Is the APA in some ice-covered Nordic hellhole again this year? I don't follow these things anymore, but last year in Chicago was fucking epic. I do believe at one point I was pillaged by vikings.
The annual meeting of the APA is no longer being held at all. That venerable congregation was abandoned by the people you see arguing here on this blog. There is some knock-off version being held in New Orleans, however. It'll have to do.
They should get rid of any references to classics. This watered down nonsense where anyone who takes a week of Greek or Latin can be called a classicist has been the biggest contributor to our downfall, not some misguided notion of exclusivity based on race or gender.
If it's a troll though it gets massive boosts to constitution. If it's an asshole, that's just like, -5 charisma. Or maybe +5? I guess assholes are in the eye of the beholder.
Unless your profs are going to really take offense, in a way that will hurt your letters, I would cancel. You're never going to get hired just because you chatted with someone important over a beer for a few minutes, even in the extremely unlikely circumstances that that person was one day on a hiring committee searching for a candidate from your specialty and actually remembered your name. Save the money, time, and emotional energy, and put it all into starting an article instead.
The poster above misses the point. If you aren't getting any interviews, this isn't going to be your profession. Going makes about as much sense as going to the big annual Dentistry Conference.
Sure, maybe more qualified people are getting no interviews now than ever before, but that's irrelevant, since they can't very well go back to 2007 to compete in that market.
There are specialties this year with one or no jobs posted, and competition for the generalist positions is so intense that they've become a kind of lottery. For a person with a good degree, publications, a strong teaching record etc., it might very well make sense to go on the one-year market in the spring, in hopes that next year, something in their specialty might come along. Have a little empathy, man.
Going to the cursed meetings just to schmooze is stupid unless you are flush with cash. The 'networking' that the gray hairs go on about is not really very valuable set against racking up more debts.
Problem is not so long ago, there was no 1-yr market in fall. Now, the 1-yr market has started now, and while there are spring jobs, there are fewer positions in that pool of possibilities, too.
Depending on where you come from, an APA could easily cost 1-2k. For someone with no interviews, the effort and expense just isn't worth it.
I do have empathy, man. Empathy is not encouraging people who have literally no interviews to keep going down this self-destructive career path. Listen to what you're saying. Pay $1000 to go to a conference to network in a field where most people don't get jobs, and then move for a one year position, just so that next year when it's definitely time to pursue another career they'll be in a strange place, probably in the middle of nowhere? Empathy does not mean being delusional and encouraging that delusion in others, just because apparently we're all magical sparkle ponies who will get jobs eventually if we just work hard.
Further proof our field is in crisis: the Times-Picayune does not mention our conference next weekend, but does mention the midwestern barbershop singers' convention: http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2014/12/new_orleans_2015_convention_sc.html
On the contrary, since at the end of the process my anus no longer retained said keg, it was in fact the opposite of retentive; the tenting may have been slower than your tastes would prefer, and there may have been retentive stages involved, but the result is surely protention rather than retention.
Jesus. No wonder people think Classicists are hoighty-toighty. Nothing is hoightier, or indeed toightier, than refusing free booze on hygenic grounds. What if you were a pirate? Would you go around inquiring as to the provenance of the local grog? Let me tell you, the other pirates would keel haul you good. Better batten those hatches, matey.
a) Jan.4-12: At no point in your rambling, incoherent responses were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on this blog is now dumber after reading your posts. These wastes of time had no points for the purposes of this blog, and may God have mercy on your soul(s).
b) Jan. 3 re Conference Attendance:
Disclaimer: I also think that the conference is a big drain on the bank account, and I've always looked at it as a necessary investment into the future. So:
How does one expect to be taken seriously in the field as a new scholar learning the climate of the field, if one chooses not to participate in the field at the conference / professional level at which one could learn the climate that could, hypothetically, assist one's hire?
Put another way: If someone only attends the annual meeting because they have an interview, wouldn't it be likely that their inherent interest and dedication to the field as a whole is proportionately reflected in their job portfolios. People still go to present papers, right?
I'm not the anal retentive pirate, but did you not notice the description under "Sandbaggers and Scufflers?" Cut our backdoor pirate some slack and continue your rhetorical musings over in "Missing on the Proside" if s/he bothers you so much.
Why doesn't the SCS advocate for ending conference interviews altogether? Turn the conference back into what it used to be: a place to present scholarship and learn from other presentations, to meet old friends, to make new ones, and to celebrate the field.
The miasma of dread and terror will be lifted, and those least able to pay for attending will no longer be forced to do so. Everywhere I look national scholarly organizations are advocating for ending the conference interview, so why don't we classicists be groundbreaking and do it immediately, before the AHA, MLA, APA, etc. do so. It would be a powerful statement.
For the record, I shelled out $1600 for two interviews, one of which was for a non-TT position. I already know one of them was a bust because a friend already has a flyout with the same school. I could have used that $1600 in many different and better ways.
I wonder how many people would actually bother with the SCS if there were no interviews. It's far from the best venue for scholarly presentations. There's just more of them.
I, for one, welcome this; I hope it burns in meeting hell. I will laugh at it from pirate heaven and offer it not even a drop of my butt beer to quench its thirst.
If the following is true than I will be calling Adam Blistein to let him know that I will no longer be giving. I don't give much, but I give consistently. I wasn't at this year's meeting, so can somebody confirm the following comment (from the wiki):
"The SCS, for implementing the blue-tag system for identifying donors to their giving campaign. What graduate students and job candidates DO NOT need is public shaming for their poverty. Rewarding those well-off enough to donate with free coffee at the conference is an extra FU to those already in a tight financial spot who had to plan the trip with the hope of interviews they never got (often spending 10% of their annual stipends, mostly not getting the reimbursement that the more-well-off faculty members can count on). Do we want every job applicant to have to worry about what the committees will think about their absence from the list of donors in the program? That is disturbingly manipulative, or outright extortion."
I'm on the AIA side during January and I know many would welcome a demise to the conference interviews that SCS depends on so much. I attend CAMWS to get my classics talks, which are typically more interesting and less stress-tainted. It sounds like the AIA is making a clean break from the Placement Service anyway and this would be the next step. Many AIA type jobs have non-classics SC members who would not only be comfortable interviewing by Skype, but also use it regularly in their own discipline. It's apparent from past comments on here that SCS folks aren't ready to move on from first-round conference interviews. AIA talks are top shelf and it's at least partially because there is no corresponding regional conference. Any decrease in grad student attendance, which I would guess to be minimal, would be more than offset by a better atmosphere for all.
One major dilemma with eliminating the conference interview is generational, at least as I see it from talking with old farts and young farts.
The older generation of classicists remember very clearly the bad old days when jobs were arranged under the table. The conference interview was a way to shine a light on the hiring process by putting the first round interviews under the aegis of the (then) APA. Reputable institutions had to interview and then interviewed a more or less set number of candidates, which at least gave others a shot at the job, and it gave the Chosen Pupil a chance to shoot himself (usually a him) in the foot. The conference interview was a democratizing move and it supported an idea/ideology of meritocracy.
We younger classicists see Skype (vel sim.) as serving a similar purpose. It is democratic in that it does not require the large monetary output that conference interviews do, and it is, in most ways, better than a phone interview. We see it this way because we are comfortable with the technology, but we are also comfortable with the [i]idea[/i] of the technology.
Some of the older faculty are comfortable with the technology, but few are comfortable with the idea of it. They mistrust Skype for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it is a break from a centralized job process. That is, if jobs no longer go through the (now) SCS, then what oversight is there to regularize and normalize that first round interview?
Interestingly to me, many older faculty I've spoken with insist that they get a better sense of the candidate from an in-person interview than they do from a Skype interview. Their argument is that Skype interviews have (empirically) resulted in worse campus visits than conference interviews. I suspect that this in part for the same reason that we as candidates prefer Skype interviews: because via Skype we have more control over ourselves -- both literally (strategically placed notes off the side) and psychologically (in our own space). That may mean that we reveal less of our true selves. I include in "true self" breaking due to anxiety under pressure.
I personally think Skype is kinder to candidates. I don't know whether it is better or worse for departments.
But don't worry. Monetary pressures from administration will eventually force a transition to Skype interviews.
That may mean that we reveal less of our true selves. I include in "true self" breaking due to anxiety under pressure."
Good analysis, but I would argue that Skype interviews level the playing field more and add more overall consistency to help the SC focus on what truly matters IF they don't get hung up on past metrics. It might be that the old school interviewers are the ones trying to fit a square block in a circular hole when they try to run an old school interview by Skype.
How does it level the playing field? I know many candidates from big time programs have faculty, who have served on many committees, run extremely close simulations of SCS interviews. Many are buddies with SC members and "grease the wheels" by calling their buddies, which gives them borderline insider information and flags (in a good way) their student for them. Now tell me, does this really help the SC find the best candidate for the long run, or the one who was best prepped and positioned for the interview?
Finally, I would argue that Skype interviews are more conducive to bringing out the "true self" of those who don't have the inherent advantage of being intimately familiar with the SC members thanks to the largess and connections of their advisors. While serving on SCs myself, I've had colleagues rise up, shake the candidate's hand with a big smile. I asked later on what this was about and it's inevitably due to prior contact and familiarity with the candidate thanks to their advisor. Don't you think that smile and handshake, combined with a possible predisposition to serve up cupcake questions and be more lenient on candidate due to false familiarity, could result in a self-fulfilling "top" candidate?
I agree with you. I really do. When I'm in a position to talk with what I termed the "old farts", I make similar arguments. In my experience, my arguments have been brushed off as revealing my inexperience. I suspect that you are right, though, that the reason the older generation gets "better" campus visits out of face-to-face interviews than out of Skype interviews (if in fact they actually do and they're not just voicing a pre-existing bias) is not because of a weakness in the Skype medium but because they're not adapting their interview style to fit that medium.
I do worry, though, that a decentralization of the interview process might lead to an increase in "stealth" interviews and behind the scenes dealing, since there won't be even the pretense of a "front scenes" any more. But as you say, that already happens.
I also happen to suspect that the extraordinary glut in the market directly contributes to behind the scenes dealing: it's so much harder to pick among so many excellent candidates that word-of-mouth (i.e., cronyism, nepotism, networking etc.) has become more important. I only have anecdotes to support that, of course.
I don't think programs can get away with stealth interviews in this day and age. All reputable universities have standards in place where interviews need to happen for TT positions. Yes, there are ways to circumvent these standards, but I don't see how conference vs. Skype affects this dynamic. It's a small world. People will know if proper interviews weren't conducted.
I'm probably in the minority when it comes to this particular cultural aspect of SCS interviews, but I find it strange that getting the "true self" out of a candidates means making them feel as uncomfortable as possible in order to see if they will crack. Inevitably, making a candidate feel uncomfortable means whipping out your own sub-specialty and research interests to grill the candidate. How is this a good measure of a candidate's long term success? When will they ever be in that type of artificial situation? Oh, this person couldn't answer my question about my research into a book of Vergil. S/he will surely bomb when it comes to teaching, service, research, collegiality. We should be saying WTF if we step back and think about how screwy this is. These practices, once again, skew success towards those who have experienced dead-on SCS interview simulations, which are quite peculiar, and are familiar with the SC members beyond website bios. I don't buy that this is a true indicator of "thinking on one's feet" and "being familiar with the field" as some old school apologist will likely say after my post.
