I’ve previously blogged about enhancing production as a way to develop a more robust CV, and have suggested that publishing well and widely may (for instance) increase one’s odds on the job market.  Both imply that academia is a meritocracy.  It isn’t.  But meritocracy can be a useful myth.  Please note: that’s can be, not is.

A friend (who has asked to remain anonymous) and I have been talking about this over email. Friend argues that increased productivity does not in fact increase one’s odds on the job market. Although I disagree, I do think Friend is correct to note that many other factors (over which the job candidate may have no control or may be unable to anticipate) play an important role, too.  To name one personal example, one of my MLA interviews (in 1999) led to a campus visit, which in turn led to my coming in second place for the job. First-place candidate turned it down, and the job went to me. That’s luck! However, it’s also not entirely luck: having the publications helped me get to second place. To name another personal example, I later learned that my ability to create a website was one thing that attracted the department — this wasn’t something I anticipated, but for a department that does all its own web work, web ability turned out (in 1999-2000) to be a marketable skill. And so on.

But, as I’ve noted elsewhere on this blog, publishing is the currency of academe, and we get to print our own money: If you publish more, you increase your cultural capital (within academia).  Please understand that I am not arguing that the system should work this way. I think that young scholars should have more time to develop; the rush to publication may create more scholarship, but it does not necessarily create better scholarship.  Furthermore, I’m troubled by academia’s failure to reward teaching and service in the same ways that it rewards research.  All three are equally important.  That said, though I take my three obligations equally seriously, I also know that research is valued more — and thus I tend to work overtime so that I can invest a little extra in research. If I cannot change the system, then at least I can figure out how to succeed within its terms, right?

Well, it’s not that simple.  In allowing the system to guide my professional choices, I in fact help to sustain those very features that I criticize.  By gaining from a system of which I disapprove, my actions uphold that system’s assumptions — that industry and productivity provide a path to success for all.  Friend summarizes the paradox nicely:

in another context, Lauren Berlant has argued for the necessity of sentimentalism as a means of survival, even as it reinforces the structures of oppression that make survival difficult. In the context of the job market, meritocracy is one such sentimentalism.

In other words, the belief that hard work will eventually lead to success encourages academics to undertake lots of unpaid labor … which helps keep academe running, but may not necessarily help Ph.Ds to land that elusive tenure-track gig.  As Friend points out, the excellent scholarship being done by those beyond the tenure track refutes the idea that academe is a meritocratic system (if it were, then all adjuncts and post-docs doing great work would swiftly find good jobs on the tenure track).

So.  What should an aspiring academic do?

1. Focus on what you can control.  Having been on hiring committees, I know that publishing does set you apart from other job candidates.  Friend disagrees with me on this point, but I believe publishing more does increase your odds — and this is the sense in which meritocracy is a useful myth.
2. You have to act as if your actions will have an effect, even though you know full well that they may not. On the one hand, you sustain some level of belief in the meritocratic fantasy, and on the other, you acknowledge that, at most, all you’re doing is improving your odds. In other words, maintain a kind pessimistic optimism (or optimistic pessimism?), in which the “optimist” portion is always 51% or greater.
3. But Friend has the best advice here. The best reason to be productive is that you believe in your ideas, and recognize that you’re doing real work in the world. This is a much healthier approach than “productivity increases your odds.”  The satisfaction of doing good work that you believe in is a more spiritually sound way of living.  If you’re only trying to expand the CV, then the focus is too much on the production and not on the reasons you do the work in the first place.

Finally, I should say that I do not find my answers to be wholly satisfactory. So, as always, do feel free to critique them, and — better — provide stronger answers of your own.

More posts on academia from Nine Kinds of Pie (this blog):

• What Do Professors Do All Week? & the full “What Do Professors Do All Day?” series: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
• How to Publish Your Book; or, The Little Manuscript That Could.  These strategies have worked for me.
• How to Publish Your Article.  The “prequel” to the above.
• Never Say Die: A Mix for Job-Seekers.  Because you might need a little encouragement.
• Procrastigrading; or, How to Grade Efficiently.  One solution to the scourge of grading.  The main drawback is that it also involves actual grading.
• Fortunate Failures; or, How I Became a Scholar of Dr. Seuss.  When academe gives you lemons, make green eggs and ham.
• The Art of PowerPoint: A User’s Guide.  PowerPoint doesn’t have to suck.  Trust me.
• How Did I Get Here? Part I: Up from Adjuncthood.  Academic autobiography.
• How Did I Get Here? Part II: Into Professorland.  Academic autobiography, Part Deux.
• Mash-Up vs. Purple Crayon.  There are many paths to success.

Image source: Michelle Kerns’ “Hilarious yet Heartbreaking: The Reviewerspeak Awards for May 2010.”

With a hectic new semester about to begin (or, for many of us, already begun) and our new governor’s proposed assault on some of Kansas’ most vulnerable citizens, let us seek solace — and inspiration — in the verse of our greatest living YouTube poet, Parry Gripp.  As he counsels, when

The world has gone insane

and you don’t know what is right,

you got to keep on keepin’ on:

get on that pig, and hold on tight.

This of course is excellent advice for that baby monkey riding backwards (below).

It’s also sound advice for the rest of us.  The world does have a tendency to go “insane,” as Mr. Gripp suggests.  But we must not lose our grip (ha!).  We must “get on that pig, and hold on tight.”

Gripp‘s tunes offer insight into many other predicaments.  If you visit his website, you will also find hummable wisdom on the benefits of oatmeal (in your face, cholesterol!), the dangers of excessive self-Googling, and of course the versatility of our good friend the hamster.

In case you’re curious how a baby monkey came to be riding backwards on a boar, this wasn’t staged.  Both animals were orphaned, and live in the same zoo (in Japan, I think).  The zoo staff introduced them to one another, and they bonded.  Here’s the video clip that inspired Gripp’s song and video:

As aficionados of Gripp know, the “Baby Monkey” song made its debut in September 2010 (not incidentally, also the beginning of a semester).  And he posts a new song on his site every week.  So, check there or follow him on Twitter.

