Teaching vs. Research

I was talking to a friend and colleague the other day and we were both kvetching about how we didn't have enough time to do the things we wanted to do. She was complaining that she had several writing projects with impending due dates and couldn't spend as much time on teaching as she would like and I complained that my teaching preparation was leaving little time for research.

What interested me about this conversation is that it made me realize that my view of the teaching part of my role as a scholar is different than hers. In telling me that she spends less time preparing for teaching than she would like to, I realized that she sees both teaching and research as activities that are manipulable, at least in regards to how much time one devotes to them. More surprisingly, I realized that I have a fairly static view of teaching and the time it takes.

I realized I tend to see my teaching as something static, something that takes up a given amount of time that can't really be changed. If I have a new prep, that time is larger, and if I have a hybrid class, there's a slight increase in the time I spend on the course because of the online interaction, but it's a fairly solid block. This means that when I plan out my work week, teaching starts off as a block of time that will take up most of the week and I try to calculate what little pieces here and there that might be left for research. Even when I have a project to finish, I don't think of teaching as something that I can really carve space out of, and if I need to spend more time finishing a conference paper, I think of it as overtime effort above what I would normally do in a week.

My colleague obviously sees teaching as something a bit more flexible, that one can spend more or less energy on, not because the preparation demands it (you need a lecture/activity at bare minimum for each class), but because you might need to pay more attention to other things.

What I wonder is why we have these different attitudes?

• I'm a younger scholar than she but a few years and have been teaching less (and at the same time, more often outside my area), so maybe some of it is comfort with teaching. 
• She also have a tt job in her area and is expected to publish, while I have contingent work that depends more on continued positive student evaluations and less on whether I'm getting research done.
• The other possibility of course is that we're just different that way and it's a personal difference in approach to time and responsibilities.

But it's an interesting difference to contemplate. And I suspect that if I'm going to get to where I want to be in this profession, I'm going to have to figure out how to be a little more like her, which is fine with me 'cause I think she's fabulous!

Perpetual rejection?

I've had this sense for a while, but the Chronicle just confirmed it in an article on "The Art of Rejection" (which is supposed to cheer up those of us who are perpetually losing in the job market, but fails to do so convincingly). In it, the authors write:

Over the previous two years, the MLA found that more jobs had been advertised in the spring and summer months than in the fall. In fact, 52.6 percent of jobs in English and 60 percent of jobs in foreign languages appeared after the MLA convention in 2011. Those are welcome opportunities, to be sure, but that statistic also means that the so-called season of rejection now runs continuously from October through September. Under such circumstances, we ask, is there ever a time when a job seeker isn't being rejected?

Indeed. Is there ever a time when I might open my inbox or my mailbox without the vague dread that I will find yet another rejection inside? 

Didn't think so.

First Round Two

freefoto.com

That title is a bit of an oxymoron isn't it? But it's true. I realized the other day that this is the first semester since 2006 when I haven't had a new course to prep. All of my courses this semester are round two or later. That realization really picked me up; last semester was really tiring so I'm hoping that a semester full of round two courses will be less exhausting.

I did change the textbook in one of the courses, so there will be new readings and some new lectures come out of it. The course is also a hybrid one, so there will be some podcasts that I'll need to record for the days that the class meets online, but there won't be new material each week. I also might have some time to build up lecture material in the other courses as well, which will improve the way I can deliver those courses.

The biggest bonus will be to my research and writing; at least that's what I hope. I have three confirmed conferences and possibly another between now and summer, which when I type it, sounds like a lot, but a couple of the papers are based on work I've already made a good bit of headway on. But that doesn't change the fact that I'd really like to carve out a few hours every week to attend to my own intellectual development. Even when my research gains from my teaching (which isn't often since I rarely teach in my research area), it's nice to be able to pursue other paths that have nothing to do with teaching prep.

Don't need an interpreter for this dream

Had a dream last night that needs no interpretation. It starts as I'm trying to find an address in an urban area because I have a job interview. It's a bit like MLA in that I'm trying to find this place, but when I get there, it's not a hotel but a little house. But I realize I've made it just in time - I'm 2 minutes early, and pretty happy I'm there.

I go in and am greeted by a woman who tells me I need a name tag before I can join the other job candidates who I can see sitting in another room. So I write my name on the tag and prepare to enter. But the woman tells me I've done it wrong and I need to try again. I ask her what I need to do, but she just turns her back on me. So I try again. And again. Repeatedly, the woman tells me I've done it wrong but won't answer when I ask what's wrong and I can't see the other candidate's tags to figure out what it should look like.

