Every time I try to read a post by somebody who has been unsuccessful on the academic job market, I encounter in it something so egregiously offensive to myself and to everybody I know that any solidarity or compassion I might feel towards its author simply evaporates. Here is the most recent example from such a post:

Higher education is like the mafia: I was only able to get the adjunct gig because the dean had met one of my mentors, and so I had to say, “So-n-So sent me.” . . . I’d like to see a study done about the correlation of inflated grades as they correspond to the teachers who give them, particularly when it pertains to people who get interviews or even achieving tenure.

I’ve seen many of such posts and one thing that is consistently missing from them is an acknowledgment that their authors might have some tiny little share of responsibility to bear for not finding employment. It’s always bad academia, bad employers, bad colleagues, bad friends, bad family members, bad world, bad universe, bad historical moment – and one completely perfect sufferer caught in the midst who is denied work because everybody is jealous of so much perfection. It would be very refreshing to see at least one of such sufferers acknowledge that 2% of responsibility for their failed job searches rests with them. Or if 2% is too much, then 0,2%. Or 0,02%. Or something.

When I was on the job market, I got many rejections from places where I would have liked to work. And by many I mean MANY because I applied absolutely everywhere. Two of the rejections were due to very clear and obvious corruption where positions were given to “relatives and friends.” These relatives and friends have since then been kicked out of their jobs which was to be expected given their complete lack of requisite skills. One rejection was due to the intense hatred that somebody on the hiring committee conceived towards me for no reason I could fathom. One more rejection was due to a horrible conflict between the members of the hiring committee that made them incapable of concentrating on interviewees. Every single other rejection, however, was on me.

Oh, all the ways I fucked up. The worst one was forgetting the name of the institution I was interviewing with and not being able to name a single writer I discuss in my dissertation. This happened during the interview with the place that was my number one preference by far. There were less embarrassing but still painful fuckups. Like the time when I was asked what my approach was to teaching at a 4-year Liberal Arts college and I had no idea what the question even meant. And made it very clear I had no idea what it meant.

I was talking recently to an older colleague who said that hiring a tenure-track person for a smallish department was an extremely important decision next only in weight to choosing a life partner. “You will probably get to spend the next thirty years working very closely with this person,” my colleague said. “So it is crucial you can get along.”

And ask yourself this: would you want to work for those proverbial 30 years alongside someone who is sitting in front of you during a job interview convinced that the only reason you ever got hired or promoted or tenured is because you inflate grades / kiss ass / are connected / know the right people / sleep around / give bribes, etc.? Would you want to give a chance to somebody who denied you a similar consideration before even meeting you? Somebody who placed you within the ranks of the corrupt and the unprofessional just because you happen to have your job?

We only have one life to live. One single opportunity. You can spend it being disappointed with the universe for not making your life what you want it to be or you could work on the only area of existence that is completely within your control: yourself. The belief that “academia sucks” is a very valid belief to hold and you are perfectly entitled to it. However, it also guarantees that you will not get a (tolerable) job in said sucky academia. I know, for instance, that sales suck dick something fierce. Which is why I’m not looking for employment in sales. But if I had to do that, I would begin by learning to love sales and everything that had to do with it. Applying for jobs before that would be a complete and total waste of time.

I believe that the best thing a blogger can do to gain insight into their professional future is to read his or her own posts on the job search and ask him or herself: would I want to work with this person every day for the next 30 years?

P.S. I’m teaching 5 days a week in the 37th week of a high-risk pregnancy. I’m spending as much time at work as I do at the hospital and as I do traveling between the two. This means I’m in no mood for any drama-queenish crap from people who are abused by me having opinions. Please do me the kindness of keeping all that away from my blog. If you write a response, I absolutely promise not to come by, not to link back, and not to comment in any way.

I was discussing the syllabus with the students and discovered an interesting cultural / linguistic reality. The syllabus was prepared by my colleague who will teach most of the course after I go on maternity leave. A propos lab activities the syllabus says, “Workbook chapters are due on the designated dates no later than midnight.”

So the question is: if the designated date is September 3, when does the assignment have to be handed in? On September 2 before 11:59 pm or on September 3 before 11:59 pm?

I’m asking because I just discovered that the answer is different for me and my colleague. This is not a trivial question because a riot almost broke out in class today over this.

Well, duh:

This weekend, I went on a Twitter rant in which I took the extreme position that Wikileaks had done no good whatsoever, then challenged defenders to prove me wrong. It took a while to get even one concrete example of a change directly attributable to the leaking — namely, the video of U.S. abuses in Iraq that forced the Iraqi government to deny the U.S.’s request of legal immunity for residual troops.

That was a good thing, in my opinion, but it’s small compared to the original vision of Wikileaks. As implied in the name, it was meant to be a distributed network of leakers — rather than the bizarre personality cult it ultimately became. The goal was to restrict the ability of the elites to operate in secrecy by making the cost of secrecy astronomically greater and thus to limit their ability to abuse their power.

There was simply no way this plan was ever going to work.

I have been saying from the start that Wikileaks was achieving and was going to achieve nothing. And if you look at the whole thing rationally, you will see that I was right and there isn’t a single useful or important thing to have come out of it. I know everybody wants to have hope and believe the best, but this plan was doomed from the start.

However, let’s not make the mistake of confusing Assange and Snowden. There is still hope – slim as it is – that Snowden’s revelations will result in change. And the outcome does not depend on what Snowden does from now on, or at least not a whole lot. He has done his part, and this is not the kind of an issue where a Spiderman-like savior will deliver us from all evil while we sit back and enjoy the process. Now everything hangs on how the American people will process the intense violations of their civil freedoms and react to them.

And this, in turn, depends on the economy. We all know that I’m not a Marxist and do not look to the economy as an answer to every question. Here, however, it is more than appropriate to look at where the country is economically. If the general public feels that the recession has been sufficiently mitigated and the financial future is not completely bleak, we can expect people to start paying attention to their civil rights. If the fear brought on by the recession is still very strong, we can expect everybody to forget about Snowden and his revelations very fast and very easily.

If you see stuff published online and which doesn’t support your opinions as abusive, hurtful, painful, traumatic, or bullying, you are the person we will have to thank when every single word we publish online will be policed and subject to criminal penalties every time it departs from the standard of complete and brainless blandness.

To put it bluntly, unless you get your obnoxious feelings under control, total Internet censorship is inevitable. And you will be used as an excuse to introduce it.