Biting, also Scratching

Waiting to hear back from job applications is like waiting to hear back from graduate schools was in college. Everyone you knew had also applied to grad school, and they were waiting, too. And everyone knew when the range for possibly hearing back was. And there was a time of densest probability of hearing back. And that time was still a little bit away in the future.

But as the time approached, things got wound really, really tight. And like someone you knew would have heard back early. And then someone else you knew would suddenly get a nibble. And you knew that time of densest probability of hearing back about being accepted was still in the future, though by now only barely, and if you hadn't heard back early or semi-early it started to seem like it was already too late and because by now two or three other people of your acquaintance had heard, good news, and you haven't heard and you aren't going to hear because it doesn't just matter about talent the odds are against you too and who are you to think that you can beat the odds and you aren't even that great really, in fact forget that, you totally suck. It's fine: you can move back home with mom. Or scratch that, maybe with your boyfriend's mom, who you don't like much but who is richer.

Anyway it kinda feels like that around here. And I'm not even applying; I'm just really, really rooting for CV to get a job. And as I hear of a nibble here, a nibble there, among colleagues, I get nervous on his behalf. I should admit it's really on my behalf. Winning the bread as a female is awesome and all, but enough. It's my time to eat bon bons.

It doesn't help with the nervous, strained feeling that everyone in the department is applying for the same jobs.*

The other thing that doesn't help is the teaching situation back home. The BMU enrollment was apparently way, way down this year, meaning less kids and less money to fill classes, meaning less classes for the TAs to teach. Sorry TAs. I know you were counting on it but no crap-classes full of freshmen to put bread on your tables.

Hey, I have enough outside gigs to support myself more or less. I'm resourceful. But the whole up-in-the-air state of teaching assignments in these parts certainly adds to the generally strained air around here. I don't know that our department is overly competitive -- normal stuff, but not, like, severe -- but the fact that the pack of us grad students is sometimes like a pack o' hungry jackals tossed just a couple scraps (Anyone want to pick up a last minute Grammar Course that pays $800/semester?, goes one such scrap) certainly fosters the biting-and-scratching brand of collegiality.




*I exagerrate. But it's, you know, some.