This goes on and on until all of the candidates have been interviewed and the interviewer announces the interviews are over. Everyone leaves and I'm left sitting in the little house, still wondering what I was supposed to put on the nametag.

Pretty obvious, isn't it? Something so simple as my name, and I can't get it right and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. It's clear that the constant job applications over the last couple of years are getting to me. I'm doing everything right, and yet nothing has come of it. And as much as I know the market's hard for everyone, it's hard not to see it as a personal failure, hence the problem in the dream is that I can't get my nametag right.

*image source: desdechado's flickr stream

Getting to know students

We're at the end of the second full week of classes, and for the most part, I think I've got everyone's names memorized. That's about 120 names, so I don't feel bad that there are a few students who I have to think about when I call out their name, but overall, I think I've got them nailed. For some reason this semester has felt harder as far as remembering faces, and I'm at a bit of a loss.

I know one cause. In two of my classes, there are conflicting forces at work to make it easier/harder to remember names. I'm teaching two sections of a hybrid course, which means we meet half the time face to face and the other half online. The fact that I only see students once a week makes it a bit trickier to remember their faces because I've got a lot of time in between to forget who they are. On the other hand, some of the online meetings are through digital technologies (e.g. Google+) that incorporate a picture, which makes it easier to remember who they are. So it's a mixed effect of remembering/forgetting in this class.

But that doesn't explain why matching names to faces this semester has felt harder in the other classes as well. I really don't want to admit that maybe it's just age and/or exhaustion after a hectic Fall term, but it just might be.

e-reading

I got an e-reader for Christmas and have been happily trying it out. I've been reading both public domain texts (free is always nice) and more mainstream texts. I've been loving it. It's just the right size to hold, and I actually really like the dictionary feature since I don't have to read with another device near me if I want to look something up. (I've been known to take my smartphone out with me when I'm reading a novel, just in case I want to look something up...)

But the one thing that surprises me is the cost of ebooks. I was compiling a list of books I'd love to read this year (a short one, thankfully! - these lists aren't always so) and two of them would cost more as ebooks than as paper versions. And since I always buy enough to get the free shipping, why would I want to pay more for an ephemeral ecopy? This I do not understand. Can anyone explain?

MLA blues... sort of...

Feeling oddly strange not being at MLA 2012 convention. I've been for the last three years, and while it's not exactly an enjoyable conference in the way that many of the others I attend are, I feel oddly strange not to be there. I haven't been in Seattle for probably a dozen or so years, and then it was a quite fly through, so I wouldn't have minded being there.

I won't complain though. This way, I've got time to prepare for the upcoming semester, which I've just discovered is going to require a bit more planning than I thought it would at the end of last semester, mostly because the scheduling of my classes is less than ideal.

The problem with tenure isn't academic freedom

The Chronicle yet again weighs in on tenure, and while I don't agree with much of what the article claims (some of which is poorly argued), one sentence stood out:

The fact is that nontenured and non-tenure-track faculty are toiling in undesirable positions at low pay and subsidizing the interests and security of tenured faculty members...

Exactly. The problem with tenure isn't that academic freedom might be under fire. The primary problem is that a shrinking number of tenured positions are subsidized by contingent faculty, who when they are doing research themselves in an effort to change those undesirable ones into desired ones don't have research freedom, or even in many cases, teaching freedom.There are places that attempt to provide comparable wage schemes for their contingent faculty, but others that don't, and as a whole, the discrepancy between what the tenured and not tenured are paid for teaching the same course remains. That's the problem of tenure, not whether or not academic freedom is at stake.

Turing year

I find it odd how I picked up and read Ted Chiang's The Lifecycle of Software Objects (which I've had for over a year) over the last two days, that is, the first days of 2012, only to realize that Chiang is a bit of a fan of Alan Turing, and this year is the centenary of Turing's birth.

I frequently mention the Turing test in my class on Cultural Perspectives on Science as an introduction to the idea of thought experiments in both science and science fiction because it's one that students find fairly easy to understand. Of course, Turing's codebreaking work was highly valuable during the second world war, which is why the disgraceful charges against him because of his homosexuality are being sought to be overturned. (If you live in the UK, you can sign the petition here.)

I've read mixed reviews of Chiang's book, but I'd have to say I tend to side with those who enjoy it. The link above takes you to an ecopy, but if you can afford the hard copy, it's far more rewarding because of the illustrations and intricate maps included in it.

