Sobering

Wow, Meagan, that's a sobering article. I knew I shouldn't look, but I had to.

The job market has hijacked my dissertation (as I think I've mentioned) and my writing sample still needs quite a bit of work. I've been a little side tracked by some non-academic stuff: primarily a ruptured disc in my lower back. I found out last week that I'm going to need back surgery -- I'm mildly freaked about the surgery itself, but also freaked about the recovery time: 4-6 weeks. As ALL of you know, I can't take 4-6 weeks off. Can you imagine? I mean, if I could take a 6 week vacation where the world basically stopped so that deadlines weren't creeping up, I'd be all for it. If I ever find a way to make that happen, y'all will be the first to know. Until then, I'm hoping that after a week recovery time I'll be able to get back to work, but I need to get that writing sample done before the surgery.

Granted, I've been saying that for a few weeks now. Gotta get my butt in gear here people. Butt in gear.

Job search costs

A sobering account of what it costs to spend a year on the market, in exacting detail.

Via Academic Cog.

update

i've been such a horrible boot-camper. here, though, are a few updates:

during the last week of July, after 7 freakin drafts of my prospectus, my committee finally approved my diss r-s project.
as a result, in August i received formal notification of my upgraded status to Candidacy (ABD, baby!).
then today i FINALLY received word of my IRB approval from my sponsoring institution (Temple).

even though i didn't have official approval, there was some "data" collecting that i was able to do. however, as of tomorrow, the study will officially begin with vigor. and for those of you who have probably forgotten what i'm even up to, it's an ethnography of the literacy practices of student-athletes. in other words, for the next 8.5 months i'm gonna be a fieldnote-takin fool! pretty sweet, huh.

on the side i've also been working on a draft of an essay for an edited collection. as of late this work may be described most aptly as: half-assed. though i hope this isn't the case, it could be that this lil side-project dissolves into nothingness...especially if the due date creeps up on me...

Hello out there.

Hi all. I'm just checking in. Haven't heard from too many folk lately and was wondering what all y'all were up to. As Meagan noted (and many more probably know), the job list is O-U-T out. I'm on the market this year, so I'm spending too much time on cover letters and c.v.s and not enough time on my dissertation. So be it. The dissertation will get done on time and this is a bit more pressing.

I applied to three jobs today (just the send us your letter and c.v. sort of application) and will probably apply to a few more tomorrow. But I need to get a few more things in order before I send my applications out to the send-us-everything sort of schools. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time.

I'm preparing myself for the possibility of not getting a job this time around -- it certainly happens -- and I'm mostly okay with it. I know what I would do next year to improve my chances, so it would be fine. Not ideal for me, but fine. But, here's hoping that doesn't happen.

Luck to all of you on the market this year!

A big decision

I've talked before about my efforts to get stuff together for the job market. (If you're not a comp/rhet person, then you may not know that the grand list of job openings was published on Friday.) After looking at that list, and taking a hard look at my progress on the diss and my other activities, I've decided not to go on the market this year.

I've been keeping my options open since this summer, getting the application materials together just in case I saw jobs that I felt I absolutely must apply for. But in reality, I need to get more work done on my dissertation before I can talk definitively about what I do in the project and what I have found.

Now that I've decided to take another year, I'm excited about what I can do in that time. Instead of cobbling together a makeshift dissertation in the next 7 months or so, I can take more time and do this well-- and submit an item or two for publication while I'm at it.

In the meantime, I am still writing. I will also be applying for fellowships. Rest assured that I am not resting on my laurels-- indeed, I am not even sure where my laurels are. But I'm planning on the RNF at CCCC in New Orleans-- maybe I'll find them there.


Cross posted at Intent/Effect.

The Job Market Loometh

For those of us going on the market this year, I imagine the upcoming job list looms large. It certainly does for me. All other work seems to have been put on hold. Instead of working on my next dissertation chapter, I've been revising my c.v., writing cover letters, writing my teaching philosophy, and putting together my portfolio. I've also made sure to set up interfolio and start talking to my references about writing letters. It's pretty much all-consuming.

I'm on top of it, but just barely. My writing sample needs LOTS of work and my cover letters and philosophy will probably need at least one more revision. I'd like to get working on my rhetorical listening chapter -- and writing my presentation for the feminisms and rhetorics conference in October -- but I'm pretty much stuck in market mode.

Anybody else in the same boat? Or any suggestions from those who have successfully navigated these waters?

Comp/rhet job market wiki

The wiki is here.

(I forget where I saw this link. Oops.)

Update: I saw it at The Blogora.

Useful reference?

For Chris or Billie, maybe:

Faculty and male student athletes: racial differences in the environmental predictors of academic achievement. By: Comeaux, Eddie; Harrison, C. Keith. Race, Ethnicity & Education, Jul2007, Vol. 10 Issue 2, p199-214

I haven't read it, but I came across it and thought it might be relevant for you two. I figured I'd mention it since it's not in a comp/rhet journal, so you might not have seen it.

I found it in Academic Search Premier, but it's too recent to be available full-text.

Happy reading. Or ignoring. Whatevah.

Progress

I haven't posted much lately on the state of my work because I haven't felt that I had much to say. This summer, most of my work has been in small increments on several different fronts. I've been writing a bit, but that has taken a backseat to data collection. My first round of data collection is done, but now I need to review videos and audio files. This work will be scattered around the ongoing bits of writing.

I've also been collecting job market documents. CVs (different ones for teaching and research jobs), the teaching portfolio, the bones of a cover letter (to be adjusted to each position). Tonight I did some significant reworking of the CV-- I've kept mine pretty well updated, but it turns out that the format no longer showcases all of my fabulousness to its greatest advantage.

One reference tool I've been using in this process is Surviving Your Academic Job Hunt by Kathryn Hume. It came highly recommended and I appreciate its specific focus on humanities PhDs. On first glance, the book seemed intimidating-- but that only makes sense, given that it's offering you suggestions on how to maximize job offers so that you'll get the kind of job you want. Given this, I felt a bit disoriented when I realized that I am absolutely qualified to compete for the kind of jobs I want.

I'll back up a bit-- I am often hard on myself, evaluating my status by what I have not done rather than by what I have done. Constructing and refining my CV forced me to account for all of the things I have done and to recognize their significance.

There's much more work to do, of course, but it's important to give yourself credit for what you have done.

There's your moral of the story, kids. Go pat yourself on the back for something you've done. It's grand.

Cross-posted at Intent/Effect.

article

Well, I finally finished a VERY rough draft of an article that I've been writing. And it has been a serious struggle. The organization is a mess, I don't think the intro works, and the end is falling apart. But it has a beginning, middle, and end so at least there's something to work with.

I have to say that I've been relatively productive this summer. I'm about a week behind my schedule, but given that it's summer, that's not too shabby.

I head home to WI in about a week for my dad's 70th birthday and being productive there will be difficult -- my brother and both my sisters will be in town as well (we all live in different states) so I'll want to spend time with them, as well as with my parents and step-parents. But I'm going to try to set aside 2-3 hours at least 5 days a week to work on my c.v., my teaching portfolio, cover letters, and maybe this article.

The rest of the day? Hopefully swimming.