I couldn't agree with you more, 11:30. As you or someone else mentioned, this grilling can be quiet uneven in intensity, depth, and focus from candidate to candidate. This allows SC members with an agenda, whether conscious or subconscious, to stack the deck against or for particular candidates. As someone else inferred, body language plays into this as well - smiles/frowns, warmth/frigidity, intimidation/accommodation, etc. This is less of a factor over Skype, which is a good thing, IMHO.
I suppose I'm in the minority, but I don't think the ribbons for giving money is such a big deal. I seriously doubt that search committees expect fresh (and cash poor) phds to be making donations to the organization, let alone grad students. No one cares that much. Maybe, on balance, it would have better not to have had them. But y'all need to chill out.
Judging by the interview count it looks like every department is trying to hire from the same small pool of people.
This is absolutely true and I have no idea why it happens. For the first couple of years of my job search, I was on the outside looking in when it came to conference interviews and barely got VAP-type positions at the end of the year. It was frustrating and it seemed like a complete waste of time attempting to get a job.
The year when I finally landed a TT job, I suddenly was the person on the wiki who had 8+ interviews. I still have no idea what changed. I didn't really publish anything new, the book was still in limbo, I didn't know people in departments which had scheduled me for interviews.
The only thing that actually changed was that I shifted my pie-in-the-sky and still largely undefined next research project in a new direction; one which was markedly different than my doctoral research. In fact, I basically stopped talking about my doctoral research. Maybe that made the difference, but I don't really know. I did notice at the SCS this year that a panel which looked at my old research area had about 9 people in attendance while a panel on my new/current area had upwards of 50.
The last few posts ("skunky ass" excepted) makes 13 Jan 11:30's point rather well.
The first-round application process favors those who have good mentoring on job-materials. That is, it measures a very particular set of game-playing skills. Access to these skills is not democratic, but it is increasingly available through services like The Professor Is In if one's own faculty don't provide it.
The conference interview measures a different set of game-playing skills that really is taught only in a very few programs. Some people learn them on their own after a few go-rounds, but the wildly successful job candidates are those who were trained specifically in getting a job in addition to the skills one applies on the job itself.
Add in fads, luck, and the quality of printer ink on any given day, and there you go.
If the SCS was half the professional society that it claims to be, it should be the agent that provides materials to help prep departments for classics searches. Before I landed my job, I probably had 20-30 interviews over several years and the vast majority were amateur hour. Once in a while the chair was quite good but it was the exception, not the rule.
Judging by the interview count it looks like every department is trying to hire from the same small pool of people.
But the numbers provided on the wiki actually do not support this claim. While clearly the wiki does not include all job seekers, let's assume it's representative. The average interview count reported is 2.2, with a median of 1. So the majority of people had 1 or 2 interviews. If the above claim was true, the data would skew higher, with the "same small pool of people" clustered around 6-8 interviews. Only 3 people reported having more than 5 interviews. One issue is that we're missing data on how many people had no interviews. We can assume this is the majority. So if you mean the same small pool of people had any interviews at all, one could make that claim, but at least 63 people reported interviews via the wiki, and I assume many more do not report.
Time to reopen a popular can of worms around here.
While at the conference I spoke with a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis and asked about the reasoning and motivations behind starting the new PhD program that so many have criticized on FV. The detailed explanation I received, none of which I will share here because I have no right to do so, makes perfect sense, and reveals both that there were valid reasons for establishing it and that it will not be adding significantly to the glut of people on the market. In other words, there has been a lot of time (and bile) expended on this subject here, and without sufficient justification.
Hey, I'm anonymous, those of you who have spent so much energy posting contemptuous thoughts about that program don't have to believe me. I just figured you should read that there is indeed another side to this issue.
So why don't we all take a deep breath and find some other target for scorn?
It's a troll, people. "There's a good reason and I just can't tell you what it is?" I'm all for justly calling out WTFUSTL, but this round was obviously contrived by someone who understood that the best way be an effective detractor is to impersonate a defender while being as obnoxious as possible.
I don't think it's a troll, but a clumsy attempt by a member of a certain classics demographic. It's the same type of person I overheard in NOLA talking about how dangerous FV is to the discipline. How they need to figure out a way to get rid of its anonymity. For all its ills, thank the heavens for the democratizing effects of the internet.
FYI, I can be far, FAR more obnoxious than that. As a small example of this, I will point out that if you could not read between the lines and realize that I spoke with someone in confidence and therefore do not believe it proper to divulge the contents of that conversation in a place like this then your skills at careful readings of texts are so poor that I hope for your sake (not to mention that of any students you may have) you are an archaeologist and not a philologist.
Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We do, we do! Who keeps Atlantis off the maps? Who keeps the Martians under wraps? We do, we do! Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do, we do! Who robs cavefish of their sight? Who rigs every Oscar night? We do! We do!!!
Sounds like an interesting conversation: "Here are some perfectly valid reasons for establishing our PhD program, but they must be kept absolutely between you and me and never revealed publicly. And, while this also is top-secret state confidential, here's why turning out additional new PhD's in an already over-saturated market will not add to the glut in that market."
Having participated, as candidate and committee member, in plenty of interviews in person and several in Skype (including committees that have chosen finalists and ultimately successful candidates interviewed only by Skype and phone interview), I do wonder why anyone thinks Skype will level the playing field in terms of connections, reactions to personality, etc. It does level the playing field when it comes to economic access to attending the APA meeting itself. And that may be a perfectly good reason to push such a change. But once all candidates are interviewed via Skype, having thesis committee members dropping drunken hints at the meeting may actually play an outsized role, at least among committee members who don't trust such newfangled techniques for interviewing.
Good Lord, Anonymous 9:43. Do you really not understand that sometimes when people speak it is simply understood by the nature of what is being discussed that one should hold it in confidence? I did not ask for permission to make a public report of what I learned, since during the conversation I had no thought to a FV post, and that's why I'm not going into detail. But as I thought about it, I figured that since the posts here last month were so misguided it wouldn't be a bad idea to indicate that this is very much an overblown controversy.
My final thought, and then I'll no longer respond to the trolls, is that classicists above all should be aware of the Socratic concept that true wisdom requires being aware of one's areas of ignorance, and yet most of those who have posted (and continue to post) on the subject of the Washington University PhD program show from the absolute certainty of their comments that they have failed to consider for even a second that they might not have sufficient knowledge to form, let alone share, a worthwhile opinion. (Socrates would be ashamed...) No doubt possessed by the spirit of Socrates -- New Orleans is full of ghosts, after all -- and recognizing that I was not the wisest when it came to this particular subject I sought out someone whom I hoped could illuminate me regarding the nature and reasons for the new program.
Damn! I need to get in touch with my contacts at WUSTL and see if they also have the winning lotto numbers and the cure for cancer, but are just keeping those things under wraps for obscure reasons.
What a blowhard. Well, I went to the pearly gates the other day and the someone who will not be named told me in confidence that WUSTL made the wrong choice. The end.
I went somewhere recently. I want to remain anonymous, and telling you where I went might out me. While I was there, I spoke with someone whose name I won't reveal out of a polite respect for the social contract. This person told me some things in confidence, so I can't share them with you. I can tell you, though, that based on what I heard, you should completely re-evaluate your attitude toward a particular issue. You may have discussed it in some detail, but just trust me on this, I know better.
By the way, if you don't get what I'm saying and agree with my obviously privileged information, it's because you're insufficiently educated assholes who clearly don't understand even the basest rudiments of the profession I hold above all others. You are incapable of reading and you do not appreciate basic social nicety. I have equally good information that you smell. Badly.
Guys, let's not waste our energy on beating this horse anymore. That guy is just using another version of the old "but I have a friend who works there, so it is clearly ethical." If there were any real justification, it wouldn't be a secret but would have been made already, for example in the inside higher ed article.
Any word on those last few places?? Or should we expect those searches to be cancelled at this point?
I don't know of anyone who's heard from Va Tech. Maybe they have to wait until their semester formally starts (on Tuesday) for administrative reasons? Maybe they had no idea how many applications they would get and did not leave enough time before winter break to get through them all? I don't know, but I'd think they'd want to move sooner rather than later.
I'm not sure why departments skipping conference interviews would want to move at the same rhythm as those who didn't. They can hire in May for all they care, if that fits their budget timeline. It's not like the applicant pool will have dramatically diminished by then.
Given that the conversation was clearly in confidence, it was highly irresponsible and disrespectful to reveal that there exists a WUSTL professor who actually thinks that there is a sound reason for starting a new PhD program. They clearly revealed that only in confidence for fear that they'd look stupid; now the whole world knows. Outrageous! What Socrates tells you in the cave should stay in the cave!
I am Jan 14 8:34 and I agree fully with what Jan 15 5:58 says.
In fact, I just remembered something else that changed for me the year I got a shitload of job interviews and ended up with a TT. A colleague in a department where I had a visiting position who went to a Harvard/Yale/Columbia-type school (I got my PhD from a respectable, but definitively second-tier school) shared their CV with me. I adopted their headings, structure, font and style.
With roughly the same information that was on the previous year's CV (apart from maybe an extra conference paper or equivalent) I began getting interviews.
In fact, within a few months of doing this, I got a campus interview for a TT job in a top-10 department - a department which was arguably better than my PhD granting department!
I was not trained in campus or in-person interview skills, but the bit of charm and experience I had was enough once I got past the written application. Until that time I wonder if my written application was turning off committees because it didn't look like the applications from students that went to schools like theirs and had the same job-search training as them.
I know that I'm damn lucky to have a job; and I can absolutely confirm, from my experience at least, that getting a job can very well hinge on the most meaningless, superficial parts of the process. I am fairly certain that I got my TT job because the campus interview convinced my department that I'd not be a pain in the ass to work with and that I worked in some areas where gaps existed. It was not because my second-tier PhD and mediocre or worse publication record (at the time) stood out against the Harvand/Yale/Columbia applicants with a forthcoming book and two articles.
Does anyone else think that the "Chalcock" poster on the Brown section of the wiki seems...well, really angry? I can't tell if they're legitimately arguing that in this day and age there are elites and then the rest of us, and the rest of us should just get used to it, or if they're just defending the abuser. Show us where the bad archaeologists touched you!
I believe Chalcock is supposed to be a portmanteau of 2 names (whom I will not mention, but you can figure out). This (disguised) use of real names may violate FV and wiki policy.
Portmanteau aside, I don't see how these are ad hominem comments (or any different, for instance, than those about WUSTL).
The power of the wiki and Famae Volent is the element of transparency that it brings to the job search/hiring process. The program in question at Brown is transparently not transparent about how it hires, or if you like, has a very particular perspective on what the "best" candidate looks like. Desired qualities: (1) pre-existing connections with certain members of the department, (2) a Cambridge education or at least outlook, (3) an interest in landscape archaeology. Nothing wrong with #3. #2, well, okay, it's a matter of opinion about whether that is "best" and that kind of hiring can lead to an unbalanced scholarly perspective for students in the program, but that's their business. But #1 is the kicker.
And it's not an ad hominem attack to say so; you can look at the hiring history and at the cvs of candidates and recent tenure-track hires and see that it is simply a fact.
I'm not at Brown (actually I applied for the job and didn't get an interview), but my impression is that they really want a good departmental 'fit.' It's not too different from picking people for an archaeological project: the "best" isn't necessarily what's best for the project. Having said that, they've hired a bunch of really good folks. People won't all agree with their hiring decisions. Tough, I guess.
