Here's how all this started: I finished my PhD this year from Prestigious University and, like a good new doctor have been spamming the universe with my CV and cover letters with a gusto only possible by combining lots of caffeine with face-melting terror. Then lo-and-behold, last week I get a call from Selective Liberal Arts College (SLAC) congratulating me on being a finalist. But something strange happened. There was a brief sense of elation during which I called quite a few people to announce the good news, but after that cleared, something else took its place. Lets call it Vague Sense of Doom (VSD).
VSD: What is it? Where does it come from?
I believe that most people in academe can relate to experiencing VSD. There is a knot in your stomach, you feel like your future is a long procession of sadistic committees, entitled students, snarky colleagues, and escapist fantasies of opening a coffee shop or moving to Borneo. You feel like you have no control over anything important that happens to you, like where you live, who you spend time with, whether or not to start a family, or whether or not you will have a job next year. There is a constant underlying guilt that you should be working harder than you are, including weekends and evenings, and that if you are ever seen reading for pleasure (or doing anything fun just for the heck of it) people will laugh and call you a fraud and a sham and label your work non-rigorous and suspect and you won't get tenure. You are never allowed to use the words "I don't know" because you need to know everything to maintain your credibility. I think you get the picture...
The Rejection
So anyway, I started getting emails about doing a job talk and teaching demo, emails arrange my flight and hotel room to come visit SLAC. And with every email that knot got a little tighter, the VSD a bit more oppressive. I enlisted a friend to go with me and buy a suit, and I must say I looked pretty darn good in it. But the thought of wearing it while trying to convince a committee that I'm scholarly and profound while also not seeming too desperate was not so nice.
So I did what any self-respecting academic does when faced with uncertainty. I called my mom. That conversation was a few hours long, but boiled down to one thing she said: "You don't have to do it if you don't want to." Wait, what??? I don't have to go interview for a tenure-track job if I don't want to? It was the most radical thing I had heard in a long time. How is this possible? The Academic Police would not handcuff me and read critical theory to me as punishment? I could actually say no? I could REJECT THE COMMITTEE???
Its exactly what I did. I wrote an email politely saying that I regret to inform them that I have decided not to pursue my candidacy with them, and best of luck to them in their future endeavors.
I'm not sure why, but I'm in a better mood today than I can recall in quite a few years. I'm not really sure what this means, or if I have just done the stupidest thing in my whole life, or the brilliantest, or some combination of both...
So I decided to start this blog to share with others my progress on this new and strange road which may be leading me out of the Ivory Tower, since this definitely feels like a breaking point that has been coming for quite some time. Let's see where this goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment