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''I Know I'm Unlovable'' : Desperation, Dislocation, Despair, and Discourse on the Academic Job Hunt
Andrew F. Herrmann Qualitative Inquiry 2012 18: 247 DOI: 10.1177/1077800411431561 The online version of this article can be found at: http://qix.sagepub.com/content/18/3/247

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11431561Qualitative InquiryHerrmann The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

QIX18310.1177/10778004

I Know Im Unlovable: Desperation, Dislocation, Despair, and Discourse on the Academic Job Hunt
Andrew F. Herrmann1

Qualitative Inquiry 18(3) 247255 The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1077800411431561 http://qix.sagepub.com

Abstract Failure, according to the academic canonical narrative, is anything other than a tenure-track professorship. The academic job hunt is fraught with unknowns: a time of fear, hope, and despair. This personal narrative follows the authors threeyear journey from doctoral candidate, to visiting assistant professor, to the unemployment line. Using a layered account and through a Foucauldian lens the author examines the academic success narrative, delving into the emotional bipolarity during the job search, and the use technologies of the self. It concludes with a reexamination of academic discourses and the canonical narrative of academic success as well as an appeal to continue to do good work. Keywords discourse, Foucault, narrative, academic identity, unemployment

I know I'm unlovable You don't have to tell me Oh, message received Loud and clear Loud and clear I don't have much in my life But take itit's yours The Smiths, Unlovable, 1986

Ive never seen you so focused. That was one of the best presentations you have ever given, said one of my thesis advisors, after the presentation. That was a turning point. On the flight home I devise my own slogan: When the going gets tough, the tough present. It can never get worse than the past few months. I WAS WRONG. ****

****

October 2004
Im going to quit my doctoral program. This sucks. Ive got nothing left. Ive lost my fianc. Four hurricanes hit the state and my car is currently crushed underneath a tree. My new laptop is fried. Im exhausted. I want to go home. I can get a job and forget this dream turned nightmare. Im supposed to present at the Organizational Communication Mini-Conference in Saint Louis this weekend, but Im not going. Ive got to deal with the insurance company. If I go to St. Louis I might not come back. I heard about whats happened, my department chair says to me in the hallway. Like Garp, youve been predisastered. After we chuckle, he asks, When is your flight? Tomorrow. I dont tell him Im thinking about not going, or going and not coming back. I go. I present.

Failure, says academic culture, is anything other than achieving the ultimate goal of a tenure-track professorship. More specifically, the epitome of success is a tenure-track job at a major research university. You're still successful, albeit to a lesser degree, if that job is at a liberal-arts college, and even less so if it's at a community college. But a nonacademic career, well, that's just unacceptable (Kajitani & Bryant, 2005, p. 3).

East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, USA

Corresponding Author: Andrew F. Herrmann, Department of Communication, East Tennessee State University, ETSU Box 70667, Johnson City, TN 37614, USA Email: herrmanna@etsu.edu

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248 This, the canonical narrative of academe, carries with it horrifying consequences, as it invokes Foucauldian power as applied by the self on the self (Foucault, 1986). According to Foucault, to study power and the individual, one must examine techniques of both domination and the self. Foucaults opus indicates the importance of, and interrelationships between, power and knowledge. For Foucault power is relational. It does not reside in a particular person or institution, but lies instead in discourses, practices, and performances of everyday life. Power is everywhere in social relations, and it is exercised at all levels through various discourses and multiple performances (Herrmann, 2011a). Our profession was once constructed as a vocation or calling similar to that of the artist or the clergy (Hartnett & Kline, 2005, p. 10). The discourse of the academic vocation was one of a higher calling, a fulfillment with spiritual overtones. Vocation does not come from a voice out there calling me to be something Im not. It comes from a voice in here calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given to me by God (Parker, 2000, p. 10). The professorate was a call to serve. Academic discourse no longer terms what we do a call. The discourse of our work as a calling is rarely expressed today. Even if we feel the vocational calling on our lives, it is the reality of the socially constructed academic capitalist discourse and narrative young academics face. Our academic vocation is constructed asand surrounded bythe discourses of career. Not a calling; a career (Herrmann, 2009, p. 17). We learn becoming an academic is like entering any corporation. Academia is not a value sphere but an industry, and academics are proprietors of microenterprises that struggle for competitive advantage in a brutal and unforgiving market (Oaks, 2003, p. 601). Those who possess meaningful power in the academy allowed managerialism to creep in. These academic capitalist discourses regarding productivity, assessment, and administrative authority are implicit in the pursuit of prestige by higher education institutions. We allow ourselves to be labeled knowledge entrepreneurs rather than researchers, information delivery systems for students rather than teachers, publishing machines rather than writers (Herrmann, 2009, p. 21). Through this self-disciplining, our love of what we do can turn back upon our self, as we look at the canonical narrative and see how we fall short.