I am not affiliated at all but I am familiar with the situation. The major pitfall I see with so much power concentrated into the hands of two people is that biases are difficult to overcome. Yes, the opposite end of the spectrum where you have squabbling interests with no leader is not great either, but I think the above comment showing how one-dimensional in outlook the faculty can become speaks to these potential pitfalls. Yeah, it's a nice little program, but the experience of my students there and elsewhere suggest to me that one's time there can be particularly tough if you don't fit the overriding paradigm and culture.
This is a boring conversation. Of course individuals operate largely (and often solely) in their self-interest, Classicists, Clarchs, et al. included. Of course they dress up self-interest in terms of "fit", "areas of expertise", "approaches to the discipline", and so on. Of course disinterested actors could and would do better. Of course it is infuriating, and it is infuriating in no small part because intelligent people whose powers of analysis are sharp enough to point out logical fallacy, critical errors, and sloppy thinking in others (to say nothing of hypocrisy, malfeasance, and plain bad faith) rarely ever apply those powers toward analyzing themselves and their own actions. Instead, they are wasted on rationalization.
We are frustrated, angered, depressed, irritated, driven to drink, and compelled to post on internet fora because we expect justice in this world; we yearn for justice.
That doesn't exist. It never has, and in a human world, it never will. Before the social convention, life was nasty, brutish, and short. Now it's just nasty and brutish.
Is there a point here? Probably not. Just a rumination that there is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. πολλάκις δ᾽ ἐθαύμασα, "why"?
there is certainly no justice or rationality in the pursuit of a career in higher education. those who wail and lament here (and elsewhere) forget that logic and merit really have little to do with the making of human-driven choices. after all, classics hiring committees aren't prone to choosing the daring, the innovative, or the revolutionary - often their default setting is to duplicate themselves insofar as that is possible. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...
Yes, there is a point. You're either a fatalist or an incredibly clever insider. The point is to air out what happens behind the scenes for the sake of transparency and the health of the discipline. I still laugh at the hubris and complete lack of cultural understanding displayed by the old guard posts on here claiming how dangerous this place is. Yeah, maybe to their opaque way of handling things for generations but certainly not for the health of the discipline. You act like a shit, expect it to be aired out here for people to digest.
why wail on JIAAW? if you're on the inside there, it's a good deal. can we fault the operators there for choosing people akin to themselves? for fulfilling what seems to be their mandate? if you are an outsider who gets 'in' there, it is difficult. is that so different from other top programs - Michigan, for instance?
a lot of the comments here are simply sour grapes. nothing more.
I just find it amusing that the institution branded itself as the avant garde, "uncola" institution for the 21st century and has become just as bad if not worse than the established guard. It goes to show that when people complain about business happening as usual, what they're really complaining about is that they're not the ones in charge. Well, they've been in charge for some time with all the resources a t their disposal and I'm decidedly underwhelmed.
As for 6:10, I would say that I'm a fatalist, though I would also (independently) like to think that I'm clever. A few might call me an insider, too, but if that's some, I'm not a member of the inner circle or even the middle circle; I'm in the Oort Cloud of insiders. Famae Volent isn't CNN, BBC, etc. We aren't going to break Watergate. Shed all the light you want: it changes nothing. At the most, it gives a justification for the negative opinions of the dispossessed toward the dispossessors, sometimes naming the dispossessors and calling out their actions explicitly. Maybe, on a good day, it unmasks a few faculty to their own students (who will then STFU about it or be disowned by their faculty and cut from classics like a cancer, even though it's their seniors who are the cancer). It does not foster change. I wish that it did.
At 6:12: Your comment "if you're on the inside there, it's a good deal" reeks of irony so intensely I think it has made my nose-hairs magnetic. As for your next comment, "can we fault the operators there for choosing people akin to themselves?" Yes, yes we can. And we have. And we will again. Like likes like. That's the basis for parochialism, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and any number of other vices. Extrapolate those to the academic sphere and you'll see not a "core competency" but rather a kind of inbreeding. The rest of your comment is equally foolish. I could go clause by clause, but again, I'm bored by you. For me, that is the greatest sin.
good for you, snark-bird I'm sure you are super popular and super successful in the academic rat race. where did you get the idea that higher ed humanities were progressive (or even understood that idea?).
The difference at Michigan and pretty much every place is that it's much more difficult for a couple people to dictate everything that happens down to the screws used to hang paintings with little accountability. If you deny this you're missing the entire reason that the people in question left said institution to establish their kingdom! Lest you think it's harmless and entirely an internal issue, no, it affects the entire discipline. It means less money going into more widely accessible organizations like the AIA from the donors. It means these people have a powerful platform to push their chosen ones for national fellowships, grants, jobs, etc. Are many exceptional and deserving? Yes, but in a number of cases that seems to skew higher than usual, I would argue their chosen ones weren't very good but had some big names pushing them as the next big things. So, yes, this is the pertinent (only?) place to discuss these issues.
A point of clarity (5:48 again). Sometimes I get caught up in these internet posts, but other times I step back and ask myself, "Who benefits?" I can rage against the machine, point out its iniquities, name names, (or insinuate them so that they don't get deleted), but what will actually happen from that? A number of the other like-minded, dispossessed will agree with me. A very small number of the evil-doers will read the posts, not recognize themselves, and defend their fellows. That's it. What do I hope to get out of this? It's good for venting, I suppose, as a kind of group therapy.
And maybe, in my more hopeful moments, I think it might be good as a warning to those star-eyed, bright-faced youngsters who want to go to Classics grad. school. That's where the "danger" to field that the oldsters talk of comes from: we might (might) inform those who have not yet entered here, have not yet abandoned all hope. That would hurt the superfluous graduate programs and give them reason to want to shut down FV. But then, our energy would be better spent giving lengthy, explicitly, passionless descriptions on places like GradCafe.
@6:30 [...]Yes, but in a number of cases that seems to skew higher than usual, I would argue their chosen ones weren't very good but had some big names pushing them as the next big things. So, yes, this is the pertinent (only?) place to discuss these issues.
Interesting point. This may be--depressing as it is--the only platform, but whom is it reaching? What changes in attitudes or actions is it effecting? And if those aren't the ones you/we would like, then what sort of platform do we need in order to effect those changes, and how to do we go about creating it?
BTW, these are not entirely snark-birdish comments (to borrow an earlier poster's neologism). In fact, I'm about 95% serious when asking these questions.
In reference to 6:48 That's a bizarre request. The posts to which you point do not violate FV rules, are civil and are interesting. What rationale do you have for wanting them deleted?
Are you one of those who tries to suppress or silence speech with which you do not agree?
For those who say that posting here is merely a cathartic exercise, I think you underestimate how many people actually read this to get an unfiltered pulse of the discipline.
I genuinely hope you're right. The fatalist in me is less optimistic. But if you're right, then I hope that (A) many upon many people are reading this, (B) they most away from a third-person perspective and start applying the things they read here to their own programs and their own advisors, and (C) they think long and hard about what is in their own best interests, both as incipient Classicists, and as whole persons who are not defined by the few years of their graduate programs.
We are but dust in the wind. Let's not spend our lives trying to live up to the opinions of someone born on third base who thinks they hit a triple. Let's do something that lets us live stable lives so that we can pursue our happiness. Let's not pursue our happiness to the dissolution of our lives.
PS: My "captcha" for this post included the word "ethics".
May I just say that I am utterly delighted by the phrase "reeks of irony so intensely I think it has made my nose-hairs magnetic". It has made my nethers tingly.
I frequently see comments here to the effect that (to paraphrase an earlier commenter) ideas that are 'daring, innovative, and/or revolutionary' are not only not recognized as such by many hiring committees, but are in fact detrimental to the job prospects of the scholar. I'm genuinely curious here: can anyone provide specific examples of what kind of approaches are being talked about?
January 31, 2015 at 6:48 PM said: I think the last ten posts should be deleted. What say you blog owner?
Famae Volent is an inflammatory response to the lesions that are eating away at Classics. Erasing the response won't treat the underlying issues in the body politic.
In other terms, where there's smoke, there's fire. The proper response isn't to fan away the smoke and whistle while the building burns down.
Senior Classicists who find FV "dangerous" (if anyone really says that) would do well to get their own houses in order. Then FV would disappear on its own.
Do "Senior Classicists" even know FV exists? I think maybe about 12 grad students, 5 or 6 lecturers, and two especially embittered tenure-trackers in some out of the way place actually visit this site.
There is no way anybody of any importance gives this place even a sideways glance.
I think they must know. Look at the comment numbers for the past several years. A couple years back there were so many comments that a second bitching thread had to be opened because the first one broke. Then the comments dropped precipitously along with some mention that faculty at a few institutions had gotten wind of FV and had forbidden/advised their students against it.
As for other evidence, you can see that a few places still post job ads on here, and faculty at schools that have scandals do sometimes respond (in both the bitching thread and in the Wiki).
That said, your numbers might be not be too far off for the frequent posters. So which group do you belong to?
Can confirm that the faculty at my top-tier grad program are aware of FV, because they explicitly tell students not to come here as part of the job search coaching process.
But being aware of its existence hardly means that they sit around reading it.
Is that before or after they tell you "Don't worry, none of that applies to you. There are always jobs for good people, especially with the coming wave of retirements"?
Also, that you have a "job coaching process" at all ignites my envy.
Not sure if finding this place before I applied to grad school would have changed anything. But I am more realistic about the market now than I would have been without FV. I don't know why faculty care about students coming here though. If FV didn't exist as it does it would exist differently and, judging from the blogs and boards for other fields, be much worse.
The stated reason for discouraging grad students from coming here in my program was that coming here would lead to depression, hopelessness, and consequent lack of focus that would make it harder to get a job.
Having gone through several years of being on the market and using FV, I can attest that all of these concerns are valid. However, I don't think I would have gotten a job even if I had been the most optimistic person ever. And frankly, I thank sweet non-existent Jesus every fucking day that it turned out that way.
Right, but in my experience academics keep going by telling themselves that things will be different once x happens, where x is getting the PhD, or a job, or a tenure-track job, or tenure, or an endowed chair, or that job at a better institution.
FV robs us of this hope by making clear that no one is even remotely happy, anywhere; the pot at the end of the rainbow is full of shit, not gold.
Then their reputation should suffer and suffer publicly. Unless they can defend themselves in an open forum, then the reasonable assumption is that they are not honest or reliable actors.
Some of you really never stop whining, do you? Every little something with a job is somehow evidence that you're being screwed over by inside jobs and fixed searches?
Bizarre. You're projecting, I suppose, or you misread "shoddy" as "shady". Not sure which is worse: being overtaken by your own insecurities, or simply lacking reading comprehension. Probably the latter given our professions.
Changing a job ad mid-stream is shoddy. I had no suspicion and made no implication that it involved an inside search, etc.
I just want to state for the record here that escaping from the academic world with a Classics Ph.D. and selling that on the outside, so to speak, is pretty awfully difficult. The track record we all worked to build as academics really means almost nothing to most human beings (I am not saying it should mean something to them, I am just painfully reminded how insular and detached the academic world is ...) Some have made it and been lucky, but it is not a given. Do not send people down this path, undergraduate advisors, unless those people are thrill-seeking death-loving lunatics, are equipped with trust funds (or perhaps these things combined).
roger that. I found that public education in K-12 contexts was a very tough road to go after leaving college teaching, given how much additional bureaucracy and cost is associated with the requirements for teachers. Those costs can be steep and the additional coursework can really add up.