But, come what may, don’t let go of that pig!

The sequel (or prequel?) to “How to Publish Your Book,” here’s something else they don’t always teach you in graduate school.  As in that earlier post, this is what has worked for me.  Results may vary.

Please note: the advice below derives from my experience as an English professor who specializes in children’s literature.  This advice will be most applicable to those in English/Modern Languages and, more generally, the Humanities.  If you’re working within a different discipline, then please consult someone in that field.

1. How do I know when my article is ready to send out?

The short answer is when it’s in the best possible shape it can be in.

The longer answer is if you’re not sure what that shape looks like, then seek help.  If you’re an assistant professor or adjunct, then seek help from a colleague — at your current or former institution — or from a colleague you’ve met at a conference.  If you’re a graduate student, ask a professor.  Or ask a graduate student who’s already published something.  Have people whose advice you trust — and whose writing you admire — critique the article.  What works?  What doesn’t?  What isn’t clear?  But don’t revise endlessly: Set yourself a deadline for revising it, make the essay as tightly focused and as clearly written as you can, and then send it out.

2. Where do I send my article?

What journals cover the subject of your article?  If you’re not sure, you might look at the journals you consulted during your research.  You might also seek advice from someone else in the field — if you’re a graduate student, then perhaps from a professor.  After you’ve a list of possibilities, read some articles in each journal and think about which would be the best fit.  In the field of children’s literature, some journals you might consider include: Children’s Literature, The Lion and the Unicorn, The Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Children’s Literature in Education, The New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, and Jeunesse (formerly Canadian Children’s Literature).  That’s by no means an exhaustive list.  For a more complete (if decade-old) list, see Wally Hastings and Michael Joseph’s page of Journals that publish articles on children’s literature theory and criticism.

Two other general principles:

1. Aim high and then settle.  That is, if you think the article can be published in the top journal in your field, then send it there first.  If that journal doesn’t like it, its editors will let you know.  And you can move on to the next one.
2. Publish widely and well. If this is your second (or third, fourth, etc.) article, consider sending it to a different journal.  It’s a-OK to publish more than one piece in the same journal (especially if it’s a good one), but publishing in more than one place (especially good ones) shows that your work has been approved by multiple venues.

3. What does a cover letter look like?

Nearly all submissions happen on-line, so this is probably a cover email rather than a cover letter.  Here’s my most recent one, sent to American Quarterly on 2 August 2010:

Dear Editors,

I am attaching “Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: Seuss and Race in the 1950s.”  I’m also attaching a document containing images.  I’ve read your guidelines concerning images, and — should the article meet the needs of American Quarterly — I will (of course) send hi-res scans and obtain all necessary permissions.

Should you have any questions about the manuscript (or the images), please don’t hesitate to contact me.  Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Philip Nel

[followed by full contact info.]

As you can see, the letter is brief and to the point.

4. The journal’s guidelines ask for Chicago citation style. I’ve used MLA style. Do I have to re-format my article?

Yes.  Follow all of the journal’s guidelines, including suggested page length.  It’s not that hard to switch from MLA to Chicago, or Chicago to MLA, or any of the other styles.  It may not be especially exciting work, but it’s simple enough.  Do it.  And you may as well save a copy in your original citation format — just so you have it.

5. I’ve sent it in.  Now what?

First, the journal should acknowledge receipt of your work.  Generally, this happens within a week, perhaps even within a few days.  If a month passes or even a couple of weeks pass without acknowledgment, then follow up.  If more time than that passes, then follow up again.  If you reach six weeks or so and there’s not yet been any acknowledgment, then write again, politely informing the journal that you have decided to submit your article elsewhere.  Each time you correspond, you should include the record of your correspondence — easiest way to do this (in email) is by simply forwarding the earlier one each time, and appending your latest query to the top of the message.

You can, of course, wait longer than six weeks.  Perhaps it’s a very prestigious journal, and you feel it’s worth the wait.  That’s up to you.  But the essay is your intellectual property, and it deserves to be treated with respect.

6. When should I expect to hear from the journal?

Three to four months after it sends your article out for review.  Some journals take longer, and some are more swift.  On the longer side, American Quarterly now takes 6-8 months just to decide whether to send out the article to reviewers.  On the shorter side, the editor of a special issue is most likely to offer the most prompt response.  Indeed, the fastest way to get published in a journal is through a special issue: it allows you to bypass the journal’s backlog of unpublished articles.

If three months pass, and you’ve not yet heard from the journal, then follow up.  Be polite and brief.

Dear [person at journal],

With apologies for bothering you at a busy time of the term, I thought I would follow up.  Have you any sense of when we might receive readers’ reports on my manuscript?

Thanks in advance for any information you may have.

Best regards,

[your name, contact info., etc.]

The journal will then follow up with the reader(s).  As a reader myself, I find these follow-up emails very helpful.  I get overwhelmed with work, and I use urgency to bump this task up my to-do list.  So, when I get a “where is the reader’s report?” email, I get right on it.

Two related points:

1. You can withdraw your article. Depending on how tardy the response, you might decide to withdraw your article from consideration.  When?  That depends on how prestigious the journal is and how long you’re willing to wait.  It’s reasonable to expect readers’ reports within three to six months time.  This is your intellectual labor: if the journal isn’t treating it (and thus you) with sufficient respect, then take your submission elsewhere.
2. One journal at a time. Very important: you must withdraw the article from consideration at Tardy Journal before submitting it to another journal.  You’re not allowed to have the same article under consideration at more than one place.

In case you’re curious: yes, I have withdrawn work and submitted it elsewhere.  In one case, I withdrew work from a proposed essay collection (the editors of which were not responding as swiftly as I’d liked) and submitted it to a journal’s special issue — where, in short order, the essay was published.

So.  Be proactive!

