Loneliness and academia, part 40

Loneliness seems to come as a side-effect of the academic lifestyle. I am on a fairly large mailing list for an activity with a new faculty member in his early 40's who keeps sending updates on his mother's health. It seems strange to do, because he goes into such depth about which medical tests, and what the outcomes were. I know him personally, and I'm glad that I know that his mother is sick and he needs extra support, but I feel like knowing the details is kind-of intrusive even as a relative friend of his. For the many people on the list who don't know who he is, it's downright weird to know that this guy's mother had X and Y medical tests and treatments.

But then I realized that everyone needs someone that they can tell all the details to, and he doesn't have anyone. He's never mentioned a father, so apparently his father is no longer in the picture, perhaps no longer alive, and I don't remember if he has siblings, so his mother might be his only immediate family member, so it's even more traumatic that he's at risk of losing her.

He's moving to the same city as I am, and he's clearly reached out to me. He's refined and attractive, but so clearly lonely and longing. Not that there's anything wrong with those things. Being lonely is a good thing, in a way, because it means that someone likes people --- compare my misanthropic once-long-distance-boyfriend who broke up with me the morning of my job interview in his city --- but it also creates a vibe that makes others want to run away from them, at least when it comes to romantic involvement. This instinct to run away from loneliness and need is one of the tragedies of human nature.

Stragglers will always be stragglers

1. Straggler 1 has told me that they have invited one of the candidates back for a second interview. They called me up, and they told me that, and that everyone was still in play. I said okay, and waited to hear for more about their game plan. They said, again, "So we invited one of the candidates back and it's not you." And I think they may have repeated it a third time in case I didn't understand. "We just want to make sure the fit is right," she explained. That mysterious fit.

I'm not sure what the etiquette is in this type of situation. I just like to hear as much information as possible so didn't want to interrupt her.

It's an interesting thing, "fit". Looking at the candidates, they were surprisingly regional given that this school is in the top 50 of US News: one from the same university, two from the same metro area, and one was a commuter flight away. I'm in a different time zone. A few of them wondered whether I would be happy in that region of the country, and even asked me whether I am a "[their region] person".

I am guessing that the reason that they invited me in the first place was because I had a long paragraph at the end of my cover letter about how much I liked their school, specific features that I had picked up on a past visit there, and I meant every word.

I have my doubts, but I also have reasons why I would really like it. I have two close friends and a couple other friends nearby, one of whom I might date if I were living there, plus there's an absolutely fantastic ethnic supermarket chain I just discovered, and there are some good recreational opportunities in the area. But it's true I feel more at home in other regions of the country, and I'm sure likewise. A friend of mine who grew up close to that university thinks that I would hate it there. I'm guessing that the ones from the area are probably better "fit" for them.

2. Straggler 2 emailed me back, a week after I emailed them with possible dates, that they will let me know when they have figured out which dates are good ones for them. So I'm holding open the entire month of June for them.


I'm also not sure what to tell the postdoc. I accepted them conditional on Straggler 1, and said that I would let them know what Straggler 1's decision was, and gave them a time-frame that has probably long since past. Meanwhile, I hadn't mentioned Straggler 2 at all to them.

I want to tell them exactly what I know, and that I plan to find an apartment and sign a lease in their city. That's a signal that I am committed to their program, but not absolutely until I find out.

Most importantly, I want them to feel like I really want them, and that I am not hesitating to accept them. That's really important in them wanting to work with me. And honestly I'm increasingly excited about coming. It's a famous place, and last night I even met a guy who is moving there soon too. Okay. Rah rah rah! I'm going. Rah rah!

I will tell Straggler 1 that I've committed to the postdoc definitively for the coming year. But I'm curious about Straggler 2. It's located pretty close to my postdoc, so at the very least it's a source of free airfare out there, which I could definitely stand to accept.

Strategic synergies

The synergies that happen around job decision time can be useful, but delicate. Having an offer (postdoc at the top school in my field) and interviewing for a tenure-track job (at an "up and coming" school that has attracted some very good people) are both very useful statuses to have. Irrespective of what or where they are.

1. The faculty job asked me what my status was, so I said I have an offer that I'm interested in, but I can wait for a bit. They get nervous, thinking that it's a faculty offer that I have, and they seem to be clearly trying to accelerate their job search process to get all the candidates interviewed by whenever they think I need an answer by. Which makes sense all around for them.