I agree that leaving classics is hard, perhaps harder than most fields, but don't despair. There are lots of things you can do with your life. And it's quite possible that you will be happier doing something else rather than getting a job in a place you hate with colleagues you hate, teaching students who have no interest in anything you have to say because it's not connected with getting a job or science or math.
the academic life is too much of crisis (even for crisis seekers). early 20s: crisis of finishing BA up on top and getting good grade placement. 20s (into 30s): crises of completing grad school (at that point, seemingly hardest thing ever). then, maybe years of visiting-adjunct-no security teaching in hopes of T-Tdom .... then, at 40ish, the crisis of starting over, explaining 20+ or more years delving in the sublime depths of a discipline that just doesn't translate to others very well. was the delving and the earlier crisisdom worth it? mostly. does it seem bleak to leave it and go out into the real unknown? absolutely. Enlightenment or not, this is a not a path for even the hardy soul.
If you're referring to Anon 3:40, I didn't say "hang in there." I'm saying, "let go of the plank, and swim away!"
If you don't know about Versatile PhD, check it out. Odds are that your school has signed up for it which give you access to their fora where people swap ideas and stories.
Other than high school teaching, I know people who have got into grant-writing, development, academic administration. I also know people who have got into market research but often that also needs some number-crunching chops. There's also a recent PhD who became a programmer.
Anonymous said... My god. We're blessed to be able to read Greek and Latin, and people are complaining this much?
February 3, 2015 at 8:40 PM
I know nothing of you personally, nothing of your intentions or morality. But your words and the attitude behind them are pure evil. I do not say that lightly nor facetiously. What you have written is at the heart of the oppressive system that keeps academia and classics in their downward spiral. "Be grateful for what you have! Don't complain; don't make waves; it could be worse!" While we're at it, lets build pyramids for our provosts and football coaches. If we run out of mortar, they can just grind our bones. But at least we're blessed to have read some Latin and Greek along the way.
Anonymous said... Oppressive system? I suspect most of us with higher degrees in Classics wouldn't know real oppression if it hit us square in the face.
February 3, 2015 at 9:07 PM
So your statement is this: "Your experience, as judged externally by me, does not meet the threshold I have independently determined for an oppressive or really just generally negative system, so f*ck off."
Or is it this: "Other people have worse lives, so screw you for wanting to right iniquities in your own."
Or is it this: "No lesser evil can be righted until the worst evil is first righted."
Glad to see you agree with my assessment of you. May any higher powers you believe in have mercy on you in this life and the next. You need it more than most.
"Blessed to read Greek and Latin"? So that's all we should hope for or aspire to? Why, then, should we have any degrees? You'd have us sitting under some arbor begging for scraps while reading Homer, thanking the muses all the while? Sad. I think you have been on some interview committees I've met with at the meetings. So glad you didn't hire me.
Re: computer programming, I made the transition to a career as a web developer this last year and am now happier than I have been in at least half a decade. Your mileage may vary, but it definitely comes with my recommendation.
If you have no idea what such a career might entail and don't know whether or not you would like it, I suggest trying some of the Ruby/Python or Javascript materials at codecademy.com vel sim. That can quickly give you a basic idea of whether or not this is something you could enjoy.
And if you want to chat more about it, hit me up at dwalin1@gmail.com.
So, an unnamed English program admits 12 new students per year and over 12 years (144 students; 1998-2010), it places 35 TT.
1) That's an average of 3 TT placements per year, and a rate of 25% of entrants achieving TT. This must be one of the "first year"/"top 6" programs.
2) It's misleading to aggregate pre-2008 and post-2008 data. It's especially misleading when 10 out of 12 years of the data are pre-2008, AND that data is used to comment on the post-2008 market. The numbers cited in the article must be much better than the current numbers.
another year, still unemployed using classics ph.d. surprised? not really. disgusted? pretty much. how many similar-minded classics malcontents are out there at this point? whither now?
The best thing we can do now is to back in time, so to speak, and warn ourselves, or at least other versions of ourselves, about the perils of this system.
Let's get active at The Grad Cafe and reveal all to the bright young naive things therein. They are so confused, and so clueless, and obviously the various programs like it that way. There is even a thread about WUSTL.
Several people warned them early on in that thread, but they were completely ignored.
That thread is so fucking weird to me now, even though I was probably even more of a fluffy bunny sparkle pony isn't Classics grand sort when I was at that stage. It's just so weird to encounter people who haven't been embittered at all yet. They are like pure driven snow I want to pee on.
Someone needs to do a documentary where they find some of these people, the ones that get in to good programs, and follow them around from now until whenever they finally drop. It would be depressing as hell, but educational if anyone ever watched it.
Seeing the extreme naivete of those GradCafe posters reminds me why this system works. They simply aren't a match for even one sexagenarian sociopath, much less a whole grad program full of them. Classics fucks people up for the same reason gravity will fuck you up if you step off a building: there's no other way it can go.
^ do you think that classics is specially effective at fucking people up? or are people just fucked up by the conjunction of grad school and a brutal market, discipline disregarded?
if anyone's looking to warn the naive, there is also this thread:
fwiw, i feel classics is especially good at fucking you up. you spend years perfecting arcane skills, perhaps getting fluffed up by the gray hairs who are impressed by said skills, only to end up at a supermarket checkstand where those skills are absolutely useless and irrelevant. then the few grams of self worth you had left fizzle and you're eating beef jerky, ramen, and natty light to stay alive. oh, wait, was that too revealing? damn.
I think it's the contrast between the value placed on Classics within the discipline and the value placed on Classics literally everywhere else that makes failure in the job market especially embittering.
There are way fewer jobs than good candidates, of course, and that means large numbers of PhDs leaving academia. But it's that jarring realization, once you leave academia, that everything you did during the previous decade is absolutely worthless that really makes people want to drive them staples deep.
^^ This is also one of the things that keeps people in the VAP game way longer than is healthy. No one wants to admit that they just wasted that many years, and not just wasted them (hell, everything's a waste) but wasted them working, when their resume would look just as good, and they would have about as much money to show for it, if they'd spent the whole time strung out on heroine.
Having left the academy after many years of struggle, trying to 'use' the skills of the classicist has proven difficult. most folks have no idea what classics is. In fact, we have seen in the news lately that many people in America don't really know what Latin is, for example. so, I think a heroin binge might have been less devastating than becoming a classics phd who failed in "the world".
If your PhD is no earlier than of 2012 vintage consider applying for one of the ACLS Public Fellowships, designed to help humanities PhDs make the transition.
...and this too: Post-Doctoral Fellow in Classics at Florida State University The College of Arts and Sciences at Florida State University has inaugurated a Post-Doctoral Fellows program in the Humanities, and the Department of Classics has been awarded one of the first such Fellow positions. This position is a two-year appointment to begin August 2015, of nine months for each of the two academic years, non-renewable. In addition to engagement with the undergraduate and graduate students and participation in the research program of the Department, the duties of the position shall include a teaching load of 2 courses each term, at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The salary is set at $40,000 per annum; if eligible under ACA requirements, health insurance benefits are available. This position is open only to those who have received the Ph.D. after January 1, 2011; the Ph.D. must be in hand by July 1, 2015 (this is a requirement of the University and is not negotiable). We seek an individual whose innovative research in Classics emphasizes combinations of the existing strengths of the Department, such as material culture and its social context; history and its records; the intersection of religion and politics; and political economy. The period of specialization is open, including Late Antiquity. Applicants should send a cover letter, CV, and writing sample (a dissertation chapter or an article) and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent to the Department. Electronic applications and letters of recommendation may be submitted to the Department at Classics-Search@fsu.edu. All materials should be received by March 23, 2015. Please address questions about this position to Professor Daniel J. Pullen, Chair, at dpullen@fsu.edu. Florida State University is an Equal Opportunity/ Access/ Affirmative Action/ Pro Disabled & Veteran Employer: http://www.hr.fsu.edu/PDF/Publications/diversity/EEO_Statement.pdf
728 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 600 of 728 Newer› Newest»Good for them if so; not many have that luxury.
Happy New Year, except in Classics. What a depressing time of year.
Is the APA in some ice-covered Nordic hellhole again this year? I don't follow these things anymore, but last year in Chicago was fucking epic. I do believe at one point I was pillaged by vikings.
NOLA
The annual meeting of the APA is no longer being held at all. That venerable congregation was abandoned by the people you see arguing here on this blog. There is some knock-off version being held in New Orleans, however. It'll have to do.
Nothing like much ado about a silly name change to show how detached some people are from reality!
They should get rid of any references to classics. This watered down nonsense where anyone who takes a week of Greek or Latin can be called a classicist has been the biggest contributor to our downfall, not some misguided notion of exclusivity based on race or gender.
O.M.G.
Don't feed the troll.
I don't think it's a troll, which is the scariest part.
OK, then. Don't feed the asshole.
If it's a troll though it gets massive boosts to constitution. If it's an asshole, that's just like, -5 charisma. Or maybe +5? I guess assholes are in the eye of the beholder.
(In which case the beholder is at considerable risk for pinkeye.)
No interviews, and my profs tell me the conference for which I'm not getting any financial help is essential for my "networking." Okay. Whatever.
Unless your profs are going to really take offense, in a way that will hurt your letters, I would cancel. You're never going to get hired just because you chatted with someone important over a beer for a few minutes, even in the extremely unlikely circumstances that that person was one day on a hiring committee searching for a candidate from your specialty and actually remembered your name. Save the money, time, and emotional energy, and put it all into starting an article instead.
I think attending your profession's national meeting should be considered a basic professional obligation.
The poster above misses the point. If you aren't getting any interviews, this isn't going to be your profession. Going makes about as much sense as going to the big annual Dentistry Conference.
In this market, not getting any interviews isn't the disaster it was a few years ago.
Come again?
No interviews is no interviews.
Sure, maybe more qualified people are getting no interviews now than ever before, but that's irrelevant, since they can't very well go back to 2007 to compete in that market.
There are specialties this year with one or no jobs posted, and competition for the generalist positions is so intense that they've become a kind of lottery. For a person with a good degree, publications, a strong teaching record etc., it might very well make sense to go on the one-year market in the spring, in hopes that next year, something in their specialty might come along. Have a little empathy, man.
Going to the cursed meetings just to schmooze is stupid unless you are flush with cash. The 'networking' that the gray hairs go on about is not really very valuable set against racking up more debts.
Problem is not so long ago, there was no 1-yr market in fall. Now, the 1-yr market has started now, and while there are spring jobs, there are fewer positions in that pool of possibilities, too.
Depending on where you come from, an APA could easily cost 1-2k. For someone with no interviews, the effort and expense just isn't worth it.
I do have empathy, man. Empathy is not encouraging people who have literally no interviews to keep going down this self-destructive career path. Listen to what you're saying. Pay $1000 to go to a conference to network in a field where most people don't get jobs, and then move for a one year position, just so that next year when it's definitely time to pursue another career they'll be in a strange place, probably in the middle of nowhere? Empathy does not mean being delusional and encouraging that delusion in others, just because apparently we're all magical sparkle ponies who will get jobs eventually if we just work hard.
The truth is the market will correct itself. It's a little over saturated now.
Yes! It corrects itself by lowering demand in response to truly ridiculous oversupply.
