It begins (I guess)

So yesterday I started the “going on the market” stuff.  There’s a certain job that’s been posted for awhile that I’ve always known I’d apply for.  Rachel’s asked me several times if I’d begun gathering/generating the necessary writings etc. to actually apply.  I’ve always told her that I’d do it this summer.  And now the time is right to start.

So I’ve been drafting an application letter, revising my CV, and I’ve consulted my first familiar consigliere. It’s going to be a lot of work.  This writing is hard.  Perhaps it’s not hard for everyone, but it’s hard for me.  

You know, it feels like that I crossed a major threshhold when I started working seriously on my dissertation, which was that bullshit no longer cut it.  In a project as thorough as a dissertation, the short-cuts that I have always taken with seminar papers and response journals and other academic thing like that just don’t fly.  I now have to do real intellectual work.  Not to downplay the real learning I did during my coursework and exams, but it’s just not the same.  The diss is more real, for lack of a better description.

Now, as I write job letters, I’m really having to do a lot of soul-searching to figure out how I’m going to represent who I am as a scholar, a teacher, and how I can honestly “sell” myself.  I’ve got some good models, but they only go so far.

It’s a lot of hard writing for me.  But I’m glad it’s started.  I ready to move on to the next thing, and it feels good to make strides in that direction.