The Family *roll

By all accounts, I had a successful year on the job market. But “success” on the academic job market entails lots and lots and lots of rejection. So, my 50 or so applications yielded two jobs and a post-doc. 3 for 50. But I’m not complaining – both jobs were on our “heart” list (Emily colored the jobs with which we were particularly enamoured pink on the spreadsheet) and, under different circumstances, I would have snatched up the post-doc in a heartbeat. Nonetheless, I have been rejected a lot over the past 9 months. And just when you think it’s over, another rejection to my initial application shows up in the mail (electronic or paper). In fact, I’ve received 3 rejection notices in the past week  alone. What makes this particularly ridiculous is that we are *way* past the time when hires are made and hiring news can easily be found at various places on the net. Now I do appreciate that the departments bothered to send rejections at all (not everyone does), but at this point in the year I had completey forgotten that I had applied to State School U. …until the rejection shows up in the e-mail. Thanks for letting me know.

Update: My mother told me that this post is “sad.” I was about to say that it’s hard to convey the intended tone in writing, but that’s obviously absurd (good authors do it all the time). Apparently, it’s hard for me to convey the inteded tone in writing. This post wasn’t meant to be sad. I find it more amusing than anything else that I’m still getting rejection letters several months after everything has wrapped up. It’s a little like someone turning you down for a date months after you asked them out and you already know they have a partner. It’s just silly. That’s all.