Running Technologies

I've been thinking about running technologies the last few times I've been out, but I don't mean some kind of fancy new shoe or some type of space-age fabric that's supposed to be more comfortable, wick moisture away, prevent chaffing etc. No, I've been thinking about the music I've taken with me and how the device I use to take it with me has changed over the decade and a half that I've been running.

Take the Walkman. Yup, old school, for certain, but man was that thing durable. The one in the picture isn't an actual Walkman, but regardless of the brand, they could take a beating and keep playing. The very fact that I still have one that works is a testament to that, but so too are the multiple times that clutzy me accidentally snapped the headphones and flung the device to the ground.

In fact, the device itself seemed pretty durable and the only limitation was the cassettes themselves. As any child of the eighties knows, heat and/or overuse can kill a cassette. I recall ruining a whole case of cassettes by forgetting them in the rear window of the car after a vacation. As a lowly burger slinger with a 5 buck an hour job, I can tell you that one hurt the pocketbook severely!

But then of course the CD player came along. The stereo CD player was pretty much a staple by the time I got a portable one, but frankly, it was a bit of a disappointment after the cassette player. The original portable CD players weren't made to handle much movement (somebody apparently didn't look up the word 'portable' in the dictionary before designing the thing...) They skipped and slid across the CD's tracks like a thing possessed. It was a real disappointment, at least until they got wise to the fact that many people wanted to, you know, actually move with the things in hand, and they started building delays and shock absorbers into them.

The portable CD player actually had another downside in that it emerged long before CD burners did, so if you wanted to use one, you were stuck with the CD you'd bought. At least the old cassette players could play mix tapes. I made one after I discovered that my running pace fit perfectly with a bunch of 80s pop songs. Not sure what it was, but David Bowie, the Police and Foreigner in particular seemed to match my stride just perfectly.

At least I got the playlist back when I received a Zune as a present. It was a bit big, sure, but the screen and  simple button arrangement made it really east to scroll through. And the graphics were of course really nice given the size of the screen. I suppose in size it's similar to a full-size iPod, though it was about half the cost, which made it a more practical choice for someone on a limited budget (like me!) Unfortunately, the battery on mind gave up the ghost after a few years. It couldn't seem to retain a charge for more than two days, and I was forever finding myself annoyed at wanting to go for a run and finding the battery dead and facing the prospect of only listening to the heavy breathing/wheezing that occasionally characterizes my running efforts. Not the prettiest sound to listen to, that's for sure!

I must say that the most recent device is the one I'm probably the most fond of. It combines small size, with the ability to create playlists, but even more delightfully, it records my workouts as well. I hadn't realized the mini iPod could do that, so you can imagine my delight in finding out that it would track my time and distance as well as provide me with just the right tunes. I was tickled! There's even a voice that tells me how the workout compares to a previous one, and I know it's silly, but there's something rewarding about hearing a little voice tell me I've just run further than I ever have before. It also doesn't hurt that I recently upgraded the software and it erased all the previous records, so now I'm impressing myself all over again!

I suppose the only way to make my music even more running friendly would be to get rid of the device and headphones all together and implant my playlist right into my head. Of course, that seems a bit extreme, not to mention a bit science fictional. I like science fiction. But on paper, not in my body!

Happy New Year!

I find myself wondering exactly what we're celebrating as midnight hits on December 31st. Are we celebrating the end of a year? If so, is it a celebration of our survival for one more year? Or is it more along the lines of 'thank goodness that year's over!'? Are we celebrating the beginning of a new one with all its possibilities? Perhaps a bit of both? Maybe if you're a pessimist it's the celebration of the end of the year and if you're an optimist, it's the beginning of the new one?

I suspect it's more-so the beginning of a new year we're celebrating as the clock strikes. Otherwise, how does one explain the jump in gym memberships in January?

Is it ever ethical to skimp on comments?

I've found myself pondering this question today. Is it ever appropriate to give few or no comments on a student paper? I don't mean for a particular assignment and treating everyone the same. What I'm wondering is whether it's ever appropriate to give extensive comments on most of the papers in a given batch but less on others.

I find myself wondering this because I'm pretty sure I just marked a paper where I spent more time reading, interpreting (a monumental task at times), and making comments on a paper than I think the student did. In this case, this student has also attended only 3 of the 7 weeks of term. The paper shows it too because we talked about each of the elements that were supposed to be present in the paper over the last 7 weeks and most of them were absent from this paper.