Further proof our field is in crisis: the Times-Picayune does not mention our conference next weekend, but does mention the midwestern barbershop singers' convention:
http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2014/12/new_orleans_2015_convention_sc.html
I'm pretty sure that barbershop singers are way higher on the social totem pole than Classicists.
... as are the Wizards at ComicCon NOLA
Well obviously we rank lower than wizards. No one messes with a wizard unless they want to be magic missiled the fuck up.
In case any of you are sad, you might try praying to Zeus:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3597#comic
I'm not that fond of swans.
How about bulls?
Too horny.
Golden showers?
Boston steamers?
Rocky Mountain Oysters?
See you in New Orleans! Good luck to all and pax ex.
I'll be the one with the alcoholic beverage
You're obviously not an archy judging by your use of the singular.
How so? My single alcoholic beverage is a keg, which I will smuggle into the meeting in my rectum.
Sounds about right.
The rectum has been unpacked. Who's ready for a keg stand?
It took you two days? It must have been an anal-retentive process.
On the contrary, since at the end of the process my anus no longer retained said keg, it was in fact the opposite of retentive; the tenting may have been slower than your tastes would prefer, and there may have been retentive stages involved, but the result is surely protention rather than retention.
Enough talk. nunc est mother fucking bibendum.
No jokes about this beer tasting like ass, please.
No, I just heard it's skunky.
Thanks for ruining my drunken revelry, skunk ass.
Dude, it is free beer.
You do not even need to drink directly from the ass.
Your standards are impossibly high.
Just say no to skunky ass beer.
Jesus. No wonder people think Classicists are hoighty-toighty. Nothing is hoightier, or indeed toightier, than refusing free booze on hygenic grounds. What if you were a pirate? Would you go around inquiring as to the provenance of the local grog? Let me tell you, the other pirates would keel haul you good. Better batten those hatches, matey.
To the posts Jan. 3 - Jan 12:
a) Jan.4-12: At no point in your rambling, incoherent responses were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on this blog is now dumber after reading your posts. These wastes of time had no points for the purposes of this blog, and may God have mercy on your soul(s).
b) Jan. 3 re Conference Attendance:
Disclaimer: I also think that the conference is a big drain on the bank account, and I've always looked at it as a necessary investment into the future. So:
How does one expect to be taken seriously in the field as a new scholar learning the climate of the field, if one chooses not to participate in the field at the conference / professional level at which one could learn the climate that could, hypothetically, assist one's hire?
Put another way: If someone only attends the annual meeting because they have an interview, wouldn't it be likely that their inherent interest and dedication to the field as a whole is proportionately reflected in their job portfolios. People still go to present papers, right?
No.
That's what CAMWS, etc. are for.
I'm not the anal retentive pirate, but did you not notice the description under "Sandbaggers and Scufflers?" Cut our backdoor pirate some slack and continue your rhetorical musings over in "Missing on the Proside" if s/he bothers you so much.
Why doesn't the SCS advocate for ending conference interviews altogether? Turn the conference back into what it used to be: a place to present scholarship and learn from other presentations, to meet old friends, to make new ones, and to celebrate the field.
The miasma of dread and terror will be lifted, and those least able to pay for attending will no longer be forced to do so. Everywhere I look national scholarly organizations are advocating for ending the conference interview, so why don't we classicists be groundbreaking and do it immediately, before the AHA, MLA, APA, etc. do so. It would be a powerful statement.
For the record, I shelled out $1600 for two interviews, one of which was for a non-TT position. I already know one of them was a bust because a friend already has a flyout with the same school. I could have used that $1600 in many different and better ways.
Kill the fucking conference interview already!!
http://www.historiann.com/2014/11/07/just-kill-the-convention-interview-already-now/
Judging by the interview count it looks like every department is trying to hire from the same small pool of people.
I wonder how many people would actually bother with the SCS if there were no interviews. It's far from the best venue for scholarly presentations. There's just more of them.
The SCS would die without conference interviews.
I, for one, welcome this; I hope it burns in meeting hell. I will laugh at it from pirate heaven and offer it not even a drop of my butt beer to quench its thirst.
If the following is true than I will be calling Adam Blistein to let him know that I will no longer be giving. I don't give much, but I give consistently. I wasn't at this year's meeting, so can somebody confirm the following comment (from the wiki):
"The SCS, for implementing the blue-tag system for identifying donors to their giving campaign. What graduate students and job candidates DO NOT need is public shaming for their poverty. Rewarding those well-off enough to donate with free coffee at the conference is an extra FU to those already in a tight financial spot who had to plan the trip with the hope of interviews they never got (often spending 10% of their annual stipends, mostly not getting the reimbursement that the more-well-off faculty members can count on). Do we want every job applicant to have to worry about what the committees will think about their absence from the list of donors in the program? That is disturbingly manipulative, or outright extortion."
I'm on the AIA side during January and I know many would welcome a demise to the conference interviews that SCS depends on so much. I attend CAMWS to get my classics talks, which are typically more interesting and less stress-tainted. It sounds like the AIA is making a clean break from the Placement Service anyway and this would be the next step. Many AIA type jobs have non-classics SC members who would not only be comfortable interviewing by Skype, but also use it regularly in their own discipline. It's apparent from past comments on here that SCS folks aren't ready to move on from first-round conference interviews. AIA talks are top shelf and it's at least partially because there is no corresponding regional conference. Any decrease in grad student attendance, which I would guess to be minimal, would be more than offset by a better atmosphere for all.
One major dilemma with eliminating the conference interview is generational, at least as I see it from talking with old farts and young farts.
The older generation of classicists remember very clearly the bad old days when jobs were arranged under the table. The conference interview was a way to shine a light on the hiring process by putting the first round interviews under the aegis of the (then) APA. Reputable institutions had to interview and then interviewed a more or less set number of candidates, which at least gave others a shot at the job, and it gave the Chosen Pupil a chance to shoot himself (usually a him) in the foot. The conference interview was a democratizing move and it supported an idea/ideology of meritocracy.
We younger classicists see Skype (vel sim.) as serving a similar purpose. It is democratic in that it does not require the large monetary output that conference interviews do, and it is, in most ways, better than a phone interview. We see it this way because we are comfortable with the technology, but we are also comfortable with the [i]idea[/i] of the technology.
Some of the older faculty are comfortable with the technology, but few are comfortable with the idea of it. They mistrust Skype for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it is a break from a centralized job process. That is, if jobs no longer go through the (now) SCS, then what oversight is there to regularize and normalize that first round interview?
Interestingly to me, many older faculty I've spoken with insist that they get a better sense of the candidate from an in-person interview than they do from a Skype interview. Their argument is that Skype interviews have (empirically) resulted in worse campus visits than conference interviews. I suspect that this in part for the same reason that we as candidates prefer Skype interviews: because via Skype we have more control over ourselves -- both literally (strategically placed notes off the side) and psychologically (in our own space). That may mean that we reveal less of our true selves. I include in "true self" breaking due to anxiety under pressure.
I personally think Skype is kinder to candidates. I don't know whether it is better or worse for departments.
But don't worry. Monetary pressures from administration will eventually force a transition to Skype interviews.
That may mean that we reveal less of our true selves. I include in "true self" breaking due to anxiety under pressure."
Good analysis, but I would argue that Skype interviews level the playing field more and add more overall consistency to help the SC focus on what truly matters IF they don't get hung up on past metrics. It might be that the old school interviewers are the ones trying to fit a square block in a circular hole when they try to run an old school interview by Skype.
How does it level the playing field? I know many candidates from big time programs have faculty, who have served on many committees, run extremely close simulations of SCS interviews. Many are buddies with SC members and "grease the wheels" by calling their buddies, which gives them borderline insider information and flags (in a good way) their student for them. Now tell me, does this really help the SC find the best candidate for the long run, or the one who was best prepped and positioned for the interview?
Finally, I would argue that Skype interviews are more conducive to bringing out the "true self" of those who don't have the inherent advantage of being intimately familiar with the SC members thanks to the largess and connections of their advisors. While serving on SCs myself, I've had colleagues rise up, shake the candidate's hand with a big smile. I asked later on what this was about and it's inevitably due to prior contact and familiarity with the candidate thanks to their advisor. Don't you think that smile and handshake, combined with a possible predisposition to serve up cupcake questions and be more lenient on candidate due to false familiarity, could result in a self-fulfilling "top" candidate?
I agree with you. I really do. When I'm in a position to talk with what I termed the "old farts", I make similar arguments. In my experience, my arguments have been brushed off as revealing my inexperience. I suspect that you are right, though, that the reason the older generation gets "better" campus visits out of face-to-face interviews than out of Skype interviews (if in fact they actually do and they're not just voicing a pre-existing bias) is not because of a weakness in the Skype medium but because they're not adapting their interview style to fit that medium.
I do worry, though, that a decentralization of the interview process might lead to an increase in "stealth" interviews and behind the scenes dealing, since there won't be even the pretense of a "front scenes" any more. But as you say, that already happens.
I also happen to suspect that the extraordinary glut in the market directly contributes to behind the scenes dealing: it's so much harder to pick among so many excellent candidates that word-of-mouth (i.e., cronyism, nepotism, networking etc.) has become more important. I only have anecdotes to support that, of course.
I don't think programs can get away with stealth interviews in this day and age. All reputable universities have standards in place where interviews need to happen for TT positions. Yes, there are ways to circumvent these standards, but I don't see how conference vs. Skype affects this dynamic. It's a small world. People will know if proper interviews weren't conducted.
I'm probably in the minority when it comes to this particular cultural aspect of SCS interviews, but I find it strange that getting the "true self" out of a candidates means making them feel as uncomfortable as possible in order to see if they will crack. Inevitably, making a candidate feel uncomfortable means whipping out your own sub-specialty and research interests to grill the candidate. How is this a good measure of a candidate's long term success? When will they ever be in that type of artificial situation? Oh, this person couldn't answer my question about my research into a book of Vergil. S/he will surely bomb when it comes to teaching, service, research, collegiality. We should be saying WTF if we step back and think about how screwy this is. These practices, once again, skew success towards those who have experienced dead-on SCS interview simulations, which are quite peculiar, and are familiar with the SC members beyond website bios. I don't buy that this is a true indicator of "thinking on one's feet" and "being familiar with the field" as some old school apologist will likely say after my post.
I want more of you as colleagues.
I couldn't agree with you more, 11:30. As you or someone else mentioned, this grilling can be quiet uneven in intensity, depth, and focus from candidate to candidate. This allows SC members with an agenda, whether conscious or subconscious, to stack the deck against or for particular candidates. As someone else inferred, body language plays into this as well - smiles/frowns, warmth/frigidity, intimidation/accommodation, etc. This is less of a factor over Skype, which is a good thing, IMHO.
I suppose I'm in the minority, but I don't think the ribbons for giving money is such a big deal. I seriously doubt that search committees expect fresh (and cash poor) phds to be making donations to the organization, let alone grad students. No one cares that much. Maybe, on balance, it would have better not to have had them. But y'all need to chill out.
In reply to January 12, 2015 at 9:45 PM
Judging by the interview count it looks like every department is trying to hire from the same small pool of people.
This is absolutely true and I have no idea why it happens. For the first couple of years of my job search, I was on the outside looking in when it came to conference interviews and barely got VAP-type positions at the end of the year. It was frustrating and it seemed like a complete waste of time attempting to get a job.
