To Live or Die at MLA

In Philadelphia this year, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of soon to be unemployed academics, meet at the MLA (Modern Language Association) conference in the hope of finding academic employment in the coming year. Wanna-be-jean-wearers like me are forced to re-discover inventions such as the "comb" and the "business suit." No matter how counter-cultural and anti-big business English studies becomes, it shall still reward people who dress like CEOs. No matter how Marxist English studies gets, it still prizes intellectual property above all, especially that lovely little thing called the published article. And at MLA, scores of English departments interview prospective applicants to determine which candidates are worthy enough to receive that glittering gee gaw, the on-campus visit.

This year, my wife and I are both on the job market for the first time. Finally, we are no longer "MLA virgins." That's right. I have now officially had to prostitute myself at job interviews: "Hey baby, you want an 18th centurist who can also teach the classics? You bring your Longus, I'll bring the Apuleius."

Notably, the word "hypocrite" comes from the Greek word for "actor." Going out on the job market has attuned me to just how slippery the categories of "hypocrite" and "actor" can be: where does the "acting" end and the "flat-out lying" begin (especially when asked how much of your dissertation is left to write)?

Although the conference is scheduled for four days (in this case, Dec. 27-30), most schools schedule their interviews on just two days: the 28th and 29th (Thursday and Friday).
Anyway, I have a couple of comments that might have been mildly helpful to me if I had thought of them beforehand.

1. Know what time it is. I don't just mean that you ought to know when your interview is scheduled; I mean, you need to have a readily accessible way of knowing the time at a given moment. The way most interviews work is that a school conducts interviews in a hotel room. Promptly, at the time the interview is scheduled, the interviewee is supposed to knock on the door. If he/she does not knock on time, it means that he/she is undependable scum. If he/she knocks early, it means that he/she is trying to cause trouble and must be punished by being offered no job. It was only as I was about to knock on the door for my first interview that I began thinking, "I haven't called the talking clock for several years now ... what if my watch is too fast? Or, what if a Modernist is in there right now thinking, 'Hurry up, please, it's time?'" So, set your watch before you leave, so that you can be anxiety-ridden about more important matters than whether your watch conforms to that eternal, objective thingy, Time with a capital T. No chrono-relativism here!

2. Schedule the schools you are most excited about on the second day, rather than the first. Of course, you often don't know which one this will be until it's too late anyway ("Sorry, you can't have that time; Harvard's going to call any day now"), but if your scheduling powers have not dwindled into comic impotence, see what you can do.

Keep in mind that on the first day of interviews, you will probably fail miserably to answer a question, and you can spend the entire night in bed thinking about what you should have said and how thoroughly jobless you are. This means that, on the second day, after you take something to get rid of the bloodshot eyes (get rid of the bloodshot part, of course; it's probably best not to remove the eyes themselves), you will have another interview, this time with a school you really want to go to. Now, initially, you may be thinking, "I am so tired! Why didn't I sleep? I hate myself!" But then, serendipity strikes: The school asks you the very same question you figured out how to answer at 3 am last night! Insomnia deserves a much better rap than it gets in the popular literature.

3.Come up with practice questions that are actually germane to the schools with which you will be interviewing. One of the really cool things about my graduate program in English here at "Anonymous University" is that we get to do a mock job interview where our faculty give us a sense of the sort of questions we might be asked. The difficulty is that, since our mock interviewers were asking the sort of questions that a search committee at prestigious "Anonymous University" would ask, we don't necessarily learn what a search committee at "Joe College" would ask. I spent hours preparing for questions about my dissertation or about describing current trends in 18th century studies, but such topics didn't really come up much at my interviews. Since I do not yet have a doctorate or a book contract or exude mad smarty-pants skills, "Anonymous University" schools are not the type to be interested in me at this point.

4. Bring extra materials. Someone advised me I should bring along a sample syllabus or a writing sample, and I did. I didn't really think they would be of much use, but whenever I offered them at the end of an interview, the committee members' faces visibly brightened, like, "How nice, I am happy now." In retrospect, it's actually a little scary--I mean, if I brought them homemade cookies, I'd understand the excitement, but--a syllabus? If only my students got that happy.

5. Elevators are Slow; or, Hotels are Tall. Keep in mind that Philadelphia hotels tend to have a lot of floors, and elevators often work long hours without adequate compensation. They often go on strike, around floor 25 or so. As a result, you might spend ten minutes before your interview shaking your fist in impotent rage at the elevator that taunts you by not coming down to the ground floor. It's like a scene from Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," where you are ever chasing the job, but never landing it: "Bold interviewer, never, never canst thou go up,/Though winning near the 'vator--yet, do not grieve;/It cannot arrive, and thou hast no more time,/For ever wilt thou be jobless, and stuck down here!" When people told me to leave a lot of time, I assumed it was just to make sure I wouldn't get lost on the way to a hotel--not that I would spend ten minutes waiting for the elevator! Just remember not to underestimate the elevator wait.

