Do not get a Ph.D.!

The Reality of the Situation

2010-02-08T16:28:00.000-08:00

As a visiting asst. professor I am contingent faculty. I depend on a yearly contract that may or may not be renewed at the end of the year. I teach a bigger load than my tenure-track colleagues, I am expected to publish just as much as they do - yet I am paid a lot less than they are.
A big reason I was hoping for a tenure-track job - apart from the stability - was the raise in pay. I need it. I have bills to pay.
So here I am, racing toward the end of my contract. I have been offered a renewal. I suppose I will take it. I'll just keep teaching more classes, grading more papers, publishing and researching just as much as my colleagues for less pay. Such is the life I have chosen.
So I guess I'll hang on for (yet another) year on the job market. I am probably deluding myself - but I keep thinking if I can just publish one more article, if I can just teach a few more classes - someone, anyone will be willing to offer me a tenure-track job. I'm a hard worker, a good colleague, and I can teach and publish. Something will break my way eventually, right?

Total Waste of Time (and money)

2010-01-19T02:00:00.000-08:00

So I got no campus invites. I am left feeling the following things:
1. Complete failure. I have failed at my chosen profession. I thought my career was headed in the right direction, but now it appears that I will never be able to get over the hump.
2. Anger. I can't believe how much time, effort and money I wasted on the job market this year - I want a fucking refund.
3. Uncertainty. I have a family that depends on me. These leads me back to the feelings of failure. Not only have I failed at my profession, but I have failed my family. Now the future is completely uncertain - I have no idea whether I will be collecting a paycheck or have health insurance beyond this spring.
I'm not entirely sure that I can take another year on the "job market". I am seriously contemplating doing something else with my life. And what's stopping me?

Late Night Thought

2010-01-16T19:23:00.001-08:00

Can I take another year on the job market? Can I keep putting myself through this?

No campus invite

2010-01-16T14:23:00.000-08:00

Just found out I did not get a campus invite for the Famous Land Grant University Located in the Deep South. Fuck. I kind of expected this after my bad interview experience, but it is a disappointment nonetheless.
The tally is grim at this point - 1 interview, 2 open, all the rest rejected. Unemployment looms.

One more rejection

2010-01-13T07:10:00.000-08:00

Got an e-mail notifying me that I have been rejected for the fellowship I applied for.
I have the two TT jobs that I just interviewed for, plus 1 open from a few months ago, and now a new one I just applied for. How do you get on food stamps again?

Conference Interview Blues

2010-01-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

Winter break flashed by in the twinkling of an eye. In between the overeating, the shitty weather, the travel and all the bullshit inbetween, I was extremely unproductive. That article I was going to finally finish and send to a journal - still stuck in neutral. Progress on my book? Zero. Zilch. Article I submitted a year ago to a journal - still no word from those pricks. But hey, at least I got to grade a massive pile of shitty undergraduate papers. I feel privileged.
One thing did happen though. I had my two interviews at the annual conference. Joy.
Let my begin by bitching about the cost of this. Flight, hotel, exorbitant conference registration fee, food. Throw in the fact that I had to buy a new suit, shoes, shirts, ties - I really took it up the ass on this.
The first interview at - let's call it Directional State University in the South - seemed to go quite well. I felt like I had a good conversation with the committee and we made a connection. I think it is a good fit. I told the committee how their university is very similar to the kind of university I went as an undergraduate. I hope this resonated with them.
How to describe the second interview? The best way may be to address each member of the search committee in epistolary form.
Dear Members of Search Committee at Famous Land Grant University in the Deep South,
Thanks for nothing.
Committee Member A: I don't give a shit who held the job before me, why the position is, like, the most important position in the entire department, and how the department is the most important department at the university, despite the fact that it is a humanities department in a Famous Land Grant University Located in the Deep South. I don't care why the person who held this position last left your Famous Land Grant University. You have all the power. I want a job. You don't need to justify anything to me. I came all this way to justify myself to you. Ask me a question for chrissakes!
Committee Member B: I'm sure your research is the most fascinating research ever. I'm sure you will win awards and accolades and groupies for this research. But I didn't come all this way to listen to you drone on and on about it. I read your damn website, I know what you do. I agree, we have a lot in common. Give me a fucking job and we can talk about it til the cows come home on the University's dime. Right now we're on my dime - and I came here to tell you about ME!!!
Committee Member C: Seriously? Checking your phone two minutes into my interview? What the fuck? How unprofessional and downright rude is that? Sorry I came all tihs way to bore you to tears. Are you hostile to my candidacy? Then don't invite me here. I'd rather stay home, believe me. Sitting there in silence, thumbing through my dossier? Didn't you read it before I came here? Asking me one, super lame, question in the end? Seriously? Yeah, I got no problem teaching a large survey class - I want a job! How should I answer that question? "No, sorry, that's a deal breaker for me. I hate employment." I got bills to pay and mouths to feed, muthafuckas!

So here I am, in the same mood I find myself in at this time of year every year. I fucking hate my career, I hate the douchebags in my profession, I hate that I chose to do this with my life.

Another one down

2009-12-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

Scratch another one off the list. Current tally - 2 open TT apps, 2 prelim interviews, 4 TT rejections, 1 non TT rejection, 1 open fellowship app.

One more interview

2009-12-09T13:23:00.001-08:00

Got an e-mail today scheduling another preliminary interview at the annual meeting. That's two. It just might - might - make the trip worth it.
So here's the count - 3 open TT apps, 2 prelim interviews, 3 (probable) rejections, 1 non-TT rejection, 1 open fellowship app.

Decade Retrospective: 10 things I could have, or should have, done instead of getting a Ph.D.

