I'm three weeks into my whirlwind campus interview stage, with about two more weeks to go! So far, so good. I'm learning so much at each campus – about what it means to be an academic, the state of Classics these days, what makes me a strong candidate (and likewise, weak), and what my own expectations for my career are. I'm not ready to make a grand summary, but so far, a few observations:
Sometimes, the hotel with the best view:
can also be the most "creative" in finding solutions to broken hairdryers:
Texans really ARE serious about their beef:
And their bears! This is a terrible picture, but try to spot two pairs of fuzzy ears in the center:
This is where they live, right in the center of campus:
More seriously: I'm coming to understand the way in which academia CAN be divided into "winners" and "losers" (and how important it is to be in the "winners" camp), but also the way in which academia is much "flatter" than I had imagined, with much greater equality across different kinds of schools. On the one hand, I'm extremely grateful to Princeton. There are so many ways in which my Princeton education helped to position me for success in graduate school: it was at Princeton that I learned about Dumbarton Oaks, the American School, the Latin/Greek Institute – all things that perhaps distinguished my CV from others'. Let me not neglect to mention the strong training I received in the languages, which gave me a head start in grad school and helped me impress the people who are now writing my letters. I hardly ever talk about Princeton while I'm at Michigan, but on the job circuit, I've talked about it many times – with the many academics who did their graduate and undergraduate training there, with committees wanting to understand my intellectual trajectory – and it always reminds me of how fortunate I am to have gotten my start there.
On the other hand, my time at Princeton gave me a very skewed idea of what it means to be an academic or what the broader field is like. When I was an undergrad, I thought there were only 3 schools of import (and you can probably guess which ones those are). But it turns out that brilliant and successful academics end up everywhere – big schools, rich schools, poor schools, in glamorous and remote locations, with amazingly accomplished students and the poorly prepared. Yet in many ways, their lives seem the same: they struggle to produce and publish while teaching; administrators want to see more Classics majors and minors; committee work is a drag; students are inspiring and terrific, as well as difficult and unmotivated. There is one school where I'm truly terrified of ending up at, and it's a replacement hire for a retiring scholar whose article on Euripides' Heracles really shaped one of my chapters. Who knew? And so much of where you end up is based on luck: who is hiring this year, what they're looking for, and whether you can fool them into loving you and your work.
Sometimes, the hotel with the best view:
(Hartford, CT)
can also be the most "creative" in finding solutions to broken hairdryers:
Texans really ARE serious about their beef:
And their bears! This is a terrible picture, but try to spot two pairs of fuzzy ears in the center:
This is where they live, right in the center of campus:
More seriously: I'm coming to understand the way in which academia CAN be divided into "winners" and "losers" (and how important it is to be in the "winners" camp), but also the way in which academia is much "flatter" than I had imagined, with much greater equality across different kinds of schools. On the one hand, I'm extremely grateful to Princeton. There are so many ways in which my Princeton education helped to position me for success in graduate school: it was at Princeton that I learned about Dumbarton Oaks, the American School, the Latin/Greek Institute – all things that perhaps distinguished my CV from others'. Let me not neglect to mention the strong training I received in the languages, which gave me a head start in grad school and helped me impress the people who are now writing my letters. I hardly ever talk about Princeton while I'm at Michigan, but on the job circuit, I've talked about it many times – with the many academics who did their graduate and undergraduate training there, with committees wanting to understand my intellectual trajectory – and it always reminds me of how fortunate I am to have gotten my start there.
On the other hand, my time at Princeton gave me a very skewed idea of what it means to be an academic or what the broader field is like. When I was an undergrad, I thought there were only 3 schools of import (and you can probably guess which ones those are). But it turns out that brilliant and successful academics end up everywhere – big schools, rich schools, poor schools, in glamorous and remote locations, with amazingly accomplished students and the poorly prepared. Yet in many ways, their lives seem the same: they struggle to produce and publish while teaching; administrators want to see more Classics majors and minors; committee work is a drag; students are inspiring and terrific, as well as difficult and unmotivated. There is one school where I'm truly terrified of ending up at, and it's a replacement hire for a retiring scholar whose article on Euripides' Heracles really shaped one of my chapters. Who knew? And so much of where you end up is based on luck: who is hiring this year, what they're looking for, and whether you can fool them into loving you and your work.
love the photos! hehe oh the hairdryer... what irony! i can't see the bears though! i want to see the bears!!! :)
ReplyDeleteanyway... love the thoughtfulness of this blog post. really enjoying your job. it's a great reminder to us to think about how our undergrad years impacted our careers as we look ahead. you're so super busy these days and yet still reflecting as you go along and sharing with us. <3
I agree, loved reading your thoughts about this... especially about your realization that brilliant academics are everywhere, and how hard it is to know what a field /job is really like when you're not in it (yet). How many other misconceptions do we have about other fields, you know? How many people do we unfairly underestimate or overestimate based on our flawed ideas on how that field works?
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