7. I heard back from the journal!  What do I do now?

That all depends on the response.  There are four possible ones.

1. Accepted.  In this case, express your delight to the editor, make the (presumably minor) editorial and typographical changes you need to make, and do whatever you need to do to prepare the piece for publication.  For example, are there images you wish to include?  If so, start seeking permissions immediately — image permissions can take months to obtain.  And, of course, update the entry on your CV to indicate “Forthcoming,” along with the article’s page length in manuscript form.  And pat yourself on the back.
2. Accepted with revisions.  Make the revisions.  Cede the point when you can, and hold your ground when you need to.  But do your best to address the readers’ concerns.  Accept the helpful advice with gratitude and respond graciously to the less helpful ones.  Important: Respond onlyto the content and never to the tone.  Sometimes, a reader’s report can be snarky or sarcastic or even cruel.  This isn’t the norm, but it does happen.  In those cases, remember that your objective is to publish this article.  Viewing an obnoxious reader’s report as an invitation to verbal sparring may be emotionally satisfying for you, but it will not help you achieve your objective.  So: don’t go there.  Be professional.  If you’re worried about your tone, have a friend or colleague read your note before sending.
   • As you make revisions or after you complete them, you might consider creating a separate document in which you sketch a map of your changes.  You don’t have to do this, and it may be that the cover letter will provide you enough space to indicate where changes have been made.  But one thing I’ve done (though I do it much more rarely now than I used to) is indicate how I specifically responded to the reader’s suggestions by pointing out where, in my article, I made the changes.
3. Revise and resubmit.  If you get this response, you have two choices.  If you feel that the reviewer is completely missing the point, then perhaps this isn’t the journal for you.  Thank the editor, withdraw your piece and submit it elsewhere.  More often than not, though, I’d advise you to pursue the other choice — revise and resubmit.  If the reader has suggested that you revise and resubmit, then he or she sees some potential in your work… but your piece is just not yet where it needs to be.  You will likely have to do some fairly extensive revisions — rewriting sections, throwing parts out, creating new parts.  But you’ll learn something and, in the process, will improve your essay.  See the “Accepted with revisions” guidelines above.
4. Reject.  Three choices.  If you think the journal is wrong, then send the piece out to a different journal.  Or, first, make a few revisions and then send the piece out a different venue.  The first journal to which I sent “‘Said a Bird in the Midst of a Blitz…’: How World War II Created Dr. Seuss” rejected it — and took its time in doing so.  I then sent the piece to Mosaic, where it appeared in a special issue.  If the essay is important to you, your second option is to revise the piece and then submit it again — either to this journal or to another.  The third option is to put it aside for now.  Work on something else.  Perhaps, in time, you’ll return to this piece, and be able to salvage what’s salvageable.  Perhaps you won’t.  But don’t fret too much about one article.  You’ll write others.  The main thing is that you learn why this one isn’t working so that you don’t repeat those mistakes in other essays.

8. How much do journals pay you?

In the Humanities, they don’t.  If your work appears in an edited collection, then you should expect to receive a copy of the book.  Again, though, getting paid for contributing is rare.  If you’re writing an essay for a reference work, you’re likely to get paid but not get a copy of the book.  That depends: sometimes I’ve been paid for those, and other times I just get a copy of the book.  And “payment” is fairly loosely defined.  “Payment” can be a certain $ amount of books from the publisher’s catalogue.

9. When will it appear in the journal?

As indicated above, if it’s in a special issue, then quite soon — as soon as a couple of months.  But that’s the best-case scenario.  More likely, your essay will not appear for at least a year.  If the journal has a backlog of accepted essays, you may wait for several years.  You can still mark the piece as “Forthcoming” on your CV, of course.

10. Geez.  That seems like a lot of work just to get something published.

Yes, it does.  But, as is the case with many things, the more you do it, the better you get at it.  If this is something you want to achieve, then persist. To quote the Desmond Dekker song, “You can get it if you really want, but you must try, try and try, try and try… you’ll succeed at last.”

A number of folks at MLA 2011 were kind enough to mention that they’ve found my “advice” postings useful.  In the hopes of continuing to help, here’s one more before I veer back to other blog topics (children’s literature, comics, biography, music, etc.).  Today’s topic is: how do you develop a robust CV quickly?

As noted in “Up from Adjuncthood,” this was a matter of some urgency: when I earned the Ph.D. in 1997, I had zero publications.  To escape terminal adjuncthood, I’d need to transform an anemic CV into a healthy one.  I found Michael Bérubé‘s CV on-line (a full version was on-line back then), and decided to emulate him.  I knew I was neither as smart nor as talented a writer as he, but (I reasoned) I could at least strive to be as productive.

It’s a simple calculus.  If you publish one article a year, then in five years you have five articles; two a year, then you have ten in the same period.  Similarly, if you can publish a book every five years, then in a decade, you’ll have two. I never literally followed this x-articles-per-year model. The idea was not to meet annual quotas. It was to think about the long term. If you maintain a steady rate of production, then, over time, publications add up.

And they have.

I’ve already blogged about How to Publish Your Book.  It occurs to me that I ought to write another post on How to Publish Your Articles.  Too often, I think, we academics take for granted that aspiring scholars already know the ins and outs of how academia works — forgetting that we had to learn this, too.  So…, I’ll do an Article-Publishing post soon.

Oh, and bonus points for anyone who guesses the song quoted in the post’s title.  Need a hint?  It’s included on Never Say Die: A Mix for Job-Seekers (posted back in September).

In yesterday’s post, I skipped past the actual getting of the job.  (Oops.)  Today, I’ll talk about that.

Oh, but enough about me.  What do you think of me?

— old joke

4. To Market, to Market, to Get Me a Job

In 1999, I had three interviews.  The first was pleasant enough.  The second was unpleasant.  Indeed, if I’d already had a job, then halfway into that interview I would have said, “Based our conversation so far, I expect you’re looking for a different candidate.  Thanks very much for taking the time to meet me, and best of luck with your search.” Then I would have shook hands, offered thank-yous, and left. But I didn’t have a job.  So, I stuck it out, and — when I returned from the conference — wrote the obligatory thank-you note, even though there was no way I’d get a campus visit.