2009-12-09T07:11:00.000-08:00

So apparently another decade has come and gone. You will see lots of these "decade retrospective" types of lists on television and in print. So let me add my own personal decade retrospective list.
The aughts were a bad decade. Terrorism, war, recession, political polarization, the dumbing down of America - it was a steaming pile of shit decade.
For me personally, it had its ups and downs. It wasn't all bad, don't get me wrong. But it was the decade that I decided to screw up my life by pursuing a Ph.D. Back in 2000 I was accepted into a very good Ph.D. program. I deferred for a year to pay off debts and save up some money. It worked - I paid off my credit card debt from college, and I had a savings account. My wife had a very good job at a very well known company. Then we moved to start my Ph.D. program in 2001. She left her good job. We got screwed over by the moving company - who doubled their estimate when all of our junk was on their truck - and there went our savings, into thin air. Then I took out a loan to pay for the first year of grad school. I'll be paying that one for the next decade while I struggle to have enough money to pay for groceries at the end of each month. Big mistake.
So here's one thing I could have done instead of going to grad school: stayed at my job. I worked at a pretty large law firm in a large east coast city as a legal assistant. The pay was shit, but it was a steady income with benefits. Now, I hated this job. But like I said, I was out of credit card debt, making regular and manageable payments on my undergrad student loans, and I was building up a savings account. Perhaps this wasn't a life-long career. I certainly wanted to do something else with my life. But I could have worked this job for another year or so and really paid down my student loan debt and built my savings.
So here I am nearly a decade later - no job security, bigger debt, no savings, no house, not much of anything besides the fake title of "Dr." Fuck.

First Rejection Letter of the Season!

2009-12-07T14:15:00.001-08:00

Wow - that was fast. I got my first rejection letter in the mail today. It was for a non-Tenure-track job. The application due date was November 9, the letter, dated last week, said they hired someone already. Inside job maybe? It's confusing. I would have killed for this job - it was in the same town where my mom (and other family members live). I'm perplexed - I usually get interviews for these kind of jobs. I know a certain university that won't be getting a Christmas card from me, fuckers.
Update: The job ad for this particular job was so poorly written that I was under the impression that the appointment would be made in January 2010 for the fall of 2010. Apparently the appointment was made last week and the position is to begin in January. This may explain why I was never given a second look - I am certainly not available in January.

Reason to hope?

2009-12-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine just told me that if you are published (and I am) that sometimes schools don't request writing samples - they just look you up in whatever journal you published in. Well, this gives me (probably false) hope about some of the jobs I have already scratched off my list. Is it possible that they didn't request a writing sample from me because they just looked up my kick-ass article on their own? Maybe. Just maybe.

And another

2009-12-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

According the wiki I am out of the running for another job. Additional material requests for this one went out Friday and I was not among the lucky ones.
Current tally: 5 open TT apps, 1 preliminary interview, 3 rejections, 1 open non-TT, 1 open fellowship.
I'm getting a sneaking suspicion this will be my last year in academia.
As I have stated before, I made a promise to myself (and others) that I would not contiue to leave my future up in the air - I will not take anymore short-term jobs, I will not continue to move my family around, I will not endure the humiliation of another year on the job market. So its this year or bust. Too bad this is the worst job market year ever(ish).

Still waiting

2009-12-03T09:25:00.001-08:00

I thought Thanksgiving week might bring some closure - but most of my applications are still open heading into December. So I'm still waiting. Bleh.

Annual Conference Blues

2009-12-03T06:19:00.000-08:00

I booked my flight this week for the annual conference. I have yet to book two nights of a hotel. This trip will cost me upwards of $700 (out of pocket) - money I don't have. I'm already in debt this winter because of hospital bills, Christmas and heating oil. I don't really have a dime to spare. Yet here I am, paying out of pocket for the privelege of being one of 10-15 semi-finalists for a job. Of course, I desperately need this job - that's why I'm willing to pay my way to the conference. The university I am interviewing with asked if I would like other arrangements - I assume this means a phone interview. But a phone interview will put me at a serious disadvantage - there's nothing like an in-person interview - it gives you a chance to put a personal touch on your qualifications.
I'm really hoping for one more conference interview - this might (might) make the trip worthwhile. Of course, what would really make the trip worthwhile would be getting a job - but there are around a dozen other people thinking the exact same thing. What makes me think I'm better than these other candidates?

Good news (sort of)!

2009-11-24T13:56:00.001-08:00

Got a phone call this afternoon - looks like I'll be heading to the annual organizing meeting of our discipline for a prelimary interview for a tenure track job - a job I would take in a heartbeat, btw.
So that's the good news. The bad news is that the meeting is very far away from where I live - so it will cost me to get there via airplane and hotels and all that. Aye me.
Current tally: 6 open TT apps, 1 preliminary interview, 2 rejections, 1 open non-TT, 1 open fellowship app.

Current Tally

2009-11-24T12:07:00.001-08:00

6 open tenure track applications, 1 open non-TT, 2 rejections, 1 open fellowship application.

Another one down

2009-11-24T09:47:00.000-08:00

After diligently checking the job market wiki all morning I finally got an update on one of my open job applications today. It looks like requests for more material (writing samples, teaching evals) went out this morning. I checked my e-mail furiously every five mintutes for well over an hour. Nothing. So it looks like I can scratch one more off my list.
I don't really understand this one. I feel like I made the first cuts for jobs like this one in the past - even when I was ABD. Now I have more teaching experience and publications and I get nothing.
I have a really bad feeling now. I don't think this is going to be my year. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!

Still waiting

2009-11-24T05:37:00.000-08:00

Aaaaaagggghhhh!!!!!!

