I’m sitting on a back porch in the early evening pecking at the keys of the
department’s laptop computer; the iced coffee has been replaced with cold
beer. Sounds nice, but a few years ago it was my own clunker of a laptop in the
bed of a pickup truck outside of a storage locker where my research and worldly
goods were. I’m now in a tenure track Assistant Professor position (and
greatly enjoying the summer months with no faculty meetings) rather than being
part of the migrant labor pool chasing after a secure position. My hope is that
this position is my first tenure track job rather than my only one. But that’s
the end of the story - and before I start it I’ll highlight four main rules of
survival.
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Rule
1. Getting a Ph.D. is more a matter of endurance and self discipline
than intelligence.
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Rule
1a. Less than 1% of the population has a Ph.D. If you get one you are an
extreme outlyer in the bell curve of formal education, so don’t worry about
having it finished by age 30 – or 35 or 40, etc.
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Rule 2. When you job hunt – or apply for grants – get over fear of
rejection quickly and get into a ‘mass production’ mode with applications;
if you don’t apply, the chance of getting it is zero.
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Rule
3. The key question is not whether you can get an academic job,
but whether you can get a desirable one. The question is not how many job
advertisements there are, but how many interest you and how many other people
also apply.
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Rule
3a. It’s not unusual for the institution that grants you the degree to
be better than the one that gives you a first job – and this might come as a
surprise because faculty at most institutions complain about the quality of
students.
-
Rule
3b. A surprisingly wide variety of positions offer the potential for you
to carve out a meaningful and satisfying professional life, but some
institutions will make it difficult.
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Rule
4. Be careful about applying for jobs you don’t want, because you
might just get them.
My undergraduate major was criminal justice with law school as the next step,
based on the naïve assumption that it related to studying justice. During a
moment of frustration, I remarked to a professor that I really wanted a school
of justice, not law. He remarked that American University had one. It never
occurred to me there might be more than one, but I got information, drove down
(without a map or appointment), walked into the associate dean’s office by
accident, talked to her for two hours, toured campus, and a year later moved
there to start graduate school. This approach worked out exceptionally well, but
I would recommend putting more research and deliberation into your decision, as
it might have easily been so different.
After two years of making pizza and partying while figuring out what to do
when I grew up, graduate school was intimidating. I threw myself into the work
and overcompensated, at least for the first year. Work for the Master’s degree
went quickly, but at the start of my sixth year many self- imposed deadlines had
come and gone (see Rule 1). Most of the people I knew took longer than me, but
the important point is that they finished (see Rule 1a) because it is all too
easy to stall out at ABD, which stands for ‘all but dissertation’ or All But
Done. The course work, comprehensive exams and actual writing involved in
getting a Ph.D. extend over years (4-10 years is the range), so there are many
disruptions and potentials for derailment – marriage, divorce, births, deaths,
sickness and accidents. (When a good friend died from AIDS, a theology degree
temporarily sounded preferable to continuing work on a dissertation about
genocide.) A dissertation support group occasionally helped by making me
announce goals, report progress and talk about problems. Still, I was turning 30
(see Rule 1a), trying to treat the dissertation as a full time job and realizing
that assembling 35 job packets was a part time job in itself (see Rule 2).
The University of San Francisco called to request the first interview, which
confirmed my excitement about the job hunt. I had served on a search committee
and been to several panels about first jobs at the American Society of
Criminology meetings.
I knew enough to do some research on the department, including some searches
to see what the faculty wrote and I tried to be astute about looking for signs
of deep political divisions. I would later learn to make a visit to the
bookstore to see what is being taught and what level of material professors see
as appropriate for the students – and to try to run a few searches at the
library. The interview itself was a grueling two days during which I met with
faculty, the Dean, taught a class, and gave a research presentation. I was the
first of three candidates, so I would not hear anything for several weeks.
The next call came from a large state university in a small town that my
Northern prejudices associate with tumbleweeds. Before the first day of
interview was over, I wanted to hitch-hike to the airport and fly home: dusty,
boring, a 90 minute drive for a good restaurant and I had nothing in common with
anyone. I asked about social life for single people since I would not be moving
there with anyone, and was told there were a ‘handful’ of junior female
faculty, but a thousand or so female graduate students. Although relationships
between (male) faculty and (female) students seemed to be an open secret, I was
still surprised that someone would say, ‘Sure, come here and date our female
students.’ Maybe the faculty member was being realistic about what tends to
happen, but I wondered if the answer would have been different if I was black.
