Waiting For The Day

For academics, November through March are perhaps the most emotionally taxing months of the year. Not only are we dealing with holiday stress while preparing for the end of one semester and the start of another, we also have an omnipresent and oppressive awareness of the faculty job market.

Somehow higher education has chosen the winter months — when seasonal affective disorders are most pronounced — as the perfect moment to decide the professional fate of thousands of Ph.D.s.

Brief check-ins with friends who are on the tenure-track market this year (some for the second or third time) underscore the fact that the academic waiting game produces unhealthy amounts of anxiety. Our conversations are almost fully occupied by speculation about if and when they will hear back from a certain search committee. → continue reading