Thanksgiving week approaches

2009-11-22T05:43:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving week is the week that many search committees make their first cuts and invite candidates to preliminary interviews. Typically these interviews are conducted at the annual meeting of the discipline's organizing body - for example the MLA for literature types or the AHA for historians. Increasingly search committees are opting for phone interviews due to the expense of sending entire seach committees to these annual meetings. I wonder if they actually consider that it is cost-prohibitive for candidates to attend these meetings as well?
Sometimes search committees will contact candidates on Saturdays to set up the first interview - so I waited all day Saturday for a call. No call came. I checked the job market wiki upwards of 10 times. It does not appear that calls went out for any of my open applications this weekend. Sigh of relief.
But what will next week bring? Last year I was contacted (rejected) for a few jobs the day before T'giving break - I would expect the same this year since most of my job application deadlines were a couple of weeks ago.
So I'll spend the week checking my e-mail every five minutes, checking the wiki every hour and waiting by the phone. It's an awful way to spend Thanksgiving week. I used to think of Thanksgiving week as one of the most relaxing weeks of the year - associated with the three f's food, family and football. Now I associate it with the three a's - anxiety, antacids and... and... clenched asshole? No, that sucks. Anxiety, antacids and... uh... - never mind. The two a's it is.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

The waiting truly is the hardest part

2009-11-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

Waiting for responses is absolutely killing me! Or at the very least, it is damaging my mental health.
Current tally: 7 open tenure track applications, 1 rejection, 1 open fellowship application.

Another attack on the humanities

2009-11-10T07:21:00.000-08:00

The humanities are an easy target. Ever since the days of Sputnik politicians, educators and other talking heads have extolled the virtues of "mathandscience" as a way of helping us "get ahead of the competition" - whether this competition comes in the form of a space race with the USSR or in the technological expertise of India and east Asia. It is not a difficult argument to make, after all "mathandscience" seemingly produce "real world results" - the kinds of technologies and expertise that can fuel an economy. Humanities, on the other hand, are more difficult to defend. The argument can easily be made that the humanities produce no real world results. Things like literature and history don't produce technologies that can change the world economy.
Yet, the humanities should be defended. I don't know if I can say it much better than Mark Slouka did in a recent issue of Harper's.
It should come as no surprise that the tea bagging right wing has set their sights on the National Endowment for the Humanities. It should also come as no surprise that Fox News is providing a mouthpiece for their knuckle dragging, mouth breathing rants.
As Slouka points out in his article the right wing would love nothing more than to produce a pliant population that has no sense of creativity or history - no sense of what it means to be human. They rant and they rave about how the government is out to get them, yet they are all too happy to produce a generation that lacks the critical reasoning skills to discern when the government is out to get them and when it is not. All of their fear-mongering about "death panels" and H1N1 vaccines would fall on deaf ears in a population that had a good solid education in the humanities.

Michael Jackson was right - I am not alone!

2009-11-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of familiar sounding blogs.
The "phdequalsrisk" blog is from a scientist - I have never revealed my discipline - but let's just say "humanities." I always assumed that scientists had it made because being a scientist is an in demand profession as opposed to working the useless "humanities." Boy was I wrong!
When I began my PhD program (let's just say that the World Trade Center existed when this happened) there were no such things as blogs (that I knew of). In this day and age the information is out there - anyone who begins a PhD program without first reading blogs like these is in for a rude awakening.
If you are starting or considering a PhD program please, for the love of all that is good and holy, do some research. You won't regret it. Honest to blog.

November is the Cruelest Month

2009-11-09T08:36:00.001-08:00

Is it November already? This is the month that most applications are due. Pretty soon search committees all over the nation will sift through hundreds of applications to narrow the field down to 10-20 candidates. Then they will invite these candidates to the national meeting of their disciplinary organizations. Candidates will be forced to pay their own ways to this meeting for the privilege of interviewing for a job that they only have a 5-10% chance of getting. What other career path has job candidates pay their own way to a fucking interview? Next they will narrow the 10-20 down to 3 or 4 on-campus interviews. Then a lucky soul will win the lottery - er, I mean get a job offer.
Search committees love this trick - they make their decisions right before Thanksgiving break - so job candidates will get a flood of e-mails the last day before Thanksgiving break either informing of their rejection or inviting to an interview (either way it's shitty news - either you are rejected or you have to spend money right before Christmas on flights and a hotel).
So here it is, November. I hate this time of year. I will check my e-mail and the job market wiki constantly - leading to an unhealthy obsession. This must be what hell is like.

Fired Up!

2009-10-20T16:26:00.001-07:00

A job was posted today that made my heart sing. It is in my (exact) field and it is (essentially) in my home town.
This happened to me last year - twice. Both times I came away empty handed. These rejections were what caused me to start this silly blog in the first place.
So I guess I need to be a bit more cautious here. I need to avoid getting my hopes up, because I have no idea about the politics of the particular department. Could be they never get funding and have to cancel the search. Could be they absolutely have to hire a woman. Could be that my research just does not fit their criteria. There are just too many factors at work here.
Still, I want this job - it would be perfect for me and for my family. It would probably make all this worthwhile.
So I need to not get my hopes up. Disappointment is sure to follow.

First rejection!!!!!

2009-10-19T13:44:00.001-07:00

It's not even the end of October and I already have my first rejection of the job market year! I know that I was rejected for this job thanks to the job market wiki, which shows that several other people received requests for supplemental materials on Saturday. I did not, which means that I am out of the running.
This particular job was not a great fit for me - it fit in a broad sense, but it really was a secondary field for me and not a primary. So I can console myself with the knowledge that I was probably eliminated because I did not fit their primary criteria.
So here's the scorecard - so far I have applied for a grand total of five (5!) jobs - way way down from last year - and I have now been rejected for one of them. So that leaves four open applications. Things are looking grim.
In a month or so I should know where my career is headed - and chances are it will be headed nowhere. In the end it will come down to whether my employer will renew my contract for another year or not - and I have my doubts. Why, you ask? Well, I am a sabbatical replacement, and the person I replaced is due to come back next year, making me expendable.
I have already begun to compose my retirement letter in my head. I will post it here in a couple of months when it becomes official that I am not going to be hired anywhere. Unemployment, here I come!
Toodles!