Tumbleweed University called immediately to offer a job, and I still had a
week before I would hear from San Francisco. The excitement of ‘I could soon
be anywhere in the United States’ now had a dark side that made it even more
difficult to focus on the dissertation. Ultimately, the University of San
Francisco offered me the job – a one-year appointment, potentially renewable.
Because of increasing enrollments in the department, the position was likely to
renew and turn into a tenure track position – but no guarantees. There would
be another national search for that position, but I would have a foot in the
door. The Tumbleweed job was tenure track, with less teaching and they had a
graduate program (which usually means more intellectual stimulation and is an
advantage for moving to a better institution).
The choice forced me to ask: How important are geography and social climate,
security, longer term potential? How do you value those in relation to a variety
of institutional factors such as its size, religious affiliation (USF
is Jesuit), graduate programs, teaching load, and type of students? With the
colleagues in a department, how important are personal friendships, political
compatibility, and intellectual stimulation? Although neither choice was a
serious research institution, I also had to start thinking about what mix of
teaching and writing I wanted to do, and under how much pressure.
If I had a family or child to consider in my decision, I might have chosen
the safer option and gone with Tumbleweed. Ultimately, having another offer made
USF increase their salary. They were not going to bargain about teaching load or
benefits. They already provided money for moving expenses, were going to buy a
data set for my research, provide conference travel money and a computer for the
office. I might have been able to bargain more, but it was a good deal and I was
so relieved I took it. (Another plus I later discovered was that they
frequently had receptions with good free food, which is almost as important to
junior faculty as it is to graduate students.)
I rebuilt the engine to my VW van immediately before leaving on what would be
a 4500 mile trip across country [see photo above], during which I worked a few days as a mechanic
to offset the cost of some additional work. I arrived in San Francisco days
before Jerry Garcia died and thousands flocked to the city that had been home to
the Grateful Dead. People on the street saw my van and asked for rides to folk
festivals and Rainbow gatherings. I explained that I was there for a job; they
asked if I had a shower they could use, and I had to tell them I didn’t have a
place of my own yet. Meanwhile, at the University, in spite of grease under my
fingernails and a ratty ponytail people called me ‘Doctor’ and ‘Sir.’
They showed me an office with my name on it, gave me business cards and
letterhead to match. The secretary came in with a box of office supplies and
apologized because the perfectly decent computer in my office was not the even
newer one I had been promised. The media relations office emailed me inquiries
from journalists who wanted to interview ‘experts’ on a wide range of
issues.
Between feeling like an impostor, learning a new city and university, and
teaching three new classes, I have never worked as hard in my life (with the
possible exception of a few 70 hour workweeks at Pizzeria Uno). Part of what
attracted me to academia was not having to be in an office 9 to 5, but I found
myself working six days a week, sometimes seven. Being able to do some of the
work at the beach, in the park or a coffee shop was small consolation. New
faculty who had not finished their dissertations had it worse, as they put in
even more hours under greater pressure. They also spent that year finishing up
the dissertation rather than tackling other tasks expected of Assistant
Professors. Because I had finished, I was able to publish a short article and
win a small grant. I had a little more energy to put into teaching, and gave
presentations at two national conferences in addition to becoming involved with
a few university events.
The job became a tenure track position that year, and I thought I was in a
good position: I won the job last time and that was before all the activities of
the past year. But that sentiment combined wishful thinking with naïveté. As a
result, I did not aggressively job hunt to cover myself as I should have. The
tenure track job advertisement attracts people who already have tenure track
jobs and/or better credentials than people who apply for one year jobs. I came
in second to a minority female who had a book due out with a good press. She
wanted the job and she was not just looking for an offer she could use to
bargain with her current institution. It was time for me to call U-Haul. (I have
met her at conferences since then and had a nice talk. Although I was upset at
losing the job, it was not a personal matter between her and me.)
