And if it does you'll hear the cries and know the meaning of black butter

[austin_dern]

Community colleges can go stuff themselves.

Maybe that needs a little unpacking. No, strike that, it doesn't. I appreciate the college in Connecticut at least sending out a mass e-mail to everyone rejected so our applications don't just vanish into the night, but, hey, every community college everywhere: I can teach any mathematics, computer science, or physics course you offer or are planning to offer at least as well as anyone you are currently employing or plan to employ. I've done it, and I can put you in touch with students who still like to say hi five years after the fact. I'm doing my part: I'm applying to you and I'm jumping through the many, many, many hoops on your crummily designed web forms to apply for any kind of overworked underpaid job that gets me back to working somewhere with a .edu e-mail address. You're the ones making the mistake and I'm tired of covering for you.

By the way, you regular colleges and universities: I can teach almost any mathematics, computer science, or physics course you offer or are planning to offer at least as well as almost anyone you currently employ or plan to employ. So don't think you're off the hook for this either. It's at least as much your fault too.

Trivia: When Rutgers College introduced the ``Latin-Scientific Course'' in September 1901 the only differences between it and the classical program were that Greek was no longer required for undergraduate admission, that French and physics took the place of Greek in the first two years of study, and that the degree awarded was a Bachelor of Letters rather than a Bachelor of Arts. Source: Rutgers: A Bicentennial History, Richard P McCormick.

Currently Reading: The Darkest Jungle: The True Story Of The Darien Expedition And America's Ill-Fated Race To Connect The Seas, Todd Balf. The Darien fiasco of 1854, not the earlier or later ones.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, dear. I hope some of my advice will be helpful.

As a side note, I am shocked they sent a rejection letter. I don't always get rejection letters even from tenure-track jobs that I've actually gone so far as to interview for, let alone community college jobs. That seems like an unusual level of courtesy by academic standards.

[yellow3.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I've been sending stuff into the void where they put listings up for years and "will keep you on file if we're ever thinking about hiring".

I keep thinking I need to look into more reliable work (like maybe something that involves paper hats) until I wake up from dreams of explaining where the shared center of gravitation of the Moon and Earth is to students, or meeting old frends at GSA. . .

I always figured education was one thing people always needed, even if only to get their papers stamped with a B.A. so they could be secretaries or whatever. Apparently my worldview is still living in the 1990s.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'd never taken literally the claim that they keep anyone on file, but when I do see jobs I'm right for posted year after year I take it personally.

What gets me is mathematics is supposed to be one of those fields where they always need warm bodies at least because every school has mathematics requirements. How do I not qualify for teaching mathematics?

[yellow3.livejournal.com]

How do I not qualify for teaching mathematics?

I dunno. I applied months ago to a position in San Francisco that, according to my advisor's reading of their posting, I was picture perfect for (you can probably guess how that's gone). All I can figure is that every place has got to be on a goddamn hiring freeze because the California state budget is produced by a million typing monkeys on Pixie Stix even when the economy is good, never mind when it's totally shot world-wide.

To be honest, I don't really know what's left for options these days. I'm not suited to be a researcher, a Ph.D., or anything else vaguely science-related besides teaching, but that's all I've got training in. That was apparently a bright move on my part.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's just time to do what I'd joked with bunny_hugger about a while ago, and give up on other schools and start our own. It can't make any kind of sense but is anything else going to?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I get rejection letters ... oh, I suppose about a third of the time. Although I found today that one of the jobs I applied for earlier this year --- where I had a friend in the department guiding me to write the cover letter perfectly for their needs --- has not only interviewed but offered and gotten acceptance from someone else. And no word from the department officially at all, of course. And they're a prestigious private university.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I sympathize. And agree. Would that I had any power to help smack these colleges upside the head for you.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[oliver-otter.livejournal.com]

Maybe you need to stress that you can teach any of those courses passably well, but certainly not as well as their tenured faculty, and pose no threat to their jobs or promotion schedules. :-/

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I need to emphasize, but this spring's policy of going through their course catalogues and showing exactly which courses I have taught that are analogues to the ones they offer not only failed completely but left me feeling worse because I put so must blasted time into the cover letters going through all these just-about-interchangeable schedules. If I feign enough interest in Pompous Lakes Community College to figure out the Mathematics and Miscellaneous Science course load they can at least feign considering me.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

Job market is bad, everywhere. The last time I attempted to enter on a professional level I wanted to cry over the lack of responses or blanket rejections for those jobs I felt especially and uniquely (and damned) qualified for. Many of the jobs turned out to be "mandatory postings" to satisfy tenure requirements or union statutes when they had already picked someone from within anyway.

Keep at 'em. Find people inside to get you heard :o)

...you know all this, but I figured I'd say it anyway.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I suppose some of these might be mandatory listings for posts that are already pre-filled, but I know of at least one that was not just wide-open but that they were worried might fail to draw qualified applicants and that, of course, I didn't even get an interview for.