the big easy

Last week, I stepped off a plane in New Orleans and was just bowled over by the city. What a fascinating place, in its history, language and culture, and policy prescriptions! I stayed in this graceful bed and breakfast:

which was located right on Audobon Park:

Having left Ann Arbor under 8 inches of snow, I couldn't believe that spring was beginning elsewhere. After a long day of interviews, I finally got my reward: a fresh, still-warm beignet, drenched in powdered sugar! Immediately afterwards, I hit up Coop's Place for its "Supreme Jambalaya," and I can attest, the advertising was not false!

go west, young lady!

I thought that I could handle back-to-back campus visits for several weeks on end. Turns out that it can be kind of tiring! One thing that keeps me energized, though, is the opportunity to see new places and learn more about different parts of the country. I had become so accustomed to the drab landscape of southeastern Michigan that I was just floored by this view:

This is the view from the Salt Lake City airport. I literally stood in front of a window, gazing hungrily at the mountains, for ten minutes after I walked off the plane. I had forgotten how inspiring mountains can be! I then flew to Oregon, where I was just delighted to see this store:

Pendleton is the hometown of one very special reader of this blog, Katie H.! Thinking of you, my dear!

When I arrived in Portland, I was exhausted, nauseated, and strung out from the stress of anticipating important phone calls. I felt rejuvenated, though, by a plate of the best Japanese curry I've ever had (not that that's saying much – I've only tried it in Ann Arbor). I then made the obligatory pilgrimage to Powell's Books!

I considered buying a tote bag, purely for the approving looks I'd get from those Ann Arborites with NPR bumper stickers on their Volkswagens. Too hypocritcal, even for me, though. Instead, I browsed the shelves, acutely aware that my jeans weren't skinny enough for me to look like a local! Then I walked back to my hotel in the rain.

expectations

All my friends, faculty, and family are constantly asking me, "How did it go?" As I discussed earlier, I think it's nearly impossible for the candidate to know how she is being appraised. Most of the time, I reply with a shrug, "Okay? Pretty well? I guess?" Then there are visits where I can be pretty sure things did not go okay, pretty well, I know.

Last week, I visited a small liberal arts college in the Northeast. I am a finalist for a campus-wide diversity fellowship; I am up against 3 other finalists, all from different fields across the college. The Classics department is tiny, so they are thrilled by the prospect of having another faculty member to offer a few courses and raise the profile of the department among their colleagues. All this to say: it's in their interest to help me get this fellowship, right? Which would involve clearly communicating expectations, right? And yet, I didn't find out until I had arrived on campus for the interview with the fellowship committee that I was being pitched as someone who could also cover for Art History and whose courses "deal substantially with post-Renaissance Western art, literary studies, and film studies." Excuse me? I mean, yes, I would be more than happy to incorporate those fields into my classes – but you probably should have warned me ahead of time. So that, when I'm asked about how I would use films in my class on Heracles, I do not respond with Disney's Hercules and Arnold Schwarzenegger's great classic of cinema, Hercules in New York. Only half of the fellowship committee came to my talk, which is just as well: two images miraculously disappeared from my powerpoint presentation, so I had to act them out with my body. Academic dignity may have been lost, but surely I earned a few points for enthusiasm.

Then there are schools that clearly communicate their expectations, but they are surprisingly specific. From a research university in the south, I received this email today: "[Your job talk] should be pitched to the faculty and should represent your original contributions to scholarship. It should be not less than 49 minutes and not more than 51 minutes. There will be a question period after it." My talk, as it stands, is not more than 44 minutes, and not less than 42. At least I know how to edit it now!

adventures in academia

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:

(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.

a busy season

It's hard to believe that it's really here: the hunt for a job offer. Before I came to graduate school, I dated a humanities PhD student who was on the academic job market for the first time. Needless to say, it left me somewhat traumatized and deeply anxious about my own future employment situation – starting 7 years ago. And now the time is here: I have several campus visits lined up. I'm polishing the talk, revamping the handout, editing the slides. I'm preparing my teaching demos, researching faculty interests, and starting to imagine myself here, there, or somewhere in between. Part of me wants to ask, how did this happen already? The other part of me reminds me: oh, about seven years of hard work (and I'm even getting the right husband out of it, too!).

I was feeling paralyzed and overwhelmed by it all last week. Too paralyzed even to blog about it. I'm not ready! I'm just a diversity candidate! They'll find out that I'm too young or not what they want or a total red-faced Asian when I drink! How on earth can I possibly the survive the scrutiny I will receive over the next six weeks? Then my dad reminded me, "It's just six weeks." That's right: six weeks. I can do this! It's just "a busy season," right? With all the travel, snatching of sleep, and frantic hand-washing, it will all be over before I know it. It's a little microcosm of this blog's subtitle: "seven campus visits. four performances of beethoven's 9th. one bridal shower. one job offer. six weeks. let's go!"

I'm off to my first school on Tuesday. Wish me luck!