I still had several months of paychecks (sign up for the 12 month salary
option!) and a summer project, but what next? Through a friend, I heard about a
job at a poor, small rural state university. They had not filled a position that
was, I learned, left vacant because of a fight. Political fights are an
occupational hazard of academic life, but in this case it was fairly rare
fistfight in a parking lot, which the professor lost to the husband of a female
student. This information came up in the context of my being told that even
though there was nothing in the way of institutional repercussions for dating
students (even current students), men needed to use some common sense. The
faculty member added that I would be quite popular with the women since I had
lived in some interesting places and my idea of fun went beyond "tractor
pulls and professional wrestling."
The job at Tractorpull U. had a high teaching load and there was little
support for research or anything faculty wanted to do; it took more than six
months to get one new faculty member an email account. One professor who had a
success record with grants and an excellent publication record told me the
administration put roadblocks in his way so he would not show up other faculty,
most of whom occasionally published a paper in formats like conference
proceedings that were not peer reviewed and thus held little prestige. When I
inquired about buying my way out of a class or two in case I received a grant I
was applying for, they found an extra class for me to teach. Then, the position
was no longer tenure track, but a one year position with several thousand less
in salary.
More hard questions: should I take it just because it was a full time job
with benefits and an adequate salary for the area? The college was in a county
where more than a third of the population was on some form of public assistance,
so they argued that I could research social problems and get a grant to do some
good work; the students could really benefit from having someone like me as an
educator and I could really make a difference in their lives. Was that enough to
counterbalance my desire to be in an urban area, work with graduate students,
have time for some research and have more in common with everyone around me?
The other, and more desirable, option was to do part time work back at American
University: live poor again (still?), devote time to job hunting (see Rule
2), and make progress on research projects. My fear of the Tractorpull U job was
that it would be an alienating environment that required so much teaching and
committee work that I would not have time for writing. Without publications,
mobility is difficult and there is an increased chance of getting stuck
somewhere. To be sure, ‘publish or perish’ is a reality at some
institutions, including a few which take it to the extreme of only counting as
publications articles that appear in selected journals or in the books of
prestigious presses. Most faculty, however, have never published a book and are
at institutions emphasizing teaching. Someone can make tenure at such schools
with minimal publications, so long as they have a solid teaching record and/or
committee service (sometimes, not even that much). But mobility to a better
place basically requires publications. (People at Tumbleweed U. argued that it
was so boring there, I’d be able to publish a great deal and move on!)
The time did allow me to make progress with an article about televising
executions that would be rejected twice before a version was accepted, and then
finally published in late 1999 – about two and a half years after I began
serious work on it. The next round of job hunting involved another 30 or so
applications, mostly for tenure track jobs, with a few temporary positions
thrown in for good measure. After the experiences at Tumbleweed and Tractorpull
U, I tried to be careful about only applying for jobs I actually wanted, but I
also wanted to make sure I would get a job.
I ended up violating Rule 4 and getting the job. They did not pay moving
expenses, so I had to pay my own way to a job I did not really want but where I’m
starting my third year. Professionally, I have grown and learned an incredible
amount, not least from supportive colleagues, but these last years have been the
least interesting ones of my personal life. I have the American
Sociological Association website bookmarked and check in every month to look
at the Employment Bulletin. To my surprise and dismay, I find
surprisingly few jobs that are better and for which I would be competitive.
Further perspective came from a recent interview at an inner-city university
where the faculty were as politically divided as six people could possibly be. I
heard that in the recent past several professors made up a rumor that another
professor had raped a student in order to drive him out of the department.
During my fifth year, my university will make a decision about granting me
tenure, at which time the job market really shrinks dramatically. Most
universities prefer to hire cheaper inexperienced Assistant Professors that they
can evaluate for tenure, rather hire than someone higher in the salary scale who
has tenure and could be around potentially for the rest of their professional
lives. So, although I am likely to get tenure where I am, my desire is to be
able to call U-Haul one more time. Perhaps there are still some expectations
from graduate training or an excessive sense of entitlement from being a white
male. I’ll be happy to write an update for the next edition of Inside Jobs
and in the meantime, I’ll read Cary Nelson’s book about the academic labor
market called, Will Work for Food. There’s a chapter addressing whether
Ph.D. stands for "Poor, Hungry, and Desperate? or, Privileged, Histrionic,
and Demanding?"
