Does anyone else find this whole process incredibly demoralizing? Even when I'm doing well I'm feeling like it's not enough, my peers are doing better, etc. It's very frustrating!

It is absolutely demoralizing and frustrating! Just not knowing drives me up the wall.
(The best advice I got was to find something that would keep my mind busy so I wouldn't think about it. I find writing papers helps.)

How many interviews do you have so far?
10 (12/7)

10 already? geez, that is demorailzing. I've only got 1 thus far...

[This is a fairly useless question, providing little else than stomach cramps for most of us.]



[A scoreboard?]

I agree that this is a useless question. I've talked to people who were on the market last year and had 10+ interviews and then got no job offers. And I've talked to others who had 2 interviews and got a job. Interviews are only one step in the process.

How are most people contacted? I provided phone and e-mail contact info, but not sure where to focus my nervous anticipation. :)
(People say good news often comes by phone; bad news by mail/e-mail, but there are notable exceptions, so keep your eye on all three).
I have received about half of my interview calls by phone and about half by e-mail, so I am obsessively checking both.
Ditto on the half and half.
I've received most by e-mail.

A lot depends on how widely you cast your net. If you apply for 50 jobs,
it's not unusual to get 10 or more interviews. The most I ever had was 15,
but that was 20 years ago now. Usually I can count on 5-6, and if I don't
have that many I often don't go. Many schools will consider you still,
phone interview, etc.

If a school's up as having scheduled MLA interviews, does that mean it's scheduled all of them?
I really want to know the answer to this question, too.
It's happened with two schools now that their names went up one day, and they called me the next day.

That makes me think this wiki is producing more anxiety than it salves...
if I see my dream school has scheduled interviews, I assume I'm not getting one.
But now I see maybe I just have to wait another day. Or two. Or not?!


As for the wiki producing more anxiety than it saves...doesn't that depend upon the person? I find myself checking the
wiki quite often, and I've seen some of my schools go up on the list w/o my being contacted.
And that's not a great feeling, but it also means I can move on to focus my energy on the other schools.
If they end up contacting me, it's a pleasant surprise.

Re: the comment above about the production of anxiety:
just because you don't get a call now doesn't mean you won't
get a call later. Candidates sometimes drop out; other times,
searches fall through and calls are made in February, March,
and even April. I even know someone who was made and offer only
to have it rescinded. This whole process is so unpredictable that,
while I think the wiki is great and helps spread info, you
really never know until you know for sure.

It might be useful to talk about the unpredictability of the process. I don't know abut the rest of you, but I'm starting to feel abused. There are schools who had application deadlines of late October and early November who seemingly haven't contacted anyone yet. Why do schools ask for materials so early if all they are going to do is sit on them? I don't feel like we are being treated like professionals here. It's not hard to at least send an e-mail to applicants letting them know the status of the search. Also, I think it stinks that we are expected to make travel arrangements for MLA long before any schools have scheduled interviews and that there is no deadline for scheduling them. I've been told that schools will call as late at the 23rd to schedule an MLA interview. That just seems disrespectful to me. I understand that a late calls probably means someone else dropped out at the last minute (i.e., the school is calling people on its "B" list), but if schools would finish their first round of interview scheduling by Dec. 1, then the second round calls wouldn't have to come so late. I also understand that search committee members are busy, but they are asking a lot of poor grad students to spend a lot of money to go to MLA, and I'd like to have enough time to cancel my reservations if I don't get any interviews. I've had 4 phone interviews already, all scheduled at least a week in advance, so why can't the MLA interviewing schools get their stuff together in a more timely manner? That's my rant. Does anyone else feel the same way?

When a school gets over a hundred letters, CVs, abstracts, reference letters, writing samples, and teaching portfolios, it takes a lot of time to read them, even if some are cut on the first glance because a person is missing a major area. I don't think schools are trying to be abusive, but I do think they are trying to take the process seriously and commit to it, reading dozens upon dozens of applications while teaching two, three, or four classes and doing other committee/service work. I'm amazed they get all that done in two months. I keep waiting to see deadlines in early September to compensate for how much time it takes. Hey, I have jobs I applied for last year where I still have not heard one word from.

I don't think that committees are being disrespectful on purpose, but long silences and late interview scheduling create that effect. Here are two options that would take into account the huge amount of work both committees and applicants put into this process:
1. Stop going to MLA and do all phone interviews-this would save expense for applicants and schools. Schools could even put that MLA money into bringing an extra applicant for a campus visit.
2. Make the committees smaller (at least for the first round of application reading) and give the members a course release for the work.

As someone who has been on both sides of the desk, I know the frustrations of the candidates and the SC. Last year, we did a search that netted 110 applicants. It was easy to ditch a few, but the others took quite some time to sift through. One of our biggest problems is that we had trouble meeting because we all had different schedules. Also, no one could take the applicants' files home and they were kept in the secretary's office, which is locked after hours, so that made reviewing apps harder and more time consuming.
In regards to #2 above, course releases are extraordinarily hard to come by. It takes quite a lot of manuevering to get one, and it is very doubtful taht any dean would agree to lose 2, 3 or even more courses (1 per SC member) in one semester (or two) for the job process.

One small step: If institutions started accepting digital applications, or went to digital materials only (some have) they could more easily review applications thus cutting down on the time. And as a bonus make it cheaper for those of us on the job market.

How would going digital change the amount of material? Whether you read it on screen or on a piece of paper, the amount of words and detail is the same.
Not only that, but even more people would apply.

Yes, the amount of the material would probably stay the same or increase, but I think the point here is the access. Rather than having to get to the materials between 9 annd 5 in the departmental office, committee members could read the materials on their own computers whenever they had some time. This would, in theory, speed up the processing time just by increasing committee access to the material. Personally, I'd like to see some sort of job clearing house like they have for med schools. Applicants upload all of their materials and then direct schools to that one central place rather then mailing 60 applications to all corners of the world.
I love this last idea!!

I have a question about going digital: wouldn't it increase work for recommenders? I ask b/c that's definitely the case with digified grad school aps, which pretty much demand that recommenders go to a different site for each school an applicant is trying to get into in order to fill out an on-screen form and then upload a rec letter. I've had to do this just once, the student was only applying to 4 or 5 schools, and it was a real pain. I would much rather have sent my hard copy letter to the job center where someone else would have been able to distribute the thing wherever my student needed it to go. My 2 cents, anyway.

AAAAAAIGH!!!! That is all.





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