2. The postdoc offer had been describing the exact parameters of the job, and they sounded like the usual grad student stuff. They said they'd like to hear from me by mid-April, and I said that I'm interviewing in early April with a tenure-track job, but I think I ought to get an answer by mid-April. The tenor of the conversation immediately changed. I'm eligible for a real job! They said that if I'm serious they can see about helping me write a grant to create a faculty position for myself. Given the caliber of the school and the people helping me, I'm sure we could come up with something good, and it is not a bad bet to take, though it leaves me in the hell of soft money.

3. I spoke with another postdoc who seems very interested, and they asked if I was applying only to other postdocs, faculty jobs, research associates, or a mixture. I said a mixture. They said that the salary was very competitive, and allows supplementation to be competitive with faculty jobs.


In general I wonder if it could be a good strategy to apply for tenure-track jobs at lower-ranked institutions on purpose in order to be treated better by postdocs in the negotiation. Often people apply for postdocs at the top-ranked places hoping that once they finish the postdoc, they'll be able to get a faculty job somewhere in the top tier or two. If they applied for tenure-track faculty at third or fourth-tier institutions, would they do better in the job negotiations?

In academia, we pretend that we don't care about money, but once again money is not a bad proxy for respect. As soon as it's apparent that one does not have to be making the typical postdoc salary, but is choosing to do so for professional development purposes, it seems like there's so much more respect.

Job talks as a privilege.

Out of 7 interviews this year, only two involved a job talk.

Last year, nearly all of my interviews involved job talks, even for positions at research institutes that would require me to set aside my own research until I got my own grants, tenure-track at a regional commuter school whose courseload was too high for research, and visiting faculty at an elite small college where the faculty guiltily confessed to me that they had just about given up on their own research. In one case, they didn't even have a position for me, but the department chair for the field I have my MA in was very friendly, the university is rapidly expanding and my field will eventually have openings, and I was in the neighborhood, so they brought me in and I gave a talk and had lunch with the faculty; that was my favorite interview, perhaps because it wasn't an interview, and I got the career advice that has influenced me the most.

I took for granted that all interviews include job talks. Jobs without an interview process didn't have job talks, of course. Two postdocs gave me an offer without meeting me, and my current postdoc came about by accident; naturally, none of these involved job talks.

This year I have realized that I should be prepared for a soft-money environment, so I have focussed my search to postdocs in well-funded fields which will teach me how to apply for grants, and it's been a surprise to see how few have job talks. The two interviews which asked me to give a job talk make me lean so much more towards them --- should I get an offer --- because they show that they respect me as a researcher. The fact that some places skip job talks also made me realize how much trouble they must be for the department, especially the ones which get a huge audience. My December job talk had an audience of over 40, and this was close to Christmas-time.

My best interviews last year, such as my one tenure-track with an elite college, had a huge audience; I even got a DVD to show my parents.

Meals are also a sign of interest, especially when they can get a few prominent faculty or many people to show up. Nearly all of my interviews last year involved at least one meal with faculty, but the postdoc interviews rarely have much of a meal. So far, I've had pizza with RAs, lunch at a food court and being allowed to tag along at a fancy dinner with a visiting speaker (clearly, the reason for the dinner), and two small catered lunches with faculty (one of which included another candidate!); two had nothing. The food doesn't matter as much as who they get to come. After my December job talk, I had tuna salad with the most prominent faculty, including a woman who must have been 80 years old, whom even some of the younger faculty at the lunch had never met; she asked a lot questions and really seemed to care about my research; that really impressed me!

The interviews which have at least 3 hours of interviews, a job talk, and a meal are exhausting, and I know that they are extremely time-consuming for faculty, who don't manage to get anything else done during interview season. At the same time, by making this kind of effort, departments get to signal that they (1) care about the research of emerging researchers; (2) want to enrich their department by sponsoring a talk, which many departments don't have many of; (3) see postdocs as a citizen of the department, rather than serfs in academic feudalism.

The extreme opposite is signaled by being the interview that I declined: 45 minutes with person A, 30 minutes with person B, and a phone call with my mentor-to-be who doesn't even live in the city, so I would never see them after starting the job.

