Part 1, I encourage you to do so before tackling this rant.

Between the convention in November and the start of Spring semester in January, the already bad taste left in my mouth about the job market turned rancid.  The month of December means departments rushing about to finalize grades and prepare for a well-deserved break from classes and students while figuring out Winter writing schedules, prepping courses for Spring, and holiday travel plans.  In short, it means hiring takes a back seat for a while because other stuff has to get done first. 

Intellectually, I understand this.  I too was slogging through grades, writing projects, and holiday plans.  Nevertheless, I habitually checked the job boards only to be disappointed that there once again hadn’t been a rush of new job postings in the last hour (or, you know, the last fifteen minutes…). Before navigating away from one job board to the next, I’d always click refresh just in case I missed the update window by a few seconds.  There were only a handful of new positions posted between the end of Fall semester and the start of Spring, but without the distraction of courses to teach and papers to grade, my attention to the boards was never more acute. This was not good for my mental well-being.  Not one bit.

Near the end of Winter break and the beginning of Spring semester, I attended a small conference with a bunch of rhetoric-type folks in all stages of still-in-graduate school. It was great.  To this day, it was one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended even though I’m fairly certain I pissed off a senior scholar in a panel session—which, as a job seeker was probably not the best move.  

I remember a few things from the conference about research methods, publishing, and so on, but what sticks out most visibly in my memory was a handful of conversations with folks from other universities who were also on the job market. Folks whom I’d met on the various conference circuits.  Folks with whom I’d shared meals and hoisted glasses.  Folks who were, and in most cases still are, my friends.  Folks who were pretty sure they’d be getting the jobs I’d also applied for—and some of them did.

Realizing that most of the folks at the conference hadn’t caught the brass ring yet was a strange mix of terrifying and terrifying.  On the one hand, I was reminded that my small time Ph.D. and silly dissertation project (about stand-up comedy… who cares about comedy?) meant that I had to wait at least until those folks—who were all in better programs and had probably thirty or forty thousand times the publications that I had—had their fill of the available positions before tossing the scraps to the rest of us.  

On the other hand, I was reminded that success in the field is never guaranteed and the elements of a job application that can be controlled are few.  A big name university on a degree or a letter of recommendation from an important scholar doesn’t magically create opportunities. It doesn’t hurt, to be sure, but it isn’t the only factor—or even the most important in the hiring decision.  At that conference, I realized that we were all in the same situation.  Nobody had a job yet (mostly because the typical timeline for hiring cycles means that offers get made in Spring, not Fall).  Everybody was staring into the void of unemployment and fighting off the crushing anxiety of uncertainty—just like me.  This was strangely comforting.

At the conference, I also got a glimpse at how different graduate school experiences affect how people approach and endure the job market.  Typically, we talk about grad school and the market with a kind of universality that elides some unique, and important, sources of anxiety for students and job seekers alike.  The conference gave me some perspective on the difference between my experience as a job seeker from a small program—where I was a comparatively big fish in a small pond (I literally won BGSU’s award for “outstanding graduate student”… the university’s not the department’s)—and my friends who were grinding out their degrees as bigger universities in better programs.

I was one of only a few rhetorical scholars in my program.  That meant that I wasn’t often competing with colleagues in my graduate cohort for placements.  Apart from the cohort level competition for fourth-year funding, we were pretty much all doing our own thing.  

That’s not true at other programs.  

In other programs, folks compete with three or four or more other people from their own cohort—people with whom they’ve survived dreaded Prof. EFG’s unnecessary-but-stupidly-hard seminar, endured a number of too small hotel rooms packed with too many conference goers, occupied less than habitable student housing, or, in some cases, a shared vision of their future—or even a bed.  For those people, I imagine the competition of the job market was less abstract than it was for me.  They knew who had applied for which positions and who was already being interviewed for jobs they desperately wanted.  

This small conference was one of the most powerful reminders that the academic job market involved other people.  It’s not just CVs and impressive letters of recommendation.  It’s people.  People who are every bit as committed to the profession as I am.  People who will miss out on an opportunity if I get one. People who also sit and scream at the jobs wiki when yet another good job posts an update and they didn’t get an interview. 

The conference was strangely cathartic, but also troubling for me as a job seeker.  I sat in panels with smart people who were good scholars from great programs and realized that we were all in the same position.  We were all bearing the weight of the job market. At the same time, I worried that I wouldn’t measure up because I had a much clearer sense of my direct competition. Imposter syndrome is real and the job market amplifies it exponentially. This is also true of Imposter syndrome’s fraternal twin, the envy-fueled resentment that pervades the academy (“What do you mean XYZ got a job a Big State U?  I’m WAY better/smarter/more [self]important than that idiot.  They didn’t even interview me!  S/he must have slept with a committee member.”).  Nevertheless, it helped to see my anxieties reflected back in my peers. I wasn’t crazy.  Or at least, I wasn’t any crazier than anyone else on the market.

Being with other people in the same shitty situation may not have reduced my anxieties about the job market, but recognizing my struggles in their experiences gave me hope that we could all get through it together... as long as there's enough coffee.