Professor Mon (More Job Hunting Advice)

I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job.

No matter how I say it to myself or how many times I say it, it doesn't quite seem real yet that I have a job. My new chair called me Professor Mon today and it just sounds too good to be true. I have a job.

This has been a crazy first job search, but now that it's over I can say that it worked out great. The very first school I applied to gave me my first interview and my first offer. And today I happily accepted. Everything about this position was earlier than what is normally done in my field, and I knew that if I was a top candidate for job, there was a chance that I would receive an offer before other positions in my field even started interviewing. But I applied knowing all of this because it was really an ideal situation for me coming from an R1 that was far from home. I knew I wanted a good professional experience, a serious change of scenery, and a place where I felt welcomed culturally and socially. Throughout my whole job search, my biggest problem has not been about finding places I liked, but about figuring out what type of institution I really wanted. I applied to just about every type and I'm not sure that was the best thing for me to do.

Job Hunting Tip #1: Figure out what you want ASAP, preferably before you go on the market. One of my mentors told me that I could have any job that I wanted and she was right, but I took a while to figure out what it was that I wanted. She told me to figure this out before I went on the market, but the market season came up so fast I thought the answer would "come to me" as I applied. That's a bad way to go about a search. My confusion created some unnecessary noise once I started receiving invitations to apply to some top R1 schools and early interviews. I started to go with the places that wanted me rather than with what I wanted. I was influenced by what other people wanted or thought best for me rather than what I wanted--bad idea.

Job Hunting Tip #2: Know Yourself.
I went into graduate school for one reason. My undergraduate experience. I loved my professors, loved the liberal arts environment, and I wanted to get my PhD so I could return to that kind of place in the future. More than anything else, that drove the decision I made today and I'm glad that was a deciding factor.

Job Hunting Tip #3: Remember This is a Beginning.
Throughout the dissertation process, I've heard folks say--"remember that this is not your magnum opus"--"it is just a start to your professional career"--"you don't have to try to do everything now." I think that the dissertation and a first job have strong parallels. What you do with both has to do with your own personal goals. For those who have goals to be the next big name in the field, what they do with their dissertation and where they take their first job is of the upmost importance. I've never had the goal of being the next big academic. I want a space to write and a life of teaching--so I chose a job that will give me those things at a place where I can BEGIN my professional career. I think first jobs, like dissertations, are the source of angst if they are viewed as the "well this is it" point in one's life in the academy. Both are important starting points but neither has to be the determining factor in the rest of one's career. As my mentor says--if you are excellent in what you do, you can have the things that you want.

So it's pretty close to official, I'll be a professor beginning in fall 2006 and I'm excited about this new beginning in my career. This gives me a great new deadline for my dissertation work--it takes some of the old pressure off and puts a new, I think more positive, pressure on. Before I wanted to be done primarily so I could leave my graduate school life behind--that motivation is still there, but now I want to be done so I can start my new life with a clean slate.