The Market, Part Three

Yay! It's part three of my posts about my experience on the job market. In Part One I discussed the realities of the academic job market in the humanities. In Part Two I discussed more specifics: the job sites I used, the types of positions I applied for, and the materials I used in my application. In this third part, I am going to talk about my specific search-- my application tracking processes and the three takeaways that I've grasped onto.

In the second half of this post I summarize my spring semester at Madison College.

Job Market Discussion

One of the smartest things that my friend and job market guru Dr. Kat O'Meara told me at the beginning of this process was to record everything. And so I did. The two documents that I used to keep track of my job applications were a Google Spreadsheet and a Pinterest board. These two trackers kept my information organized and also gave me visuals of the places that I applied, which I liked.

The job market spreadsheet was something that I went to back to time and time again. I color-coded the spreadsheet so that I could see, at a glance, where I was at with each application. On the spreadsheet I tracked details like, where the schools are, what they required in the applications, and most importantly, when I needed to submit the applications. In the fall of 2017, I applied to 21 schools and had a total of five interviews. The amount of interviews to jobs that I applied for may seem small, but I was actually very happy to get the interviews that I did, and I do feel like they were all good experiences. On the MLA JIL site that I discussed in the previous job market post, there were roughly 300 jobs posted this year. I would assume that probably at least 50 of them I was not eligible to apply for. So, as a very rough estimate, I applied to about 8% of the available jobs. I will discuss more about how I chose the jobs to apply for below. 

The Pinterest board served much less of a practical purpose, but I used it almost like the closing of the application. Once everything was submitted for a particular job application, I would pin the website of the school to board and try to find a pretty picture to represent it. That simple practice took me away from the minute and worrisome details of the application process and gave me something to celebrate-- another job done and added to the board! Even now, I like to go back to the board and take a look over the images collected and remember the effort put into the search. 

At the end of the process, just for fun, I also mapped out the places that I had applied to geographically. It is interesting for me to see the different places (literally) that my life could have gone based on these applications: 

As I reflect back on this process and remember the highs and lows of the experience, there are three characteristics that I think are worth making note of to hold onto during trying processes like these: 

1. Individuality: This item is both a strength and a weakness. One way that I think individuality must be valued is that each person must do what is right for them. I've heard of all sorts of stories of people on the job market. I've heard of people applying for one job and getting it! I've heard of people applying for 70, 80, 100 jobs to receive one or two offers. I've heard of people applying for maybe, three or four jobs, and getting offers from all four. There is no right or wrong way to apply for jobs; the job market must be approached based on the way that each person feels is appropriate. For me, my husband and I chose places that were either close to home or places to which we wouldn't mind moving. That eliminated some portions of the country just on that standard alone. In addition, I didn't apply for any jobs that I didn't think I would like. This may have been a mistake, but I felt like I needed to be comfortable with knowing I could do the job described in the ad in order to apply. 

On the negative side, individuality can also mean that a person becomes quite self-consumed. For a period of time, all I thought about was how to market myself in the best way possible, and that can be quite self-consuming. I just knew that once my applications were in I had to shake off that mindset. 

2. Tenacity: This is probably not a surprise to anyone, but this process was tiring. From the months of August to December 2016 I was, I felt like, constantly researching, writing, editing, or submitting applications. I don't think there were two applications that were the same. That meant that for every single application I had to research the job ad, the school, and the department and adjust all my materials accordingly. Though, I did spend more time on this process for some schools than for others. There is no one application to submit, and the constant changing was wearing. 

In addition, this process can be draining self-esteem wise. Like I said above, this is a very self-consuming act where a person tries to position themselves as the best version of themselves on a few sheets of paper. Because of that, this process can take a good hit on a person's self-esteem. While the job site wiki is helpful, as are job market groups like one I joined on Facebook, it can be disheartening seeing other people get a lot of interviews or jobs get taken that I may have really wanted. For me, sometimes seeing those things made me less motivated to work on my materials and get stuff out. Often I had to grit my teeth, push through, and just summon the tenacity to get it done. 