The third interview was a lot of fun. Before I explain why, I should also tell you how I prepared for all three interviews.  Since each hiring committee told me who would be on the interview team, I read the scholarship of each interviewer.  I should have spent more time on the websites looking at course offerings, but I did develop sample syllabi so that I could be prepared to answer questions like “What would you teach in a Children’s Literature course?” or “If you could teach your dream graduate seminar, what would it be on?” and so on.  In retrospect, I probably should have made copies of these syllabi to give to my interviewers, but the preparation enabled me to talk about these imaginary classes.  (I had neither taught nor formally studied Children’s Literature prior to my arrival at Kansas State.)  I also, of course, had the dissertation soundbite. I’d rehearsed answers to other possible questions — and, by rehearsed, I mean not only learned, but actually practiced speaking them out loud.  (Yes, acting is key to success!) Anyway, my point is that I went into each interview prepared.

So, if I was equally prepared for all interviews, then why was the third interview so much fun?  In this one, the interview team was prepared for me.  They’d read my writing sample closely, and asked informed questions that conveyed (what I took to be) genuine interest.  The interviewers clearly got along with each other.  Their comfort made for a comfortable interview experience.  They also knew what they were looking for in a children’s lit hire: I didn’t sense dissent or opposing “camps.”  Having since been through other interviews (on both sides), the best interviews are a like a good chat with smart people at a cocktail party.  You may have heard that comparison before.  Well, it’s true — only, of course, without the cocktails.

By the way, here’s one unanticipated question I remember from this third interview: “Which do you prefer — teaching, research, or service?”  I began my answer with: “Gosh, that’s a tough question.”  Then, I described merits of all three.  I knew that academia ranks research highest, and that my own personal preferences would rank both it and teaching ahead of service.  But admitting that would not have been the most persuasive thing to say.  In any case, we have do to all three, and I’m a team player: I expected to do all three. So, best to express my willingness to do all parts of the job.  Which I did.

A couple of weeks after the interview — or perhaps even sooner than that — the department head phoned me to set up the campus visit.

5. The Semi-Finals; or, the Campus Visit

Getting invited to campus is like making the semi-finals. You haven’t got the job, but you’re among the top two or three candidates.

To prepare, I visited the website, and read up on the place.  I also printed out a list of all the faculty members, and tried to familiarize myself with their names and specialties.  When I had downtime during the visit, I would make notes on the printout — what we talked about, anything that would help me remember the person’s name.  (I’m terrible with names!  I really have to work at learning them.)  And, the job talk.  I kept it to the length specified by the department head — 30 minutes.  (Note: if they don’t tell you the length, then ask them! You don’t want to run long or be too brief.)  I keyed up my script (the talk) to the images.  I rehearsed the talk until it felt fluent, and rehearsed answers to any other possible questions I thought I might face.

The campus visit was fun, if intense: as you might expect, you are “on” all the time.  And nearly all of your time is scheduled.  My hosts were friendly, personable, and — as the hiring committee was at the MLA interview — genuinely interested in me and my work.  When I left after three days (I think it was three), I was tired but pleased.  I didn’t know whether I’d get the job, but I felt that I’d put forth a solid effort, and sensed that, irrespective of the outcome of the search, I’d stay in touch with some of the people I met there.

A few weeks later, after the First Choice candidate turned the job down, they made me (Mr. Second Choice) an offer.  I accepted.

6. Tenure for Two

But this is not as simple as I’m making it out to be.  If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll remember that there’s also a spouse involved.  When we went to the College of Charleston, I was the trailing spouse.  If we were going to Kansas State University (which, as you’ve probably figured out by now, was the third interview and sole campus visit), we did not want to have a repeat of our experience at the College of Charleston.

We know now that we could have handled that situation differently. Although our College of Charleston English Department Chair expressed indifference to my professional situation, Karin (my spouse) and I might have negotiated at the time of her offer. After all, the worst answer you can get is “No,” and you might get something better.  Two years later, as I went on the market and received the campus interview, we should have been more proactive and told the department chair and dean.  Doing so would have given the College time to assemble a counter-offer, should it wish to retain us in the face of a campus visit becoming a job offer. However, we didn’t tell any of the higher-ups and so, when the Kansas offer came, the College was not prepared to make a counter-offer.  Having a counter-offer would have been useful for two reasons.  First, if Karin and I had wanted to stay in Charleston, a tenure-track job for me would have made that possible. (Though Charleston’s Confederate fetish is a bit disturbing, we had — and have — many friends there, and we were sorry to leave them.)  Second, having a counter-offer could have provided a bargaining chip to use with Kansas State — we might have been able to use it to get Karin immediately on the tenure-track, or we might have been able to use it to negotiate a higher salary for myself, and/or to negotiate other things.  If you’re in a situation where more than one institution wants you, then your market value rises and you’re in a position to bargain for more.

Though we didn’t know any of these strategies then, we were nonetheless determined to make the move to Kansas State a happier situation for both of us. In case the subject came up, I had brought a few copies of Karin’s CV with me on the campus visit. Officially, they’re not allowed to ask about spouses or partners, so you might need to listen for hints and opportunities. One morning over breakfast, the Department Head mentioned that he had just written an article on the need to take spousal needs into account, which I interpreted as a fairly broad hint (though it was also true; he had written the article).  I suspect that a Department Head in a slightly more remote location (such as Manhattan, Kansas) may be need to be more sensitive to such an issue, but — whatever the reason — he was sympathetic.  So, I gave him a copy of her CV, and spoke a little about her work. She subsequently provided a letter of interest, writing sample, and dossier for the department’s review.