Qualitative Inquiry 18(3) academia. While I was working through my thesis I told one of my committee members, I feel I was born to do this. She replied, You were. The choice I made did not happen overnight, nor was it easy. I was slowly being socialized into a new profession and a new social world. Over time I realized it was the right choice for me, even if it meant leaving my stable job, my family, and my friends behind, as I moved to Florida to pursue my doctorate. I believed these changes were the ones I could draw upon, when I faced the challenges for my eventual move to a fulltime faculty position. As I read the scholarly literature on new faculty, I wonder whether I will be prepared for the challenges. Ive been smart and lucky so far. I remain uneasy about my future. Outside of class, my peers and I continue to discuss what is required to be a successful academic. **** We are like three bulimics staring at a chocolate cake! I say, looking at our drafts. We laugh, but give each other tense glances. Weve heard the horror stories. We know the struggles PhDs are having getting positions, and how they have to settle for adjunct positions and one-year renewables they never escape from. We are scared. Thats why you are attempting to distance yourself from autoethnography, isnt it? Jamie asks. Part of it, I say. Even my advisor said that would probably be a good idea, and he does lots of narrative work. Even if AE is one of the methods I use to do my dissertation research, it is not the method I should necessarily stress when I hit the market. To say you are an autoethnographerwell, you might take your life in your hands. I heard the same thing about a week ago, Pete adds. It is all about positioning oneself for the marketplace. You can say you are an ethnographer or you do grounded research, or you collect culturally relevant narratives in interviews. That is true. I dont want to be seen as an autoethnographer. Ive done it, but you know at heart I am an organizational communication scholar, and those two dont jive well. Theres another reason I am not satisfied with personal narrative research and autoethnography. I feel like Ive written myself into my work, but have written everyone else out. How many publications do you have, anyway? I ask Pete. One published, one in press, and three in revise and resubmit. You? Two published, one in press. What about you Jamie? One published and two in revise and resubmit. We better keep this up or well be adjuncting at ShittyU and declaring bankruptcy, I say. No one laughs. ****

October 2006: Becoming Academics

I began asking myself what it might be like to be an assistant professor when I began my MA program at Saint Louis University in 2002. It was then I first imagined making a career change from the unstable yet relatively lucrative information technology profession into the world of

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Herrmann Through discourses that surround academia, the idea and ideal of what constitutes a successful academic is constructed and becomes the standard against which we are judged, fixed (as through psychoanalysis), and/or excluded. It is the standard by which we judge ourselves. Foucault (1982) said his goal was to create a history of the different modes by which in our culture human beings are made subjects (p. 208). Human beings are made subjectsor socially constructed through various disciplinary discourses. For example, an individual may be constituted and see him or herself as a sinner or a saint through religious discourses. Through the discourses of science, and the means by which humans began to be studiedthrough surveillance, measurement, and documentationthe individual is constructed in a particular way, and in fact, becomes a subject. Discourses act powerfully on human subjects (Herrmann, 2011b). Individuals on the academic job market continually discipline themselves to become better applicants, better potential academics, while at the same time emotionally abusing themselves about whether they are smart enough, good enough, worthy enough to be academics.