6. Have back-up questions. One of the ways most interviews end is with the committees asking, "Do you have any questions for us?" The right answer is, "Yes." But to get ruthlessly pragmatic for a second, how do you answer the follow-up question, "Well, what are they?" That one is trickier to answer. One person recommended asking, "Tell me about your master's program," especially because smaller universities are often proud of their graduate students. Now, it might be a no-brainer that this question only works for schools that actually have a master's program. What you might not have realized is the subtle point that this question also only works if the school has not already mentioned their master's program earlier in the interview. In one of my interviews, I went in without much to ask (I didn't really want to ask, "So, what's the salary? So, when's the sabbatical?"--one must ask questions that aren't too intrusive). I was planning to showcase how incredibly carefully I'd researched the school, such as that I knew they had a master's program. I thus felt rather cheated when one of the people interviewing me introduced the topic, "We have a great master's program," and then proceeded to describe it before my questioning period. I wanted to yell at her, "You stinker! That was going to be my question for you, do you hear me? You have taken something precious and meaningful and turned it into nothingness. I was supposed to get points for knowing you had a master's program!" So, then I had to come up with a substitute question, and it just wasn't as good. I really hate that portion of the interview. I don't have any practical advice about questions to ask. I just want you to know that it's okay to let yourself give in to the hate.

I'm Just an Essay

Growing up, I thrilled to the daring exploits of ... a bill! You see, he was just a bill. Yes, only a bill. And he was sitting there on Capitol Hill. There is a famous Schoolhouse Rock song which dramatizes his sisyphus-like journey. Our heroic piece of paper begins as a little idea. After the bill exists in material form, it seeks the patronage of the local congressperson deity, who says, "You're right! There oughta be a law!" Next, the bill is debated about in committee. It must navigate various obstacles, such as the evil twin houses of Congress, which, like Scylla and Charybdis, seek its destruction on both sides. Even after sailing through these treacherous waters, if the President vetoes the bill, it is sent back to Congress yet again, at which point there's very little chance that it will ever become a law. It's amazing how the song manages to be so cheery, given how traumatizing the experience must be.

Writing an essay is much like that. It begins as a little idea, often something that you write for a class. Your professor says, "There oughta be an article," and then you write it. And then you submit it to a respected journal. And then you wait several months, as it is reviewed by two readers. You wait several moments. Eventually, the desperation might grow so great that you send a tentative email to the editor, "Uh, eons ago I sent you an article ... I know your reply probably just got lost in the mail or something, but I just figured I'd follow up on it ..." Then, the editors sends your essay back to you, either rejecting it, asking you to revise and re-submit it, or accepting it immediately (if you are ubermensch). Sometimes, you revise and re-submit it, only to have the revised essay rejected anyway, so you have to send it to a different journal (it hasn't happened to me personally, but I've heard it happens). The two readers then offer their final comments, and you have to send a new revision, which will be published at least several months from then. All the while, you keep hoping in the meantime that nobody publishes a similar article that steals your thunder. ("My essay was really innovative when I first submitted it, five years ago! Honest!")

Anyway, these reflections were sparked by the first ever acceptance of an article! I actually submitted the article back in summer 2005. After endless waiting and revising, it is tentatively scheduled for publication in fall 2007. It will only have taken over two years after writing the thing! Yes, I am being purposely vague in the effort to retain my anonymity!

Nevertheless, when I am tempted to speculate on the incredible impact that my article will have on the entire scholarly community, I am reminded of a rather humbling fact: statistically speaking, the typical published article has a readership of fewer than two people (presumably, this does not include the editor and the two reviewers). This means that an individual has a greater chance of being struck by lightning than reading my article. Still, I could have written a text that was even more useless and irrelevant to society--I mean, how many people ever read a bill? Probably not even the Senators who are voting on it!

Unhappy Scottish Feet

On Friday, my wife and I saw Happy Feet. It is a coming to age story about a young penguin, Mumbles, whose feet do not fit into the local penguin community, because they are happy. Even though his penguin community has a vibrant culture that expresses itself in word and in song, the Scottish-accented elders are rather dour when it comes to dancing feet, which implicitly advocate "paganism" and encourage "backsliding." (Of course, since it is harder to do the "moonwalk" (or "backslide") without any feet, perhaps they have a point.) According to the Scottish elders, the recent drop in the fish food supply comes as a punishment from their god due to the gratuitous movement of Mumble's feet. (It is odd to note that the Scottish band, the Benachally Ceilidh Band, has an album entitled Happy Feet. Of course, it might simply be a protest album against happy feet. I don't know.) So, Mumbles goes on a journey where he meets a different breed of penguins who are short, have Latino accents and, best of all, value his feet in all their tappiness!