When the offer came, we managed to get Karin hired as a Visiting Assistant Professor — non-tenure-track, but with the understanding that the Department would try to move her back onto the tenure track.  So that she had a backdoor, Karin negotiated a year’s leave of absence (instead of quitting) from the College of Charleston, and we moved to Manhattan, KS in July of 2000.  Karin made herself indispensable to the Department, becoming the Department’s Technology Coordinator.  This position didn’t officially exist, but Karin saw a need and stepped in to fill that need.  She also participated fully in the life of the Department, going to faculty meetings, serving on committees, and generally being a team player.  Of course, she kept teaching and publishing, too.  At the end of our first year, we set up a meeting with the Department Head to ask how we could get Karin back on the tenure track.  He advised both of us to go on the job market.  Meanwhile, the Department would do a national job search for 20th Century British Literature (Karin’s field, in which she has a sub-specialty in contemporary British literature, an area not otherwise covered in the Department).

Thus, Karin and I went on the market in the fall of 2001.  I had an MLA interview and a campus visit; Karin had two MLA interviews and two campus visits, one of which was Kansas State.  During visits, we mentioned the need for two tenure-track jobs as one reason for our seeking the position. When it was time for Karin’s campus visit at Kansas State, I did not see her talk (I was advised not to attend), and nor could I vote on her hire, but the Department judged her the best of the three candidates, and made her an offer.  Rather than wait for offers from the universities where we had other campus interviews (in hopes of using them as leverage), we decided to withdraw from those searches before they concluded.  Let me be clear: I was genuinely interested in that job, and Karin was interested in the other job as well.  If one had made an offer to both of us, we would have accepted.  But Kansas made the offer first, and we were happier here than I think we would have been at the other universities.  So, as of fall 2002, Karin was back on the tenure-track, and her work at Kansas State as a Visiting Assistant Professor would count towards her tenure portfolio.   She went up for tenure early and was promoted to Associate in 2006, and I was promoted the year earlier to Associate (and in 2008 to Full).  Since 2007, she has been Department Head.

7. Now, Class, What Have We Learned?

Some lessons that might be drawn from our experience: Be both proactive and strategic.  Also, in this field, you get to choose the lifestyle, but not the location.  Kansas was not our first choice of places to live, but it’s a good gig (2-3 teaching load) with great colleagues.  If you want to choose where you live, then you’re in the wrong profession.  Aim for quality of life rather than idyllic locale.

It’s been a busy decade.  The ambitious (pronounced “nutty”) publishing regimen and opportunism has helped my career.  Or, to put this another way, my quixotic attempt to play the part of a successful scholar has thus far succeeded.  At the same time, it’s also been a bit tiring. A few years ago, when reading Clyde Haberman’s “David Halberstam, 73, Reporter and Author, Dies” (New York Times, 24 April 2007), I was struck by this quotation: “There’s a great quote by Julius Erving that went, ‘Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.’” Halberstam’s paraphrase of the Julius Erving quotation sums up how I feel, most days.  I feel extraordinarily lucky to have this job, to be able to work on things that interest me: I mean, how many people can say that their daily work is meaningful?  Yet, at the same time, I could use a vacation.  Erving nicely sums up this feeling in his comment about doing what you love to do even when, some days, you’d rather be doing something else.

So, yes, it’s hard.  But so is becoming a surgeon, architect, artist, teacher, lawyer, novelist, or curator.  The reason is that these are not jobs.  They’re careers.  And careers are demanding.  But they can also be rewarding.  Given the relative lack of financial remuneration of this career, the rewards are the only reasons to pursue it.

More academic advice from Nine Kinds of Pie (this site):

• How to Publish Your Book; or, The Little Manuscript That Could.  These strategies have worked for me.
• Never Say Die: A Mix for Job-Seekers.  Because you might need a little encouragement.
• Procrastigrading; or, How to Grade Efficiently.  One solution to the scourge of grading.  The problem, of course, is that it also involves actual grading.
• Fortunate Failures; or, How I Became a Scholar of Dr. Seuss.  When academe gives you lemons, make green eggs and ham.
• The Art of PowerPoint: A User’s Guide.  PowerPoint doesn’t have to suck.  Trust me.
• Mash-Up vs. Purple Crayon.  There are many paths to success.

Academic advice from Tenured Radical:

• A Chorus Line: Preparing for the Preliminary Interview
• Grand Hotel: The AHA Conference Interview Redux
• Tell Us About Your Dissertation: And Other Commonly Fumbled Interview Questions
• The Job Market Is a Lot Like the PBS News Hour, and Other Advice for Skype Interviews
• Another Year, Another Job Market: When Not Perfecting Your Tan This Summer, How Can You Prepare?

MLA’s coming up later this week.  Can you bear to read yet another advice column?  If not, then you may want to skip the following personal narrative that, yep, includes some advice (well, inasmuch as my personal example may be instructive… which it may not be).

You may ask yourself: well, how did I get here?

— Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime,” Remain in Light (1980)

Here’s how I got from Adjuncthood to Professorland: Luck, hard work, and opportunism.  Not much to say about the “luck” component, but I can say plenty about the latter two. I spent two and a half years as an adjunct before I got an MLA interview. Why? No publications.

1. Don’t Get Mad.  Get Published.

A year after I got the Ph.D., my partner won a tenure-track position at the College of Charleston. So, we moved to Charleston. Asked whether there would be any professional opportunities for her spouse (me), the Chair of the College’s English Department said “No.”  So, I began that year (fall of 1998) teaching one section of Composition to the tune of $1850 for the term (no benefits, of course), and seeking gainful employment beyond academe.  I sent out applications, went for a couple of interviews, and even did some free-lance computer consulting.  A month into the term, an adjunct flaked out, leaving the Department with three sections of Composition suddenly in need of an instructor.  The Chair offered me the full semester’s salary for each section, if I would teach all three.  With a dwindling savings account and no other opportunities, I accepted, and began shouldering the 4-4 course load that I would maintain for the next two years.  I also decided that maybe I’d stick with academia.  I had one article forthcoming in Children’s Literature, but that was it.  I quickly realized that I’d be doomed to adjuncthood unless I published.  Also, working as an adjunct made me angry — angry at the exploitation, angry at the permanent second-class-citizen status.  I decided: let’s channel this anger into an enhanced rate of production. This was my Scarlett O’Hara moment. With God as my witness, I’ll never be an adjunct again! Well, words to that effect.