The year when I finally landed a TT job, I suddenly was the person on the wiki who had 8+ interviews. I still have no idea what changed. I didn't really publish anything new, the book was still in limbo, I didn't know people in departments which had scheduled me for interviews.
The only thing that actually changed was that I shifted my pie-in-the-sky and still largely undefined next research project in a new direction; one which was markedly different than my doctoral research. In fact, I basically stopped talking about my doctoral research. Maybe that made the difference, but I don't really know. I did notice at the SCS this year that a panel which looked at my old research area had about 9 people in attendance while a panel on my new/current area had upwards of 50.
I always had something like 8 interviews, but I never even got a fucking flyout.
I think maybe I emit a horrible odor.
Skunky ass?
The last few posts ("skunky ass" excepted) makes 13 Jan 11:30's point rather well.
The first-round application process favors those who have good mentoring on job-materials. That is, it measures a very particular set of game-playing skills. Access to these skills is not democratic, but it is increasingly available through services like The Professor Is In if one's own faculty don't provide it.
The conference interview measures a different set of game-playing skills that really is taught only in a very few programs. Some people learn them on their own after a few go-rounds, but the wildly successful job candidates are those who were trained specifically in getting a job in addition to the skills one applies on the job itself.
Add in fads, luck, and the quality of printer ink on any given day, and there you go.
I've been following this place for three fucking years and the last handful of posts have been the most helpful ever.
If the SCS was half the professional society that it claims to be, it should be the agent that provides materials to help prep departments for classics searches. Before I landed my job, I probably had 20-30 interviews over several years and the vast majority were amateur hour. Once in a while the chair was quite good but it was the exception, not the rule.
Judging by the interview count it looks like every department is trying to hire from the same small pool of people.
But the numbers provided on the wiki actually do not support this claim. While clearly the wiki does not include all job seekers, let's assume it's representative. The average interview count reported is 2.2, with a median of 1. So the majority of people had 1 or 2 interviews. If the above claim was true, the data would skew higher, with the "same small pool of people" clustered around 6-8 interviews. Only 3 people reported having more than 5 interviews. One issue is that we're missing data on how many people had no interviews. We can assume this is the majority. So if you mean the same small pool of people had any interviews at all, one could make that claim, but at least 63 people reported interviews via the wiki, and I assume many more do not report.
@January 12, 2015 at 9:45 PM
Thanks for your insight. I suppose experience is key on the market.
Time to reopen a popular can of worms around here.
While at the conference I spoke with a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis and asked about the reasoning and motivations behind starting the new PhD program that so many have criticized on FV. The detailed explanation I received, none of which I will share here because I have no right to do so, makes perfect sense, and reveals both that there were valid reasons for establishing it and that it will not be adding significantly to the glut of people on the market. In other words, there has been a lot of time (and bile) expended on this subject here, and without sufficient justification.
Hey, I'm anonymous, those of you who have spent so much energy posting contemptuous thoughts about that program don't have to believe me. I just figured you should read that there is indeed another side to this issue.
So why don't we all take a deep breath and find some other target for scorn?
Nice try, Wash U affiliate.
There is no other side on this issue. Starting a new Classics Ph.D. program in the current market situation is immoral.
It's a troll, people. "There's a good reason and I just can't tell you what it is?" I'm all for justly calling out WTFUSTL, but this round was obviously contrived by someone who understood that the best way be an effective detractor is to impersonate a defender while being as obnoxious as possible.
I don't think it's a troll, but a clumsy attempt by a member of a certain classics demographic. It's the same type of person I overheard in NOLA talking about how dangerous FV is to the discipline. How they need to figure out a way to get rid of its anonymity. For all its ills, thank the heavens for the democratizing effects of the internet.
Anonymous 4:15 here, addressing Anonymous 7:49:
FYI, I can be far, FAR more obnoxious than that. As a small example of this, I will point out that if you could not read between the lines and realize that I spoke with someone in confidence and therefore do not believe it proper to divulge the contents of that conversation in a place like this then your skills at careful readings of texts are so poor that I hope for your sake (not to mention that of any students you may have) you are an archaeologist and not a philologist.
7:58, definitely a part of THAT demographic.
Has any one heard from the University of Memphis, or Rhodes College?
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do!
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do, we do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do, we do!
Who robs cavefish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do!
We do!!!
While we're asking for news, has anyone heard anything at all from Virginia Tech?
Sounds like an interesting conversation: "Here are some perfectly valid reasons for establishing our PhD program, but they must be kept absolutely between you and me and never revealed publicly. And, while this also is top-secret state confidential, here's why turning out additional new PhD's in an already over-saturated market will not add to the glut in that market."
Having participated, as candidate and committee member, in plenty of interviews in person and several in Skype (including committees that have chosen finalists and ultimately successful candidates interviewed only by Skype and phone interview), I do wonder why anyone thinks Skype will level the playing field in terms of connections, reactions to personality, etc. It does level the playing field when it comes to economic access to attending the APA meeting itself. And that may be a perfectly good reason to push such a change. But once all candidates are interviewed via Skype, having thesis committee members dropping drunken hints at the meeting may actually play an outsized role, at least among committee members who don't trust such newfangled techniques for interviewing.
WTF are you talking about? Go back to bed and sleep off those cocktails.
Good Lord, Anonymous 9:43. Do you really not understand that sometimes when people speak it is simply understood by the nature of what is being discussed that one should hold it in confidence? I did not ask for permission to make a public report of what I learned, since during the conversation I had no thought to a FV post, and that's why I'm not going into detail. But as I thought about it, I figured that since the posts here last month were so misguided it wouldn't be a bad idea to indicate that this is very much an overblown controversy.
My final thought, and then I'll no longer respond to the trolls, is that classicists above all should be aware of the Socratic concept that true wisdom requires being aware of one's areas of ignorance, and yet most of those who have posted (and continue to post) on the subject of the Washington University PhD program show from the absolute certainty of their comments that they have failed to consider for even a second that they might not have sufficient knowledge to form, let alone share, a worthwhile opinion. (Socrates would be ashamed...) No doubt possessed by the spirit of Socrates -- New Orleans is full of ghosts, after all -- and recognizing that I was not the wisest when it came to this particular subject I sought out someone whom I hoped could illuminate me regarding the nature and reasons for the new program.
Damn! I need to get in touch with my contacts at WUSTL and see if they also have the winning lotto numbers and the cure for cancer, but are just keeping those things under wraps for obscure reasons.
I think trolly-face is one of those guys who grew up with a girlfriend in Canada.
What a blowhard. Well, I went to the pearly gates the other day and the someone who will not be named told me in confidence that WUSTL made the wrong choice. The end.
I went somewhere recently. I want to remain anonymous, and telling you where I went might out me. While I was there, I spoke with someone whose name I won't reveal out of a polite respect for the social contract. This person told me some things in confidence, so I can't share them with you. I can tell you, though, that based on what I heard, you should completely re-evaluate your attitude toward a particular issue. You may have discussed it in some detail, but just trust me on this, I know better.
By the way, if you don't get what I'm saying and agree with my obviously privileged information, it's because you're insufficiently educated assholes who clearly don't understand even the basest rudiments of the profession I hold above all others. You are incapable of reading and you do not appreciate basic social nicety. I have equally good information that you smell. Badly.
Guys, let's not waste our energy on beating this horse anymore. That guy is just using another version of the old "but I have a friend who works there, so it is clearly ethical." If there were any real justification, it wouldn't be a secret but would have been made already, for example in the inside higher ed article.
Any word on those last few places?? Or should we expect those searches to be cancelled at this point?
I don't know of anyone who's heard from Va Tech. Maybe they have to wait until their semester formally starts (on Tuesday) for administrative reasons? Maybe they had no idea how many applications they would get and did not leave enough time before winter break to get through them all? I don't know, but I'd think they'd want to move sooner rather than later.
I'm not sure why departments skipping conference interviews would want to move at the same rhythm as those who didn't. They can hire in May for all they care, if that fits their budget timeline. It's not like the applicant pool will have dramatically diminished by then.
Given that the conversation was clearly in confidence, it was highly irresponsible and disrespectful to reveal that there exists a WUSTL professor who actually thinks that there is a sound reason for starting a new PhD program. They clearly revealed that only in confidence for fear that they'd look stupid; now the whole world knows. Outrageous! What Socrates tells you in the cave should stay in the cave!
Bueller?
I am Jan 14 8:34 and I agree fully with what Jan 15 5:58 says.
In fact, I just remembered something else that changed for me the year I got a shitload of job interviews and ended up with a TT. A colleague in a department where I had a visiting position who went to a Harvard/Yale/Columbia-type school (I got my PhD from a respectable, but definitively second-tier school) shared their CV with me. I adopted their headings, structure, font and style.
With roughly the same information that was on the previous year's CV (apart from maybe an extra conference paper or equivalent) I began getting interviews.
In fact, within a few months of doing this, I got a campus interview for a TT job in a top-10 department - a department which was arguably better than my PhD granting department!
I was not trained in campus or in-person interview skills, but the bit of charm and experience I had was enough once I got past the written application. Until that time I wonder if my written application was turning off committees because it didn't look like the applications from students that went to schools like theirs and had the same job-search training as them.
I know that I'm damn lucky to have a job; and I can absolutely confirm, from my experience at least, that getting a job can very well hinge on the most meaningless, superficial parts of the process. I am fairly certain that I got my TT job because the campus interview convinced my department that I'd not be a pain in the ass to work with and that I worked in some areas where gaps existed. It was not because my second-tier PhD and mediocre or worse publication record (at the time) stood out against the Harvand/Yale/Columbia applicants with a forthcoming book and two articles.
Has anyone heard from Texas Tech post SCS interiew?
It's no fun finding out that a job has been accepted without also finding out who accepted it. Just sayin'.
Let's see here; oh yes, I believe that job was accepted by one Snuggins McGee, PhD.
Good old Snuggins. Very promising research and aces in the interviews.
Does anyone else think that the "Chalcock" poster on the Brown section of the wiki seems...well, really angry? I can't tell if they're legitimately arguing that in this day and age there are elites and then the rest of us, and the rest of us should just get used to it, or if they're just defending the abuser. Show us where the bad archaeologists touched you!
What's a Chalcock?
The Chalcock is where the bad archaeologists touched him.
I believe Chalcock is supposed to be a portmanteau of 2 names (whom I will not mention, but you can figure out). This (disguised) use of real names may violate FV and wiki policy.
the ad hominem comments ought to be deleted from this site.
LOL. Classicists are hardly people.
Portmanteau aside, I don't see how these are ad hominem comments (or any different, for instance, than those about WUSTL).
The power of the wiki and Famae Volent is the element of transparency that it brings to the job search/hiring process. The program in question at Brown is transparently not transparent about how it hires, or if you like, has a very particular perspective on what the "best" candidate looks like. Desired qualities: (1) pre-existing connections with certain members of the department, (2) a Cambridge education or at least outlook, (3) an interest in landscape archaeology. Nothing wrong with #3. #2, well, okay, it's a matter of opinion about whether that is "best" and that kind of hiring can lead to an unbalanced scholarly perspective for students in the program, but that's their business. But #1 is the kicker.
And it's not an ad hominem attack to say so; you can look at the hiring history and at the cvs of candidates and recent tenure-track hires and see that it is simply a fact.
Well, Anonymous 1:23, that was both helpful and appropriate (in contrast to what was on the wiki, which was just hostile).
1:23 PM - what you don't know about JIAAW is a lot.
