Advice

The following NPR story starts with an anecdote about Kepler. Apparently, he was trying to find himself a wife, and he had 11 candidates, but he was too thorough in interviewing them (read: slow!), and they all got impatient and rejected him. Damn. Turns out, if you have limited options, the best strategy for a good match (though maybe not the best match) is to interview 1/e (~36.8%) of your candidates without offering the “job” to any of them.

Or: Gearing up for the job market; thank God it’s not me this time.

Hey friends!  Now that I’ve been on the market once, I’m qualified to give you advice.  Here’s the first part in an n-part series.

Your materials!  They’re how you let the job market know who you are and what you have to offer.  But you knew that already.  My first piece of advice is get a working draft of your teaching and research statements by the end of next week.  Why?  Because they’re hard to write, and it only gets harder once the semester starts.  Once you have a draft, you’ve done the hard work of thinking about your teaching and research, and you can relax and edit those puppies while grading stacks of exams.