The Perennial Problem

Right now, I am supposed to be writing letters to send to institutions of higher learning, begging them to consider interviewing me for a professor job. And while I have a lot of motivation for completing that task, it isn't inherently or immediately rewarding. Even crunching numbers and troubleshooting SPSS syntax has a certain sense of accomplishment and progress, but these letters and packets are more a matter of checklist-checking, and I have little attention for that kind of activity.

Moreover, my proclivity for becoming distracted is enhanced by the fact that the source of so many of the things I'm interested in (playing guitar, messing around with my recording gear, hitting the Stumble button, playing video games) are also centered around my computer. So at any given moment while working, I am actually touching the object that is most likely to distract me from the task at hand. This is made even worse by the fact that parts of the job application process require opening a web browser window, which makes it all to easy to open an extra tab, just to check on my blog, which results in me writing a blog post instead of actually emailing the person I came here to email in the first place.

The whole job application process is daunting. I've been reading Jeff Green's Blog, and just today was thinking about how easily he seemed to have found another job. Even if he started looking the instant that they shut down GFW magazine, he didn't spend very long on the job market. It was the same with my dad, when his company went under, he was only out of a job for a couple of months, and even during that time had numerous job offers to choose among.

I suppose this is because they had spent their careers (Jeff isn't that much younger than my dad was when he changed jobs) building their reputations, making contacts who understood that they would be assets in any context, and all the while those contacts were becoming people with the power to help Jeff and my dad out when the time came. However, right now, I am at that most difficult of periods. I have no reputation. I have only the basic skills of my profession, and a passion for my area and for teaching. No long list of accomplishments; not even a long one as graduating PhDs go. Moreover, communicating my confidence, passion, and intelligence is so difficult in a letter, particularly while maintaining a formal tone. My inherent attitude is jovial, friendly, funny, and personal, not formal at all. Even with a joke thrown into my letter, I still think it is too stodgy and plain, but I really don't see a way to change it. I hope that it will get me at least in the door, so that I can start building my career as a scholar, instead of waiting for it to start.