249 socially constructs subjects, reality, objects, and rituals of truth. How is it possible that there is no more room for a generalist in our discipline, someone who is interested in interpersonal, organizational, computer-mediated, and communication theory all at the same time? How do I sell myself? How did I become a product instead of a person? What am I as product?

November 2007
This NCA is unbelievable. Ive participated in 11 unofficial conversation about jobs, with various departments. Ive been to all the parties selling my wares. People are interested. I got a call from Cecile saying the department where she got her MA wants to meet me in the bar and to talk to me since they have an organizational communication position open. All this activity, even though I am ABD. This is a great sign. Ill have PhD in hand next summer, but a job before that. This is absolutely amazing. Damn! I am a hot property. Theres no way I wont be employed come next August. No way.

March 2007: Another Conversation

Teaching. Service. None of that shit really matters when you are on the job market, one of the faculty says, as I sit in his office sipping coffee. Only three things matter. Your pedigree, recommendations, and publications. My pedigree kicks ass, I reply. This department ranks high on the NCA doctoral departments survey. Thats part of pedigree. Yes. So it is. Pedigree counts. Publications count more. Letters of recommendation count most. Dont let anyone tell you different. We talk a great game about teaching and pedagogy, but it comes down to those three things once you hit the market. The rest is nice, but not necessary. You must market yourself properly. Are you an organizational scholar? Are you an autoethnographer? Are you a personal narrative writer or do you study organizational narratives? Those lines are not as clear-cut as we make them out to be. True, but we arent talking about what you do or who you are. We are talking about the criteria by which you sell yourself. **** Foucault endeavored to show how the modern sovereign state and the modern autonomous individual codetermine each others emergence. Discipline, therefore, is not simply imposed from the outside, nor is it always complete. If it were there would be no place for reflexivity. For Foucault (1980), power is not necessarily negative, but productive. It

March 2008: Closing Doors

The letter reads: The screening committee has completed the recommendation process for candidates for the Assistant Professor position. Your credentials were carefully reviewed, and the search committee has forwarded its recommendations. Blah. Blah. Blah. Shortly Ill have this engraved on my heart. **** All this work and Ive gotten only one on-campus interview. Try not to think about it. Try not to think about it. Write your dissertation. Write your dissertation. Write your dissertation. Get it done. Get finished. Be PhD in hand. I feel good about the one interview though. They liked me. They praised my teaching presentation. The interaction with the students in the class went well. They like my research. So I still feel good about it. Then I get that call. **** I understand. Thank you for considering me for the position, I said as I hung up. You handled that very well, my girlfriend said, sitting in my on-campus office with me. Well, what was I going to say? Thanks for letting me hang out in the cold for months while you made up your mind. And by the way, Go fuck yourself. I would have.

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250 Well its these damnable ABDs who say they will finish when they get hired and dont. **** They said it was because Im ABD, I tell the Chair of my graduate department. They struggled with an ABD they recently hired who said she was going to finish within six months of her hire. Turns out it took her over 18 months. I guess for them taking the safer and more conservative route was to hire a new assistant professor with PhD in hand makes sense. I dont like it, but it makes sense. I dont understand that mentality. They can look at your CV and have conversations with us, and they have to know that you are a finisher. You start, and you finish what you start. **** I reassured them again and again that you were going to get finished, my advisor tells me. In fact, I told them it was basically impossible at this point for you not to be done. I guess its a matter of fool me once, fool me twice. Im afraid its getting to the point where ABDs have less and less opportunity to get positions. The problem is people like you who will get done are painted with the same broad brush as the ones who say they will get done, but dont.

Qualitative Inquiry 18(3) You dont have enough publications. Really? I asked dumbfounded. Thanks for letting me know. I call bullshit. How many grad students have six singleauthored publications in peer-reviewed journals? Ive published articles in Communication Theory, Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and Qualitative Inquiry. Not lightweight journals. Dont lie to my face like that. **** They told me, my mentor tells me, that you appear to them as more of a communication theorist than an organizational communication scholar. And yet everyone keeps telling us that theory, research, and practice go hand in hand.