3. Perspective: The last item that was worth noting through this process was that of perspective. I've alluded to this point in the previous two, but I feel like it was very easy to get swept up into this world of "what will happen" and "where will we live" and "what if this is all for nothing." Even getting interviews was nerve wracking, as I'd research the school, try to brainstorm questions that they might ask me, prepare an outfit, and make sure my technology was working properly. There was a lot of energy put towards these steps, and it was easy to get lost in that. I'm grateful that I have my husband, dogs, and supportive community to help me take moments to enjoy the everyday, but I would say that during the fall semester the job market applications were never far from my mind. Keeping perspective is really important. Getting or not getting a job didn't mean that I succeeded or failed. Sending out just one more application didn't mean that I was any better or worse of a person. It was important to keep that perspective. 

This articulation of these three characteristics brought to mind one of my all time favorite quotes, which I may have shared before, from author J.K. Rowling in her book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This is the attitude that both myself and my husband tried to exhibit throughout all the work and stress and unknowns and possibilities of the job search, and I think it's what got me through: 

Semester Discussion

On that note, I'd like to wrap up this post by giving an overview of my past semester at Madison College. I taught a 7:00 AM Technical Reporting class to five engineering students, and I taught an 8:30 AM English 2 class. I also worked about 10 hours/week through the Madison College Writing Center, in person at two different campuses and online. I enjoyed my time in each capacity of this past semester. 

My time in the Writing Center was rewarding in ways that teaching isn't always rewarding. I felt like in that time I was able to give students concrete feedback on a draft or an idea and then turn them loose to take that feedback or not. During that time, I was invested in the students and in helping them succeed, but I didn't have the added responsibility of ensuring that the changes or updates were implemented. I enjoyed that portion of the work, as well getting to interact with a variety of students and colleagues and get to see some pretty cool assignment prompts.

My Technical Reporting class was great. I was concerned prior to the semester about having a class at 7:00 AM, especially one with so few students; however, the class couldn't have been better. Four of the students were peers in the same program, and the fifth student was also a science/ engineering student, so I was glad that they had some commonalities. We worked through four projects throughout the semester. The two main projects were a research report and a proposal. Two of the students liked the report best, and one liked the proposal best. We also did presentations for the proposals, which was the other two students' favorite project of the course. The students commented on learning about the intricacy of professional documents, and they also talked about learning how to differentiate between informative and persuasive communication styles. I enjoyed working with these students this semester. 

The English 2 class was the portion of the semester that was the most surprising. I've taught English 2 at three different institutions before teaching it at Madison College this semester, but I used a different course sequence than I ever had previously, and my students responded really positively to it. I still had the students complete five projects, but instead of having the projects connect via a theme or a text, the projects all built upon each other. In the end, the students wrote manuscripts for academic journals based on research both about the journals and the topic of their choice. Over half the class said they liked this project best, and over one third of the class said it was the most informative project. 

The final compositions showed the students interest in the project as well. The research, formatting, depth of knowledge, and personal engagement that the students showed was really exceptional. I was also genuinely interested in reading almost all of the manuscripts, which again points to the time and effort the students put into writing them. I read about the "Pacific Garbage Patch," the plight of sharks around the world, Middle Eastern architecture, and sexism in America, to name just a few topics.

Throughout the course we read the textbook Habits of the Creative Mind, which I really liked. Towards the the end of the class we watched Elizabeth Gilbert's TEDTalk, "Your Elusive Genius," and I asked the students: what does creativity look like or mean to you? The students came up with these answers, and I was glad to see them stretching themselves and thinking about the content that we had been discussing: 

So, at the end of all this, I'll leave you with this same question: What does creativity mean to you? May it take you wonderful places. 

The Market, Part Two

In February, I published the first in an intended series of three blogs about my experience on the academic job market. In that post, I discussed my journey through graduate school, and I outlined the general tiers of academic institutions. In this post, I will discuss the rankings of paid academic positions, and then provide templates for my own materials that I used on the job market. Again, I in no way claim to be an expert in these matters, and I explicitly say that not to devalue my own experience but to qualify it as just that-- experience. In many ways, the academic life can be somewhat bipolar in that it asks professors and students to choose areas of research and scholarship that interest them, but it also, often, pushes away personal time, agency, and care. I believe that scholars must and should work to claim and exercise their own agency through this journey, and that is grounded in experience.

So, this is my experience on the academic job market.