There is, of course, more to the story, but I suppose what I find particularly fascinating is the strange cultural/religious associations surrounding the penguins. There is something rather surreal about Scottish-accented penguins disclaiming against dancing. Why choose for them to be Scottish? Why are they so religious? Why are the Latino penguins so much more accepting of feet? Now, some film critics have already explored the "happy feet" as an allegory for "gay identity," because the movie's message is that Mumbles's parents must learn to accept him as he is: a penguin who can dance. Given that Mumbles is heterosexual, it's a bit difficulty for me to see the "gay identity" bit, but perhaps I'm just naive and unsophisticated. However, while discussing the movie with my wife on the way back, it seemed that the "happy feet" could just as well be read as an allegory for religious identity: the movie can in fact be read as anti-Presbyterian and crypto-Catholic.

Let me oversimplify. Historically, Scotland (not counting the highlands) is very Protestant and Presbyterian: preaching of the word is central. Word has priority over the image. Presbyterianism is against frills in worship and has an established reputation for iconoclasm. This is also not a religious community famous for its liturgical dance. Hispanic culture, on the other hand, has Catholic roots. In Catholicism, there is more emphasis on the Lord's Supper/Eucharist, the incarnation and "the Lord's body" (not just during His earthly ministry, but received in the Eucharist).

So, in the movie, our group of Scottish penguins place a high value on the word and singing (each penguin has a "heart song"), but they are opposed to forms of bodily expression. The movie suggests that Presbyterianism is ultimately gnostic, opposed to physicality and incarnational reality. The Latino penguins, on the other hand, are represented as both good dancers and good singers, perfectly harmonizing song and dance, i.e., correctly integrating Word and sacrament. In the movie, it is not so much that Scottish and Spanish religious cultures can learn from each other so much as that Scottish culture, to be complete, must become like Latino culture. The movie suggests that Presbyterians can never have happy feet unless they become Catholic and/or Latino! Since becoming Latino is not a viable possibility for many Presbyterians, the movie suggests that the only way for us to be happy not just with our heads, but with our feet, is to be Catholic.

Disclaimer: I am not seriously arguing this interpretation. For one thing, it attributes more knowledge about Scottish religious history to the writers than they actually have.

Bleh and Woif

It's important to have useful interjections to employ for certain situations. For example, I recall going roller-skating back in college. I was not particularly skilled in the arcane arts of balancing, so whenever it seemed like the top half of my body was about to join my bottom half on the floor, I would spontaneously say, "Woif." I do not know where this word/sound came from. It sounds vaguely Klingon-like, but since I did not have a Klingon wetnurse, its unique brain-chemistry origins remain shrouded in mystery. I do not even know why I felt obliged to make a sound at all: perhaps I subconsciously believed that the soundwaves would bounce off the floor and bounce back, correcting my trajectory and returning me to an upright and locked position. Regardless, the world is quite useful in situations which involve me falling, or involving me about to fall, and the word has stuck with me.

I also often employ the interjection "Bleh!" While "Woif" is a word I use to express a lack of balance, "Bleh" describes the feeling of general ickiness. We often use interjections like "darn" or "crap" to refer to something concrete and immediate: I accidentally stubbed my toe, darn it! "Bleh" is sort of like saying, "I am completely sapped of strength by all the bad things that have happened in my life. I will expend all my remaining energy in this one desperate cry of exhaustion: Bleh!" It is often brought about by stress. I didn't used to say the word a whole lot, but I think the whole job market/getting my dissertation done is getting to me, so now I just find myself walking into empty rooms in our apartment and saying, "Bleh!"

Normally, this wouldn't be so bad. But my usage of the word is intruding into awkward social situations. I've been chairing a socializing committee for our department, and this past Tuesday, we put on a big party for the grad students and faculty. Various last-minute problems arose, I was running late, and literally ran back into a school building. Unable to take the cold, the running, and the stress, without thinking, I just blurted out, "Bleh!" I did not realize it at the time, but a student in my line of sight undoubtedly took this as a noise directed at herself. I suppose it's understandable: here's this strange guy, wearing a peacoat, sweaty, and apparently shouting "Bleh!" at you. As I started running up the stairs, I began thinking, "I often read those reports in the school newspaper about how some strange, middle-aged man is on campus and sexually harrassing students. What if there's going to be an article about me? 'Be on the lookout for a man, about in his 30's, wearing a peacoat. Man is known to go up to female students and shout sexually suggestive grunting noises at them. Witnesses do not know if he is fully clothed beneath his peacoat. Witnesses said his hair appeared greasy, and he was panting leeringly.'"

So, does anyone out there have their own little pet interjections?