Hello my dear, dear friends,
What a wild ride it has been indeed, lo this long and dreary month of February. It was cold again, then nice again, then we had an ice storm, then the wind blew so hard I truly thought we would die. The Night Of The Dread Winds I slept nary one wink, laying instead abed thinking with an odd sense of detachment about how the enormous tree in our yard was definitely going to fall on the house at any moment. I found out in the morning that the old man had been laying awake thinking the exact same thing. It was eerie to realize in retrospect that we’d both been awake thinking of our impending brutal deaths but we each thought the other was slumbering peacefully.
I will tell you that I have had some job interviews, without giving too many details as nothing is decided yet and I don’t want to fuck anything up or jinx anything. Job interview are horrible. I know I am prone to exaggeration but in this instance every academic agrees with me. My mentor describes her own long-ago job interview period as “the worst time in [her] life, next to when [her] son got cancer.” It’s bad news. It’s so thrilling to get interviews but it makes you so incredibly anxious. So much rides on your performance, for one thing, and there are so many variables you can’t predict. Furthermore, they are just intense experiences. You spend two full days on campus going to meetings, teaching students you’ve never met before, getting interviewed by the Dean of the entire college, etc., all while wearing clothes in which you feel profoundly awkward. So in spite of how amazing it all is and how lucky I know I am, I also essentially have been sick to my stomach, to varying degrees of intensity, for 2 solid months. There is never a moment when thoughts of the jobs are completely out of my brain, and sometimes they consume me with morbid dread. First there is the phone call inviting you to a campus visit. This is followed by approximately 60 seconds of total elation and shrieking. Then the realization of what-all you are going to have to do to prepare for the interview hits you and your gut flips over. You start imagining all the wildest questions they could possibly ask you. What if they ask me to describe a grad seminar on Sibelius? What if they suddenly start speaking to me in French? They send you the details—how long your job talk should be, what your sample class will be on—and you just dive in, prepping with intensity. Writing a 30 minute talk about your research; planning a lecture on, respectively, Debussy, the Protestant Reformation, and Wagner. Getting your suit drycleaned. Fretting about whether the pants are supposed to fit this way or should you get them tailored again. Researching the department, figuring out where everyone got their PhD and trying to read as much of their scholarship as you can. Memorizing their course catalogue so you can talk knowledgeably when they ask you, “so where would you fit into our curriculum” or “tell us about three classes you could teach here.” Wondering if you should use a PowerPoint or just wing it. Having no idea what the students are like—are you pitching your Wagner class embarrassingly low or alienatingly high? Meanwhile you are also teaching full time, grading, prepping your own normal lectures, etc. You have to re-organize all your syllabuses so that they can incorporate the SIX missed classes you now have to account for. You worry that your students find you aloof and think you aren’t committed to them. Then the interview itself. You fly across the country and take a cab to a hotel room where you put Best Show Gems on your iPhone speaker and iron your suit and try to calm down enough to sleep, which is impossible because you are so wound up about the terrible day(s) to come. At one of my interviews I took a melatonin and fell asleep at 10:00, then woke up thinking it was morning and time to shower and then saw that it was midnight, and then watched Steve Brule episodes in bed until 5:00.
So ANYWAY to make it to the final round at three good jobs is pretty epic, if I do say so. One of the jobs was SERIOUSLY epic, and I made it to the final two, and then they gave it to the other guy. I don’t have the kind of personality where I hate the person who beats me for a job or whatever, so I wish him well and good day to you sir. I am proud to have made it to the final round at such a dream job. I also comfort myself with the fact that I didn’t want to live in that city very much (sour grapes; it would have been amazing).
All is well; life is good; my career continues to improve, knock on wood. I am less of a dipshit than 2 years ago and 2 years from now I hope to be less of a dipshit still. My life goal.
More details forthcoming soon.
In other news, there is not much other news. I need to rejoin the gym and go to the doctor.
I hope you enjoy this month’s Lament. We are getting some great stuff submitted here at the office and we look forward to bringing you many more delightful tales, reviews, recipes, personal ads, and maybe like poems or music downloads or something, as the years advance.
Franklin was extremely ill recently and he is now recovered but I still have anxiety nightmares that he is sick again. I read The Marriage Plot and hated its guts. We are watching True Detective and it is a very well-made show. How many shows about naked raped dead women killed by serial killers can American pop culture support? So far the answer is “a countless number.” I am not made of stone, and freely admit to enjoying this genre as much as the next sicko pervert.
Goodbye to you dear friends. I hope you are excited that it is March. Soon the flowers will be bustin’ out every which way and we will reveal our lily-white thighs to the gawping of public culture!