Academic jobs in English, rhetoric, and writing come out one time a year, and they mostly come out on one list. This is so opposite of what normal people experience in the job market, but it's the reality of our field (and, I believe, many other academic fields). This list is called the Modern Language Association of America Job Information List, or the MLA JIL. This list is published in mid-September, and it contains the majority of the job postings in the entire field for the upcoming (read one year away) academic year. Now, there are some pre-JIL postings that sometime come out prior to this date, and those are usually on individual listserves or on the Rhetoric/Composition Wiki. Jobs are also continuously posted on HigherEdJobs and ChronicleVitae. One other place where job ads are aggregated is on Rhet Map, which draws the adds from the MLA JIL and shows them according to location. Jim Ridolfo puts this together, and it is a great service to job seekers.

I used all of these resources to search for job postings. From about mid-August to mid-December I looked at one or more of these lists probably at least four days a week. The Rhet/Comp Wiki is especially helpful/problematic to check because it can be updated by community members who log on and update the individual adds with the status of their applications/ interviews, etc. To the right is one example of a post on the site from my alma mater, ASU.

These job lists come out and they list a variety of items that you can also see in this example. Items like, the title of the position, the focus of the position, a description of what the ideal candidate will focus on and/or do, the deadline for submission of materials, and sometimes (not in this case) a list of materials that the committee would like to see from the candidate. To find that information for this position the candidate would have to click on the actual link where the job is posted, in this case ChronicleVitae, in order to see what materials they need to submit for the job. I will discuss those materials coming up.

One of the most important items that these job ads list are the title of the position. In this case, the title of the position is "TT Asst. Professor." What that means is this position is listed for as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor position. Here is a list of the different kinds of teaching positions that one will generally encounter at American institutions of higher education:

Now, there are, of course, exceptions to these rankings, contract, and promotion systems, which I why I labeled them all starting with "generally." While adjuncting is by far the most tenuous and underpaid type of professorship, some institutions, like Madison College, have built in pay advancement systems. One of the main issues with being an adjunct, though, is that one only gets work if there are classes available that full time professors don't want or need. Instructors or lecturers still generally teach very heavy course loads (as many as 5/5), but their contracts are usually yearly, so there is a bit more stability; some of these positions also have internal ranking and promotion systems. Assistant, Associate, and Full professorships are the types of professorships that are most generally known to the public and considered "tenure track," although there are exceptions to this system as well. An Assistant Professor, despite the name, is a full-time professor who is part of whatever type of promotion system (tenure or non) that the institution uses. In a tenure-track system, by the time one is an Associate Professor and almost always by the time/ as one becomes a Full Professor, they are tenured and no longer tenure track.

Clicking over to Facebook just after writing the proceeding paragraph, I see that Dr. Karen Kelsky of The Professor Is In has shared this article published today (April 11, 2018) in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which asks in its title "How Much Did Professors Earn This Year?" To find specific earning statistics at any given university, take a look at Chronicle Data. The article answers that question with the following statements:

"Full-time faculty earned an average of 3 percent more than they did in the prior academic year. But the salary increase was cut by nearly two-thirds, to 1.1 percent, after adjusting for inflation. The average salary ranged widely, depending on rank: Full professors earned $104,820, associate professors made $81,274, and assistant professors took in $70,791. The average pay for lecturers was about $57,000 while, for instructors, it was $59,400. The AAUP's analysis also found salary compression at 892 institutions" (June). 

Some other troubling findings published in this article are the fact that "93 percent of all reporting institutions pay men more than women at the same rank... on average women made 90 cents on the dollar compared to men at the same rank this year" and with "the average age of a Ph.D. completion at 32," career trajectory starts much later "than most white-collar workers" (June). This is the state of the academic world that hopeful applicants, like myself, are currently entering.

In terms of what types of documents that job search committees actually want to see, there is also quite a range. Each committee wants to see something a little different, so each application takes quite a bit of time to gather and send the specific documents to the submission portal for that school. I was lucky enough to have friends and colleagues who shared their materials, so here are some of my material templates that I sent out in my job applications this past fall of 2017:

• Cover Letter
• Curriculum Vitae
• Teaching Portfolio 
• Teaching Philosophy, Statement of Research, Sample Syllabi, Teaching Evaluations
• Writing Sample
• Statement of Administrative Philosophy 
• Statement of Faith 

Like I said, I had many friends who supported me in this application process. One friend is Dr. Kat O'Meara, an Assistant Professor Rhetoric and Composition and Director of Composition at Emporia State University. During her application process, she wrote a blog post for 4Cs called "Managing PhDTSD." This article was very helpful to me as I jumped into my job application process.

That's it for my second market post! Now please enjoy these cute photos of my dogs because they are cute:

FINLEY

LACY