The problem lies in the adjunct-ification of academia. Instead of Tenure Track lines universities are relying more and more on lecturers and TA's. You just have to know what you're getting into, precisely how competitive your field is. You've got to get into the best program possible, kick ass and be OPEN geographically. For fields like Classics and Egyptology... forget it. English can be bad, but it's not that bad if you come from a decent program and are willing to move around. I know that the placement rate at UCLA for English was 60%. Of those that don't get jobs, the vast majority "fail" b/c they refuse to leave SoCal. (Can't say I blame them.) A PhD from a 3rd tier school in a competitive field is worthless. A friend of mine sat on a search committee for a top tier research university, an open search. Thee best candidate was a PhD from a 3rd tier school (Florida State, iirc). Didn't. Get. An interview at the national convention!!! No way were they going to hire somebody for their top 3 program w/ degrees from mediocre schools. Harsh.
All of these are good points. You simply can't get a PhD at a school like Florida State if you want to get a job more than 50 miles away from it at a small college. And you're absolutely right that there's an assumption of mobility, of being able to pick your life up and move places for one to four year periods in academia that doesn't go away, from grad school, to diss research, to postdoc fellowships, to jobs, to residential institutes, to research for second and third books. If you want to live in a particular part of the country, your chances of being able to control that and still be successful are extremely limited. There's an article online called "Historians and the Mobility Question" by Barbara Weinstein, president of the AHA, trying to bring this assumption into the open. It's worth reading for anyone thinking of grad school. Even a degree from a top school with a very relevant dissertation is no guarantee of even getting interviews for a job you're qualified for. I have a friend who's a Berkeley PhD whose dissertation is very relevant to current debates about the border (and is a very good diss). She got one AHA interview, nothing on campus. There is simply no logic to the academic job market. It may take 3 to 4 years after your defense to find a job. And some search committees feel that they can treat their candidates, even the one's they're impressed with, like shit. Chicago ran a history search this year where they asked all the junior candidates to write five page essays on the state of the field prior to their AHA interviews. Completely insulting, something you might ask 3rd year grad students to do for their comps. And then they brought only tenured candidates to campus. And I say this as someone who's done very well this year on the market.
Which is why you're in Dallas? Where are you teaching these days? Obviously law profession considerations are vastly different.................
I'm not teaching this year. Postdoc. A year to write, which is amazing. I was pretty burned out after 2 years of teaching 3-3 while finishing the diss. I'll know as of Tuesday where I'll be next year. I have one official offer and one unofficial offer that hopefully becomes official next week once the department meets. That will be my fifth move in five years. Ann Arbor -> upstate NY -> Brooklyn -> Dallas -> ? But this one's going to finally be tenure track. That kind of moving around can be exciting when you're in your 20s, in your 30s, it's just expensive. From seeing my friends who are lawyers at top firms, I think you have more control over where you live, but far less control over your time. Once you're in a firm, though, I imagine you can be asked to move without much control.
Well, hope you're moving somewhere nice. Dallas? Yuck. You were doing so well in your progression, too, until that one slip up. Although I suppose the "further from Ann Arbor" trend is a definite positive. What was your dissertation about, by the way? No, lawyers are very rarely asked to move. Its not cost efficient. Occasionally senior people will be asked to move to another office and work there for a bit before becoming partner, but that's a different issue. Its the demand on your time that's the real big one................
Dallas isn't as bad as I thought. It's not say, Houston or Tampa. There's a decent art and music scene and you certainly get a lot more space for your money than in Brooklyn. My wife and I manage to live with one car. The repeated gorgeous days in March are pretty nice, too. July will likely be another story. I do definitely have a "I'm only here for a year, so make the best of it" attitude, I wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life here. I don't want to jinx it, but let's just say that if the offer that's supposed to come through next week actually comes through, it will be an improvement that makes Dallas look like an aberation in the above trend. It's an environmental history of metropolitan growth in the Southwest (mainly Phoenix) and coal mine and power plant development on the Navajo Reservation in the years following world war II. It's arguing that in particular the metropolitan southwest doesn't exist without resources located on Indian land and that in general suburban consumption of electricity created new demands for energy that were mostly supplied from the landscapes of people with little economic and political power. There, that's the biggest challenge in academia. Reducing something you spent multiple years and hundreds of pages on down to two sentences.
Hey, good for you! I was afraid you were going to say something like "Ann Arbor" Are you at Columbia or NYU? Cause if its either, I'm going to audit one of your classes to hit on the chicks. I don't have to read your dissertation though, do I? Its not exactly in my field of study! My undergrad thesis was about a work (barely discoverable and never translated) by Rostoftzeff, how it influenced his later work and how it was a parable for the socio-political climate of Russia at the time.
Blah this probably has nothing to do with this but here goes. I am Civil Engineering about to be a junior. I'm not in the honors program but should finish up with pretty decent grades (3.8 + if things go ok). Will not being in an honors program badly affect my chances of getting into a top 5 grad school for my major? Berekely, UT, Illinois, etc?