Job Market Wiki Arugments

2009-10-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

I promised myself I would not do it again this year - but I can't seem to stop myself from posting on the academic job market wiki and getting into arguments with people. I shouldn't do it - emotions are running high these days and arguing only raises my blood pressure. I need some zen, now!
I ran into this same problem arguing politics on Facebook - only instead of arguing with strangers I was arguing with semi-strangers - people I hadn't seen since high school or college. I quickly realized that there was a reason I hadn't thought about these people in well over a decade. So I pretty much quit Facebook. It was liberating.
Should I quit the academic job market wiki? How else will I find people to bitch about the job market with?
I'm going to be so happy when this is all over. Either this year will end with a tenure track job or end with me in a new field. I'm looking forward to it.
BTW - I started a new file with this year's acknowledgment/rejection letters. Last year's is officially closed. I think this year's will be much thinner than last year's.

ABD Blues

2009-10-06T07:07:00.000-07:00

In a recent discussion with a colleague who is very much in the same boat as me (on the job market with no guarantees beyond this year) they remarked that deserving a job actually has nothing to do with actually landing a job.
Let me be clear about something right away - I don't believe that I "deserve" anything. I'm not going to start shouting "not fair" and throw a temper tantrum. I am an adult and I understand that life is unfair, that there are people in the world much much worse off than I am.
But I do believe that I have at least earned the right to have guarantees beyond one year. I believe that I have worked hard over the years - teaching, publishing, moving across the fucking country for one year contracts, etc. I believe that I have done everything the right way - that there is not much more I can do at this point to prove to a potential employer that I am worthy of being hired. I feel I have paid my dues.
That's why it really pisses me off to see who actually does get jobs. I have colleagues at my current university that were hired directly out of grad school. I have seen hires for other jobs that were ABDs. I know why these people were hired - a combination of where they went to school (the old Harvard/Princeton/Yale cabal), their topic (if you study Asia or Islam you are guaranteed to get hired these days) and their gender.
Here's a story that kind of sums up what I see happening all around. Last year there was a job that I was quite keen to get. It was in my field (so there was no fudging the application), it was near my home town, and it was at a not very prestigious university in the state system of my home state (I went to another school in the state system which was not super-prestigious, but more so than this place, which was most people's safety school). I thought it was a perfect fit for me. I catered my letter to the place to show that I knew the history of the school - how since the 1960s it had gone from a feeder school, to a college, to a university and how I was excited to help it continue to grow. Now, I know that my feelings about how I fit are meaningless because it was up to the hiring committe to decide - but I thought I would at least land an interview. In the end I got nothing - not a second look, nothing (even though I had landed an interview with a much much more prestigious school in the same state system). I knew what was going on - when I showed the job to friends they said "wow, that might be a good job for you" then they looked at the department which trended to the old white dude demographic. Several people told me that unless I got a sex change there was no way in hell I would land that job. So I kind of expected it.
This weekend I went to a conference. I noticed that one of the presenters came from this university. So I went to her talk. It turns out that she is (still) ABD from a pretty prestigious university (not Ivy League, but pretty damn close). Her paper was good - I was very impressed - but I couldn't help but feel resentful. I understand that she was hired in large part because she is a) very bright with a promising topic and b) female. But did they have to hire an ABD? It is insulting to those of us who spend years paying our dues as second class citizens (adjuncts, visitors) to hire someone who is not even fucking finished yet. I can't help but feel that the deck is stacked against me - even though I do everything right - get good teaching reviews, publish, attend conferences, etc. - I'm not going to land a job because my topic is not trendy enough or because of my gender. That sucks. So let me be clear about the point of all of this - for those of you possibly considering entering this profession - this is not the kind of career where you will "earn" your way into a job. There is no putting in your time and doing things the right way. Either you have the right things going for you (gender, topic, school) or you don't. Plain and simple.
Anyway, none of this matters anymore. The job market seriously sucks this year - right now there are two, maybe three, jobs in my specific field - maybe a half dozen others that might be a broad fit for me. The odds (gender, topic, school) and the numbers (there will be hundreds of applications for each job) are stacked against me. So this will be my last year on the job market (unless my current employer gives me another 1 year contract - not likely). I refuse to move my family for another short term job - I always end up losing a ton of money in moves and I cannot go into further debt (thanks to my extortionate school loans). A year from now I am facing the possibility of unemployment, no health insurance and what? Bankruptcy maybe? I don't know.
Of course, I do need to change my attitude. I need to see this as an opportunity. An opportunity to get out of this fucking poisonous profession. Take a look at last year's job market wiki to get a sense of what I'm talking about. The venom people spew at each other on that thing is sickening. It is full of petty professional jealousies and slander. Take a look at the rateyourstudents blog - even the people with jobs are bitter and angry. Fuck this. I'm going to move on with my life, find a job with a steady paycheck, deal with the day to day bullshit, enjoy my family, and enjoy not moving every year. Life is too short - I'm rapidly approaching my mid-thirties. To quote Sgt. Murtoch, I'm too old for this shit. I'm too old to have my life on hold year in and year out. I'm too old for the petty jealousies and dick measuring that comes with this career. I'm too old to waste my time being jealous because some ABD landed a job that I wanted - even thought that job probably totally blows.