Deciding to publish my way out of adjuncthood, I said “yes” to every opportunity, figuring that once I’d committed to doing something I’d simply have to follow through and do it.  Articles, book reviews, encyclopedia entries, conference papers.  I began revising the dissertation as a book manuscript, and began laying the groundwork for another project — what was then going to be a Twayne series book about Crockett Johnson (when I learned that the Twayne imprint was defunct, it developed into a double biography of Johnson and Krauss). After I presented a conference paper, I would then revise, expand, and publish.  Indeed, I’ve maintained this practice: Every conference paper I’ve presented either has been published (in expanded form) as an article or chapter, or will be published.  In the past few years, I’ve had to curtail the practice of saying “yes” to every opportunity — otherwise, I’d have imploded.  But it was a successful strategy for turning my anemic CV into a healthier one.

When I was increasing my rate of production, I decided to market myself as both a twentieth-century / contemporary Americanist (the field in which I trained) and a Children’s Lit person.  I thought that trying to compete in both categories might increase my chances of success.  It did.  I never got any interviews as an Americanist, but at the 1999 MLA, I had three interviews — my first MLA interviews ever!  Two were for children’s lit and one was for teaching with technology.

2. Better Living Through Technology

Why technology?  During my underemployed months (before I had that 4-4 load), I developed my website.  I’d launched it the year before because I thought that learning to make a website would give me a useful skill.  Also, there were no websites devoted to Crockett Johnson.  And I wanted to write a paper for a Children’s Lit conference.  These three ideas prompted me to create a Crockett Johnson Homepage, in addition to my main website.  Work on the Crockett Johnson website in turn developed into a conference paper (1999), articles (2001, 2004), a reference entry (on Ruth Krauss, 2006), and a double biography (2012).  I came to realize that having a website is useful for both self-promotion and research. The Harold for whom Johnson’s purple-crayon-wielding character is named found me through the website, and helped me contact his mother (Johnson’s sister).  Indeed, I met Julia Mickenberg (my co-editor on Tales for Little Rebels) via my website — a friend of the Crockett Johnson Homepage directed her to me.  These days, you have blogs and social networking sites, too. But, whatever sort of presence you maintain, a web presence is useful. I later found out that my website was a factor in Kansas State’s decision to hire me: the first thing I did upon arriving (on the Department’s request) was to redesign the English Department website.  Fortunately, it has since undergone a much better redesign — tho’ I & my colleague Naomi Wood continue to maintain it, albeit less regularly than we ought. (This is part of the service component of our jobs.)

3. Opportunism

In early 2000 (about the time Kansas State made me an offer), Continuum Publishing asked Mark Osteen if he’d like to write a readers guide to Don DeLillo’s Underworld.  He wasn’t up for it, and so he recommended me… which led to Continuum asking me: would I like to write this book or were there any other contemporary novels (British or American) for which I’d like to write a readers guide?  I was feeling a bit DeLillo-d out at that point — having just written a reference entry and two articles on him.  But I said sure, I could write on Underworld, and, as for contemporary novels, what about Harry Potter?  I’d recently written a reference entry on the Harry Potter phenomenon, and was about to start a children’s lit job.  So, I said, I’d be happy to write two readers guides, one on Underworld and one on Potter.  David Barker (at Continuum) said sure, Harry Potter was a good idea, but he’d prefer to have one author per book in the series: So, which would I rather write, Potter or DeLillo?  I chose Potter, which (published 2001) quickly became the best-selling volume in the Continuum Contemporaries series of Readers Guides — indeed, it paid the $3000 in permissions fees for the book that developed from my dissertation (The Avant-Garde and American Postmodernity: Small Incisive Shocks, UP Mississippi, 2002).  Choosing to write on Harry Potter wasn’t consciously opportunistic: I thought it would be fun, and I imagined that it might find an audience.  I had no idea that it would lead to so much media attention, or that it would even lead to my first invited talk, in 2003.

The two Seuss books represent a more calculated intersection between my own interests and a developing opportunism. Deciding that a book published on the 100th anniversary of Seuss’s birth might conceivably draw some media attention, I worked hard to finish the manuscript of Dr. Seuss: American Icon so that it could appear by early 2004.  (For more details on the Seuss books, please see “Fortunate Failures; or, How I Became a Scholar of Dr. Seuss” — the debut post on this very blog!)

I’ll continue this tomorrow with: the job interview itself, thoughts on dual-career hires, and links to other articles on career advice.  So, if this didn’t bore you to tears, then please tune in again, dear reader!

If you’ve not already seen Matt Rogers‘ brilliant kinetic typography video of Stephen Fry‘s critique of linguistic pedantry, then you’ll want to watch it.  And if you have already seen it, then you’ll want to watch it again.

Before my fellow teachers raise an objection to Stephen Fry’s injunction that writers be less constrained by rules, I think it important to note that Fry does acknowledge that there are times when greater formality is appropriate, even necessary.  As he puts it, “You slip into a suit for an interview, and you dress your language up, too.  You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorially when you’re at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances.”  The reason for doing so, as he says, is that “wildly original and excessively heterodox language” might, to an employer or an examiner, convey “the implication of not caring.”

