Clearmind7

Unless you've undergone a tt job search, you have no idea how brutal and soul-crushing it is. Period. The senior members of this forum have made some really great arguments that I can only echo here; namely, you cannot possibly understand what it's like to work for five (or ten) years to achieve a goal, and then to find out that the attainment of that goal could leave you without any realistic possibility of gainful employment. And I say this as someone who has a pretty fantastic tt position starting in the fall. A month ago, I had applied to thirty academic jobs, forty or fifty non-academic jobs, and I was starting to think that I was going to be a SAHM for the rest of my life. Some facts--My program (social science field, closely related to English) has been #1 or #2 for the past seven years, I have a good publication record, tons of conference presentations, great teaching experience, plenty of relevant real-world, relevant job experience, and I've worked outside academia (by choice, I wanted to keep my resume current) each summer of grad school. However, of the 40-50 non-ac apps, I got two phone calls. If I had gotten one of those jobs, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. I would have missed out on the tt-job, of course, but by February, I was desperate. Even though I had much more luck on the academic market--lots of phone interviews, several campus interviews, the endless rejections started to crush my spirits. I ended up getting lucky--that's it. Pure and simple luck. I say that because my cohort members all have similar stats to mine, and some of them are rock stars. Of around 20 of us on the job market (in different sub-disciplines), 2 of us have jobs for next year. No one else has had any luck landing a tt job, or any job, for that matter. These are brilliant people who work incredibly hard. If I didn't see it happen with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed that the market is truly THIS bad--inside and outside of academia. And people generally think that there are many more employment opportunities in my field than there are in English. I like academia. I really like teaching. But if I had to do this all over again, I would have stayed far away from grad school. I honestly believe that the Ph.D. was a major hindrance in my non-academic job search. I had applied to similar positions before grad school, on the strength of my work record alone, and I had MUCH more interest from the types of organizations that others have referred to--nonprofits, museums, industry, publishing. No one wanted to hire my Ph.D. self, probably because I have spent that last five years preparing for a career in academia, despite my best efforts to diversify my CV. I used to frequent the forums five years back, when I was applying to programs. I actually came on today to see if there were any pearls of wisdom I could pass on to my brother-in-law, who is thinking about applying to English Ph.Ds next year. His thoughts echo many of these posts--I'm aware of the realities, I plan on keeping my options open, etc. I will send this thread to him in the hope that he might listen to other voices--both similar to and different from mine.