The 2007 Student Affairs Job Hunt

In Medias Res #3- A not so brief riposte

I’ve been trying to write these things in advance, so I don’t fall behind when stuff gets crazy. The problem with that is thing’s change so fast. I’ve scheduled interviews, been declined by schools, but the sentiment here is pretty consistent so I haven’t edited anything.

So even though this is an anonymous blog I already got outed by a friend. Not that I told her, she figured it out herself. There’s two nice things about this: 1) it means people are actually reading, 2) it means my friends know me well enough to pierce the admittedly thin veil I threw up. So kudos, cohort. Kudos.

As we were discussing the blog they decided they wanted their aliases to be Grey’s Anatomy characters in a sort of homage to my co-blogger. Admittedly I’m more of an Office/30 Rock man myself, but I do like to catch up with Seattle Grace when Steve Carell’s in reruns. But it seems like Pick Me is having a bad week, so I'm not going to twist the knife by stealing her shtick. This is gonna have to suffice as a shout out: HEY PUNKS. They did want me to post the following. We were asked the other day to come up with a metaphor for the job search experience:
Learning to ride a bike/Running a race/On the diving block at a swim meet (there were two swim meets actually)/Moving up to the big kid’s table at Christmas/Being a soldier/Wanting a pink Huffy (the women in the room apparently got this one)/Jumping out of a basement window and you’re dying and..(somebody was a little overtired I think, but I still love ya SO)/ Going from the clarinet to the oboe/Getting shot in the butt on the way in and on the way out (also, AA was tired)/ A ship that left port without a navigator/ Bungee jumping & experiencing doubt halfway down/Your spin on Wheel of Fortune/ Like a rollercoaster/ In the carpool lane, picking an exit.

So what does this tell us about SA professionals? We suck at metaphors and the job search is stressful. Very revealing, I know.

One of my favorite critics, Nathan Rabin, is writing about a year of flops/fiascoes over at The Onion. He started with a survey of Elizabethtown which was the last time I can remember a bunch of my friends getting together to go to a movie. We were mixed on the result. Rabin calls it a fiasco, but I really remember enjoying it. He takes his definition for a fiasco from the film:

As somebody once said: There’s a difference between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is simply the non-presence of success. Any fool can accomplish failure. But a fee-ass-scoe, a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions. A fiasco is a folk tale told to others that makes other people feel more alive because. It. Didn’t. Happen. To. Them.

I liked Elizabethtown because it was slow and meditative and I am enchanted with the idea of going on the sort of road trip that ends the film. I got to do one just like it this past summer on the way to my internship. I found in the process of driving, and in reading Rabin’s description of Elizabethtown I was reminded of this, that I am a slower and more meditative person than I give myself credit for. I think this can only help me in the job search, as the process is long and (in many ways) methodical. There are stages, and critical questions to be asked, and it is a great deal more cerebral than physical. To that extant I have been unconsciously collecting tales of other people’s job hunt fiascos and while I don’t have the space or time to recount them, the one thing they all have in common: recounted in hindsight they actually sound a lot like fun. There’s a book I love about a fiasco of a romantic relationship (but I’ll withhold the title, to maintain the slightest shred of anonymity-I talk about this book that much and it’s that obscure) that closes with the narrator wondering if given the chance would he repeat his decisions. On seeing his younger self, on the precipice of entering into a long drawn out soul draining process, he ends the book simply with, “Of course. It’s exhilarating. Even bad things can be exhilarating. I’m looking forward to it.” Although I’m seriously hoping that my job search doesn’t end with the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, I am ready for the actual hunt part to begin. I thought I would feel that way after I got some apps out or after I scheduled some interviews, but it doesn’t. I want things to start. I’m looking forward to it.

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 10:21 AM