First job of the year

2009-09-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

I'm to the point where I check h-net.org three or four times a day - often in vain. Finally this past friday the first job of the year that is a perfect fit for me appeared. This caused my heart to skip a beat. Of course, I'm left to wonder - how many others out there experienced the same thing? 30? 40? 50? 100? Who knows, but I don't like the odds. So far there seems to be a lot less jobs this year than last, so I have deep concerns. Oh, and a big part of my student loan bills come due next month - to the tune of an extra $300 on top of the $300 I already pay. What a wise investment!

The daily h-net.org check

2009-08-06T15:46:00.001-07:00

How many times a day do you check the h-net listings for new jobs? I'm averaging about three right now - but it will get worse this fall.
It's always very exciting to find a potential fit in your field, even though the chances of actually landing the job are very slim.

Update

2009-08-05T12:03:00.001-07:00

I have calmed down a little since I first created this blog.
To rehash what I have written in some of the comments: I first started ranting "do not get a PhD" after a particularly tough year on the job market. The economy caused several job searches to get canceled. I had been rejected for my dream job. I was facing the end of my postdoc with no job prospects in sight. There was personal stuff. So I posted some emotional stuff that was very ranty and, in retrospect, kind of silly. But I left it up for people to read because I think it accurately reflects the kinds of ups and downs a lot of people experience on the academic job market. It's depressing shit.
So, I want to transform this blog from a bunch of silly rants about the job market and the state of higher education into a chronicle of (yet another) year on the academic job market. Should you choose to read this blog, you can experience these ups and downs with me. If you are going through something similar we can commiserate. If you think I'm a whiney bitch, you can tell me. I don't mind.
So let me first give an update as to what has happened to me since my last blog post back in February. I had an on-campus interview for a job that I did not in any way want. Let me just leave it at that. I did not get the job. There was much rejoicing. I was offered a visiting assistant professor position. I jumped on it. I am now employed for at least another year. I was offered a book contract a month ago. So now I have a big project and a decent one year job. Let's see what happens next.
If you are reading this and you are also on the job market and would like to compare your credentials to mine, without getting too specific, here they are:
I finished my PhD at an Ivy League school two years ago. I do not say this to brag, believe me. I state it simply as a fact. Please don't take this to mean that I have never TA'd - lots of people in the comments sections have accused me of this. It is not true. I TA'd for several years.
I have what I am told are three very good letters of recommendation.
I had a postdoc for a year and a half.
I have published an article.
I have a book contract.
I have published book reviews in academic journals.
I have given papers at regional, national, and international conferences and I continue to do so.
I have recently made a research trip - so I have an active and ongoing research agenda.
I am currenlty a visiting assitant professor at a university that is ranked in the top 30 for undergraduate education according to US News.
I have teaching experience and have good student evaluations from this.
Personally - I have debt from student loans and a family to support. This makes the job market even more pressing and depressing.
This last year I snagged three interviews for tenure track jobs. One led to an on-campus visit.
So, we'll see what happens this year - my third year on the job market. I am not hopeful because the economy has not improved very much. I think it will be a weak year for jobs. Nevertheless, the first job in my field has come up, and its a pretty prestigious job. I do not hold out any hope, but I will apply.
I am currently in process of getting updated letters from my dissertation panel and former employer. Remember to do this if you are going into the market for another year - get updated letters that reflect all your recent activiity. I can't stress this enough.
My next task will be to count up the number of jobs I applied for this last year. I was rejected for all of them (save one). My favorite rejection came from another Ivy League school. They addressed the letter to the wrong name. Nice.
OK kids, I'll update this when I have news to report or rants to make. I promise to be as honest as I can be - which means I won't name names, but the sentiments will be honest.

The end of tenure?!

2009-02-04T15:57:00.000-08:00

The mainstream media has picked up on the current dire academic job market. Ok, the "Village Voice" isn't the mainstream media like "The New York Times" but it isn't trade journal like the Chronicle. One of the recent Ph.D.s quoted in the piece wonders if this is the "last leg for the tenure system." I think this might be a bit of a panicky thing to say, but I think it is a good indication of just what recent graduates are going through - the emotional ups and downs of a typical job market year compounded with a terrible economic environment really does make it seem like the end of the world, or at least like things will be changed irrevocably. For those of us who failed to land a tenure track job this year, next year does not look any better, in fact it will probably get worse.
Could the argument be made that this is a good thing? Perhaps the current stockpile of humanities Ph.D. will seek employment elsewhere over the next couple of years, reducing the supply. This in turn will restore market equilibrium after the recession. Perhaps, but not likely. To be sure, some will seek private sector employment over the next couple of years, but many will "wait it out" as adjuncts, visiting assistant professor, or postdocs. Also, the number of humanities Ph.D. students will probably go up over the next couple of years, as lots of people will try and wait out the recession in grad school. The cycle continues. Without serious change - a reduction in the number of universities that can offer Ph.D. programs in the humanities, more transparency from universities on job prospects for incoming graduate students, serious pressure from the government or professional organizations like the AHA on universities to stop employing cheap labor, and so on - the problem will continue.

Another Blog

2009-02-03T13:10:00.000-08:00

My google searchings have revealed yet another blog that deals with the academic job market for humanities Ph.D.s. The author of this blog is much less cynical than I am, and has written some well thought out entries on the state of the job market. I would highly recommend the blog to anyone who is interested in pursuing a Ph.D., currently enrolled in a program, or searching for a job. The author of the blog clearly knows his stuff, and has spent a lot of time researching the current state of the academic job market.
Here's a column from the Chronicle on blogging and the job market. Part of the reason I have kept this blog anonymous is that I don't want my expressions on a silly blog to prevent me from getting a job in the future, no matter how slim the chances of actually landing a job are. My two original posts on this blog were half/joke half/rant emotional resposes to striking out on the job market. I've tried to turn the blog into something a little more serious since then. I'm still working on it.

