Comment of the Week

As the depressing scroll of new jobs is unfurled -- persuading me with each passing day that I am not long for this profession -- comments like these (in reply to this classic DSC post) go a long way toward easing my pain:

The nightmare of solo meals at Crapplebee's and the Compost Garden keeps me awake at night. But the other side of the story, of course, is the meal with Potential Colleagues you actually must endure. I interviewed once at the University of The Most Important City in Canada, where my dinner companion was the chair of the department. A most charming fascist he was, and between pretending to like him and the cheap whiskey he kept ordering me, and trying to figure out ways not to agree with the proposition that lesbian feminists were taking over the universe, it was a miracle I didn't commit self-murder that night. Good thing Canada has strict gun control laws.

"Self-murder." My heart is a-flutter. Someone buy this fellow/madam a serving of the most expensive whiskey in the house!

Please, sir -- can I have some more?

What I said last week (paraphrased and condensed for readability) when asking my Dean for a raise:

You might remember from last spring that I had planned to stand for early tenure. I’ve decided, however, to wait for several reasons, the most important of which is that I believe I am not being compensated adequately for the work that I have done at this university. I have taught three distinct classes each semester for four years, usually with one or more new preps per term; I have published more than most faculty who have already earned tenure; I am evidently incapable of turning down service requests, and I have spoken to more community audiences and done more to represent this university than any other faculty member I can think of. Having looked at similar jobs at similar schools, I have determined that I could possibly earn a more satisfactory salary elsewhere. For these reasons, I have decided to go on the market this year. I would be interested in staying at [University of X], but I am unwilling to do so at my current salary.

What I was thinking last week (unexpurgated and carefully reconstructed from memory) when asking my Dean for a raise:

You feeble-minded turd gobbler.

First of all, it blows my mind to learn that you make $110,000 a year. As near as I can tell, your job pretty much consists of issuing contradictory and arbitrary policy decisions, the bulk of which contribute to the endless ass-fucking that constitutes our lives as faculty. Having served that function admirably, you and your cheesy porn star mustache leave town for three months a year to study [unnamed animal species] on [unnamed remote continent] -- a research program, by the way, that pretty much renders you the laughing stock of this campus. Consequently, I can’t fathom the perversity of a universe that requires me to come to you on bended knee to ask for a motherfucking raise that would (if granted) still earn me far less than half your fucking salary.

To make the situation even more humiliating, you just hired a term faculty in [under-enrolled social science discipline] who hasn’t even finished his/her fucking Ph.D. and who is now -- after precisely zero years teaching at this fucking clown college -- earning three thousand dollars more than I do. In fact, I won’t earn his/her salary until AFTER I earn tenure in two years -- a process, by the way, that I have no intention of completing without some sort of massive fucking change in the status quo around here. And don’t give me any of the usual bullshit about not offering retention raises to faculty without a competing offer, because as everyone knows, you offered [unnamed natural science professor] a 10% raise for no discernible reason last spring, a gesture that he/she certainly appreciated when purchasing his new fucking boat this summer. Meantime, Spouse and I can only afford three days of fucking child care each week, a deficit that requires Yours Truly to spend two academically unproductive (though personally exhilarating) days watching the Tax Deduction shove random objects in his/her mouth.

You wonder why your junior faculty in the humanities and social sciences don’t stick around for tenure? Because this job makes us want to torture small animals and drink ourselves into death in our garages. Sadly, though, when I break into your office and take a shit on the letter of resignation I leave on your desk, there will be 200 desperate motherfuckers clamoring at your door the next week, willing to accept a position for $5000 less than what you’re paying me right now. Fuck you, you taint-tasting fuck.

Unsurprisingly, the Dean was non-committal on the question of raising my salary.

Job Search, Day One

As I was perusing the job ads this morning, I came across this little bit of prankery. I can't believe this has remained on the Chronicle site for so long, but I've preserved it for prosperity just in case:



When I first saw the ad, I honestly thought, "Afghanistan? Shit, I could work in Afghanistan." After all, the Preznit tells me we've liberated these people, that freedom is on the march and whatnot. Who cares that the Taliban is back in control of much of the country, that opium production has surged to the levels last achieved during the Russian-Afghan War, or that Karzai's government will survive only so long as it continues to kiss the ring of its American sponsor. Oh, and we've pretty much forgotten about the entire country while more or less giving up on finding that douchebag -- I forget his name, Saddam or Osama, something that sounds freedom-hating. You know, the guy with the facial hair.