An E-mail
Congratulations on being done. I do feel for you that the job search did not turn out successfully this year. I'm also quite happy that you aren't giving up on the academy. I'm sure the search will go much better next year. There appears to be a good chance that we will be advertising for multiple positions, with at least one in organizational communication, so I'm hoping you'll apply again. I think I remember telling you that you were right up at the top of our candidates this year (top 8 out of 70+), but we decided to take care of our need in rhetoric. Org com will be next year for sure. **** The ambiguity of the academic employment process encourages applicants to use the technologies of the self to choose type of academic person they will become. It allows them to ascertain and implement for themselves where and when to care for the self (Foucault, 1986) and how much to use the technologies of the self to discipline the self in order to become who they want to be. Despite the calls to expand the requirements for academic appointments to include mentoring, service, community involvement, and teaching excellence, applicants recognize the canonical academic narrative that says publishingand therefore researchremains the prime barometer for tenure and promotion. Simultaneously, applicants fear the slow publication process (Bochner, 2008). The demands of academe defined in this manner lead applicants to discipline the self; disciplinary power focused on writing, publishing, and research. Individuals have the ability through these technologies of the self to reflect upon, shape, govern, and be responsible for their selves within these discourses and resources of power, to transfigure themselves to achieve

April 2008: Excuses, Excuses

The truth is, we know that you enjoy teaching and that you could surely teach classes here. But we also know that you are a researcher, and therefore, the fear is that you would leave after two years, and we would have to start this process all over again. I understand that. But like Ive told you, I will research and write no matter where I am. It is, after all, what I do. I know that. You know that. The rest of the committee is not easily convinced. After all, all they have to go by is your application. They dont know you like I do. I know it stinks. Yeah, but at least you are being honest with me. **** I received personalized letters from some of the search committee chairs I know, along with the standard rejection letters. Thats nice of them. Still it drags on my soul. I am staring at the future with no job. Nietzsches void stares back at me. What the hell happened? ****

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Herrmann a definite condition of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality (Foucault, 1994, p. 225). In other words, we reflect upon ourselves and ask, What type of academic do I want to be? What must I do to become the academic I want to be? This disciplining of the self is enterprising, a continual project of self-construction and creation that can be extrapolated to explain how applicants draw meaning from the ambiguity of hiring processes. Ive constructed my academic self for the market, as I am supposed to, but I am being deconstructed from the outside.

251

July 2008: Life off the Tenure Track

Wed like to offer you the Visiting Assistant Professors position, the man on the other side of the phone says. Are you interested? Hell yes! Hell yes! Hell yes! I yell inside my head, HELL YES!! Absolutely, I say. Great . . . blah blah blah contract, send it back . . . moving, classes, blah blah blah. I feel like Charlie Brown listening to his teacher. We hang up. **** I start shaking all over. Trembling. I fall to my knees, tears streaming down my face. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. I have a job.

June 2008: A Doctor With No Job

Well, I am now a Doctor. Here at the end of my four-year journey, I am suspending my prospective academic narrative temporarily, although in July I begin the process of applying for positions anew. That is not something I am looking forward to doing again, though it will be easier, as I wont be stymied with ABD status. I dont want to write. I dont want to research. I want to hide under the covers of my bed. I have no incentive. I have no prospective narrative. As Herrmann (2007) wrote, My future is translucent and indiscernibleand therefore, so is my whole narrativepast, present, and future (p. 1006). What did I do wrong? How did I end up in this position? Did I set unrealistic expectations? Did I have delusions of grandeur? Does this have to do with my graduate school, because of the department's reputation as the qualitative of the qualitativethe ber-qualitative? Did I make a mistake in my choice of dissertation topics, looking at narrative and sensemaking of new faculty? Should I have stuck with my computer-mediated communication research, or my research on the discourses surrounding the stock market? Should I have stayed with a more conservative research agenda? Are my six publications not enough? Am I not good enough? I can see what Im doing. Im personally practicing my Weick. Since my prospective narrative has broken down, I am attempting to make retrospective narrative sense of how I got to where I am. As Kierkegaard (1967-1978) noted, It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be livedforwards (p. 111). Is it ironic that just as Ive completed a critical project on the culture of academia, I am inclined to examine myself through the lens of my narrative identity rather than what Ive learned about the discourses of the academy? Yet it makes sense, because the narratives and discourses of the academy coerce us to look at ourselves, rather than the power ofand the power behindthose discourses.

