Unsolicited advice for students on the market. The world of academic job searching looks different to my eyes than it did when I was hunting or prior to that dreaming about the hunt. I thought I wanted to get hired at the biggest big guns place I could find. Turns out, I was such an atrocious interview...that did not happen. But in the 11th hour, very, very late in the hiring season, I landed a job at Ole Miss. It is a small, but solid clinical program in the middle of the deep rural south. So, my advice: 1. consider small ponds. There are some things you can do in a small pond that would be much harder to do in a big pond. My own wild academic heart has benefited greatly from being in a place where there are no fish big enough to eat me, big enough, but not big enough to eat me. This means have been able to swim anywhere I want. A reasonable level of productivity and faithfulness to the job is appreciated. 2. Consider places you never heard of. Way fewer people apply to some regions...Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Dakota.....than other....every place in the north east, LA, San Francisco, etc. Sometimes smaller, more remote places are more sensitive to getting along together as a group and do not necessarily want the prima donna with the most giant vita if they think the person would be corrosive to the social fabric. Also, you might just find that some little town offers some quality of life stuff you are not even thinking about. On any given day when my kids were growing up, I was 5 minutes away. I have only put 35,000 miles on my 7 year old pick up truck. Commuting = life sucking wasted days. Those hours spent every week driving to and from, staring at the back of someone elses car, will not be refunded to you later. Nor will they be subtracted from your workload. They are just gone. Your days are fewer than you think. Use them well. One of my students who recently took a job in a masters program in a rural area heard said about his new job: I hear they have some nice lakes up there. And my bet is, he will have some time to swim in them with his kids if/when he has some. Be kind to yourself. Many of the things we think we want will not end up even being on the list when counting goodness at the end of your days. As I approach my 60th birthday in September, I am pretty clear that big vita and giant high prestige research center are not among my big deals. Where I am seems quite enough. Just perfect for me. namaste yall from my back porch in little old Oxford, Mississippi, kelly (on sabbatical until fall, 2015:)
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 21:22:42 +0000