interview recap

The campus visit is over. I’m sitting in the nearest hub city waiting to connect to my flight home. Wine has been consumed.

A few highlights:

During last night’s dinner, one of the committee members called me “amazing.” Really.

Teaching demo went well with good student interactions and lots of enthusiasm.

Research talk also went well, and I felt very comfortable. The questions were genuine and they seemed to find my research interesting.

Now, I wait. 3 weeks, to be exact. Keep those fingers crossed!

evaluate this!

Today I received my packet of student evals from last semester (all three courses) from the department assistant. I took them into my office, expecting the worst. What I saw was just about ideal, and certainly far better than I’d expected.

It was funny how some students said they wanted more lectures and less group work, yet others wanted less lecture and more group work. Can’t please everyone, I suppose. The fact that these comments are just about perfectly balanced suggests that I’m doing things right in that department. Lots of people commented on my kindness, approachability, and willingness to meet with students outside of class. Glad they noticed.

One very conspicuous outlier was some disgruntled student in my afternoon class who rated every aspect of the class (and me) at a 1 out of 5. At least she was consistent. In the open-ended comments section, she wrote that I was the worst professor she’d ever had. If there had been even one more person who’d made similar comments, I would be very worried about what I might have done wrong. This one person might have just been having a bad day or feared for her grade, and decided to unload on me. Whatever. I had a number of students in all of my classes who said I was the best professor they’d ever had and that I’d either inspired them to switch into my discipline or remain in the discipline. Not too shabby, eh?

These evals will serve me well in the job search, although I’m very much hoping that I have no more than a couple of weeks left in that process. T-6 days until I leave for my on-campus interview. Fingers crossed, por favor!

 

professor’s progress

With 16 hours until I depart, I’ve only actually cried once and nearly cried maybe 2 or 3 times. This, my friends, is progress. I’ll give the final tally once I’ve actually left. Sigh.

To be honest, I can’t muster the necessary enthusiasm to go back. I know that I was ecstatic to get the job, and believe you me, I am so very grateful to have it. That said, now that I know that there is no potential for it to convert to t-t, I’m less inclined to break my back in service of impressing them. I’ll still do my job and do it well, but gone are the 10-hour days in the office, going the extra mile, etc. I’ll show up for departmental meetings, teach my classes, and check my e-mail. That’s it. I’m going to look out for #1 and do whatever I can to get a job. It would be great to get at least one more additional pub out this year, and maybe do some other things to put me in a position to succeed long-term.

I’ve decided that I may be skipping out on Huge National Conference this year, given that I didn’t get a paper accepted and it costs an arm and a leg just to get there. I got asked to chair a session, but BFD. Those chuckleheads didn’t see fit to accept my paper (despite good reviews), so why exactly should I spend hundreds of my own dollars for their benefit? There’s an interesting conference happening in April much closer to home that may be less expensive and a surer prospect for acceptance that I will submit to. If I really loved HNC, I’d totally sacrifice to go, but I hold it as an example of all that is wrong with academia. Hence, I’m keeping my money. I’m sure those of you in other disciplines feel similarly about your own flagship professional organizations.

wiki tiki tavi

Did I really just do that? Yes, apparently I did.

Today I cruised over to the wikis (yes, multiple wikis…I’m just lucky that way) and found that a number of jobs I’ve applied to have moved on without me. Hmm. As I scrolled through the entries, I thought to myself, “If I’m not getting so much as a phone interview from these people, who IS?!” Truly baffling. They range from R1 behemoths to bottom-tier schools, but they share a common thread: Lack of desire to give me the time of day. Nothing to do but keep my head down and just keep swimming.

I’m also in a rather unpleasant state of affairs because my blissful 6 weeks with the spouse are winding to a close. I go back on Tuesday mid-morning, and we won’t be together again until February 8. The only thing keeping me from a full-on breakdown is that in the meantime I’ll have the beginning of the semester, a revise-and-resubmit to finish, a campus visit, and a visit from my mom to keep me occupied. Also, the day I leave will start the countdown for 91 days until we no longer have to live apart. We can deal with that, knowing that it’s temporary. How people do this as a matter of course for years at a time defies comprehension.