August 2008
Im applying for the position here, where I am working as an Assistant Visiting Professor. Why wouldnt I? This is the pinnacle. Im visiting at a Research I, with a distinctive and well-known faculty. Although it is an interpersonal position, I can do this. Ive taught it, Ive published it. I love the faculty here. Ive known a number of them for years, and they are supportive, more than willing to help. **** I wanted to talk to you about the position in person, rather than send you a letter about it, the chair says to me as I sit in his office. We are not going to consider you for the position because most of us believe that you are too organizational for an interpersonal position.

NCA 2008
A bust. I have no interviews. One rejection letter mentions the department received over 400 applications for one organizational communication position. I feel like Ive had some excellent phone interviews. Who the hell knows? I cant tell anymore. Ive lost all my confidence. I cant write. I cant concentrate. I dream about my teeth rotting out of my head, my face melting off, getting limbs cut off by lawnmowers, propellers at airports, trapped in caves with the unseen monster coming up the passage. I have been offered a second year as a Visiting. At least I have a position. I cant gripe too much. Some of my friends are suffering and suffering dearly. They have nothing.

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252

Qualitative Inquiry 18(3)

April 2009: Personality Crisis

Ive spoken with some of the people you have interviewed with, my mentor tells me. You have to realize that you have an overpowering personality. That threatens some people. You are very excitable, and that IS good. However, you need to tone down. You need to remember to put yourself in a one-down position. Be respectful. Call other people Dr. rather than by their first names. **** My personality. I suppose that could be it. Im from New Jersey where we dont believe in pulling punches, where we say what is on our minds. We joke about how the rest of the country communicates passive-aggressively. Theres no such thing as Minnesota Nice or Southern Charm. In Jersey, theres only aggressive.

April 2009: A Conversation at CSCA

I want to tell you we are not considering you for our job. Why not? It seems like the perfect fit, qualitative organizational communication. Politics. The search committee chair determined we need to hire an African-American. Well, I dont fit that bill.

January 2010: No Bites

Well shit shit shit shit! Will I or wont I have a full-time position in 2010-2011? Nothing. No bites. Lots of interviews, but no takers. What the hell is wrong with me? So although I applied for every possible position I was remotely qualified for in 2009 for 2010, none of them came through. I had a few interviews: a couple on Skype, a couple in person. What I received were letters or emails that went like this: "Thanks but no thanks." Panic is setting in. To top it off, I started smoking again. Im a basket case. **** On CRTNET I see a Visiting Assistant Professor position listed. Thats the ad for my replacement. I tell my apartment mate Kristen: Seeing your own position listed on CRTNET is like reading your own obituary.

October 2009: Disappearing Act

The narrative of academic success makes us reflect, ascertain and implement for ourselves where and when to care for the self (Foucault, 1986, p. 2) and how much to use the technologies of the self to discipline our self in order to become who we want to be. When all the work to become the academic self we want to be fails, it turns upon that self. Ive diligently applied technology of the self that now I am tied up in knots. **** I dont want to show my face. Im embarrassed. I dont want to go to NCA. I dont want to face all the questions. I dont want to lie, but I dont want anyone to know the truth either. Ill skip NCA. Theres really no point in going this year. Im not presenting. I dont have any interviews. It would be nice to see everyone, but I really cant afford to go. Thats a lie. I could go. I should go. But I am an embarrassment. Everything is falling apart around me. Im avoiding the faculty on campus. Im avoiding my peers. I am jealous of my friends who graduated with me who have finished their second year on the tenure track. Jealous AND mad. How dare they be successful, while I am not? How dare they!? Im as smart as they are. I work as hard as they do. Im published as much as they are. What the fuck is wrong with me?! Im avoiding anyone having to do with academe. I havent talked to my dissertation advisor in six months. Ive let him down. All his other advisees have found positions, but not me. What does he think when he thinks about me? Im embarrassed. I am the failure. I am the loser. I am the major league piece of shit.