Right. She/he may not know that they denied tenure to the only person who deserved it. And yes, he had a couple of books already under his belt.
Poop three shoes and squiggle them gently, we all want a chicken but some of them aren't.
I'm not at Brown (actually I applied for the job and didn't get an interview), but my impression is that they really want a good departmental 'fit.' It's not too different from picking people for an archaeological project: the "best" isn't necessarily what's best for the project. Having said that, they've hired a bunch of really good folks. People won't all agree with their hiring decisions. Tough, I guess.
I am not affiliated at all but I am familiar with the situation. The major pitfall I see with so much power concentrated into the hands of two people is that biases are difficult to overcome. Yes, the opposite end of the spectrum where you have squabbling interests with no leader is not great either, but I think the above comment showing how one-dimensional in outlook the faculty can become speaks to these potential pitfalls. Yeah, it's a nice little program, but the experience of my students there and elsewhere suggest to me that one's time there can be particularly tough if you don't fit the overriding paradigm and culture.
This is a boring conversation. Of course individuals operate largely (and often solely) in their self-interest, Classicists, Clarchs, et al. included. Of course they dress up self-interest in terms of "fit", "areas of expertise", "approaches to the discipline", and so on. Of course disinterested actors could and would do better. Of course it is infuriating, and it is infuriating in no small part because intelligent people whose powers of analysis are sharp enough to point out logical fallacy, critical errors, and sloppy thinking in others (to say nothing of hypocrisy, malfeasance, and plain bad faith) rarely ever apply those powers toward analyzing themselves and their own actions. Instead, they are wasted on rationalization.
We are frustrated, angered, depressed, irritated, driven to drink, and compelled to post on internet fora because we expect justice in this world; we yearn for justice.
That doesn't exist. It never has, and in a human world, it never will. Before the social convention, life was nasty, brutish, and short. Now it's just nasty and brutish.
Is there a point here? Probably not. Just a rumination that there is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. πολλάκις δ᾽ ἐθαύμασα, "why"?
hear, hear!
there is certainly no justice or rationality in the pursuit of a career in higher education. those who wail and lament here (and elsewhere) forget that logic and merit really have little to do with the making of human-driven choices. after all, classics hiring committees aren't prone to choosing the daring, the innovative, or the revolutionary - often their default setting is to duplicate themselves insofar as that is possible. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...
Yes, there is a point. You're either a fatalist or an incredibly clever insider. The point is to air out what happens behind the scenes for the sake of transparency and the health of the discipline. I still laugh at the hubris and complete lack of cultural understanding displayed by the old guard posts on here claiming how dangerous this place is. Yeah, maybe to their opaque way of handling things for generations but certainly not for the health of the discipline. You act like a shit, expect it to be aired out here for people to digest.
why wail on JIAAW? if you're on the inside there, it's a good deal. can we fault the operators there for choosing people akin to themselves? for fulfilling what seems to be their mandate? if you are an outsider who gets 'in' there, it is difficult. is that so different from other top programs - Michigan, for instance?
a lot of the comments here are simply sour grapes. nothing more.
health of the discipline?!? now there's a joke.
I just find it amusing that the institution branded itself as the avant garde, "uncola" institution for the 21st century and has become just as bad if not worse than the established guard. It goes to show that when people complain about business happening as usual, what they're really complaining about is that they're not the ones in charge. Well, they've been in charge for some time with all the resources a t their disposal and I'm decidedly underwhelmed.
then what do you really know about archaeology in the 21st century? several of their apparent finalists are cutting edge people.
5:48 here. I agree with 6:09.
As for 6:10, I would say that I'm a fatalist, though I would also (independently) like to think that I'm clever. A few might call me an insider, too, but if that's some, I'm not a member of the inner circle or even the middle circle; I'm in the Oort Cloud of insiders. Famae Volent isn't CNN, BBC, etc. We aren't going to break Watergate. Shed all the light you want: it changes nothing. At the most, it gives a justification for the negative opinions of the dispossessed toward the dispossessors, sometimes naming the dispossessors and calling out their actions explicitly. Maybe, on a good day, it unmasks a few faculty to their own students (who will then STFU about it or be disowned by their faculty and cut from classics like a cancer, even though it's their seniors who are the cancer). It does not foster change. I wish that it did.
At 6:12: Your comment "if you're on the inside there, it's a good deal" reeks of irony so intensely I think it has made my nose-hairs magnetic. As for your next comment, "can we fault the operators there for choosing people akin to themselves?" Yes, yes we can. And we have. And we will again. Like likes like. That's the basis for parochialism, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and any number of other vices. Extrapolate those to the academic sphere and you'll see not a "core competency" but rather a kind of inbreeding. The rest of your comment is equally foolish. I could go clause by clause, but again, I'm bored by you. For me, that is the greatest sin.
good for you, snark-bird I'm sure you are super popular and super successful in the academic rat race. where did you get the idea that higher ed humanities were progressive (or even understood that idea?).
The difference at Michigan and pretty much every place is that it's much more difficult for a couple people to dictate everything that happens down to the screws used to hang paintings with little accountability. If you deny this you're missing the entire reason that the people in question left said institution to establish their kingdom! Lest you think it's harmless and entirely an internal issue, no, it affects the entire discipline. It means less money going into more widely accessible organizations like the AIA from the donors. It means these people have a powerful platform to push their chosen ones for national fellowships, grants, jobs, etc. Are many exceptional and deserving? Yes, but in a number of cases that seems to skew higher than usual, I would argue their chosen ones weren't very good but had some big names pushing them as the next big things. So, yes, this is the pertinent (only?) place to discuss these issues.
A point of clarity (5:48 again). Sometimes I get caught up in these internet posts, but other times I step back and ask myself, "Who benefits?" I can rage against the machine, point out its iniquities, name names, (or insinuate them so that they don't get deleted), but what will actually happen from that? A number of the other like-minded, dispossessed will agree with me. A very small number of the evil-doers will read the posts, not recognize themselves, and defend their fellows. That's it. What do I hope to get out of this? It's good for venting, I suppose, as a kind of group therapy.
And maybe, in my more hopeful moments, I think it might be good as a warning to those star-eyed, bright-faced youngsters who want to go to Classics grad. school. That's where the "danger" to field that the oldsters talk of comes from: we might (might) inform those who have not yet entered here, have not yet abandoned all hope. That would hurt the superfluous graduate programs and give them reason to want to shut down FV. But then, our energy would be better spent giving lengthy, explicitly, passionless descriptions on places like GradCafe.
@January 31, 2015 at 6:29 PM
WTF is a "snark-bird" and whom do you mean?
@6:30
[...]Yes, but in a number of cases that seems to skew higher than usual, I would argue their chosen ones weren't very good but had some big names pushing them as the next big things. So, yes, this is the pertinent (only?) place to discuss these issues.
Interesting point. This may be--depressing as it is--the only platform, but whom is it reaching? What changes in attitudes or actions is it effecting? And if those aren't the ones you/we would like, then what sort of platform do we need in order to effect those changes, and how to do we go about creating it?
BTW, these are not entirely snark-birdish comments (to borrow an earlier poster's neologism). In fact, I'm about 95% serious when asking these questions.
I think the last ten posts should be deleted. What say you blog owner?
In reference to 6:48
That's a bizarre request. The posts to which you point do not violate FV rules, are civil and are interesting. What rationale do you have for wanting them deleted?
Are you one of those who tries to suppress or silence speech with which you do not agree?
Yeah, it's like Greece thinking they've elected Syriza and finding out 8 years later it's actually the same oligarchs from PASOK.
I was in Greece for the election. The Greeks on the ground I talked to know full well: meet the new President, same as the old President.
Do you mean the ceremonial president or the PM?
Yup.
For those who say that posting here is merely a cathartic exercise, I think you underestimate how many people actually read this to get an unfiltered pulse of the discipline.
@7:13
I genuinely hope you're right. The fatalist in me is less optimistic. But if you're right, then I hope that (A) many upon many people are reading this, (B) they most away from a third-person perspective and start applying the things they read here to their own programs and their own advisors, and (C) they think long and hard about what is in their own best interests, both as incipient Classicists, and as whole persons who are not defined by the few years of their graduate programs.
We are but dust in the wind. Let's not spend our lives trying to live up to the opinions of someone born on third base who thinks they hit a triple. Let's do something that lets us live stable lives so that we can pursue our happiness. Let's not pursue our happiness to the dissolution of our lives.
PS: My "captcha" for this post included the word "ethics".
May I just say that I am utterly delighted by the phrase "reeks of irony so intensely I think it has made my nose-hairs magnetic". It has made my nethers tingly.
Carry on.
I frequently see comments here to the effect that (to paraphrase an earlier commenter) ideas that are 'daring, innovative, and/or revolutionary' are not only not recognized as such by many hiring committees, but are in fact detrimental to the job prospects of the scholar. I'm genuinely curious here: can anyone provide specific examples of what kind of approaches are being talked about?
January 31, 2015 at 6:48 PM said:
I think the last ten posts should be deleted. What say you blog owner?
Famae Volent is an inflammatory response to the lesions that are eating away at Classics. Erasing the response won't treat the underlying issues in the body politic.
In other terms, where there's smoke, there's fire. The proper response isn't to fan away the smoke and whistle while the building burns down.
Senior Classicists who find FV "dangerous" (if anyone really says that) would do well to get their own houses in order. Then FV would disappear on its own.
Do "Senior Classicists" even know FV exists? I think maybe about 12 grad students, 5 or 6 lecturers, and two especially embittered tenure-trackers in some out of the way place actually visit this site.
There is no way anybody of any importance gives this place even a sideways glance.
I think they must know. Look at the comment numbers for the past several years. A couple years back there were so many comments that a second bitching thread had to be opened because the first one broke. Then the comments dropped precipitously along with some mention that faculty at a few institutions had gotten wind of FV and had forbidden/advised their students against it.
As for other evidence, you can see that a few places still post job ads on here, and faculty at schools that have scandals do sometimes respond (in both the bitching thread and in the Wiki).
That said, your numbers might be not be too far off for the frequent posters. So which group do you belong to?
Can confirm that the faculty at my top-tier grad program are aware of FV, because they explicitly tell students not to come here as part of the job search coaching process.
But being aware of its existence hardly means that they sit around reading it.
Telling students not to come here seems like the very best way to ensure they do. Rather stupid advice.
@February 1, 2015 at 12:29 PM
Is that before or after they tell you "Don't worry, none of that applies to you. There are always jobs for good people, especially with the coming wave of retirements"?
Also, that you have a "job coaching process" at all ignites my envy.
the gray hairs have been promising that "coming wave of retirements" for more than a decade. guess what - not. gonna. happen.
Anonymous said...
the gray hairs have been promising that "coming wave of retirements" for more than a decade. guess what - not. gonna. happen.
February 1, 2015 at 12:48 PM
The point and you are like ships in the night.
Not sure if finding this place before I applied to grad school would have changed anything. But I am more realistic about the market now than I would have been without FV. I don't know why faculty care about students coming here though. If FV didn't exist as it does it would exist differently and, judging from the blogs and boards for other fields, be much worse.
The stated reason for discouraging grad students from coming here in my program was that coming here would lead to depression, hopelessness, and consequent lack of focus that would make it harder to get a job.
Having gone through several years of being on the market and using FV, I can attest that all of these concerns are valid. However, I don't think I would have gotten a job even if I had been the most optimistic person ever. And frankly, I thank sweet non-existent Jesus every fucking day that it turned out that way.
