Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Job market and tenure anxiety

I spent much of the day in committee meetings for a job search and also the department PTR (promotion, tenure and reappointment) committee--committees that decides who gets a job and who gets to keep it.

The result: I'm a nervous wreck by the end of the day. Even though I got a job and got tenure, going through the stack of files brought back a lot of pre-job, pre-tenure anxiety. I wanted to send an e-mail to each applicant encouraging them to hang in there...

I can't imagine being in that situation again...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Over the weekend, my wife and I were discussing how different our lives were exactly a year ago. I was working on my dissertation, mailing out job application packets on a daily basis, and checking the sociology rumor board every ten minutes for information. The phone call for my first on-campus interview (for the job I have now) came about two weeks later.

Life is much better on this side. ;-)

Peter Thurley said...

I'm not looking forward to being in that position one day...

Alas, I still have a few years to go... But I'm still thinking about it, specifically in how I must conduct myself now, and what kind of work I need to have now in order to reduce my stress level then.

Brad Wright said...

Dave... I'm glad that you only had to wait 2 weeks for an interview. just getting that first interview is huge.

Peter... what kind of work to do know? I don't know about philosophy, but in sociology there are 3 answers: 1) publish, 2) publish, and 3) publish.

Peter Thurley said...

heh... well, it seems that whatever the differences between the humanities and the social sciences, there are at least three things that can be held in common. These are, of course, 1. Publish, 2. Publish, and 3. Publish.

(If only hitting the publish button on this comment counted... heh)