The 2007 Student Affairs Job Hunt

In Medias Res # 13: Push the Button

Ok, I know everyone else is all psyched about the Final Four, but my bracket petered out quick this year. So I have a new obsession. Last year The Believer magazine published a long essay about the author’s obsession with the 2005 contest, and while I was always aware of Eurovision (I study abroad for about 30 seconds in a winning country) I never followed it. Mainly cause how the hell was I going to follow it? But thanks to the magic of Youtube and friends living in places where this is a big deal, I can! The 2007 contest is going to be in Helsinki (a simultaneously amazing and depressing city), and I how I wish they would broadcast it here. It somehow manages to be even more tragic and campy than American Idol (would this be the place to mention I have a horrible secret crush on Blake Lewis? Probably not).

Anyway, my favorite song right now is the Israeli entry: Push the Button. It is a weird Pop ditty that seems to incorporate Eastern European musical influences (Klezmer anybody? KLEZMER!), and the lyrics are in French, English, and Hebrew (the Hebrew is actually a rap interlude). Most importantly the whole thing seems to be about either provoking or preventing nuclear war with Iran. The whole thing reminds me of a less angry Gogol Bordello, which is to say, “Not as good.” It will be interesting to see how the song and the band does though. There are some notoriously anti-Semitic countries in the voting block (Turkey, anyone?), although honestly after reading three different descriptions of how the voting is done I still have no idea.

Watch the video and tell me that the accordion player does not think he’s the biggest pimp in the world.

Ok and even though the song bores the crap out of me, it appears the Danish are stealing a page from the Israeli’s playbook (Dana International? Yes). She truly is a drama queen.

Wow. Is this not beautiful people? I am blogging from my porch! Aside from the awesome fact that I have a porch, it is a gorgeous temperate sunny day in In Media Res-Land©. I would imagine most of you are expecting to write about my last on campus, but honestly haven’t we had enough of that?

Taking a cue from the final arrival of Spring I spent the weekend cleaning my apartment, and it is amazing what some good weather and an orderly space can do for your mental health. I spent a decent amount of time prepping for NASPA/ACPA, but I’m trying not to spend too much time worrying about it. My interviews are hovering around the high single digits, and I don’t really want to add too many more than that. One of this week’s phone interviews invited me on campus (it was the one I knew I nailed) and so I’m maintaining my strict criteria.

There are two things I’m concerned about:

• NASPA/ACPA is a lot longer than OPE and I’m hoping for some tips on how to shore up my energy. My initial interviews are pretty spread out, but I know that the socials can go to a pretty late hour (if memory from last year serves). Should I be scheduling power naps? Or is that an even worse idea since I might sleep through an interview?
• How many campus interviews are too many? I remember my friends last year only going on one or two, but I’m well past that (and I of course don’t have a job offer yet). I recognize that I started the timeline a little earlier, but with this most recent offer my schedule is getting congested. I have missed a lot of work, and a considerable amount of one of my classes. My supervisor is amazing and supportive about the process, but even when I am told to go I worry about how very little I am working this semester. After March I don’t have a lot of vacation time left to collect on, and there are only so many hours in the week when I am not in class that I am actually available to work. I have already turned down one school, but I’m thinking anymore campus interviews I need to think hard about whether I really want the position.

This weekend I did have the pleasure of doing something I hadn’t done in forever: going out to dinner with friends. I haven’t blogged much about my personal life and that’s in large part because I have not had a personal life for the last month. I’ve been a candidate (did I mention that I’m now single? Such is the toll of the job search, and such is the grace of the job search that I’ve had this massive diversion). So we went to this little hole in the wall Italian place and it was nice. The food was good, we had some wine (I should say they did, In Medias Res isn’t much of a drinker), and we talked. Since we’re all grad students in the same program obviously we talked about the job search. I have no doubt that we will all get fabulous jobs. We cycled through the job search stuff pretty fast though (it does get old after a while), and after that we returned to the usual topics: how much class sucks, how much work sucks, how much we will miss each other, how exciting it is to be almost done. We went on sort of a wild goose chase on our way to the bar (where I did actually drink a beer) and I remembered how much fun these people are when you strip away all of the student affairs BS. I know I can’t take all of them to my next job (unless we managed to find the most understaffed institution in North America, and who wants to work there).

Oh and I successfully defended or as a friend put it, “I won!” Which means job or not I will graduate.

So for the next post (and to make me laugh) I want triumphs, horror stories, wacky anecdotes, and whatever else you want to share about your NASPA & ACPA experiences. Y’know what? Let’s make it all professional conferences! I’ll post them right before I leave (either Wednesday or Thursday) so the cut off will Wednesday at Noon EST just to standardize stuff. You can send them to In-Medias@hotmail.com. Let me know whether it’s okay to include your info or if you want me to give you an alias (and an alias if you want to provide one). Hopefully people will actually respond to this, so I don’t have to blog next week.

posted by StudentAffairs.com @ 1:29 PM