Talk:US History, 2009-10

Hey, let's talk it up in here. The best part of the wiki is the discussion. . . or the venting, whatever you want to call it.

Ok. Too early in the season to require any venting - at least over the job market. How about interview prep? In a phone interview for a SLAC last year (first year on the market, and the only SLAC position I applied for) I was asked some questions which, in retrospect, I should have seen coming.

Q) What experience do you have with SLACs? A) Zero (Doh!)- I'm a product of the state universities, baby. But I DO have a brother who attended a wonderful SLAC for a semester before failing out and transferring to State U!

Q) Given your lack of SLAC experience (I feel I'm already at a disadvantage), what makes you think you'd be a good fit at a SLAC, let alone our SLAC? A) Well, I enjoy working with students (true story). That, and I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night. ..

But seriously, I'm having difficulty formulating a response that doesn't sound lame-ass and canned. Anecdotes? Advice? Scorn??

--

Oh, honey, you don't need to ask for my scorn, that I give out freely and unprompted. But let's try something a bit more useful. One way to answer "what makes you think you'd be a good fit at X" -- even if you have no prior experience of X -- is to demonstrate that you are aware of what X wants or what makes it tick. You could provide an answer that is built not on your non-existent experience at a SLAC (there's basically no way to make that sound good) but rather on what you know about the demands of teaching at a SLAC. So, you could say that the even balance between teaching, research and service at a SLAC appeals to you because it mixes human interaction, organizational skills, and the more cerebral challenges of the archives in a refreshingly varied order. Or, you could talk about how having regular classroom duties presses you into new research fields; how research appears dull without the ability to share the process and results with students, and the like. So, you're not talking so much about your limited experience, but instead theorizing about work conditions in a SLAC, in a way that should (theoretically) be pleasing to your interlocutors.

The other thing is, always be specific. Have a good anecdote about a pleasing student interaction in which you magically discovered your enjoyment of working with students (true story). Demonstrate how enjoying teaching has shaped your academic career (hint: publish articles about teaching, or say that you are working on that). If the SLAC has a mission statement glorifying the civic benefits of an educated citizenry, say that's a mission that resonates with you. Talk about, even if you have to totally make it up, the alienation you felt in the back row of your 700-student introductory lecture survey courses at State U., and how you scrabbled around in the dirt, raised your clenched hands to the heavens, and declared, "As Gawd is my witness, I'll never teach at at state institution again!"

Of course, this was an easy question for me to answer back in my interviewing days. I was a product of a SLAC, had repeated experiences adjuncting at SLACs, emphasized teaching and pedagogy in my doctoral program and publications, and always intended at teaching at such a place. Due to the ironic workings of the world, of course, I'm not at a SLAC at the moment. But, damn, I interviewed well at them.

And, really, you should have seen that question coming.

--

What can a female candidate do when a SC asks if you have kids or are considering having kids? I know these questions are on the no-no list, but it seems like this happens a lot according to the anecdotal evidence. Are you basically killing your chances to show up to AHA pregnant? 9/26

I showed up to the AHA pregnant a couple of years ago and still got two on-campus interviews. I showed up to these interviews even more visibly pregnant and still got a job offer. I have a friend who had to ask for breaks to pump during an on-campus interview (she had a month-old baby at the time), and she still got the job. So it's not an insurmountable challenge. And, I think, any hiring committee who would discriminate against a pregnant woman might make for horrendous colleagues down the road for an exhausted and frazzled new mom. (9/27)

Can someone explain to me what the "job center" at the AHA is? I'm a little unsure about it based on the description on the meeting's website. Is it only for prearranged interviews (I thought those were conducted in hotel suites)? A place for departments to interview adjuncts on an ad-hoc basis for the upcoming year? And, a related question, when or where adjunct positions are advertised? Desperation thy name is PhD in history. (10/11)

---Some prearranged interviews take place in hotel suites, while others are done at the job center. The job center is basically a large conference hall or ball room in the hotel. Each school has a small table where you are interviewed. The tables are separated by curtains, so there's some privacy (although I've heard people complain that you can overhear the interviews of others; this has never happened to me). There is a waiting area outside of the main interview area where you check in beforehand. It can be very nerve wracking since you're sitting with a lot of anxious people. One of the people from your school will come out to the waiting area and call your name when it's your turn (which is a relief because you leave all those anxious people behind). Some schools collect c.v.s and arrange interviews at the conference, but the two times I've been there only a few schools have done this. In my opinion, it is not worth it to go to the AHA to look for a job unless you already have an interview lined up. All in all, the AHA is not as scary as some people will try to tell you it is. As for adjunct positions, in my experience these are generally not advertised publicly, much less interviewed for at the AHA. You should contact the chairs of the departments you could teach for directly to see if they have any openings. (10/17)

slim pickens
How sad is this wiki?

