The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Part I

Interview experiences on the academic job market in 2022-2023

One of the things I want to do is help others understand what it means to be a historian, or help folks become historians. It’s job season, and that means lots of scholars are readying applications and hoping for the call to interview and maybe, just maybe, get the job of their dreams. I thought maybe I could share these experiences in a trio of posts called The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, detailing some of what I went through last year.

This post is for The Good.

Among the sixty-odd applications I prepared last year was for a program with which I was utterly unfamiliar: Illinois State University. But they were looking for someone who had experience teaching high school history and who specialized in Native North America. Illinois State is a university in the Heartland and focuses on preparing secondary education teachers for their careers. It’s actually a pretty big school: about 20,000 students attend.

I knew one of their faculty, Andrew Hartman, from twitter. I’d always liked what I’d seen from him and asked him about the town and school, of which he raved about both. That was enough for me. I prepped an application.

Prepping an academic job application can be tough. You need to tailor your application to the program and position (emphasizing say, early American history or Native history or environmental history as the ad states). Typically you need to at least have a cover letter, a curriculum vitae or “cv” (this is like a resume for historians), and a mixture including some or all of the following: a teaching statement, a diversity and equity statement, a writing sample, and either letters of reference or a list of references.¹ I’ve always been rather annoyed by much of this, thinking that all committees really need is a CV and cover letter for the first round. This is because job committees get HUNDREDS of applications. The job market is awful right now and people apply to stuff way beyond their specialties on hope and a prayer. Job committees do not have it easy. Also, asking for letters from your letter writers takes so much time from them. It’s a tough process on everyone involved.

After a few weeks I got good news: I had been selected for a zoom interview. Typically at this point the committee has narrowed their candidates to about ten or so, almost all of whom are outstanding or attended an Ivy. Virtual interviews are pretty standardized to give every candidate the same opportunities. I’ve been fortunate enough to have some great friends who helped me prep and I knew that I did well. This is often a vibe thing. At this stage almost everyone is a capable scholar but universities are looking for the right fit. I had one virtual interview with a committee at Butler University that tanked because I just didn’t gel with the committee chair. It happens. And that’s a good thing. What I found, though, was that I REALLY liked the committee, which was several faculty members and a few students. They were cool, enthusiastic about history, and about different ways of teaching history. A few days after that interview I got the good news that I’d be invited to an on campus interview.

One of the odd things about academia is that you often have to compete with your friends for your livelihoods. I knew a couple people who’d applied for the position but didn’t get invited to an on-campus. But one person who did was my great friend Lindsay Marshall. We had both shared with each other early on that we were applying and celebrated when we got the zoom interviews. Then we both got invited to Normal, Illinois for the interviews. In this case, you wish the other person well and try to compartmentalize as best you can. You’re not really competing against them; you’re going on a date with a university. There are better analogies, but you get the idea.

Typically, on campus interviews are a series of meals with faculty members and administrators, a teaching demonstration, and a job talk about your research. Ultimately, the committee is trying to determine two things: 1) can you make tenure, and 2) will you be a pain in the ass for the next three decades.

I was scheduled to interview after Lindsay, assuming I made it there at all. I had to fly in late January from West Palm Beach to Atlanta and then to Normal. The problem was that the Atlanta flight had to turn around MID FLIGHT because as the pilot announced “something was wrong with the aircraft and we aren’t sure it’ll make it to Illinois.” SUPER.

Long story short, after a series of delays that caused me to miss the initial dinner with the faculty, I arrived around 1:30am the morning of my interview to cold-ass Illinois. My teaching demonstration was at 9am and folks, I was AWFUL. Just terrible. One of the worst demonstrations I’ve given. I was tired and worn out and just not up to snuff. Fortunately the rest of the day got better. I did well meeting with faculty and I liked the university. The students were lovely. I gave what I thought was a good job talk. Unfortunately I didn’t get much time with anyone because I missed the first day due to airline issues, but so be it. I did the best I could.

I flew home, thankfully with no delays, and began the waiting period. A few weeks later I got the good news: my friend Lindsay Marshall got her dream job. And you know what? She was the right pick. Lindsay had been a teacher for years before going into higher ed. She’d done post doc work down the road at Illinois. And folks, she’s phenomenal. She even tried to apologize to me when she told me but I wouldn’t have it. I was incredibly honored just to be in her company. Lindsay getting this job was the GOOD in this series of posts because Illinois State has a terrific program and chose a terrific person for them.

I got the experience of interviewing and meeting some great folks. I learned. Got better at this gig. And ultimately that’s all you can hope for when you are applying and interviewing. Huge thanks to the folks there for the opportunity.

I’ll have more on other experiences a bit later and I’ll see if I can figure out how to share my documents here so that potential candidates can learn from them. But until then ciao for now.

1. Unfortunately job committees are not interested in how much I can bench press, but I wish they were. Oh well. 410. There, I said it. Wait, that was in 2018. It’s less now. But it was that number. Years ago. Whatever. Moving on.