I know I shouldn't take it personally and I don't when students decide not to attend class. But I do find myself resenting the time (and brain power) I spent trying to figure out what this student was saying and then trying to provide constructive advice to perform better. I felt like I was investing more in this than the student was. And I was seriously tempted to just slap a letter grade on it and skip any comments.

In the end I did write comments. I hope the student takes them to heart. But somehow I doubt it. I don't feel any better for it though.

Is that a light at the end of the tunnel? The professor's dilemma

The start of semester is always a bit of a roller coaster ride for me, as it is for most academics. Regardless of how much prep I've started before classes begin, it always feels like I'm falling behind as soon as Labour Day is over. (It doesn't help that the JIL starts a week or two after classes and the research and letter writing for that takes a HUGE amount of time.) But by the end of September, things are usually starting to clear up and the initial rush of preparation lulls a bit before the rush builds again with midterms and other assignments.

So I'm seeing some light at the end of the tunnel and it's a great thing to see. But now I have a dilemma.

If I work through much of the weekend, I will definitely be on top of things and feel better next week. But I've already worked through the last two weekends and am starting to feel the effects. If I take time off and enjoy myself (a hike invite is sitting in my inbox, for example), then I will be no further ahead and run the risk of falling further behind.

Decisions, decisions...

Thoughts (on) Planning and Wandering

I came across this article on shrinking your carbon footprint: Salina Journal News: Shrinking footprints
(which incidentally says almost nothing about what individuals can do to reduce their footprint, so seems misleading). But it got me thinking. Bear with me, this will take a bit of time, but I should get there by the end of the post.

Yesterday, I drove away from my house twice - to two different high-density areas - to meet two different people for two different purposes. And in contemplating my energy expenditure for both those trips (small, given my car, but noticeable nonetheless), I realized that I could have shrunk that footprint if I had known the details of both meetings earlier than I did. I first drove to one place early in the afternoon, had my meeting, then drove home. The drive took about 25 minutes each way, which means I not only was burning fuel, but also spending time rather unproductively in operating my car.

The second (early evening) meeting was only organized that afternoon (in fact, I made the arrangements as I was waiting for the first meeting to start). It was further away, but actually took about the same time to get there. Once I was there, my husband also came with his car because he was coming directly from work. Which means we drove two vehicles back from the same place. You might see where I'm going with this.

Had I known when/where I was meeting people yesterday, I could have organized things so that I only left once and went from one meeting to the next. Instead, there was enough time between the two that I returned home and worked for a few hours in-between.

In addition, had I known that we would have the second meeting and where it was taking place, I could have used public transit to go to the first meeting, move to the second one, then get a ride home. Of course in this city there's a disincentive to actually go with public transit because it would have cost just as much (and possibly a bit more) to buy two transit tickets as it did to burn the fuel I used in my car. (I realize there are other costs associated with the car option, but it is so ridiculously fuel-efficient that the numbers come out very close. And that's without factoring in the time cost of the less-rapid public transit option.)

What I'm getting at in thinking about this is that it's not just about the car or the public transit. Some of what I could have done yesterday to reduce my carbon footprint depended on very social elements of the day, including waiting for a call from the organizer of the second meeting.

In fact, much of my week has been this way. I did manage on Monday to book the two meetings I had back to back, but on Tuesday, I ended up again going home between commitments because I'd had to book the appointment I had in the afternoon weeks ahead of time and then couldn't change it to a time that made more efficient use of both my time and energy expenditure.

Now, I realize that I can't always organize my week efficiently like that, and I'd hate to be so rigid that everything has to be accurately planned out ahead of time. But it struck me as I was thinking about car travel and footprints, and then about my time and my anxiety that I will not get everything that needs to be done finished in time before the semester starts, that maybe we're not talking enough about behaviour changing when we talk about carbon footprints.

We talk about changing light bulbs, and car pooling and getting more public transit options to encourage people to use them, and yet at the same time, I suspect my week is like many other people's in that we spend a lot of time and energy moving around inefficiently, rather than making it more effective. My teaching schedule this term is an example. Because I teach in two different departments, it's been hard to concentrate all the classes on two or three days. Instead, I teach all five days of the week and for four of those days, I'm only teaching one class on that day. That means I'm going to the school every day, a fairly inefficient use of my time, especially since my job does not require me to be physically present when I'm not teaching. (It also means I will need to spend an hour in my car or three hours on public transit each day. Guess which option I'm leaning toward?)