it's not the wiki that's pretty damn sad. it's the invisible hand of the market, giving me the finger. 9/14 - invisible my ass - maybe some of these places should have invested more wisely, spent less on construction, sports, etc. etc.

what is the deal with all of the tenured or chair or endowed chair positions? It pisses me off every time I see a job for a person who already has a job, while those of us trying to get our foot in the door are waiting around. 9/26

Endowed chairs come from earmarked funds -- from a specific donor or fund set up for a specific topic. In other words, the money doesn't have to come from some decimated general fund that all departments are competing for in this dire economic climate. 10/29

I don't think the initial comment referencing these senior posts was meant to suggest that they directly divert funds that might otherwise go for assistant-level positions. It seemed more like a "Why are the rich getting richer?" lament (which I second). (11/1)

Dates
It's very useful is everyone dates their comments. It really helps to know when things are posted. It is also useful, for the sake of quickly keyword-searching a page, to date things in the same way and to write single-digit dates with a zero. In other words, it makes keyword-searching much easier if a comment is not only dated, but dated, say, 10/02 as opposed to 10/2. When a person searches "10/2" he or she will hit every date that begins with a 2, as in 10/21, 10/22, etc. when they are, in fact, seeking a comment posted on October second. Likewise, when dealing with months such as January and February, it is helpful to write the date as 01/10 or 02/10, as this avoids picking up 11/10 and 12/10 in one's keyword search of the page.

--

Look, I just don't think you're going to get a lot of argument about the importance of dates from a page of historians.

Now, getting historians all to agree on the same method of dating, that's a different matter. 9/14

-- Perhaps I will become the date-keeper. Other wiki sites insist that the dates be uniform. It's much easier that way. 9/17

Anticipating this Year's Market
Is it just me or do there appear to be very few jobs opening up this year? This is my first year on the market, and I'm a little unsure when most jobs get posted. Does anyone have any insight?

--It ain't just you. It's late. (09/14)

--It's wretchedly bad so far, especially in 20th century U.S. Far fewer postings than in the past couple of years. (9/14)

--Really, really bad. This year the number of jobs I can legitimately apply for is lower than the number of interviews I've gotten in previous years-for all the good it did me.

--The pace of posting reminds me of the off-peak periods 2-3 years ago -- really just a trickle. I do think, though, that there will continue to be some interesting/viable postings through the fall and even past AHA in January. (Just not very many of them.) -- (9/16)

--This year is a complete disaster, especially for 20th-century U.S. There are far fewer positions advertised than in any of the past five years. (9/19)

-- The AHA listings seem completely useless this year -- incomplete and not very up-to-date. Chronicle, too. H-Net is far and away the most thorough. (9/26)

-- Historian of Bryzantine/Medieval Art? What are these departments doing? (9/26)

--It's amazing how roughly 1 out of every 10 US History graduate students do Early America and it seems that 9 out of every 10 jobs is in Early America. (10/2)

--I am a nineteenth-century American type--put a fork in this year--its done. In my field its horrific. 173.73.172.155 00:03, October 7, 2009 (UTC)

Do graduate programs talk candidly about the job market?
Just wondering--as someone who finished grad school a dozen years ago, and as someone who has a tenured job now--if graduate programs today talk candidly about the job market? I felt very much on my own, although there were supportive fellow grad students and a few supportive faculty. This wiki provides far more detailed information than anything I heard back then. It still seems like the profession acts like a guild.

Can someone tell me what VAP stands for?--75.167.129.241 21:57, October 26, 2009 (UTC)

Visiting Assistant Professor

When I started six years ago, I was told by a grizzled and too-faux-cynical-for-his-own-good DOGS that "you run yourself ragged putting out six conference papers and an article, and you'll end up with a position in the sticks. Some life." Sounded okay to me. Four articles, ten conference papers, and five semesters as an instructor of record later, I got out and scored a single on-campus interview (granted, this was 2008-09). So, I think it's probably rare to hear candid advice. I'm not sure if it's because candid advice is bad for business, or they've just got their heads in the sand (hey, it worked out for them, right?). Probably a bit of both. --71.173.164.254 20:35, November 2, 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the last poster. Depts. and some select, often cynical or already-marginalized individuals, and others with real heart, do tell it like it is -- "the market is bad"-- but beyond them, by and large, the institutional processes take hold of grad training (esp, post-comps) and serve together to make it seem as if because it worked out for the individuals in dept. X it CAN work out for you, so just keep teaching, writing, taking assistant-ships, vaps, etc. Candor and esp. real talk about strategies for employment (from publishing to networking, to how to market teaching, much less writing and revising materials etc.) are very often given short shrift or none at all in the late stages of PhD training, a time when all of that sort of thing is long since over due. In short, the training today is probably just about the same as it was when the original poster posed her/his q. That said, the wiki and other kinds information channeled via new technology (blogs, email) have made a modest difference in transparency, even if the result is just to expose the farce and absurdity of the "job market" - 11/3/09