Monday, September 17, 2007

(Peek!)

So at the moment I'm putting off editing my article/chapter on Lucrece (that old windmill tilter) even though it is due to my committee tomorrow afternoon. This committee is a group of three senior colleagues who will be conducting my second-year review later this semester. Yes, that is right, I'm being reviewed in my second year. I will also be reviewed in my fourth, and the 6th year is the tenure review. Quite a lot of reviewing, no?

Anyway, whilst playing hooky from my fucked up footnotes, I decided to steal a glance at the MLA Job Information List, just a tiny look.

So I did. I peeked. I'm not ashamed.

And I can finally let out a sigh of relief. Maybe I'm too much of a snob for my own good, but I saw very few enviously scrumptious jobs in my field. Sure, there were some jobs that looked like nice first jobs, but only one or two that looked remotely second job worthy. Of course I'm pretty happy here at my first job, so maybe I don't know what second job worthy looks like. What I mean is, maybe "second job worthy" is utopian at this point.

There were lots of early modern jobs and it is fairly early in the listings game, all of which makes me glad for my friends on the market. But of those 5 pages of advertisements only two jumped out at me as highly desirable. And I'm not counting the famous place that rarely tenures its junior faculty (what the hell is a "tenure-track associate professor"?).

I peeked into the big spooky room of missed chances and I feel fine.

4 comments:

Pantagruelle said...

If you are too much of a snob for your own good, then so am I because I am utterly depressed by the job listing in our field this year! Only 3 jobs are in a state where I want to live. There is one job where I think I have a really good chance, and it's a nice place, but it's definitely in the "first-job" category, not somewhere one would want to spend the rest of one's life. There are a couple jobs in places that have been so ravaged by natural and not-so-natural disasters that I'm hoping not many people will apply. And there's one good job in your state! I'm really crossing my fingers on that one. Imagine how cool/weird it would be if we ended up being neighbours? :-) But overall I don'T think it's a good year compared to last year when there were a lot more high-end, to-die-for jobs. So where are all of the Ivy League grads going to go this year? To the not-so-to-die-for jobs that the rest of us usually covet. Oh well... As you say, it's still early, and I'm putting a lot of hope in later postings materializing. Especially up here. Did you notice that's there's only one job in all of Canuckland so far? Yikes! I'm very envious of your first-job! And I hope the beginning of term is treating you well and the review goes smoothly. I'm sure you'll ace it!

Pamphilia said...

Alas, we wouldn't be neighbors- I'd still be an hour and a half away. But it would be cool as hell. And I'd have yet another excuse to make the hour and a half trip out there to the land of civilization, yoga, and mythological garden coffeehouses. There's also a really great medieval and Renaissance center at one of the universities there, and another one starting up at another (they got this huge grant).

Pantagruelle said...

Cool! I didn't know about the center or really anything at all about the place--like where it is on a map related to you! (You wouldn't believe how much time I've been spending on Wikipedia just trying to found out where half these places even are!) Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one. It would be fun to live (relatively) close to you and have excuses for excursions!

Pamphilia said...

Well, there are several schools in that area (a number between 2 and 7). The two I mentioned are in different towns from the one you mentioned, but they're all really close and there's kind of one giant academic/intellectual community (at least it seemed that way from all the Jews I met last week on Rosh Hashana).