But to return to the question of the social influences on energy consumption. What if we started thinking about energy consumption as more than just kilowatts of electricity or litres of fuel? What if we started thinking about it in terms of hours of energy expenditure? Or started talking about efficiencies of movement in our cities? What if we thought not just about how roads or bus lines connect with each other, but also paid more attention to how people really move through our cities rather than some abstract idea of how we think they might move through them?

I know this city's transit is organized on the assumption everyone wants to go downtown. But lots of us don't. And then we don't use transit because it doesn't go where we want to go without taking us through downtown first (this is why transit is 3x longer than driving to get to my place of employment). Maybe that focus on centrality is efficient on paper, but it certainly isn't for individuals users. But maybe if we started thinking about people individually, we could get somewhere (literally and figuratively!) Given the kinds of geographic mapping technologies we have and computing power, should we not be able to find ways of making an individual's days more efficient by creating systems that do more than just assume everyone is going to one place?

And isn't there a way that I, as one of those individuals, can find a way to make my own movement through the city more efficient, both in terms of my time and my energy expenditure by organizing my days and activities more efficiently? Why does it seem like the more technologies we have for organizing things, the less efficient we seem to get? Perhaps our carbon footprint is a result of social inefficiencies as much as it is structural ones? I'll be thinking about how my social connections affect my energy consumption over the next while, for sure. It might not yield any fascinating insights, but, then again, perhaps it might.

It's August!!!

Those are not exclamation marks of joy. They are exclamation marks of panic. How did it get to be August already?!

What this of course means is that - as usual - I will not have completed all the things I wish to by the end of the summer and need to review my to-do list with an eye to prioritizing the things that absolutely must get done in the next three weeks. But even after I've crossed some stuff off the list (it will have to get done eventually, just not in August), it still seems pretty darn long:

Productive Disagreement

I'm in the processing of preparing a paper for a conference that came up pretty much at the last minute. Those of you who also write conference papers on short notice know what I'm going through - the great idea, the anguish of trying to translate that idea into words, the endless search for the right way (or at least a good way) of expressing those ideas. Sometimes it gets a bit frustrating trying to translate those thoughts into words that would make sense to other people.

The argument is pretty basic. The abstract I sent in outlines it:

The futuristic (Nano)visions of Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber

Most visions of human technology of the future extrapolate the technological developments of the current moment to suggest that development will continue to penetrate human existence, enabling humanity to accomplish more while it also becomes more reliant upon those technologies. Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber begins on such a world, a world penetrated by nanotechnology to such an extent that the humans living on Toussaint feel it gives them a “sixth sense” even if it really is only a “crutch” (Hopkinson 328). However, as the action of the novel switches to New Half-Way Tree, it ultimately reveals that the interconnectedness that the “Granny Nanny” web of nanomites provides a poor account of the diversity of human experience without the stories and the relationships that also make up the life of humans.

As a technology, the nanomites of Hopkinson’s novel envision one way that the nanotechnologies under development in contemporary technoculture might affect human lives. In Nanovision: Engineering the Future, Colin Milburn suggests that nanotechnology is built on such promises, writing that, “the possibilities opened by the capability to restructure and rearrange matter at the nanoscale are immense…. the world itself can be transformed, our lived realities made completely malleable, guaranteeing that the future will be radically and immeasurably different from the present" (6). Milburn further argues that this vision of the transformative nature of nanotechnology is closely affiliated with the imagination, so that writing about nanotechnology is science-fictional in nature.

What makes Hopkinson’s novel unusual is that it counters the technophillic adulation of nanotechnology often presented within science fiction texts. Like Joan Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean, Midnight Robber suggests that enabling technologies do not need to be machinic or divorced from the biological reality of human life. Adopting a Caribbean patois language and attitude, the text provides a refreshing alternate to the masculine, hard science fiction that characterizes writing about nanotechnologies. At the same time that the novel valorizes hard work, relationships, forgiveness, and storytelling over reliance on technology to manage the business of everyday life, the ending suggests a role for nanotechnology that does not unduly intrude or cause dependence for the humans of New Half-Way Tree.

I was doing a good bit of flailing with this one - there's only about a page written so far - so I did what any other writer trying to put together an argument does when stalled: more research! In this case, I found a paper on the same text - Midnight Robber, slightly different idea - web of communication rather than nanotechnology, but still pretty close.

The great thing about reading this paper is that I disagreed with so much of what the writer was arguing. We agree on a number of points, but I felt like this particular writer ignored the entire last half of the book. Which got me thinking about the last half of the book in ways that I hadn't before. And I actually thought some interesting (at least to me!) thoughts about that half of it.