The next couple of weeks will be hectic, so I can’t promise very much in the way of posts. Enjoy yourselves, dears!

 

Istanbul

Here’s a list of what we did, ate, saw, etc. Since we ended up being there for 12 days (instead of 10 as we’d planned), it seems a bit much to try to do a day-by-day recap. I’ll just hit the highlights, and include pictures here and there.

A few of our favorite experiences:

• The Blue Mosque (Sultanahmet Camii)

• A visit to a hammam (Turkish bath)
• Archaeological Museum

• Strolling down Istiklal and around the Beyoglu and Cihangir neighborhoods

• Drinking lots of great Turkish coffee and tea

• Eating dinner at a down-home meyhane (complete with raki, of course)
• Taking the ferry boats up and down the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus

• Chora Church and walks through some of the surrounding neighborhoods

• The Hagia Sophia

• The old city walls

• Dolmabahce Palace

 

• Visiting the Asian side of Istanbul (mostly Uskudar and Kadikoy)

• Basilica Cistern

• Grand Bazaar

 

I really want to return to Turkey to see even more of Istanbul (it’s the 2nd biggest city in the world, after Shanghai) and to branch out to other regions of the country. Turkey is truly the world’s crossroads, and there really is something for everyone there. It’s basically everything I like about travelling in various regions of the world all in one place.

merhaba

The past week has been really busy, leaving no time for a proper post-Istanbul post. That will happen soon enough, dear readers. In the meantime, here is a link to my photo album.

In my subsequent posts, I’ll talk about the trip, the beginning of the semester, the upcoming interview, and other miscellany. Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season!

why did constantinople get the works?

I’ll soon find out. We leave for Istanbul tomorrow morning and I am super excited. 

Bags packed? Check

Grades submitted? Check

Vacation responder on work e-mail? Checkity-check-check-check! 

 

Enjoy your holidays, everyone! 

cue the violins

A student somehow totally forgot to turn in the final project paper. How one does that, I’ll never understand. However, it gets better.

A while after the deadline I receive an e-mail begging for me to accept it late, all the while acknowledging that I said in the syllabus “No late projects accepted for any reason.” I confirmed the student’s suspicions and informed hir that that I would not accept it.

I grade on a points accumulated model, rather than some weighted average or other system. This paper really only counts for 10% of the grade, which is a letter grade, but much less than any other project/exam/paper I’ve ever had to do as a student.

The student then responds: “I respect your decision. I’m sure I’ll regret this mistake for many years to come as my GPA will most definitely suffer from it.”

 

I exercised the utmost of restraint by not responding, “If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the world’s tiniest violin playing ‘My Heart Bleeds Peanut Butter For You.’ “

Please.

end-of-semester growlings

The grading isn’t going so badly thus far, but dealing with some of the drama generated by slacker, clueless students is driving me to drink. Make no mistake: The overwhelming majority of my students are just fine and are not a bit of trouble. But the two or three who have suddenly realized that I actually give grades for things like turning in work on time and attendance really just need to take a good smack in the head with a clue-by-four. The best one is the student who failed to turn in the form actually enrolling hir in my class, never came to class, and basically turned nothing in. Now, zi is raising a stink in the dean’s office about how zi should get credit for the course and doesn’t understand why zi is failing (in a course in which zi isn’t even enrolled). Yeah, nice try, but areyoufuckingkiddingme?!

Luckily, both the dean and my department chair seem to have my back on this one. I hope that there isn’t further drama. Thank His Noodly Appendage that I will be out of the country for over a week and won’t be checking e-mail during that time. Like hell I’m going to take time out of my hard-earned vacation to deal with some entitled know-nothing.

fingers crossed

On Friday evening, I got a call inviting me to a campus interview. This from the 2nd phone interview I did, which is a far better job for me than the one where I would be a teaching automaton. I have over 6 weeks to prepare, and I was able to build in some time off in my spring syllabi, so everything should be in place for me to succeed. 

I’ll have more details by the end of the week, but I’m thinking it will be a pretty whirlwind time. I know there will be some kind of teaching demo involved, but beyond that, I have no idea. Never before have I had an invitation for an on-campus for a tenure-track job before the holiday break, so it seems that things are getting better for me. I will stay hopeful until the bitter (or not-so-bitter) end.