Benton Strikes Again

2009-02-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

About a week after I posted his original 2003 column discouraging young undergraduates from going on to a humanities Ph.D. program, Thomas Benton wrote a new one. Yes, it is very depressing to think that not much has changed in six years. I was in the early portion of my grad program in 2003. It is disquieting to think that I could have heeded his warnings back then and saved myself quite a bit of grief. The two columns should be required reading for anyone considering a Ph.D. program in the humanities. The "coming wave of retirements" has been a constant refrain in academia for well over a decade now. Here's the problem: professors may retire, but they are often not replaced with new tenure track positions. Universities have found that they can adequately replace old positions with adjuncts. On top of this, as I have stated repeatedly in this blog, supply seriously outstrips demand. Even if there is a coming wave of retirements, there is a warehouse full of recent Ph.D.s searching for permanent employment. Demand will never catch up to supply, unless people stop enrolling in Ph.D. programs for the next decade (these numbers are not scientific).

In the meantime higher education in the United States is a mess. Various news outlets have reported that over the last couple of decades the rise in the cost of tuition has seriously outpaced the rise in median household income. The middle class is being priced out of higher education. This past Sunday Bill Moyers interviewed former Brown University president Vartan Gregorian about the problems facing higher eduation. Like many other sectors of America, both private and public, higher education is looking to get its hands on some of the bailout money. As anyone who was recently on the job market can attest, state budget crises have seriously impacted the hiring of new faculty - at least three of the jobs I applied to this year were withdrawn because of hiring freezes. Prospects for landing a tenure track job are poor in a good year, recently this has been compounded by the recession (or "economic downturn" for those who prefer to speak euphamistically about the mess we're in). I don't particularly disagree with Gregorian on any of this - higher education is a crucial component to the nation's ability to compete on a global scale when we come out of the recession - and the federal government should get involved. The bailout bill passed by the House included money for higher ed - but who knows what will happen when the Senate Republicans get their hands on it. My main concern is that if Universities get bailout funds, the money should be earmarked for certain things - like, oh I don't know, hiring new faculty and not for shiny new gymnasiums or student centers or signing bonuses for assistant football coaches. Furthermore, if bailout money does, by some miracle, go towards hiring new faculty, what are the chances Universities will use it to hire new humanities faculty? The argument can be easily made that in order to compete with China and India we need to invest in computer science, engineering, bio-technologies - not new Shakespeare scholars.

Nothing New

2009-01-24T10:42:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I figured that I was not the first embittered humanities Ph.D. to start a blog or to bitch about the job market or to be insulted by a troll. But some searching of the internet has turned up more than I could have imagined.

Here's a particualarly pertinent column from the Chronicle of Higher Ed back in 2003.

Here is some commentary on the column from an old blog called "The Invisible Adjunct" - a blog that was shut down by the blogger, mind you, because he or she decided to give up on an academic career after adjuncting for several years, determining that it was not worth the struggle and poverty. In fact, the opening post of that blog rings a familiar tone. I guess there really is nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to regrets about this career track. I wonder what happened to the "Invisible Adjunct"? I hope things worked out for him or her.

This is my situation - it was my second year on the job market this year. I did better this year - I made the "first short list" for two jobs, two jobs I would have happily taken. My first year I got nothing. I have yet to get a campus invite. I'm not sure that it will ever happen for me.
What I find most frustrating about this process, well ok, maybe not *most* frustrating, but pretty damn frustrating, is that I have no idea why I did not make the "second short list" for these jobs. What am I missing? What did I say wrong in my phone and conference interviews that made them decide that I was not worthy of a campus invite? What did the others have that I did not? If I knew the answer to these questions, I might know how to prepare for future interviews, I might know what to say and what not to say, I might know what I need to add to my cv. As it stands right now, I have no idea.
Another frustrating thing is that I have to find out whether or not these potential employers are passing on me from the job market wiki. The potential employers themselves won't tell me. No e-mail, no letter, no nothing. It would be nice, after I spent $170 on a conference registration in order to get this stupid 30 minute interview, to get some kind of notification along the lines of "Sorry, we're passing on you. Good luck in the future! Have fun paying your student loans with no job!" But I get nothing. It just strikes me as unprofessional, or at least dickish. If they are going to reject me, at least have the courage to tell me. I mean, at least when I get an article rejected the referees tell me why. It's because I suck.

I often wonder if I am the only person who keeps their rejection letters? I keep mine in a file. I plan on making wallpaper out of them some day. I have a collection of letterhead from some of America's (and Britain's, and Australia's, and Canada's) finest and most mediocre institutions of higher learning. Things are so sad these days that I actually look forward to getting rejection letters in the mail so I can add to my collection. The worst are the schools that don't even bother to acknowledge your application or send you a rejection letter. I also hate the e-mail rejections - no letterhead in an e-mail.
Rejection letters vary. Some are terse "we are no longer considering your application." Others are very encouraging "We received over 200 applications for this position and choosing a short list was a difficult task. This is no reflection on your ability or your worth as a human being. Good luck."
If there is anyone reading this, what do you do with your rejection letters? Do you ball them up and throw them away? Do you keep them? Do you burn them? Also, what is the nicest rejection letter you have ever received?
I have temporary employment for the next year at least. So I have that going for me. The job market was especially bad this year, or so I am told, because of the economy. I don't think this will improve in a year. So I am going to give this a go for at least another year.