Now off I go, to try to find more postdocs that will have lunch with me and have me give a job talk.

Excuses, excuses

I applied for a postdoc with several sites. I got an interview for site A which I was told was for half a day, but a few days before leaving I found out it was just over an hour long; and a week later for site B. I can't imagine taking site A even over my current job. Making contacts at site A is probably useful, and when I like someone I'm good at making contacts. Unfortunately, I'm so transparent that when I am not interested, it shows through so in this case I won't make any contacts unless I pick up acting ability.

What's a better excuse?
* I can't get away from work. (Obviously I could if I wanted to.)
* I think the other site is a better match.
* I can't take a day away from work for an interview which may not be long enough to give me a sense of whether it's a good match.

The latter two are snotty, so probably the only thing that I can do is claim helplessness.

The reason that I have delayed canceling is because I could of course just suck it up and take the day to go. I could take acting lessons and really learn to look interested. And maybe it would be worth it. I've wasted days before, and what is one more wasted day? And yet, I feel like if I go, that will waste the entire week since I'm traveling at the end of the week too.

The ideal case would be if I had two skills which would help me anyway:
* Not to get phased by travel and disruption.
* Acting ability to seem interested when I'm not.

Unlikely to develop them, so helplessness in the face of work, it is!

Signalling: Confidence and jobs

The main topic of this blog is the job search and transition into an academic career, but I talk so much about dating partly because it's very similar to the job search. In both cases, you have people who can learn a limited amount of information from each other before making increasingly greater commitments to each other, and so must rely a great deal on the information that they receive. In both cases, that means that messages can be sent non-verbally through many channels. These non-verbal signals shouldn't be overthought, but I've found that I can ignore them only at my own peril.

Some examples which have come up recently for me:

1. Patterns of communication: replying too readily signals eagerness or desperation, which depending on the context may or may not be a good idea. I don't think that work should be the center of my life, but I've found that treating work communication before personal communication helps me in both areas: there's no disadvantage to replying to every job search related email or phone call right away, and there's often an advantage; by contrast, answering an early dating email or call right away makes it seem like I've been just sitting there waiting for a phone call or an email, which I have so I'm worried about people being able to tell that. The one exception, I've heard, is teaching: if you reply right away, people say that students always expect instant reply; I intentionally delay answering until I have more time. Since I do have my email program open quite a lot of the time, I can in theory answer anything instantly, so have to restrain myself not to, both for external impressions and so I can get some work done.

Extraneous communication signals irregularity, and people aren't sure what to make of it. Sending emails or making phone calls for purposes other than the normal ones of setting up meetings or pre-date chitchat make people wonder. At least, they make me wonder when the roles are reversed. I made a mistake, I think, in contacting a potential employer to ask whether I could mention them as a potential mentor in an application for a national fellowship: the kind where you get money with few limits on where you research (anywhere at one or more institutions, anywhere period), and this is someone who I genuinely would want to work with at the institution. The next morning, I thought better of it because it puts them in an awkward situation, and said never mind in hopefully a reasonable way. While the request signals my interest, and it looks good that I'm applying to such a competitive fellowship, it may have made them feel uneasy, and that's never good.

2. Earnestness versus status. During my job search, I had a few interviews with places which were in the lower tiers of schools, many of whom were so incredibly nice to me. One postdoc said to me, "Tell us what you would need in order to accept this position." Someone else repeated over and over how famous one of his collaborators was, and how important this body of work was. (Funnily, the body of work is a bit out of my area, so the fact that I had never heard of it didn't mean anything about its importance, but somehow it seemed maybe it was unimportant because this guy was trying so hard. It turns out that it really is quite important and I have a friend who's learning about the area right now.) They wrote up the offer letter while I was visiting and I walked away with it. I turned them down, but I wonder what I would have thought if they showed a bit less earnestness.

Recently I had an interview for a postdoc at a top tier school, and they also were almost excessively nice and earnest. Because they had status, it didn't feel insecure or ingratiating, just nice.

Likewise with dating: someone who's really desirable in some way and seems excessively nice, just seems cute for it. Someone not so desirable who is trying so hard seems creepy, and that's exactly how I felt about the guy telling me about his famous collaborators.

Many more parallels to come in future posts.