Near misses (in my field)

There’s something uniquely disconcerting about familiar views obscured by a different angle.

Part 5 in this series.

In the month after my meeting with HR, I found two open jobs in my field at universities in my area. This was wild given the hiring cycle for professorships usually starts in September and is wrapping up by the end of February.

In other words, if you aren’t in the process in the fall, you’re stuck waiting for the next year’s jobs to try again.

So those two job possibilities felt like a gift (even if one of them was at the school that had just let me go…more on that later). I applied to both and got initial interviews.

And then came the saga of two processes travelling very different paths to the same destination.

The first job was in my field and a weirdly perfect fit. Creative writing was the top need. Check (my PhD emphasis). And journalism. Check (my first career). And be versed in Latinx literature. Check (not my primary field but I’m more than casually familiar). And the candidate needed to teach composition. Check (20+ years of that under my belt).  

My preliminary interview became a finalist’s visit to campus and I did well. Signs pointed to me being the choice. And then things got weird. One faculty member from a completely different field of study didn’t like something I said. (Nothing inflammatory, just a take that differed from his.)

And that was it. They passed on me and pulled the search completely, opting to start over with new applicants in the fall. That email stung for sure.

At the same time, the school I already worked for—the one that cut my position—encouraged me to apply for a different one. Despite my misgivings, I did if for no other reason than it would mean the least upheaval for my family in the short term.

Here too, I was a finalist. Did seven hours of interviews, mostly with people who already knew me. Was the initial choice again. But the administrators in charge held their decision for two months, kept taking applications, and then told me no just before my son’s high school graduation.

And that was that. Academia’s door closed for at least a year, and that’s if I can (and want to) get back in. This was likely my lowest moment while working through my anger and frustration with the situation.

It was also a punctuation I apparently needed, the period on my last 15 years.