I’ll gladly and promptly provide prospective employers with absolutely anything they want to see, if I can just figure out what that is. I’d send these folks a DNA sample and EKG readings if I thought they would secure me an interview. Now let’s face it, I’ve been in graduate school since the mid-1990s. What it wanted was not letters of recommendation, which it already had, but transcripts and a writing sample. One university e-mailed me to request my dossier. What the devil is a dossier? Some ads read, “Send dossier, including letters of recommendation” others read, “Send dossier and letters of recommendation.” It may well be that the request for the abstract is couched in the cryptic terms in which these ads are written. So the actual cardinal rule is this: Send only what the department asks for, except for the stuff you should always send, even though the ad never asks for it. The corollary to that unbreakable rule is that you always send a dissertation abstract, even if the ad doesn’t call for one. My placement advisers preach the one cardinal rule of job applications: Never send anything the ad doesn’t specifically ask for.
candidate in English looking for my first tenure-track job and Jason as a tenured professor in philosophy looking for a similar position. The job market’s paper nightmare is not stuffed into trash bags and hauled to the curb for the garbage collectors, but collated, clipped, and slid carefully into perfectly labeled envelopes entrusted to the Postal Service.ĭeciding what goes into those envelopes is more difficult than we had expected as we pursue our joint search for jobs in the same town - me as a Ph.D. Why did she get more presents than I did? (Both Jason and I have sisters.) Why are there so many job listings this year in metaphysics and so few in epistemology?Īnd then there is the massive nightmare of paper everywhere.
But the next day, childlike wonder gives way to infantile greed. There is the sense of abundance, of endless possibilities. But for the most part it is an occasion for excitement and wonder. There are the pleasant surprises, the perfect toys, and the occasional unsightly outfits from that aunt you’d rather not talk about. Opening the first job listings is like opening presents on Christmas morning.
0 kommentar(er)