Left implicit here is the related point that a writer needs to know the rules in order to break them.  Fry’s mastery of the rules is part of what makes his own bursts of heterodoxy and originality so effective.  The need to know the rules underwrites my own tendency — as a teacher — to enforce them, and sometimes to do so with perhaps greater strictness than Mr. Fry would recommend.  When I encounter a student who does know the rules well enough to break them, I do let the artful informality stand.  Indeed, one of the exams I graded last night had some rhetorical flourishes that conveyed the writer’s superior command of the rules.  Alas, many others conveyed confusion over such basics as the uses of an apostrophe.  But, in an exam situation, I’m less stringent than I am when grading a formal paper.  Time constraints prevent adequate proofreading.  So, while I may mark such an error, I’m highly unlikely to deduct points on an exam.  On a formal paper, however, these errors would certainly affect the student’s grade.

But I do love Fry’s argument for “verbal freshness,” in no small part because it embodies the principles that it advocates.  In his critique of the usage police, he asks of them, “Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it?  Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to?  Do they?  I doubt it.”  But Fry does, and more power to him.  Here’s to vibrant heterodoxy!

Not That Kind of Doctor‘s delightful post on “The Five Stages of Grading” prompts me to share my own grading method: Procrastigrading.  While the word is a portmanteau of “procrastinating” and “grading,” I do not mean “put off grading indefinitely.”  Instead, give yourself a one-week deadline for each assignment (quizzes, exams, papers, anything), and begin grading on day 6.

I adopted this method over a decade ago, while working as an adjunct professor, with a 4-4 teaching load.  Here’s why.

1. Grading devours all the time you give it.  You need to limit its diet.
2. Grading stacks of comp papers (as I was at the time) can be a soul-crushing experience.  Why spread the agony over multiple days when you can ruin a single day instead?
3. You have other important work to do.  Whether you’re a grad student or a professor (at any rank), you need to keep advancing that research agenda.  Time spent grading is time not spent publishing the articles and books that will get you (a) a job, (b) tenure, and (c) promoted.  Priorities!
4. Teaching is also important work.  Time spent grading is time not spent reading or preparing for class.
5. And thus… efficiency!  A one-week deadline & starting as close to the deadline as humanly possible means an extremely intense (and, possibly, grueling) grading experience.  But it prevents the grading monster from gobbling up too much time.  See also no. 2, above.
6. I am now at the point where I literally cannot focus on grading unless there is a metaphorical gun to my head — that metaphorical gun is the deadline.  And, unless the deadline is imminent (i.e., tomorrow), then the metaphorical gun is too far away to be really threatening.  Really.  Prior to day 6, my attention simply will not remain on the grading.
7. The week deadline is important not just because it provides a narrow window of grading but because recency in feedback better helps students to learn from their mistakes.  The longer it takes to return the work (with comments), the less pedagogically effective your comments are.  Ideally, you would turn the assignment back the next class (and I try to do this with quizzes).

True, this method does not always work perfectly.  Sometimes, it means I’m up until 2 a.m. the night before (morning before) class and then, after a few hours’ sleep, grading feverishly in the hours before class.  Sometimes, I miss my mark and end up returning the work in 9 days instead of 7 days.  But 97% of the time, I return work in 1 week or sooner.

I suspect that this method is not original to me.  And I admit that it’s an imperfect solution to the anguish of grading.  Indeed, one might argue that procrastigrading works better on the 2-3 teaching load that I now have rather than the 4-4 teaching load that I had when I started using it.  Whatever its limitations, one thing is certain: procrastigrading will help you move through those “Five Stages of Grading” much more swiftly.  You’ll skip Denial, have limited time for Anger, be too conscious of the ticking clock for much Bargaining, too busy to be Depressed, allowing you to spend most of your time on Acceptance/Resignation, a.k.a. Getting It Done.

Images from Dave Pear’s Blog and Save Pottstown!!

If you enjoy maxims or reflecting on how to sustain healthy friendships, then Timothy Billings’ translation of Matteo Ricci’s On Friendship: One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince (Columbia UP, 2009) will appeal to you.  Written in 1595, the book helped Ricci — a native of Macerata, Italy — make friends and (as Billings says in his extensive and thorough introduction) “forge meaningful cultural connections between Europe and China.”  A Christian missionary living in China, Ricci composed the book in Chinese and, within a year of the book’s composition, friends and acquaintances began printing copies, quickly — as Billings writes — “turning it into the late Ming equivalent of a best seller.”

There are many quotable passages, but here are 10 of my favorites:

1. My friend is not an other, but half of myself, and thus a second me — I must therefore regard my friend as myself.

9. A friend who gives a gift to another friend and expects something in return has made no gift at all, but is no different from a trader in the marketplace.

17. Only the person to whom one can completely divulge and express one’s heart can become the truest of true friends.

19. Proper friends do not always agree with their friends, nor do they always disagree with their friends, but rather agree with them when they are reasonable and disagree with them when they are unreasonable. Direct speech is therefore the only responsibility of friendship.

26. The stability of a friendship is both tested and revealed by the instabilities of my life.

40. If one has many intimate friends, then one has no intimate friends.

50. Friends surpass family members in one point only: it is possible for family members not to love one another. But it is not so with friends. If one member of a family does not love another, the relation of kinship still remains. But unless there is love between friends, does the essential principle of friendship exist?

62. The honorable man makes friends with difficulty; the petty man makes friends with ease. What comes together with difficulty comes apart with difficulty; what comes together with ease comes apart with ease.

88. Trying to make friends with everyone is complicated. In the end, avoiding people’s hatred is enough.

95. In ancient times, there were two men walking together, one who was extremely rich, and one who was extremely poor.  Someone commented: “Those two have become very close friends.” Hearing this, Dou-fa-de (a famous sage of antiquity) retorted: “If that is indeed so, why is it that one of them is rich and the other poor?”

Since children’s literature is a major theme of this blog, I’ll conclude by calling attention to some excellent children’s books about friendship.  You likely know Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad series (1970-1979) and James Marshall’s George and Martha series (1972-1988), and (for that matter) friendship is a major theme of children’s literature more generally — Winnie-the-Pooh, Harry Potter, and so on.  So I’ll restrict myself to a few picture books that may be slightly less well-known.

