I'm sooooo tired. D. and I had a crazy weekend of flying across the country and back in three days so that we could be back in Grad School City for a family function. I'm really glad we went -- it clearly meant a lot to D's mom -- but we're completely wiped out now.
I was unexpectedly emotional during the visit to Grad School City, some (perhaps the majority) of which was hormonal but some of which was having a sudden realization that the last time I lived there, I was six years younger, twenty pounds lighter, and had hopes for a bright academic future. I actually teared up more than once on the drive from the airport to D's mom's house. Fortunately, D's mom arrived home just moments after we did, having picked up wonderful food from our favorite Thai place, and so my moodiness dissipated in a happy blur of spicy noodles and garlic scallops and mango with sticky rice.
By the time we left on Sunday morning, the hormones were waning and my mood was much lighter, despite not enough hours of sleep and too much wine the night before. And then I fortuitously eavesdropped on such an interesting conversation on the airport shuttle! Two academics -- who obviously only kind of knew each other, or at least who hadn't kept up with each other -- were talking about their careers, and I overheard a bit about the career trajectory of one of them. He is working at a humanities institute somewhere, in what sounded perhaps like an administrative rather than faculty position; he said that he'd been immersed in grant-writing all year, when suddenly he wound up with a book contract. He had eighteen months to get the book to the press but couldn't get any time off from work, so he wrote in evenings and on weekends for the year and a half and got the book done. He's an Americanist -- sounded like he had a history background, but maybe it was literature -- and is now planning on a second book that builds on his scholarly training but is directed at a popular readership, which is apparently what his first book did as well. The press that published his first book has a first option on his second book, and he actually has two different ideas for a next book (both of which sounded interesting!). So all of that was a lot of food for thought on the long plane ride home.
In honor of my eavesdropping, I decided to start a new blog category, "Career Exploration," which is a better name than "Job Market" for the kind of thinking and chatting with folks and, well, exploring that I've been doing for the last few months.
No wonder you're exhausted! But excellent eavesdropping.
Posted by: Tiruncula | March 14, 2007 at 05:45 AM