PBS Documentary

2008-12-13T05:37:00.000-08:00

This one is kind of old too (2005) but is pertinent. This is a PBS documentary on the state of higher education in the US - it includes some discussion of adjuncting.
Something must be done about the state of higher education if we are to compete with China and India after the recession.
http://www.decliningbydegrees.org/

A job is not just a job because some jobs are terrible jobs

2008-12-12T10:28:00.001-08:00

As I have stated several times, most of us labor under the impression that once we get a tenure track job our life will be peachy. Of course, there are jobs and then there are jobs and lots of jobs are just plain crappy jobs. There is a good chance that if you get lucky and land a job somewhere that it could be in a terrible place that you would not even fly over, let alone live.
This is an old article (2006) but it especially pertinent for today, what with the economy in terrible condition and what not.
http://www.slate.com/id/2142489/

5 Reasons not to get a Ph.D.

2008-12-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

Aside from the extremely limited job prospects, the life of poverty, the wasted years and so on, here are five more reasons you should not get a Ph.D. in a humanities field.

1. Ph.D. students are a cheap source of labor for universities and nothing more.
You may be asking yourself "If universities know that job prospects for their Ph.D. graduates are limited why do they keep producing so many?" The answer is that Ph.D. students are an extremely cheap source of labor. Almost all Ph.D. students serve as Teaching Assistants in very large classes. This makes them extremely cheap wage slaves who do a lot of the heavy lifting in courses - grading, running discussion sections and so on. Ph.D. students endure this humiliation because they are told that serving as a TA is good experience and will help you on the job market. It does not. Most search committees could not care less about your experience as a TA because they know that all you did was the grunt work and that you had little to do with actual instruction. TA experience is meaningless - it is experience as an actual instructor that search committess look for. This is a dirty secret that most universities will not tell their Ph.D. students.

2. The vast majority of Ph.D. programs do not prepare you for jobs outside of academia.
The fact of the matter is that you spend your time in grad school preparing for prelims (or comps) and researching and writing your dissertation. These are not real world skills. These are skills for academics. Once again, the problem is that there are not enough academic jobs, so these skills are worthless. After 6 or 7 or 8 years of honing this worthless skills you may find yourself without any academic job prospects. What do you do now? Take your worthless skills into the real world? While you were honing these worthless skills your friends were going to law school, getting an MBA, or going to dentistry school. They are much smarter than you. Some universities have begun to discuss "transferable skills" - but the problem is the skills you learn in a humanities Ph.D. program are not transerable. They are worthless outside of academia.

3. Ph.D. programs do not prepare you for the realities of academia.
Yes, a Ph.D. program will help you to hone some important skills - reading, writing, analyzing and so on. But the fact of the matter is academia is a nasty, nasty place, full of cronyism, territorial pissing, petty jealousies, mindless gossip, needlessly inflated egos, and assholes. Your time as a grad student, for the most part, isolates you from this. Your Ph.D. supervisor typically likes you as a person and wants you to succeed. They will not be as hard on you as the rest of acadmia will. Your supervisor will tell you that your work is very good and that you have an important contribution to make to the world. The rest of academia will not give a shit about you personally and will tell you that work work is not worth pissing on. Your Ph.D. program will try to scare you by telling you that you must pass comps in order to continue in the program, but the truth is that no one fails. It is no skin off anyone's back in your Ph.D. program if you are allowed to skate through unscathed. The rest of academia wants you to fail and most will go out of their way to ensure it. They will do this by ducking behind the "blind review" process where they will say nasty things about your work - but at conferences they will say nice things to your face. Academics are cowards because most of them have spent their lives avoiding the real world. Your typical academic does not want anyone challenging the little fief they have accumulated their whole career. They will see you as a threat and treat you accordingly. Academics are dicks. Don't become one of them.

4. If you are a white male, the deck is stacked against you.
This is a very un-PC thing to say and it will make many people angry. But it is the truth. Look at the world around us. Pretty fucked up, right? The reason it is fucked up is because the so-called "Greatest Generation" and the Baby Boomers made it this way. This extends to academia as well. The World War II generation and their vapid spawn (the Baby Boomers) stacked humanties departments with white males, believing that women made better elementary school teachers than academics. This began to change over time and white men came to be seen as the most evil entity in the world. Perhaps this is correct. Look at how much they fucked the world up. But the fact of the matter is humanties departments now have a mandate to make their departments more diverse. The problem is that academics never retire, and most of these departments are still full of old white dudes. They do not want to hire you if you are a white male. Sorry, but it's the truth.

5. A job in academia is not worth the struggle, humiliation, and heartbreak.
This is the worst part. Most of us spend our years in grad school laboring under the (false) belief that once we get a tenure track job life will be swell. It won't. An academic job is still a job. A very low paying job. Remember, academia is full of inflated egos, petty jealousies, and assholes. These people are now your co-workers! You will now spend the rest of your life arguing with these people about trivial things. You will also spend the rest of your life teaching spoiled students who send text messages during your lectures and would rather be anywhere else in the world than listening to your lecture. Then they will complain about their grades. Oh how they will complain. And make excuses. Some of them will have 6 different grandparents die and they will break up with 5 different "longtime girlfriends." So congratulations, you spent your 20s in poverty, your 30s suffering the humiliations of the job market, blind-reviewed journal submissions, conferences where you were surrounded by blowhards and dickheads, and several moves because each job only offered you 1 or 2 year contracts, only to land a crappy job that pays shit. Nice work. Way to think things through.

This is my crusade.

