Lessons in passive-aggression

I received an e-mail last week telling me that book orders for next quarter were due this week. It noted that there was a flyer about their used book program attached to the e-mail and concluded with the following: “Please consider getting your textbook order in on time to help save the students money.”

Cover letters

I just sent out a job application, using a previous application’s cover letter as the template for the new one. Running a spell-check, I found that there were spelling errors in areas that I had not changed for this new letter. On the plus side, the template letter was fairly unique among my applications, meaning that the problem is hopefully not widespread in the others (for the sake of my sanity, I’m certainly not checking); on the negative side, this is one of the jobs I would most like to get.

I don’t know if having the ready excuse of having failed to run a spell check will make it better or worse if I don’t wind up getting an interview for this particular job.

The big Other has been satisfied

I have previously reasoned that since my defense, I effectively “had” my PhD, but I still wasn’t sure that my degree had fully registered in the symbolic order. Now all ambiguity has been dispelled by a public spectacle that included me receiving a diploma and a hood and shaking a lot of hands, a spectacle witnessed — one can assume — by the big Other.

A flood of good news

Within the last week, I have somehow found myself with a short-term teaching position for next year. I’ll be teaching two courses each in the fall and spring quarters in the religion department at Kalamazoo College. Everything about it seems ideal — it will give me valuable teaching experience at a great school, and they are making every effort to be as generous as possible. The only minor drawback is the commute, which is definitely manageable as I’ll only be teaching two days a week for (to me, an inveterate “semester person”) short periods at a stretch, conveniently separated by a multi-month break since I won’t be teaching in the winter quarter.

In other news, I got a royalty statement indicating that by the end of 2008, I had made back my advance on Zizek and Theology and had in fact already earned £1.44 above and beyond. By the time the next royalty statement rolls around, I will doubtless be an extremely, indeed almost embarrassingly, wealthy man.

Thus readers who wonder why the quality of this blog has been falling so sharply of late have their answer: things are going too well for me.

Defense result

Pass with distinction.

Curses!!!!!!

I wanted to be the one who wrote the Inside Higher Ed article comparing academic job searches to online dating!

The die is cast

I just officially submitted the version of my dissertation I’ll be defending.

“The Gap Year”

Having a “gap year” after you finish the PhD is pretty typical regardless of economic circumstances, right? And if it were starting to look like I was in fact having a “gap year,” doing it in a year when the listings were already thin and were then retroactively decimated by the economic crisis may even count as good timing, arguably.

“By God, Kotsko, you’ve done it again!”

Milestone

I now have a complete draft of my dissertation. The very last chapter, which I finished tonight, is perhaps rougher than previous ones, as I’m trying to get something to my advisor for comment before he leaves for an internet-poor region of the world — but the fact remains: it’s a full draft. (Hiring committees googling me take note! Yes, I really am going to finish — not just fishing.)

Perhaps once I’ve gotten to the point where I’m submitting it to my committee in advance of the defense, I’ll actually share my topic with you, my loyal readers.

Good times

You know what’s fun in late January after sending out like twenty job applications in the fall? Needing to send out more job applications! Seriously, those bankers and their crazy derivatives are throwing a major monkey wrench into my academic career — along with everyone else’s. Rumor has it that a variety of hiring freezes and job search suspensions are hitting even the Ivy League at this point, including the (blessedly) former president’s alma mater.

If any Chicago-based readers have the “suction” necessary to get me some adjunct teaching, or else indexing, proofreading, or other research work, let me know, because it may well come to that. (Readers with the “suction” necessary to get me into a fast food or retail management career should hold off for a few months.)