Fuck it! Freedom is on the march, baby! And I need a new job!

Then I read this:

Founded in 1819, Maryville College is one of the oldest baccalaureate-granting institutions of higher learning in the South. Consistently ranked in the top tier of Southern colleges in national magazines in recent years, the College is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, USA and appears on the John Templeton Foundation's guide to "Colleges that Encourage Character Development." The curriculum is notable for its strong liberal arts core program and the two semesters of Senior Study research required of all students. The student body, numbering 1150, is drawn from the Southeast, Middle Atlantic States and the Midwest. Located in Maryville, Tennessee, Maryville College is ideally situated between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Knoxville, the state's third largest city.

Sounds lovely . . . but it ain't Jalalabad.

You know your life has taken a turn for the worse when you and some friends are compelled to send the following e-mail:

Last night a volley of messages were sent out from
this account by a small group of fools who now regret
what they've done. Old friends visiting after two
years apart engaged in a drunken conversation about
people we used to date but lost touch with, or people
we wished we had dated, or people we wished we hadn't
fucked, or people we regret never having fucked, etc.

With laptops and booze in hand, we turned to Google;
after about two hours of investigative work and many
more beers, the ill-advised decision was made to
unleash a wave of shitfaced e-mails from a dummy Yahoo
account. Some of the e-mails were less insulting than
others; some were just mean-spirited and cruel; and
others were filled with half-truths and complete
fables that for some reason seemed funny at the time.
(For example, Maressa, your husband did not give one
of us HPV in 1993; Charles, your wife never had oral
sex with any of us; Ginny and Kevin K., your "pathetic
little secret" has not been posted on Craig's List;
Jon, one of us did not recently sell a used pregnancy
test on eBay).

We're ashamed of all of these e-mails and apologize --
as sincerely as four now-sober adults can apologize --
if any of them actually nudged past your spam blockers.

Each of you deserved to be left alone. Reading the e-mails
today, we are completely mortified, embarrassed,
ashamed, and terribly, terribly sorry.

sincerely,
H, B, D & S

It really did seem funny at the time. Now, not so much. As for my role, I assign 47% of the blame to my faculty senate meeting (see below), which drove me to drink much earlier in the day than I should have...

Kill Me

Spouse and I had a kid at the end of last semester, which gives this year's job search an extra dimension of urgency. I'm not as angry as I was last spring, but the truth is that we simply have to get the fuck out of our shithole town before our child reaches high school; though I understand this appears to give us a fourteen year cushion, I plan to throw myself in front of a bus if we're not out of here by summer 2008. The clock is ticking.

Last year's search was moderately selective. I applied to fifteen jobs -- which is quite a few, I think, for a faculty member in his/her fourth year -- mostly in regions of the country that were closer to our families, mostly at schools like my own that emphasize teaching but expect some sort of commitment to publishing, and mostly in areas of the US that are less goddamned expensive than the place I live now. Our regional criteria excluded the West Coast, the Sun Belt, the Deep South, and upper New England, with some wiggle room in the Mid-Atlantic states. My professional criteria excluded Research I institutions, most of whom would look at my school's letterhead and think, "There's a school called this? Who the fuck are these people?" That, and they'd look at my CV and conclude that I have no coherent research field, even though I've published a good handful of articles in high quality, peer-reviewed journals and have churned out more book reviews than most people produce in a lifetime. I'm a huge believer in the value of recognizing one's limits, whether those limits are artificial or self-imposed, the consequence of a life devoted (as mine has been) to underachievement.

As evidence of this, consider what I'm doing as I type this post. Instead of bettering myself in some small way, I'm calling in to my university's faculty senate meeting from home. I'm watching the Tax Deduction today, and I have a speaker phone apparatus that allows me to play old Atari games on Spouse's computer while I suffer through this bovine gathering, whose only virtue is that -- like a surge of menstrual cramping -- it only happens once a month. The only thing keeping me sane at the moment is the fact that I can watch the Red Sox on my laptop while my knuckleheaded colleagues ponder the latest quack proposal descending from the Provost's office....

