philosophy jobs panic

Before coming to school today (and installing my new column - check it out on Facebook!), I collected a couple days' worth of mail from our box. In it was my copy of the American Philosophical Association's Jobs for Philosophers. I'll refrain from a lengthy diatribe on the moral cesspool of the academic hustling market, because that wasn't the first thing on my mind this morning.

In fact, the first thing on my mind this morning was that the APA has finally noticed that I'm a dues-paying member. I've had a long-standing feud with the APA. I pay membership dues, and they stop sending me publications. I complain. I stop paying dues, and they start sending me publications. I don't complain. They stop. Undeterred, I continue not to pay. Coquettishly, they start sending me every other publication, leading me on, and I succumb, and pay my dues. They immediately stop sending me anything.

Yes, the APA is a filthy, and unfair, whore. But we already knew that.

(Oh, and a further diatribe on the incredibly snotty conversation I had with an APA person one year when I had - she swore, though I knew better - failed to check the box indicating I wanted to receive the JFP on my dues notice, and so, she explained, I had irrevocably refused to receive it and this problem could not be fixed until dues were paid for the following academic year.)

So, I got the JFP in the mail, which must mean I haven't paid my dues this year. It's exactly like Arthur Dent's relationship to the utilities service.

I haven't opened it yet. I've barely smelled the newsprint. It's in my backpack on the floor of my office (with newly installed column), tell-tale-hearting at me. I can't face it. When I consider applying for an academic position, I am faced with the certain futurity of my own death. Truly: for me, applying for an academic position has always been a moment of insight into the uncanny, in the Heideggerian sense - a moment of authentic Being-toward-death. So I'd much rather idly write a blog post about it...

Will my so-called academic career survive? Will I survive my so-called academic career? Will anyone survive my Bioethics class, set to begin in ten minutes' time?

rejection season

I've received a handful of rejection letters from the various universities I've applied to for tenure-track positions. Most have been standard-issue form letters that say, more or less, "we've filled the position, we received many high-quality applications, thanks for applying." This doesn't say anything about your application, its relative merits, etc. It doesn't say whether yours wasn't a good fit.

Occasionally, they get more detailed, sometimes even telling you when something odd happened during the process. For instance, I got one this year saying that the funding for the position was reduced so that it went from an open-rank position to entry-level. (That I received that might mean that they assumed I wouldn't work for the cheaper price, which could have been true, but I'll never know.)

Years ago, I got one from a school in a very lovely place, who had put out a very general job description, that noted they received more than 700 applications.

Today I received one of the weirder ones. It had the usual form letter fare, but then included a final paragraph that said (to paraphrase): "Obviously, this is disappointing, but keep in mind that your achievements are abiding." What the ?

I have to assume everyone they rejected got this letter, and that it wasn't sent to some particular group of applicants who had either more extensive or more impressive CVs. I mean, I do have 40-some conference presentations, a handful of peer-reviewed publications, several book chapters, and so forth, but under contemporary standards I don't think that's a lot of accomplishment as a scholar. Plus, to me, "abiding" (that word is verbatim) suggests enduring, as though something I've done has significantly changed the philosophy world, and I know for fact this is impossible. Or at least not deliberate.

csu, state budget, my future

The governor's January budget proposal stab in the dark ficción calls for a $300 million increase in funding for the CSU, and a further 10% increase in student fees (which is another $350 million or so in revenue, or, in other words, blood drained from our students). This, and other news, has shifted my CSU employment-threat status from "doomed" to "precarious." The governor (in his last year) also said that the state has to stop cutting higher education funding. He claimed it was because he recognizes the significance of education for the state's future, but I think his staffer admitted the truth to the newz media: the student protests got to them.

I'm so frickin' conflicted, it ain't funny. What should I do if one of these jobs comes in, but the likelihood of my current job remaining becomes more certain?

I love my stupid university. I adore our students, I adore the classes I teach, and I adore raising hell there when the opportunity arises. Although I don't love Turlock, I do love fruit, possibly more than is altogether healthy or sane.

I've lived in California almost 12 years, and I miss Pittsburgh and snow (one of which I might possibly get in a move). I've never had job security in any meaningful sense - i.e., tenure - and won't ever get it here. Besides which, the governor's budget proposal pipe dream lame attempt at generating a mass hypnotic spell ficción is certainly not going to come to pass.

Plus, at its current pace, my stupid university will be a broken shell of its former self within 2 years.

And ultimately, I have to face the fact that as long as I am in this position, not only will I be vulnerable to losing my job practically any time, but I will continue to have permanently degraded working conditions that I don't deserve.

It's all rather academic at this point, though, since at the moment I don't have a job offer to contemplate.

on the road, perhaps, sometime

Job prospects are starting to begin to think about considering sorting themselves out. And we're contemplating what it would mean to move out of state.

It's bringing the reality of the situation into sharper focus.

I mean, I am likely to be making a decision soon to leave the university I have worked for and loved to teeny tiny pieces. I've been here almost 12 years, which is a year shy of the longest time I've lived anywhere. I know there's a certain degree of trauma involved in moves like this, no matter the circumstances. But I also know it's worse when it's coerced.

I've lived rough quarters of my life in four states: Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and California. About half of that was in suburbia (as a kid in Maumee, Ohio and in Greensboro, North Carolina, then Charlotte). In Pennsylvania, it was in the old, beautifully broken city of Pittsburgh. And now Central Valley overgrown small town California.

The two coerced moves (to NC and CA) were much more traumatic than the one move by choice (to Pittsburgh). Here we go again.

This time, it'll be with Lauren, who has never lived anywhere but California.

uncomfortable questions

The last week or so, several people have asked me about what I'm teaching next spring. The fact of the matter is, I don't know whether I am teaching next spring. I don't know if I'm teaching in Winter Term come January.

This has got me a little freaked out.

I don't have much more to say about it at the moment. Life hasn't been in this much flux in a while. Losing steady employment is like that. Potentially losing a career is like that, too.

I heard a story this afternoon on the local NPR station about budget cuts to services provided to California inmates, in particular education and job training services. The story included a soundbite from a woman who has taught printing classes at a California prison for many years. She's 46, thought she had a career going, and now is pretty much stuck. Man, I can relate.

job search begins

Having heard from my interim department chair that, by current plans handed down by college deans, there will be no work in the department for me next year. So I'm looking for work. I hate that.

I looked through the American Philosophical Association's Jobs for Philosophers publication this afternoon. It didn't take long. I found 5 jobs I have a reasonable fit for, and 4 of them where I might actually be considered, perhaps.

I never wanted to come to California. I didn't like the Central Valley when I got here, and, truth be told, there's a lot about it not to like. Some crappy things have happened to me here, too.

But through the years, especially the past 6 or so, I've fallen in love with my campus, and with California, and of course with Lauren, and this has made being here not merely tolerable, but a life worth living. Now, I don't want to leave California. I may not have the choice. In academia, you get to choose what you get your degree in, you get some choice of what you study, a little choice of what you teach, but virtually no choice where you live.

Dusted off my CV a bit this afternoon, too. Surprisingly, it's mainly up to date. I don't seem to have a letter of application anywhere, so tomorrow I'll be writing that up. Ugh.