I haven’t been around here much lately because I have been busily, busily, busily applying for jobs. I am in the midst of prostrating myself at the feet of every institution of higher learning with a vacancy in my field. Public or private; research or teaching; university, college, or community college; North, South, East, West, The Middle: I care not. This is extremely stressful, partly because (despite what the long preceding list implies) there are just not that many vacancies in my field right now. It is also one of those sorts of things where the entire time you are engaged in the procedure, from the moment of logging into the Job List (There is only one Job List — one! ALL the jobs are there! Those are the ONLY jobs! It is ludicrous! It’s such a fucking racket!) to the moment of finally hitting "Send" or ceremoniously dropping the Fat Application Envelope through the Post Office Mail Slot of Destiny, your heart rate is approximately 30% higher than usual, your stomach is nervously churning the excessive amounts of coffee you have poured into it, and your bowels are threatening mutiny. It is not fun, let me tell you. The best part of it all, though, is the thought that I will likely be doing it all over again next year, as even if I do get hired somewhere now, odds are in favor of it’s being a visiting position, not a tenure track one. Had I, like any sensible person, begun this procedure in September, there would have been a lot more positions I could have applied for [subjunctive, irrealis, irritated]. But, of course, I hate to make things easy for myself. Why not wait until the last minute, then realize in a state of panic that I have not updated my CV in, like, ages, and I barely remember the title of that one paper, and by the way I have to go buy new printer cartridges for all the letters I have to print, but when I get to Target I apparently do not know what brand of printer I have let alone the secret formula for determining which numbered cartridge to buy, holy crap? It has been a regular old party in the Vague household. Writing job letters is absolutely the worst — I am just not comfortable boasting about how freaking original and groundbreaking my "research" is or how I am the future of college "teaching;" my classes are so damned brilliant and wouldn’t I "love" to contribute to the "stimulating" intellectual environment for which [That College] is known. Did you know, by the way, that I am deeply committed to liberal arts education? Because I so am. Also, I think you should know that the foundation for a good composition program is close reading, critical thinking, and an active academic and social discourse community. "DISCOURSE!" "COMMUNITY!" I think I’ll go cut off my own hands now before I am tempted to type any more of this nonsense.
Monthly Archive for April, 2007
My dad told me the other day that at his workplace, he constantly sees signs posted on things claiming needs fixed or needs repaired, with the verb to be completely left out. I haven’t seen this sort of thing all that often, but I told him I would investigate. A quick googling led me to discover the following trends: it seems common among engineers (which would make sense for my dad, who is a chemist and works with other chemists, engineers, and, yea, even chemical engineers); many people claim it’s a Midwestern Thing; many Midwesterners claim never to have heard it; some claim it’s common in Pennsylvania; and one source characterized it as a Scottish tendency. Have you guys encountered this one? Where? Are you engineers? Are you Scottish? Are you engineering things and eating haggis right at this very moment? It’s not uncommon for the verb to be to be left out of things — think about urban vernacular, for example — and we cool with that, dogg, at least usually. In this case it seems to be left out for the sake of efficiency. Lord knows we need efficient! All those Midwestern, Pennsylvanian, and Scottish engineers are so very busy and important that they have no time for the lowly verb. Needs repaired is so much shorter than needs to be repaired, isn’t it? Two whole words shorter. But if that were the case, then, if it were for the sake of efficiency, why use a past participle? Why not a noun? Needs repair, needs fix, or, better yet, let’s move to the imperative itself and command: FIX! After all, why make the broken item the subject of the sentence — a passive sentence at that, as this item needs to be repaired is the implied sentence here — when you can make it the object? FIX! Fix this item! I command you to fix this item! Suddenly, after that orgy of exclamation points and the imperative, I feel drunk with power. I shall climb to the top of the highest tower in Zembla and command electron microscopes and toasters and bedazzlers all over town fixed. Fix! Fix! Fix them all!
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