The Post-Postdoc Post

I've been offered the job in Tennessee. I have also, after a brief negotiation, accepted the job. It's possible that the next few weeks or months will present other opportunities for me to pursue, but right now the most likely scenario is that I'll be moving to Nashville next August and finally, finally merging onto the tenure track.

My friends - particularly my academic friends, who know how hard it can be to land a decent, permanent job like this - have been uniformly warm and congratulatory. My advisors are proud and probably thrilled not to have to write any more recommendation letters for me (at least for now). My parents, whose confidence in my abilities has been slowly outstripped by anxiety over my future employment prospects, are relieved. And I - well, I'm responding with caution-verging-on-ambivalence. This is not too surprising: I would respond to winning the lottery in precisely the same way ("Whoopee! 125 million dollars! Mustn't spend it all at once, though... I should prioritize my purchases and probably invest most of it. But wait, where am I going to invest it? Hmm... bonds are relatively safe, but I could get a higher return in a money market account... but those have become really risky lately... and there's all the taxes I'm gonna have to pay..."), so let me delineate a few of my thoughts/emotions on getting a tenure-track job, more or less in the order they came to me, though rendered much more eloquently here than when they first appeared:

On hanging up the phone with the dept chair: Yes!

Immediately thereafter: Wow, their other candidates must have really bombed.

Then: Maybe there were no other candidates?

Then: I dunno. As Woody Allen says in Annie Hall (quoting Groucho Marx), "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." Maybe their judgment is unsound.

Then: I need a burrito.

After eating the world's messiest burrito: Mmm.. messy burrito. Now, where was I?

Then: Must text people with the news. They'll be happy for me!

A few cellphone beeps later: I knew it! Yay!

Then: Wow, it's only November and I already know that I'm going to have an income next year. That hasn't happened in a very long time.

Then: And god but the job market's brutal this year. Schools advertising positions and then withdrawing them once budget cuts are announced, hundreds of unemployed historians clamoring for even the crappiest and most temporary of jobs, and next year it's only going to be worse.

Then, while washing burrito juice off my hands: Assuming this isn't a hoax, and assuming the department did interview other people, and assuming that their judgment is sound, then this is quite an accomplishment. (Are there no frigging paper towels in this bathroom?) It's the first time since I got that job at Borders that I've actually been offered a job after interviewing for it in person. Guess I did pretty well.

Then: Of course I did. I'm very good at what I do - in fact, I'm kind of a big deal. I've got a book coming out, a handful of great fellowships/awards on my cv, my students love me. Wait, am I too good for this job? I wonder how my applications at NYU and Northwestern are doing...

A few days later, after sending emails to NYU, Northwestern, and a handful of other schools, inquiring about the state of my application: Really? You won't be making a decision for several months still and "strongly advise" me to accept the offer I've been given? Hrmph.

Then: Guess I'm not such a big deal after all.

Then: Nashville! I get to live in Nashville! I wonder how much houses cost in Nashville...

After a bit of googling: Golly, that much, huh? Maybe I'll just rent for a year or two. I really hope they offer me the higher salary I've asked for.

On getting an email from the department chair about my salary: Hmm. Well, I guess I could always get a second job...

On reading the rest of the email: Man, I'm gonna be busy...

Then: Stability! I'll finally have some stability! No more moving somewhere for a year, making friends and putting down some tentative, shallow roots, and then moving on. I can join clubs, buy lots of furniture, become involved in the community, get a dog!!

Then: Dog dog dog dog dog dog dog...

Then: But wait, dog or no dog, I do believe I'm going to miss The Valley terribly. I was just settling in and getting a bit comfortable, and while I always knew I'd be leaving, it's only now becoming a concrete reality.

A few wistful moments later, after pondering white kids with dredlocks, farm stand pumpkins, apple crumbles, fall foliage, Suburu station wagons plastered with bumper stickers, big white Congregational churches, lesbian couples with Asian babies, ninjas, bike trails, anarchist book stores, tobacco barns, Herman Melville, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Calvin Coolidge: Damn!

A few moments more, after pondering sweet potato pancakes, Nathan Bedford Forest, Charlie Daniels, Ernest Tubb, meat-and-threes, Andrew Jackson, Dollywood, southern accents, Civil War reenactors, and the prospect of living in one of the few blue counties in a ruby-red state: Well, hmm.

Then: At least I won't be on the west coast, where I know almost nobody. And I'll be a day's drive from my parents in Oklahoma and my brother in Virginia.

And then the following image flashed before me: Charlie Chaplin, clutching his hat and stumbling into a rickety cabin, seeking shelter from a raging blizzard. The movie, of course, is The Gold Rush, and the symbolism should be obvious to anyone paying attention to the grim economic news that keeps getting grimmer by the day. A job, after all, is a job, and this job is a pretty good one. It's Thanksgiving tomorrow, and, while I'm not normally given to much sentimentality during this holiday - it's almost all about the eating, as far as I'm concerned - I know enough to be extremely thankful that I have a shelter in which to weather this storm. It's not a palace, but it'll do. And I'll do my best to make it cozy and warm.

And that, more or less, is where I am right now.