Right, but in my experience academics keep going by telling themselves that things will be different once x happens, where x is getting the PhD, or a job, or a tenure-track job, or tenure, or an endowed chair, or that job at a better institution.
FV robs us of this hope by making clear that no one is even remotely happy, anywhere; the pot at the end of the rainbow is full of shit, not gold.
So you're saying the shitpot is a shibboleth.
Shitpot Shibboleth noted as possible band name.
Would need to put a hole in the shitpot to make a shitpot bass, though. Ma needs that shitpot to shit in, but what would Pa have done?
Did Queensland really just cancel their VAP and then restart the hire in the space of two weeks?
So what if they did?
Then their reputation should suffer and suffer publicly. Unless they can defend themselves in an open forum, then the reasonable assumption is that they are not honest or reliable actors.
That is, if it's true.
Details of the position have been changed, e.g. from Ancient History to Roman History.
There's a story there but probably a mundane one.
Ah--probably Just the usual sort of shoddy dealings common among academics.
So all we learn is that this place isn't any better than any of the rest.
Moving along here.
Some of you really never stop whining, do you? Every little something with a job is somehow evidence that you're being screwed over by inside jobs and fixed searches?
Bizarre. You're projecting, I suppose, or you misread "shoddy" as "shady". Not sure which is worse: being overtaken by your own insecurities, or simply lacking reading comprehension. Probably the latter given our professions.
Changing a job ad mid-stream is shoddy. I had no suspicion and made no implication that it involved an inside search, etc.
I just want to state for the record here that escaping from the academic world with a Classics Ph.D. and selling that on the outside, so to speak, is pretty awfully difficult. The track record we all worked to build as academics really means almost nothing to most human beings (I am not saying it should mean something to them, I am just painfully reminded how insular and detached the academic world is ...) Some have made it and been lucky, but it is not a given. Do not send people down this path, undergraduate advisors, unless those people are thrill-seeking death-loving lunatics, are equipped with trust funds (or perhaps these things combined).
roger that. I found that public education in K-12 contexts was a very tough road to go after leaving college teaching, given how much additional bureaucracy and cost is associated with the requirements for teachers. Those costs can be steep and the additional coursework can really add up.
I agree that leaving classics is hard, perhaps harder than most fields, but don't despair. There are lots of things you can do with your life. And it's quite possible that you will be happier doing something else rather than getting a job in a place you hate with colleagues you hate, teaching students who have no interest in anything you have to say because it's not connected with getting a job or science or math.
the academic life is too much of crisis (even for crisis seekers). early 20s: crisis of finishing BA up on top and getting good grade placement. 20s (into 30s): crises of completing grad school (at that point, seemingly hardest thing ever). then, maybe years of visiting-adjunct-no security teaching in hopes of T-Tdom .... then, at 40ish, the crisis of starting over, explaining 20+ or more years delving in the sublime depths of a discipline that just doesn't translate to others very well. was the delving and the earlier crisisdom worth it? mostly. does it seem bleak to leave it and go out into the real unknown? absolutely. Enlightenment or not, this is a not a path for even the hardy soul.
easy for the person with paycheck and security to say "hang in there" to the drowning rat with but a plank.
If you're referring to Anon 3:40, I didn't say "hang in there." I'm saying, "let go of the plank, and swim away!"
If you don't know about Versatile PhD, check it out. Odds are that your school has signed up for it which give you access to their fora where people swap ideas and stories.
Other than high school teaching, I know people who have got into grant-writing, development, academic administration. I also know people who have got into market research but often that also needs some number-crunching chops. There's also a recent PhD who became a programmer.
My god. We're blessed to be able to read Greek and Latin, and people are complaining this much?
some of us have to eat and such. Greek and Latin vapors alone don't really do it.
Anonymous said...
My god. We're blessed to be able to read Greek and Latin, and people are complaining this much?
February 3, 2015 at 8:40 PM
I know nothing of you personally, nothing of your intentions or morality. But your words and the attitude behind them are pure evil. I do not say that lightly nor facetiously. What you have written is at the heart of the oppressive system that keeps academia and classics in their downward spiral. "Be grateful for what you have! Don't complain; don't make waves; it could be worse!" While we're at it, lets build pyramids for our provosts and football coaches. If we run out of mortar, they can just grind our bones. But at least we're blessed to have read some Latin and Greek along the way.
Oppressive system? I suspect most of us with higher degrees in Classics wouldn't know real oppression if it hit us square in the face.
I'm sure you say that to all the minorities, a**hole.
Anonymous said...
Oppressive system? I suspect most of us with higher degrees in Classics wouldn't know real oppression if it hit us square in the face.
February 3, 2015 at 9:07 PM
So your statement is this: "Your experience, as judged externally by me, does not meet the threshold I have independently determined for an oppressive or really just generally negative system, so f*ck off."
Or is it this: "Other people have worse lives, so screw you for wanting to right iniquities in your own."
Or is it this: "No lesser evil can be righted until the worst evil is first righted."
You are a fool and a collaborator.
No, just not a ready subscriber to a victim mentality or culture.
Glad to see you agree with my assessment of you. May any higher powers you believe in have mercy on you in this life and the next. You need it more than most.
"Blessed to read Greek and Latin"? So that's all we should hope for or aspire to? Why, then, should we have any degrees? You'd have us sitting under some arbor begging for scraps while reading Homer, thanking the muses all the while? Sad. I think you have been on some interview committees I've met with at the meetings. So glad you didn't hire me.
Re: computer programming, I made the transition to a career as a web developer this last year and am now happier than I have been in at least half a decade. Your mileage may vary, but it definitely comes with my recommendation.
If you have no idea what such a career might entail and don't know whether or not you would like it, I suggest trying some of the Ruby/Python or Javascript materials at codecademy.com vel sim. That can quickly give you a basic idea of whether or not this is something you could enjoy.
And if you want to chat more about it, hit me up at dwalin1@gmail.com.
@Daniel Walin: thank you. Nice of you to offer your experience, and help.
Fuck it all. I'm going to become a dancing shark. Dr. Left Shark.
You misspelled "shart".
Anybody seen this yet?
As mentioned in the article, that study really doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know.
So, an unnamed English program admits 12 new students per year and over 12 years (144 students; 1998-2010), it places 35 TT.
1) That's an average of 3 TT placements per year, and a rate of 25% of entrants achieving TT. This must be one of the "first year"/"top 6" programs.
2) It's misleading to aggregate pre-2008 and post-2008 data. It's especially misleading when 10 out of 12 years of the data are pre-2008, AND that data is used to comment on the post-2008 market. The numbers cited in the article must be much better than the current numbers.
I want to be a snark-bird. That sounds totally awesome.
Looks like another year with no job prospects.
Right there with you.
It's the old normal!
another year, still unemployed using classics ph.d. surprised? not really. disgusted? pretty much. how many similar-minded classics malcontents are out there at this point? whither now?
The best thing we can do now is to back in time, so to speak, and warn ourselves, or at least other versions of ourselves, about the perils of this system.
Let's get active at The Grad Cafe and reveal all to the bright young naive things therein. They are so confused, and so clueless, and obviously the various programs like it that way. There is even a thread about WUSTL.
http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/57317-fall-2015-applicants/
Several people warned them early on in that thread, but they were completely ignored.
That thread is so fucking weird to me now, even though I was probably even more of a fluffy bunny sparkle pony isn't Classics grand sort when I was at that stage. It's just so weird to encounter people who haven't been embittered at all yet. They are like pure driven snow I want to pee on.
Someone needs to do a documentary where they find some of these people, the ones that get in to good programs, and follow them around from now until whenever they finally drop. It would be depressing as hell, but educational if anyone ever watched it.
Seeing the extreme naivete of those GradCafe posters reminds me why this system works. They simply aren't a match for even one sexagenarian sociopath, much less a whole grad program full of them. Classics fucks people up for the same reason gravity will fuck you up if you step off a building: there's no other way it can go.
Motherfuckers can't fly.
^ do you think that classics is specially effective at fucking people up? or are people just fucked up by the conjunction of grad school and a brutal market, discipline disregarded?
if anyone's looking to warn the naive, there is also this thread:
http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/51776-life-after-admission/
fwiw, i feel classics is especially good at fucking you up. you spend years perfecting arcane skills, perhaps getting fluffed up by the gray hairs who are impressed by said skills, only to end up at a supermarket checkstand where those skills are absolutely useless and irrelevant. then the few grams of self worth you had left fizzle and you're eating beef jerky, ramen, and natty light to stay alive. oh, wait, was that too revealing? damn.
If you can afford Natty Light you haven't fallen far enough yet.
nothing like a diet of slim jims and flat, light beer to remind you why you went on to earn a ph.d.
I think it's the contrast between the value placed on Classics within the discipline and the value placed on Classics literally everywhere else that makes failure in the job market especially embittering.
There are way fewer jobs than good candidates, of course, and that means large numbers of PhDs leaving academia. But it's that jarring realization, once you leave academia, that everything you did during the previous decade is absolutely worthless that really makes people want to drive them staples deep.
^^ This is also one of the things that keeps people in the VAP game way longer than is healthy. No one wants to admit that they just wasted that many years, and not just wasted them (hell, everything's a waste) but wasted them working, when their resume would look just as good, and they would have about as much money to show for it, if they'd spent the whole time strung out on heroine.
^^ Good points.
Having left the academy after many years of struggle, trying to 'use' the skills of the classicist has proven difficult. most folks have no idea what classics is. In fact, we have seen in the news lately that many people in America don't really know what Latin is, for example. so, I think a heroin binge might have been less devastating than becoming a classics phd who failed in "the world".
If your PhD is no earlier than of 2012 vintage consider applying for one of the ACLS Public Fellowships, designed to help humanities PhDs make the transition.
https://www.acls.org/programs/publicfellowscomp/
...and this too:
Post-Doctoral Fellow in Classics at Florida State University
The College of Arts and Sciences at Florida State University has inaugurated a Post-Doctoral Fellows program in the Humanities, and the Department of Classics has been awarded one of the first such Fellow positions. This position is a two-year appointment to begin August 2015, of nine months for each of the two academic years, non-renewable. In addition to engagement with the undergraduate and graduate students and participation in the research program of the Department, the duties of the position shall include a teaching load of 2 courses each term, at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The salary is set at $40,000 per annum; if eligible under ACA requirements, health insurance benefits are available. This position is open only to those who have received the Ph.D. after January 1, 2011; the Ph.D. must be in hand by July 1, 2015 (this is a requirement of the University and is not negotiable).
We seek an individual whose innovative research in Classics emphasizes combinations of the existing strengths of the Department, such as material culture and its social context; history and its records; the intersection of religion and politics; and political economy. The period of specialization is open, including Late Antiquity.
Applicants should send a cover letter, CV, and writing sample (a dissertation chapter or an article) and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent to the Department. Electronic applications and letters of recommendation may be submitted to the Department at Classics-Search@fsu.edu. All materials should be received by March 23, 2015. Please address questions about this position to Professor Daniel J. Pullen, Chair, at dpullen@fsu.edu.
Florida State University is an Equal Opportunity/ Access/ Affirmative Action/ Pro Disabled & Veteran Employer: http://www.hr.fsu.edu/PDF/Publications/diversity/EEO_Statement.pdf
forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit
Surely you meant nocebit?
Post a Comment