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February 26, 2007

nothing distracts like the frustration of being a very slow learner

Posted by dogpossum on February 26, 2007 4:18 PM in the category academia

I gots the email monkey. Each time the little red bubble thing pops up to let me know I have a new email I have to rush and check. If it's come to my 'official' email address (ie not one that has anything to genetic engineering gone totally wacked) my heart rate jumps.

I'm waiting word on a postdoc I applied for that is 'totally me'. In fact, so me it's like they wrote the application with me in mind. The Squeeze said I should just have sent them my thesis with a short note: "I hear you have a position for me?".
All this 'it's just so perfect for you!' talk (which seems to have spread all over the continent - friends in Canberra, Perth, Brisbane and Tasmania have commented - the Ps are still being Proud Ps and blabbing my academic achievements to the world) only adds to the pressure. It's entirely likely that I didn't write a terribly great application letter, that my CV was crap and my discussion of my current research interests was dodgy. I don't have enough experience with academic job applications to know what I'm supposed to do. And I'm not very good at being really serious and formal. It doesn't help that this is a postdoc with a very flash American university. Pressure? What pressure?

Applications had to be in by the 13th February.

Finalists will be determined, appropriate visits to campus arranged, and a candidate selected by March, 2007.

So we're looking at about two weeks til I hear, right?

God, this is killing me. I don't really feel like I have a chance (though I look ok on paper, even though I don't have millions of publications - I have about 5 waiting for paper incarnations but who cares about them when the chips are down?). But I'd really like the job - it's a job where they want someone like this:

...a scholar in dance history/theory who examines dance forms as cultural practice with relationship to any of the following: international cultural exchange, globalization and globalizing practice, national and/or nationalist formations of embodied identities and cultures, and/or transnational and diasporic practice. We are open to the following geopolitical areas of specialization: Latin America (including the Caribbean, Central and South America), the African Subcontinent, the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia.

See what I mean? Even the area of geopolitical specialisation applies, as I'm big on African vernacular dance history. It really is like they thought 'hm, we want this girl. How can we get her?' That, of course, makes it even worse. I really don't feel positive about this application, but then, it is a perfect match. But did I communicate just how perfect? I mean, you have to be pretty crap to screw up a job application for which you are perfect, don't you? I know it's not helpful to think like that, but with the dentist thing dealt with and the thesis over, I need something on which to focus my irrational fears. Can't undo all those years of tertiary programing education just like that, can we?

And it's not like there are many of us thinking about dance as cultural practice, with an interest in dance history/theory (again, I'm both). And who's talking about international cultural exchange? God, it's like they read that paper on lindy exchanges and camps as un/national networks. Globalization? Well, more like localised globalisation, but what's one letter? Embodied identities? Embodied cultures? National or Nationalised formations of said identities? Diaspora? Baby, I got your diaspora right here.

It's scary. And so I can't stop checking my email. This is one application I haven't just forgotten about. It's bothering me. And no amount of work or music-listening or sewing (three dresses in a weekend, folks - one house dress, two wearing-to-a-wedding options, only a couple of hems and one set of buttons to finish) can distract me.

I think I need some Big Apple time. Nothing distracts like the frustration of being a very slow learner.

Posted by dogpossum on February 26, 2007 4:18 PM in the category academia