April 2010
Just got back from an on-campus job interview. Even before my flight home landed, I knew I wasnt going to get that position. I fumbled through my research presentation. I couldnt concentrate. I could tell they had more questions about my research agenda and that was going to be the sticking point. It was. They hired nobody. ****

I am a worse choice than nobody

The nightmares keep waking me up. I dreamt I was at an on-campus interview. The interview itself is a blurred mess. But now the committee chair and I are on the roof in the middle of the night. It is cold and dark. As I look over the roof I hear the committee chair mumble goodness of fit. A hand hits the small of my back and shoves me. I am tumbling over the side of the building, arms akimbo, spiraling down to the darkness beneath, screaming. I wake up in my bed, feeling and still reeling from the impact of my fall. So this is how my world ends. Not with a bang, but with a splat.

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Herrmann

253 Simple. Shit happens. My two-year gig ended. That was strike one. Two months later my lease ended. That was strike two. No one is going to let you sign a lease if you cannot prove you have an income. Third, I have no idea, exactly, what I am supposed to be doing if I am not writing and teaching. So what are you going to do? Simple. I am going to keep writing. I wont quit looking. Ive already sent out 45 application packets. **** Why dont you go back into information technology? asks the woman at the unemployment office. Well I cant go back to what I was doing because my skills are now almost ten years out of date. I could probably be a manager of some sort. Not in this economy. You might have to settle for something else. I am settling. Im supposed to be a professor. ****

May 2010: Unemployed

My visiting position ended. I will have to find a position outside of academia to support myself. I dont even know how to look for a job anymore. I havent updated my resume in five years. I planned for one career and one career only when I started graduate school. What a mistake! I wanted to be a professor. I was solely focused on that. Whats next? Whats next? I have no idea. I consider myself an idealist. It is one reason I wanted to be in academe. I wanted to make a difference. Reality encroaches. I am going to be forty four. I need health insurance, and I need to start paying back my student loans within six months. I need to ratchet up my retirement funding. People keep telling me I should have applied for one-year lecturer positions. For what? So I could spend a ton of money to move across the country, only to have to spend a ton of money to move again? Adjunct pay, too, is insufficient and some of those other benefits are not available to contingent faculty (Bousquet, 2008). I need to start looking outside of academe. I dont want to do that. It will be readily apparent that I dont want to have any old job.

July 2010: So Close and Yet So Far

I just want you to know that your buddy Dave applied for this position, same as you. Since I know the both of you, as well as the third person who is applying for this job, I am stepping back and letting other people do the hiring. **** Dave applied. Dammit! Hes super. Personable. Brilliant. Hard-working. Always has his shit together. Makes plans and fulfills them all. Why him? Why now? Why? WHY? His wife has an awesome job. They can afford not to have him work. Its just me. I have no back-up plan. This is my last shot for the year. Hes going to get the job. I know it. I just know it. Damn him. **** The call comes. I was right. I didnt get the job. Jesus, I cannot catch a break. I apply for unemployment. I stop paying my credit card bills so I can afford the rest of the rent until the lease ends. During one of the phone calls the credit card customer service representative calls me Dr. Deadbeat. I start applying for jobs for the 2011-2012 academic year. I move into a tiny basement apartment owned by my mothers husband. I listen to The Smiths.

I got my PhD last year, Matt says, as he makes my triple venti nonfat latte. So I am looking for a job too. Ok, now you are just busting my balls. No. Seriously. I have my PhD in performance studies. Maybe Ill get lucky at NCA. You go to NCA? Every year. I am the poster boy for what is not supposed to happen, but I cant find a damned job. So here I am, living the clich. **** You never should have gotten your PhD, my mothers husband says. There are no jobs for you. You should just go and get a job, any kind of job. You do realize that the unemployment rate around here in St. Louis is 13%? Well, if you didnt have that PhD, you could get a manufacturing job or a job in business. Because you got it, no one will hire you. You are overeducated and underqualified. Plus you wouldnt have to write all that stuff for those conferences and journals. You dont get paid for them, so they are nothing but a waste of your time. **** I sleep almost continually for a week, keeping the shades closed, living in my dungeon. Only my ferrets keep me company. They dont question me. Everyone is questioning me. Especially me.