2008-12-09T05:10:00.000-08:00

Greetings.
I hope you have discovered this blog because you are either an undergraduate or master's student in a humanities field who is interested in going on to get a Ph.D. and you have done a google search to find more information.
My goal, my crusade if you will, is to convince you to stop. right. now. Do not get a Ph.D. It will destroy your life. I am not joking.
By now you are probably asking yourself "who are you and why should I listen to you?" I am Dr. Anonymous and I have a Ph.D. in history from an Ivy League school. And I am here to tell you that I wasted the last 8 years of my life getting this worthless degree. I do not want other people to make the same mistake I made.
My guess is that you are in your early 20s. You majored in history or English or some other humanity subject. Perhaps you went on to get a master's degree in the field of your choice. You have had a great time learning about a fascinating field from interesting professors who showed passion for the subject. You thought to yourself "I want to be just like Professor X! I want to devote my life to such a fascinating and esoteric subject and spend my whole life discussing it with eager young minds. What a wonderful life it would be!" I know these feelings, because I felt them myself. History was always my favorite subject. I went into my undergraduate program as a history major - "Wonderful!" I thought, "I can spend the next four years studying nothing but history!" And it was great. So I applied to a master's program at a prestigious university in Britain - I got in! I was very excited to spend a year delving more deeply into a specific topic. I finished my master's thesis and I thought "I don't want to stop now! I've only just begun to explore this topic!" So I applied to a Ph.D. program at an Ivy League university to study with a top professor in the field. I got in! "How exciting!" I thought, "now I can spend years thoroughly exploring this topic and making a contribution to the field of history!"
The next 6 or 7 years had their ups and downs. There were times of extreme stress (prelims or comps as they are known some places) there were times of joy (spending a year researching in the archives of a beautiful European city) there were times of tedium (serving as a TA for massive survey classes).
Overall, the getting of the Ph.D. is not the bad part. Who wouldn't want to spend 6 or 7 years working on a research project of their choosing?
It's what come next that is the problem.
Here is what they will not tell you when you are admitted to a Ph.D. program. There are no jobs, especially tenure track jobs, in the humanities. You spend your 20s (and in some cases into your early 30s) in poverty while your friends were entering professions that allowed them to buy houses, start families, build retirement accounts, take vacations, eat in fancy restaurants, and on and on. You did this because you believed it would all be worth it in the end. "Ah" you thought, "while my friends are toiling away and spending the rest of their lives working meaningless jobs I am on my way to a rewarding and wonderful career as a professor in my chosen humanities field. My life will be full of interesting people, fascinating discussion about topics that the rest of the world can only guess about. I'll be set for life once I'm on the tenure track!"
I hate to break it to you, but chances are this will not happen.
Here is the brutal truth about getting a Ph.D. in a humanties field. There are way, way more applicants than there are jobs. And I'm not talking a couple more - I'm talking hundreds more. I can say this from experience - you will apply to jobs for which there will be well over 100 applicants - sometimes more. Your fate will not be decided based on where you went to school or who your advisor was or what kind of publications you have. It will be decided for random reasons like "oh, this person would never come to this school." Or it will be decided by cronyism. Or the job will go to someone who has spent a decade adjuncting (more on this below) - so really the job market becomes an endurance test. Would you like to spend several years after your Ph.D. (a time, remember, where you were barely kept over the poverty line and therefore could not build any kind of savings or retirement account or purchase property) making $3,000 per course with no health insurance? That is what adjuncting is. You see, universities have spent their money on such important things as multi-million dollar gyms and exorbitant salaries for university presidents and other administration instead of hiring new faculty. So the vast majority of Ph.D.s end up as "adjunct faculty" - they work on a course by course basis, making below minimum wage with no assurances of any kind of future employment. The minute a budget crisis hits (which is usually when the economy goes bust) adjuncts are typically the first to go. People with Ph.D.s endure the humiliation of adjunct positions because they hold out hope that some day their number will be called and they will get the cushy tenure track job. In the meantime the academy will continue to pump out newly minted Ph.D.s every single year. These are intelligent people who just 6 or so years ago had the same wide eyed idealism as you. They will discover the brutal reality as well. The cycle continues.
I'm here to try and stop this vicious cycle. Universities will never do the right thing and simply stop producing Ph.D.s. They are not accountable to anyone. Producing Ph.D.s looks good for a university, and it looks good for the professors who supervise them. They do not lose any sleep over the fact that Ph.D. candidates are wasting a good chunk of their life on something that will not get them a career. Universities will continue to happily pump out Ph.D.s knowing full well that a good career does not await them.
There needs to be a nationwide boycott of Ph.D. programs.
Until there is some kind of accountability in the industry, people need to stop enrolling in Ph.D. programs (especially in the humanities) now. Parents need to demand that their young unversity students be taught by full time professors and not adjuncts. University budgets need to appropriate money for faculty and not shiny new buildings or huge bonuses for university presidents. The federal government needs to get involved, but it will not take notice until there is a demand for it.
So here is what I ask. If you are accepted into a Ph.D. program send a letter to the university saying that you will not begin the program until there is more accountability - until more full time jobs are created and less money is appropriated to gyms and useless classroom techonology and greedy presidents. Parents need to demand that their students learn from full time faculty and not adjuncts. Adjuncts need to be paid a living wage and given health insurance.
This will depend on you, young Ph.D. enthusiast. Go to law school. Go to dentistry school. Get an M.B.A. DO NOT GET A PHD. Trust me, you will be much happier. You will be able to afford all the basic things in life that most people with a higher education have - a home, a family, a car, groceries, a retirement account, and so on. A humanities Ph.D. will not get you these things.
You see, the academy is the only industry I can think of that does not function on a normal supply/demand cycle. There is almost no demand for humanities Ph.D.s yet the academy continues to produce them - overproduce them, in fact. This is because there is an endless supply of wide-eyed, innocent humanities undergraduate students who do not quite understand how the academic job market works. "This does not apply to me" they think, "I will prove to be the exception to the rule. I want to do this. The possibility of a tenure track job justifies the heartbreak." I'm sorry, it does not.
So I am going to do for you what I wish someone had done for me so many years ago. I'm going to tell you not to do this. It is not worth it. Do not get a Ph.D.