Last year, I also interviewed at the AHA, and coming out, I saw a medievalist I knew slightly in the hall waiting. We said hi, and wished each other luck. As it turns out, the job went to a young scholar I met and for whom I chaired a panel at Kalamazoo. She and I have had a growing friendship since, and we have a ton of very good friends in common. I’m really happy for her, and would like to think I would be if I hadn’t already had a job.

All of which kind of brings me to the point I was rambling towards. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — there is nothing more useful to me than having had really well-paying jobs outside academia. I’ve been jobless in several markets! But seriously, knowing that, if I couldn’t get a job doing what I love, I could still find work that used my skills and that I enjoyed and even paid better than being a prof? Priceless. I think it gives an air of confidence that sets one apart from many interviewees, and every at job I’ve had (two visiting before this one) I was told that my non-academic experience was one of the reasons they hired me, because it was seen as something that helped me to empathize with today’s student population AND was necessary for dealing with new accreditation standards.

2002 in San Francisco stank too. We were in comfortable rooms, but there were no curtains or even pretense of privacy or discretion about the process. So, we’d interview a bunch of candidates, and we’d periodically see most of them hopping back in and out to interview with other search committees, and they’d see who else we were interviewing. Not far from the interview table I sat at interviewing new potential colleagues for Baa Ra U., my former “colleagues” at my first job were interviewing people for my former line. The former chair of the department glared at me–but then, she glared at most everyone, all the time–even the job candidates she was interviewing!

(TMI, in my opinion.)