• Jon Agee, Dmitri the Astronaut (1996).  Dmitri returns from the moon, but will anyone remember him?
• Jon Agee, Terrific (2005). Sarcastic people can make friends, too.
• Tim Egan, Metropolitan Cow (1996).  An earlier blog post details the brilliance of Mr. Egan’s work; why not read it?
• Tim Egan, Roasted Peanuts (2006).  Again, yeah, that older blog post.
• Kevin Henkes, Chester’s Way (1988).  Introduces Henkes’ best-known character, Lily (later of Purple Plastic Purse fame).
• Oliver Jeffers, Lost and Found (2005).  Boy helps penguin find his way home, but where is home?
• Barbara Lehman, Rainstorm (2007).  Beautifully illustrated wordless tale of a boy in a big house who finds a key, goes exploring, and is lonely no more.
• Leo Lionni, Little Blue and Little Yellow (1959).  Lionni’s debut, created to entertain his two grandchildren, shows that all you need for a great picture book are: torn circles of colored paper, a keen sense of design, and a story to tell.
• Leo Lionni, A Busy Year (1992). Friendship between two mice and a tree.
• Chris Raschka, Yo! Yes? (1993).  Brilliantly told with minimal words and emotionally expressive pictures, two boys become friends.
• Natalie Russell, Moon Rabbit (2009). In which Little Rabbit meets Brown Rabbit.
• William Steig, Amos & Boris (1971).  Amos helps Boris; Boris helps Amos.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of picture books about friendship.  But, to me, the books on this list are not only about friendship but have come to feel like friends themselves.

Inspired by a tweet and then a blog post from Natalia Cecire, this mix is intended for those of you on the academic job-market — but I hope it provides some encouragement for anyone out there looking for work.

1) Respect ARETHA FRANKLIN (1967)

If this isn’t the greatest cover song of all time, I don’t know what is.  (Otis Redding wrote it, and recorded it first.)  Appears on the Queen of Soul’s Atlantic Records debut, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, and on many compilations, including Aretha Franklin: 30 Greatest Hits.

2) Look At Me (I’m a Winner)! THE AQUABATS (2005)

“…you just can’t argue with that!”  From Charge!!

3) Movin’ On Up (theme to The Jeffersons) JA’NET DuBOIS & OREN WATERS (1975)

“…to a deluxe apartment in the sky!”

4) All Star SMASH MOUTH (1999)

In which the band proves that it would not be a one-hit wonder. From Astro Lounge.

5) Shining Star EARTH, WIND, & FIRE (1975)

“You’re a shining star / no matter who you are / Shining bright to see / what you can truly be.”  From the album That’s the Way of the World.

6) Where You Come From THE MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES (2000)

“… it’s more where you’re going, and knowing that the going might get strange.”  From Pay Attention, the group’s penultimate album (excluding the 2007 collection of odds & ends)

7) Plea from a Cat Named Virtue THE WEAKERTHANS (2003)

Is there a better song written from the point of view of a cat?  From Reconstruction Site.

8) Electrolux BICYCLE (1999)

“Suck it up, enhance production.”  This was on my job-seeking mix, back in 1999.  The mix — a cassette! — was titled Enhance Production.  To the best of my knowledge, Bicycle only released this self-titled debut album.

9) It’s Alright, Baby KOMEDA (1998)

“From patience and from pain, / The one who never ends will gain.”  Appears on What Makes It Go? (1998) and the Gilmore Girls soundtrack.

10) Finest Worksong (Mutual Drum Horn Mix) R.E.M. (1987)

“The time to rise has been engaged. / You’re better, best to rearrange.”  This version from Eponymous (1988), the IRS Records hits collection.  First appears on Document (1987).

11) Worker’s Song DROPKICK MURPHYS (2003)

“This one’s for the workers!”  From Blackout.

12) I Believe I Can Fly ME FIRST AND THE GIMME GIMMES (2003)

From Take a Break, the band‘s album of R&B covers.

13) Verb: That’s What’s Happening ZACHARY SANDERS (1974)

From Schoolhouse Rock, and (in the accompanying animated cartoon) featuring an African-American superhero, too!

14) You Can Make a Difference If You Try, Try, Try THE HAPPIEST GUYS IN THE WORLD (2002)

From the compilation Greasy Kid Stuff: Songs from Inside the Radio.

15) Don’t Give Up THE NOISETTES (2007)

From the album What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?

16) Participation Prerequisite DJ FORMAT featuring ABDOMINAL (2005)

From one of the best hip-hop records of the Naughties, If You Can’t Join ‘Em… Beat ‘Em!

17) Float On MODEST MOUSE (2004)

“Don’t worry if things get a little bit heavy / We’ll all float on alright.”  From Good News for People Who Love Bad News.

18) Pressure Drop SPECIALS (1996)

A cover of Toots and the Maytals‘ 1970 classic.  Appears on Today’s Specials.

19) I Should Be Allowed to Think THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS (1994)

Launching the song with a line from Allen Ginsberg‘s “Howl” (1956), TMBG lets us know that they should be allowed to glue their poster, to shoot their mouths off, and to blurt the merest idea.  The song first appears on John Henry (1994), and again on Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants (1999).

20) Hurt Feelings FIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS (2009).

“Some people say that rappers are invincible.  We’re vincible.”

21) Someone Who’s Cool ODDS (1996)

“I’m the the coffee, not the sleep.”  From Nest.

22) I’m Not Down THE CLASH (1979)

From London Calling, which is one of my Desert Island Discs.

23) Pick Yourself Up FRED ASTAIRE (1936)

Astaire sings and dances to this in Swing Time (1936), the sixth of ten films he made with Ginger Rogers.  Here they are, watched by the reliably funny Eric Blore:

24) Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (Again) WILCO (1999)

From Summer Teeth.

25) Never Say Die / When You’re Young THE BOUNCING SOULS (2009)

If I had three words of advice for anyone entering academia, those three words would be “Never say die.”  Seriously.  I know it sounds like a team cheer, but it’s true.  Gotta keep on fighting.