East Coast Transplant in the Midwest Seeks Repatriation to the Homeland; or, Please Hire Me!
Dear blogosphere,
Epix is back!
As much as I wanted to get this entry out as fast as possible, I knew that I needed time to sleep and recuperate so that I could function as a student and an interviewer.
Thus, this is my moment of apology/selfishness.
However, ACPA was a blast! I am still completely dumbfounded by what a small field Higher Ed really is…My supervisor and other colleagues told me that we all know someone who knows someone who knows someone…but, I didn’t realize how true this would be until I got there.
I mean, DAMN! Everywhere I looked, someone knew someone at my current or former institution…it was nuts!
I definitely did not get to go to as many sessions as I would have liked, as the job search took priority.
Now, the interviews themselves… We all stayed in a small location where we used our laptops to do last minute-research on the schools, then were corralled into a smaller waiting room while we sat and waited for someone to come and call our name and lead us to our doom…err…salvation…err…something? Each school had some sort of swag, some sort of identifier. I appreciated that. It was a nice personal touch and just, well, fun, in an otherwise stress-packed day. Each institution had similar questions, and only a few stuck out. Unfortunately, I am so wiped and mentally gone from this time, that I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME remember these questions! L
I was definitely “me” throughout, and sold myself as a person deeply vested in, and attuned to, the needs and interests of those from underrepresented populations. That said, I know I scared some schools off, but they wouldn’t be a good fit in the long run.
I’m happy with how it turned out. Now, there’s just an impossibly long waiting period…Will I get a lot of on-campus interviews?!?!? Will those “anticipated” positions open up???!?! Who do I need to kill to make them open up?!?! Wait, er, scratch that…who do I NEED TO FIND ANOTHER JOB FOR so that those positions open up?!??! Much better. J
Stay tuned for my next post on the advice I have for others doing the conference thing when job searching!
-Epix
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