The job search is not about you

Yesterday the MLA job list went up, detailing what I’m assuming will be a severely pared-down list of jobs for the 2010-2011 school year. The stories from last year’s job searches, especially for newly degree-ed folks, mostly ended with “they canceled the search,” “the job got pulled at the last minute,” and “I never heard anything after the request for more information,” and this year’s is shaping up to be no less depressing — and no less damaging to bright and sensitive scholars.

The hand-wringing about the overproduction of PhDs is, as always, making the rounds of academic publications, but this year may make the gap between the number of PhDs and the number of tenure-track positions — the holy grail for the humanities, at least — even more stark than usual.

According to MLA numbers, only about half of newly minted PhDs in English got tenure-track jobs during the 1990s, and the percentages went steadily down during that decade, with only 35% getting tenure-track jobs in 1996-1997. And honey, how we would all love this year to look anything like 1996-1997.

It’s really bad out there.

But what upsets me the most is not that people won’t get tenure-track jobs. It’s not necessarily tragic for us to take our passions and our engagement into the world beyond academe. No, what upsets me most is how difficult, defeating, and yes, damaging the job search process is on the people who go through it.

If your department was anything like mine, you’ve been hearing about the crappy job market since, oh, the letter accepting you into the program. (If I remember correctly, and I’m pretty sure I do, my friends and I pouted and wondered why they couldn’t even let us be happy about this accomplishment for a minute; we’d worry jobs down the line. Reality and 20-year-0lds are not generally close bedfellows.)

But we all did it anyway. And we did it anyway because we were, in the immortal pride of late adolescents, sure that it would be different for us. We would be so smart, so prepared, so shining, that we would prevail over difficult circumstances. We would work hard, harder than any graduate student had ever worked, and it would all work out.

Go ahead, laugh. But I’m going to bet that every single person on the job market this year is crossing their fingers and throwing salt over their shoulders and also, at the very same time, telling themselves that it’ll work out for them because they’re smart, they’re personable, they’re great and dedicated teachers, they’ve published, they’ve done service — they’re practically an assistant professor as it is!

It’s only natural to try to find ways to keep up our spirits in the face of dispiriting odds, but the problem with this story is that it inevitably turns into its opposite: If I don’t get a tenure-track job, or if I only get one that my department and colleagues don’t “respect,” then it’s because I am stupid and a terrible scholar and my advisor hates me and oh my god, did they see the evaluation of me on RateMyProfessor.com that criticized my pants?

And I don’t know about you, but I’m relatively non-functional as a human being when I’m telling myself stories like that. When I’m telling myself stories like that, I’m not connected to what I love about my work. I’m hiding in bed with the pound of chocolate I bought at midnight and three trashy mags.

Because I suspect you have your very own version of shutting down when you’re telling yourself stories like that, I want to, very gently, challenge you to try to not take the job search process personally.

Because it isn’t about you. Really.

Look, if you’ve gotten all the way to a PhD, you’re clearly smart and capable and dedicated and all of those most admirable qualities of scholars. If you’ve gotten all the way to a PhD, you are plenty good enough to rock an assistant professorship and rock it hard.

But fortunately or unfortunately, nearly all of the reasons people don’t get jobs are structural, not personal.

Let’s just take a look at the evidence. For a department to run a search at all, its institution has to have the funds to hire that year. A university’s budget? Not about you.

What they search for is going to be determined by the needs of the institution as well as the needs of the department, and a new college-wide composition requirement or the retirement of the Victorianist is not about you.

Who ends up on the committee, how the politics of the department structure what they’re looking for (explicit or not), the personalities of the department as a whole — none of these are about you, but they have everything to do with the elusive “fit,” which, after all, is what it all comes down to once you have a pile of awesome and accomplished scholars in front of you.

So I implore you — whatever happens, however difficult and disappointing it turns out to be, resist taking it personally. You are a wonderful and amazing scholar, and whether or not you get a tenure-track job is largely not about you.

Yes, if you wrote your cover letters in crayon, I might allow that it had something to do with you, but barring complete unprofessionalism, it is not your fault and it is most certainly not a comment on your value.

So as you wade into the piles of CVs and envelopes and stamps and lists of who wants a teaching dossier and who wants recommendations now versus later, know that you’re awesome. You’re fabulous. Send those packets out with joy and pride and with every hope of getting your dream job, but once you drop them into the mailbox, let go. Loosen your grip. Know that whatever happens, you will be okay.