October 2010: Conversations

How did you end up with no gainful employment, living on the dole, and renting the basement apartment in one of your parents buildings.

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254 Yeesh, ten years ago you finished your masters. You were hundred percent debt free. You had US$10K in your savings account. You had a job with all the good benefits. Now look at you. Unemployed. No savings. US$100K in student loan debt. US$40K in credit card debt and considering bankruptcy. Boy oh boy oh boy, you made a mess of your life, you arrogant prick. You thought the economic dilemmas facing the unskilled and the great masses wouldnt touch you. You made a real mess of things, a real mess of things.

Qualitative Inquiry 18(3) Job offer. Tenure track. Organizational Communication. I start in August.

Keep Doing Good Work

The academic success narrative is part of the larger discourse of lack (Giroux, 2007). As such, we point the finger back at ourselves, the job hunters. It isnt the economy. It isnt that higher education is adding fewer full-time tenure track positions (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). It isnt that over the last thirty years, states have cut their higher educational budgets by an average of thirty-four percent (Zumeta, 2006). It isnt that academe is caught up in neoliberal discourse and seen less and less as a common good (Herrmann, 2009, p. 22). No. Instead, we look at ourselves. When we look at ourselves through the lens of the academic success narrative, we conclude that there is something wrong with us. We are not smart enough. We arent resilient enough. We have not tried our best. We are bad interviewers. We studied the wrong subject. We picked the wrong advisor. We did not work as hard as we could. The academic canonical narrative reifies the discourses of lack. This narrative of lack constitutes us as failed subjects with failed occupational futures. We take upon ourselvesand struggle withour discreditable identity (Adams, 2010), while attempting to deal with the imposter syndrome that tells us we are not good enough to be in academia (Herrmann, 2008). Although we talk about how we, as individuals, are not what we do, as academics we are heavily invested in what we do (Herrmann, 2009, p. 19). We are encouraged to and do invest a lot of our self into our teaching, our research, our career. On the positive side, this helps us be reflexive about the work we do and imbues our work with passion. We all think, to some extent I am my research, since it is what we are writing, what we are studying, what we are doing in our doctoral programs. Our research is a creative act, and therefore, our identities are implicated in it. We are our research. We are our teaching. We are our careers. That is what the discourse tells us to do. That is what the discourse tells us we are. In actuality, we are not. When we are this invested in what we dowhen we believe this career is what we arethat we are called to do thisit is hard not take rejection personally. You begin to question your self worth, your value as a teacher, your estimate of yourself as a researcher and writer. You will question whether you wasted years preparing for a career that does not want you. You will hurt. You will get mad. You will get angry. You will get pissed off. Enraged. You will want to drink yourself into a stupor. You will want to sleep for days. You will want to burn your CV. You will be resentful that youve put all this effort into trying to find a position. You will suffer bouts of insomnia. You will question

November 2010: Promises, Promises

Its my off day at NCA. I meet Ellen, a friend from way back in college. You know you should just stop this shit, Ellen says as we walk along the streets of the Mission District. Here in San Francisco, women dont give a shit about what kind of car you have, but damn, if you tell them you are published, that will rock their socks off. You could get a job outside of academe and get laid. Im considering it El. At this point I have nothing to lose. If I do not have a job by the time CSCA rolls around in the spring, Im out of academe. There will be nothing left for me. Ive been looking for a tenure-track job since 2007. This is my last stand. **** Four interviews at NCA. Nothing pans out. Four phone interviews after NCA. Again nothing pans out. The stack of no thank you very much letters is getting larger. No one wants me. Ive given up. The Sex Pistols reverberate in my head: No future. No future. No future for you! I start applying for information technology positions in California.