So, I feel reinvigorated for writing this thing. It still needs to get written, and there will be plenty of staring at the screen, tugging at hair, wandering around the house while trying to work out the argument, but I've got a jumping off point now, which is what I really needed.

Productive disagreement, indeed!

When a Bad Experience turns Good

A little while ago, I presented a paper on a single author's work at a conference and it went badly.

It was scheduled for 8am and not only was the audience only 4 people, the other two presenters didn't show up. So I moderated my own paper. Awkward. Especially since two of the audience members were only there to see the paper of a no show.

As I had recently experienced a major setback just before this, I felt like the whole conference was a bust and was really a bit angry that none of the people who I had begun to think of as friends, not just colleagues, who  usually present in this area and might show up were even there. Not even the area chair.

But. A couple of months later, I got an email from that author I was talking about. Apparently the one person in the audience who knew the novel I was talking about also knew its author and told the same about the presentation. The author asked if I would mind sharing the paper. I said, no problem, and sent it as well as some other conference work I'd done on other books. Then we emailed exchanged for a bit, which was really useful because it gave me a chance to find out what the author's perspective was on things I was seeing in the book (not that I necessarily always give that credit; my favourite prof used to always say, 'writers lie' even about their own work). I of course also thought it was kinda cool to email chat with a real author, since I only know a handful of authors, and none of this one's stature (not that it's huge; just bigger than anyone I've met to date). So, yes, I was a bit impressed that an author might take the time to ask about what us academics are writing.

But it also goes to show that even what you think are some of the lows of a career can turn out okay. You just never know....

Ultimate Geek Club

You know how book clubs are cool?

Okay, maybe you don't think they're cool. That means you might want to skip this post. Or. You might want to read on and hear about what would probably be your idea of the worst possible kind of book club. Well, either way...

A couple of friends and I decided we needed to get our theory game on and put together a theory reading book club.

Yup. Theory and book club together.

We've begun with Elizabeth Grosz's Time Travels: Feminism, Nature and Power.

I've gotta say it's been a really good experience so far. Not the book. There are several places where Grosz sets up strawmen as caricatures of what those ideas really are just to knock them down. And that's a bit annoying (especially since she picked on science fiction and science studies - two things I can say I know a little bit about).

But getting to talk to other people about the book, hearing their understanding of it, has really helped me understand some of the parts of the book better than if I had read it alone. And it reminds me of the best parts of doctoral seminars where you get to share ideas with really smart people. I mean, you get some of that at conferences, but at conferences you have to put together a formal presentation and often people don't know what you're talking about (that's the worst, isn't it? When you've slaved over a paper for months and then no one in the audience knows the book/theory you're talking about and you get no questions whatsoever.) In seminars, or in our academic book club, you all are all the same page and get to share cool ideas.

So. It may be one of the geekiest clubs ever, but I'm liking it!

"Glacial" just seems too fast for such responsiveness

Got two job rejection letters today. Two. To which I applied, oh, seven months ago. Seven.

For goodness sake! I know that you only sent out all the rejection letters once you had a signed contract in hand with your selected candidate, but really, if I didn't make your first cut, why couldn't you have mentioned so then? That would've been what, November? maybe December?

In the real world when I worked HR, we either advertised that we would not contact unsuccessful applicants, or contacted them after we set the first interview schedule. Because, really, if you didn't make the cut the first go round, we don't really want you. We always first-interviewed 6-8 people for one position, and if you made it into that first pool, there was no guarantee you'd make it to the second interview or to an offer. But more importantly, if, for some bizarre reason, I interviewed 8 people in a first interview and found them all ill-suited to the position, I wouldn't go back to my pile. I'd repost. Now, I realize that's not quite possible in the academy because you risk losing the line if your search isn't successful, but seriously, if you went through a dozen first interviews and then selected three for campus visits, what would be the chances you would return to the original pile if none of those worked?

I'm willing to bet zero.

So, seriously people, it's almost insulting to get a letter this late in the game, like you thought I still had a chance. I'm not that dense. I got the message loud and clear when I didn't hear from you by January (and when the job wiki made it clear you'd contacted interviewees a month before that).

While we're on the topic, don't be so cheap that you send a letter that is on a photocopied sheet of your letterhead. Seriously, how much would it cost to at least use the real deal? I did. Why can't you?

A Different World

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind roaming this world for a world. Getting a bit tired of the one I inhabit.