Sara’s post last week about taking time off also started me thinking about the process of trying to find a tenure track job.<\/a> Why do young professors feel guilty for taking weekends and holidays off? Nobody would ever actually say that professors or anyone else should work all the time and never take breaks. So why the guilt and anxiety? I think that (for me) a portion of that \u201cshould always be working\u201d feeling\u00a0has to do\u00a0with\u00a0being on the job market.<\/p>\nLet\u2019s look at it for a second: you apply for jobs, probably many, many jobs,\u00a0perhaps\u00a0putting enormous amounts of time into the applications, developing enthusiastic cover letters and in the process totally falling in love with the idea of job after job. You are constantly looking at yourself on paper, comparing or unsuccessfully trying not to compare yourself to everyone else, wondering how to be a better candidate. Which is a bummer mindset in itself, I must say. But then how to accomplish anything and become a better candidate when the whole job application process itself takes up a whole lot of time? How to put aside worries about your worthiness as a candidate and just get to churning out math and being an amazing teacher?<\/p>\n
On lucky years you get interviews, which is exhilarating but you feel like you are wrecking your classes by taking so many days off. You find decent clothes, write job talks, study each college\u2019s curriculum so you can talk\u00a0intelligently about teaching there. You meet a lot of people on their turf, without getting much feedback. You get your heart actually broken by some rejections.<\/p>\n
And then you get an offer! Hooray! \u00a0This is awesome. \u00a0So you move, and start a new job, which is really cool but for about a semester or year is actually like doing two jobs because you not only have to learn the new job but you have to do it at the same time. You try to make new friends. \u00a0If your new position is short-term, rinse and repeat.<\/p>\n
If you are a Jedi knight you can do this without feeling really weird. I am not a Jedi. I was a huge stressed-out mess for big pieces of the years I was on the market. I couldn\u2019t stop checking my email, ever. I felt like I needed to work all the time because I really did need to work a whole bunch of time to do it all, plus I was always trying to be in a better position for the job market the next year. Instead of just trying to do my job well, I was trying to compete with every other amazing candidate in the world. After a few years of this I thought, \u201cI cannot keep doing\u00a0this. This is not a sustainable way to live.\u201d<\/p>\n
This all sounds very grim, and\u00a0so let me\u00a0mention that my\u00a0job search had a few real positives. \u00a0I had a lot of fun in some interviews (even the short joint meetings interviews!), and met\u00a0great people across the interview table. People asked me questions that gave me ideas or made me put together my old ideas in new ways. \u00a0The applications and interviews got progressively easier, and I definitely\u00a0got better at applying for things and presenting myself.<\/p>\n
My current job is wonderful for a host\u00a0of reasons. It\u2019s an amazing job! I love my colleagues and students. Also, I can\u00a0now fully appreciate what a great benefit it is just to break that cycle and let go of the whole extra job of\u00a0applying for jobs. For the first time in years, I feel that I can usually take weekends off when I want to. Of course there are many, many other things to apply for now, but I feel that it\u2019s possible to live a good life while doing this job, which I can now love more.<\/p>\n
For those of you who are on the job market and stressed, I totally\u00a0get it. You are going through something that can be objectively awful. It\u2019s super competitive, you get rejected a lot, you have very little control over it, and the nature of the process constantly encourages you to think that you are not good enough. That is just not true. Everybody feels like that. I just wanted to say “way to go” and remind you that you are actually doing a pretty\u00a0hard job\u2014really two stressful, difficult\u00a0jobs at once. Hang in there.<\/p>\n