The Tax Deduction is so fucking bored by the meeting that she's been asleep in her swing since the approval of the last meeting's minutes. Lucky baby. If she'd only wake up and start screaming, perhaps I could artfully duck out of this meeting. Nah. Sleep well, my child. Let the buffoonery wash over you like a gentle, somnolent wave.

I wonder if I'd get fired if I got tanked while I listened to Faculty Senate? I don't think anyone even remembers I'm here, so why not? I'll take a shot every time Dr. X makes a niggling procedural observation; every time one of the departments with which I'm not affiliated introduces a stupid certificate or degree program that I don't give a shit about, and every time a yawn of awkward silence follows the senate chair's request for discussion of an agenda item that clearly no one has cared enough to think about.... I'll be on the floor in about 15 minutes.

Mr. Beefeater? Meet Mr. Tonic. Oh, I see you've met before.

Here we go again . . .

First day of classes . . . rewarding myself with a liter and a half of wine as I scan the job postings.

It begins. Christ help us.

No, really. Some of my best friends are secretaries. Honest.

This, from "JW," is too good to be left buried in the comments:

Dear BA,

Dear, dear, poor, sweet, stupid BA. I know how hard it is to work all those years, struggle financially, spend hours on research, only to find out after all that work, that you appeal to no one. Your life is meaningless. Your work is unimportant. Your personality is repulsive. And your attitude is, well you said it, bad.

As you know, there is more than one side to a story. Hows about I clue you in on the other side, bud? Guess what I do for a below-poverty-level living? I am the secretary for faculty searches. I get it from BOTH sides: the intellectual elitist who thinks NOBODY ever before fucking thought the thoughts he's had, AND the brilliant, already-tenured and frequently unshowered professor.

Let me explain. First of all, I don't care how far you have to drive to the airport and that your wife is 11 months pregnant and needs the car to take your yet-un-potty trained 7-year old for his twice-weekly shrink visit. And I don't care that you have allergies so could I be sure, SURE, ABSOLUTELY SURE that you get a non-smoking room. And furthermore, I couldn't give a shit less about your special needs meaning you have to stand in mountain pose, facing north at 2:17 p.m. and chant so would I please not schedule any appointments then. And if I may ask, why, if wifey isn't coming with you, do I need to arrange to have a breast pump available?

OF COURSE I'll drive you around so that you can see the "housing options," in our fine town. While we're at it, how 'bout I stop by Home Depot so that you can pick up an application for something that you could actually DO!

Oh yes, we're all putting our best foot forward here. But before you start whining to me about how hard it is to get a job, spend a little time in the real world with me, why doncha? In MY real world, there's no such thing as tenure. In MY world, spring break does not exist. In MY world, nobody's claiming we're in the pick-your-own-number percentile of salaries.

Why do I do it? Because you people are the most interesting thing on the face of the earth. I don't have to go to work each day. I GET to go to work each day and hang out with you guys. It is amazing.

So, quit whining. Shave. Look a little bright-eyed. And remember, at small, liberal arts colleges they ask for everyone's input in selecting faculty.

Including ME!

That's the kind of bile we need around here. In a mirror universe, there would be a blog entitled "Dear Job Candidate," in which college and university staff disgorge streams of poison darts at the prima donnas who descend from the clouds for a few days each spring and clot their lives with paperwork and asinine requests like the (I assume) loosely non-fictional ones detailed above. Indeed, on my own campus, an otherwise qualified interviewee was recently tossed out of the pool due in part to her rude treatment of our department staff when faculty were not present. While we're slogging through piles of applications, meeting with candidates at conferences, and discussing matters of Deep Scholarly Import with the few who make it through to the final stage, underpaid -- and in my state, non-unionized -- colleagues like JW are responsible for arranging everything and dealing with the yawning ocean of bullshit that invariably washes over even the simplest administrative task. In a truly just world, JW would be permitted to garrotte and de-bone any candidate who requested appointment-free yoga time.

So allow me to issue a disclaimer: At no point in the interview process described on this blog was I treated with anything but saintly consideration by anyone outside the closed circle of dysfunctional, mouth-breathing faculty who elected (wisely) not to make me their colleague.