Seattle snapshots

Most of my time in Seattle last weekend was occupied with sweating, pacing, and hand-wringing. But once the interviews were done, we had time to do a little sightseeing! It had been a long time since we'd taken a full day off just to explore a new place together, so it was especially enjoyable. Here are a few highlights:

The famous Pike Place Market – no fish were being (purchased or) thrown during our visit, though!

Delicious fishes

 D.J. and Ashley came downtown to eat dinner with us. Here we are in front of the very first Starbucks!

We had the opportunity to visit with relatives from my dad's side of the family: my dad's aunt and uncle, and cousin and her husband (and two rambunctious boys).

 Pioneer Square, very Pacific Northwest

 This is a picture from the "Underground Tour" of a section of downtown below the street level. Apparently, Seattle was originally built at sea level, which was a huge mistake because of the tides; after the city burned down in the 1890s, they backfilled the whole downtown area and built on top, leaving some areas below still accessible.

 Seattle Central Library (Rem Koolhaas, 2004)

 Olympic Sculpture Garden

And of course, the iconic Space Needle!

We wish we had had more time to get to know Seattle better. I guess we'll just have to go back! Next time, I want to go in the summer, when we can hike in the mountains and go on the water.

Save-the-dates

We are woefully behind on our wedding planning. It seems we've been preoccupied with other tasks! One big priority post-job-interviews has been getting out our Save-the-Dates. I love getting magnets or beautiful postcards to put on the refrigerator. But there is no time for that! The wedding is only 4.5 months away!

So I've been trying to design myself a nice image that we can email to our friends and family as we solicit their physical addresses for the formal invitation. I had originally envisioned a modern-looking graphic image that contained our names, but not our picture. But Dave (and everyone else I talked to) liked the picture idea, and they are so right! I won't post the official Save-the-Date here, but I did want to share the background image. It's one of our favorite pictures of us. This is a self-timed photo from northern Michigan in September 2011. The original colors were brighter (and more blue), but I gave it an old-timey wash – must be the pernicious influence of Instagram!

We had just finished a long drive up north and were eager to go for a walk along the shore while the sun was setting. Dave spotted the big driftwood, and the magical moment was captured! It's hard to look relaxed in posed pictures, and we like how this one has a more casual feel. I hope it gets people excited for the wedding!

post mortem

The annual meeting of my professional organization is over, and I can now happily report that I survived my interviews in one piece. Although it was probably the most stressful weekend of my graduate career, I feel relatively at peace about the whole experience. I made a lot of mistakes, but I also learned a great deal – about myself as a scholar and teacher, and about the field and career more generally.

Some things not to like about interviewing:

• walking into a room full of strangers whose identity and disposition were previously not established
• probing, openly doubtful questions about the value of the research you've spent years on
• strange or incomprehensible questions that may or may not sink your chances at getting a job
• waiting outside hotel rooms and bumping into the same candidates over and over again because you're all competing for the same jobs

Some things to like about interviewing:

• it's a great opportunity to inflict your ideas on unsuspecting scholars from all over the country
• a narcissist's dream: talking about oneself ALL DAY LONG
• the chance to see what different kinds of academics value about their colleagues and institutions – is the most important thing the freedom to grow into whatever kind of scholar you want? or to be surrounded by the smartest colleagues? or to have the brightest students? or to live in the most desirable (however you define it) location?

Everyone has been asking me, "How did it go?" But it's nearly impossible for the candidate to know. The friendly and kind committees will smile and nod, no matter how stupid your answer is; the challenging and pushy committees will frown and ask a follow-up question, no matter how brilliant your answer is. I experienced occasional brain-freeze, but usually had some sort of answer for the questions that came up. I still don't know whether those answers went over well, or not. But at least I enjoyed some memorable moments: the interview in which an older committee member asked one inscrutable question, and then promptly fell asleep on the table; the interview when I was asked about my methodology of early Aegean archaeology, and gave some answer in which I mumbled "Linear B" three times; the interview in which I was asked whether the approximately four Asians in the field had a secret "cool club," etc. etc.

2013

Ready for the new year? When I created this blog, I imagined that it would document a year of my life: May 2012-May 2013. I can't believe that more than half of that year is already over! When I look ahead to 2013, I see some "anchor events" that are inevitable: graduation, wedding, summer travel. But after August, I see a huge blank. Will Dave and I be professors at the same school? Will I be living far away from him for at least a year or two? Will I still be in Ann Arbor, continuing much the same life? I won't know for several more months, and the suspense is killing me! ;)

Dave and I were discussing our New Year's resolutions last night. Well, our lack of resolutions. We both feel that we have enough goals to accomplish this year as it is! I've got to get a job, or position myself to be even more competitive for next year's job market, in addition to planning the wedding and teaching. Dave has multiple grants to write and some big papers to push out, in addition to planning the wedding. Our lives right now are so focused on preparing for the future, which requires sacrifice in the present. If there's one thing I'd like to resolve, it's to "stop and smell the roses" whenever possible. I don't think that has to mean that I take a lot of time off work to go for long walks by the river. But I want to be able to savor the small moments along the way!