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.

Going Public

For those on the academic job market, March -- not April, with all due respect to T. S. Eliot -- is the cruelest month. By now, most of us have completed our interviews and have discovered our fate. Some of our friends and colleagues have received job offers, for which they are momentarily grateful; the rest of us are facing another year of adjunct appointments, another year of living in shitty towns we can't wait to leave, another year of wondering when enough is enough. While setting aside the proper amount of time to flog ourselves for our personal inadequacies and shake our fists mightily at an oversaturated market, we must eventually settle our gaze upon the true source of our enduring misery -- the search committees who cast our files into the "B" and "C" piles, who dismissed our artfully-crafted letters and fruited CV's, who overlooked our stunning proclamations during preliminary phone and conference interviews, and who ultimately chose to deprive us of the employment we so evidently deserved.

They are the enemy, and they must be exposed.

To that end, I have set up two e-mail accounts, one for me and one for you. If you or someone you know has some choice sentiments you'd like to pass along to the search committees who rejected you, you can contact me directly (see the address at the top of the page) using the dummy e-mail account I have created to assure maximum anonymity and guarantee that everyone feels comfortable releasing their inner, gurgling volcano of bile. I will post all anecdotes, foul oaths, and cries for justice from an uncaring universe on this blog. I'll continue to post, too, as my career spirals in ever tighter circles toward the sewer.

The dummy address is eat.me2006(at)yahoo.com, with the password "fuckoff" (all lowercase). It's my little gift to you. Please don't use it to threaten or harrass anyone, unless you're threatening me.

Of course, anyone who wishes simply to e-mail me from another address is welcome to do so. All names, locations, schools, and other identifying details will be altered to assure true anonymity. Go ahead. Get it out there. You'll feel better.

(And if you're a newcomer to this blog, I encourage you to review my earlier posts to get a sense of the spirit in which we're going to be spraying the shit around here.)

Dial "D" for "Douchebag"

Good news, world! I didn't get a (new) job this year! The fucknuts at QLAC decided to take a pass on me, and they had the high fucking class to dispense the news in a brief letter (and the phrase "I shit you not" comes to mind here) signed with the laser-printed signature of the department chair. Are you fucking kidding me? Actually, to call it a "signature" would be to grant the gesture an unearned degree of professional courtesy. This was not like a mass mailing from George W. Bush to his supporters -- e.g., "Laura and I thank you for your generous financial support and the stellar rim jobs we received during our last visit to [insert fascist gated community name here]. Best wishes, [insert facsimile of president's signature here]." No, none of that. This was actually the search committee chair's name printed in a different fucking font. (I think it was Lucida Handwriting.) They couldn't even pretend to give a fuck. To top it all off, the letter was evidently the same letter they mailed out to the first round of rejects -- it thanked me for taking the time to apply but expressed regret that my candidacy could not be "passed along to the next stage" and that I would not be invited for a campus interview.

Congratulations, QLAC! You are the inaugural recipients of the Outstanding Achievement in Douchedom Award, to be awarded each year to the college or university department that single-handedly undermines all the pious rhetoric about making academic searches "friendlier" and more “humane.” If I ever run into you feeble-minded fucks at a conference, I’ll try to remember to say hello before I blind you all with a handful of shrimp skewers.

Honorable mention to Large Southern State University, which has evidently decided to save money on letterhead this year by e-mailing its job search rejects en masse with the anticlimactic news that we "were not among those invited for preliminary conference interviews in January." Thanks for the tip, ass clown. I was wondering what to do with myself those first few days of the year. Ending the e-mail on a more positive note, however, the human resources director -- I suppose the search committee chair simply can’t be bothered to participate in the correspondence -- encouraged us to consider applying for "other open positions" at the university.

What a fabulous fucking idea! Here I was, thinking that the world had closed in around me, that the three years I devoted to stuffing my CV with attractive, interesting classes, peer-reviewed publications and an impressive roster of service commitments had all come to naught -- that somehow I had become less marketable since I first bartered my way into the academy in 2002. But no. As LSSU has helpfully reminded me, the bong is actually half-full! I'm not an economist, for instance, but I see here that a position in econometrics is still listed as open. And it seems the grounds crew is always looking for someone to mow the lawn and snip the rose bushes. There are, in fact, a lot of fantastic jobs at this university that somehow -- in my withered, constricted view of my own skills -- I managed not to explore.

The future sure does look bright. It will probably look even brighter after I drink the bottle of scotch calling me from across the living room....