February 2011
How did it go? my brother asks, picking me up at Lambert Airport. I am just back from an on-campus interview. Inside I cringe. I am not sure any longer. I dont want to get my hopes up again just to have them dashed upon a rocky beach. Others have gone well, and all I got were rejections. I am tired of being rejected. I am broken. I dont know. **** Friday morning my cell phone rings, blasting Ministrys The Land of Rape and Honey. I recognize the number. Its that university. I steel myself, readying for the inevitable rejection. I feel my guts tighten as I answer the phone. Hello. This is Andrew.

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Herrmann everything. You will want to murder someone. You will resent the people who found positions. Forget al-Queda. You will terrorize yourself. Remember, it is not necessarily you, despite what the canonical academic discourses and narratives say. Whether you are looking for a job, or submitting to a journal or conference, or standing in front of a classroom of apathetic students, academe will reject you. Dont let the process drive you to despair. As Tammy Spry noted, Keep doing good work (personal communication, April 9, 2011). Writing and researching (and lots of earnest prayer) saved my life. Ultimately, so did rejecting the canonical academic narrative. After my initial performance of this piece, Michael Willits asked, Andrew, was it all worth it? (personal communication April 9, 2011). I leave you with the same answer I gave him. Yes it was. Authors Note
This text is based on a one-person performance at the Central States Communication Association in April 2011. Thanks to Amy Pinney, Tammy Spry, Danielle Stern, and Michael Willits for support and comments. Special thanks to Art Bochner, who never gave up on me.

255
Foucault, M. (1994). Technologies of the self. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics: Subjectivity and truth (pp. 87-92). New York, NY: The New Press. Giroux, H. A. (2007). Beyond neoliberal common sense: Cultural politics and public pedagogy in dark times. JAC 27,11-61. Hartnett, S., & Kline, F. (2005). Preventing the fall from the call to teach: Rethinking vocation. Journal of Education and Christian Belief, 9, 9-20. Herrmann, A. F. (2007). How did we get this far apart? Disengagement, relational dialectics, and narrative control. Qualitative Inquiry, 13, 989-1007. Herrmann, A. F. (2008). Narratives and sensemaking in the new corporate university: The socialization of first year communication faculty. Unpublished dissertation, University of South Florida, Tampa. Herrmann, A. F. (2009, April). Power, publishing and prestige: Academic freedom in the corporatized university. Paper presented at the Central States Communication Association Convention, St. Louis, MO. Herrmann, A. F. (2011a). Losing things was nothing new: A familys story of foreclosure. Journal of Loss & Trauma, 16, 1-14. Herrmann, A. F. (2011b). Narrative as an organizing process: Identity and story in a new nonprofit. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 6, 246-264. Kajitani, M., & Bryant, R. A. (2005). A Ph.D. and a Failure. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http:// chronicle.com/article/A-PhDa-Failure/44884/ Kierkegaard, S. A. (1967-1978). Journals and papers (7 volumes; H. Hong & E. Hong, Eds. & Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Original work published 1833-1855) Morrissey, & Marr, J. (1986). Unlovable [Recorded by The Smiths]. Louder than bombs [CD]. New York: Sire. Oakes, G. (2003). Academic career management: The higher learning in the age of marketing. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 16, 599-611. Parker, H. L. P. (2000). Career communities. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Schuster, J. H., & Finkelstein, M. J. (2006). The American faculty: The restructuring or academic work and careers. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Zumeta, W. (2006). The new finance of public higher education. NEA Almanac of Higher Education, 39, 1-3.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

References
Adams, T. E. (2010). Paradoxes of sexuality, gay identity, and the closet. Symbolic Interaction, 33, 234-356. Bochner, A. P. (2008, February). NCA journals I: Is the review process too slow? Spectra, 44, 3-4. Bousquet, M. (2008). How the university works: Higher education and the low-wage nation. New York, NY: New York University Press. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.) New York, NY: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. Dryfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Foucault, M. (1986). The care of the self: The history of sexuality (Vol. 3., R. Hurley, Trans.) New York, NY: Random House.

Bio
Andrew F. Herrmann is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at East Tennessee State University, where he teaches organizational, group, and professional communication.

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