Every year I want to write this post, and every year I think of it too late — which is to say, after we’re in the thick of hiring and graduate school applications. And I wouldn’t want to post it then, because if I did, people would think I was breaking the rules of discretion and referring to some specific applicant.
So this year, I’ve got the timing right: I’ve seen no applications, either for jobs or graduate admissions. And I wish to offer a suggestion governing such applications: thou shalt do thy homework.
If you’re applying for admission to study history at the graduate level, or if you’re applying for a job in a history department, you are not applying to Platonic Ideal History Department, you are applying to a specific actual one. It is not like other ones. Why is this department not like all other departments? Please find out, so you will not sound (not to be rude, but) like an egomaniacal ignoramus.
Graduate school applicants: applying to graduate school is like applying for an medieval apprenticeship — you’re applying to study with someone, as much as at someplace. You need to show that you know why you should be an apprentice to this person, and not to some other person. Furthermore:
- Please consider, checking the website is not good enough. A department website will tell you that Professor Q is an expert in administration during the Age of the Pharaohs. You mustn’t cut-and-paste, saying, I want to study administration during the Age of the Pharaohs with Professor Q. Because Professor Q will have a very specific take on administration during the Age of the Pharaohs. Professor Q will have strong opinions about the sources you should use to study administration during the Age of the Pharaohs. And — this is the key point — Professor Q will not have kept these ideas secret, but will in fact have published them somewhere. Get hold of that publication. Read it. Then explain why you should study with Professor Q, using meaningful and specific examples.
- Please don’t write Professor Q to ask her opinion on administration during the Age of the Pharaohs until you have read what she has already said in print. Emails that say, “I am interested in administration during the Age of the Pharaohs and I see you are too. Could you tell me more about your research?” are emails with the secret message in invisible ink reading “I did not go to the library. I do not care enough about you or your research to read it before writing you. I am, honestly, unclear on the concept of being a graduate student.”
Which is all quite understandable, as people applying for graduate study are often unclear on the concept, and it’s more the fault of their undergraduate advisors for not helping them with it. It is in short as nothing compared with the job applicant who does not do his/her homework.
Job applicants, let me repeat: if you are invited to a campus interview at a department, you are invited to a campus interview at a specific actual department with real people in it who have real expertise. You are not being invited to Platonic Ideal History Department. Find out who’s in this department, especially within your own field. Interestingly, the same caveats apply as with graduate students, but need slightly stronger phrasing.
- Please consider, checking the website is not good enough. Seriously. You’ve got a PhD, or are about to. You got that PhD in a real department full of real professors. Have you not noticed how thin-skinned they are, how specific and narrow their interests, how much they need placating and flattering like a bunch of Versailles courtiers? Let’s stipulate they shouldn’t. But you can’t get a job in the department that should be, you can only get a job in a department that is. Please, figure out who’s there. Read a little of their work. Have a sense of what questions they might ask you, and prepare yourself to answer them.
- Please, don’t indicate too obviously that you’re unfamiliar with work that’s relevant to your field, especially if it’s published by someone in the department you’re applying to. Quite possibly, it might come up in conversation. It might even have substantial relevance to what you’re saying. And if you don’t know about it, you are saying silently, “I do not care enough about you as a prospective colleague to read your work even when it’s obviously relevant to my research. I will probably therefore be a terrible colleague, honestly.”
You’d be surprised how often — more than 3/4 of the time, I’d say — applicants exhibit a newborn’s frank innocence of where they are standing and with whom. And you can say all kinds of things about whether it should matter, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t.
I was going to talk about why almost all job talks are bad and how to fix them, but it appears I’ve rattled on for rather a long time and will have to save that for another post.
26 comments
December 3, 2007 at 11:11 pm
kelmanari
Eric is just mad because of the candidate, a few years back, who talked for what seemed like hours about the McKinley assassination, never realizing that Eric had written a book on the subject. Oh wait, that candidate was me. Dude, if you’re still mad, all you have to do is say something. So passive-aggressive.
December 3, 2007 at 11:20 pm
eric
So why can’t you make your avatar picture work properly, huh?
December 4, 2007 at 12:41 am
kelmanari
Look, there’s a little picture of me leering out at you from next to my comment. Why it doesn’t seem to be anywhere else is up to you to figure out.
December 4, 2007 at 6:55 pm
ac
I wouldn’t take the complaints of a talking tie seriously.
December 4, 2007 at 7:16 pm
eric
It’s a talking tie and shirt.
Admittedly, it could be a dickey.
December 4, 2007 at 7:17 pm
kelmanari
That’s a fair point, ac. Eric has been bugging me about my icon for weeks. Given that it was rather hard to read, I hadn’t considered turning the tables.
December 4, 2007 at 7:19 pm
eric
Oh, all right, I’ve changed it. Honestly, you people are no fun.
December 5, 2007 at 12:49 am
lb
Okay, on a serious note, John W. Sweet (now at UNC-Chapel Hill) and I wrote an article about preparing for AHA articles that applies as much to on campus interviews. It is available for free in its original version at:
http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1998/9812/9812ANN2.CFM
It was also in a new and improved version in a set of useful essays published by the American Historical Association, Perspectives on: Life after a History Ph.D. Edited by Richard Bond and Pillarisetti Sudhir (2005)
http://www.historians.org/pubs/teaching.cfm#lifeafterphd
Blog away you two and expose both history, historical life, and the relationship with the rest of the world. As a civil servant, I won’t weigh in too often, but the more communication the better. Oh, unless we are all shouting into the wind, or whatever King Lear said.
Lucy Barber (now at National Historical Publications and Records Commission)
December 5, 2007 at 12:57 am
eric
From Lucy’s extremely helpful article:
Exactly — it may seem obvious. Indeed, it should seem obvious. But in real life it evidently isn’t obvious. So it bears some repeating.
December 5, 2007 at 4:19 am
eb
Platonic Ideal History Department
The thing about their applications is that the forms never change.
Anyway, I tried to read a book and all the articles and book reviews I could find online back in the days of the Melvyl MAGS database by prospective advisors before/while applying to grad school. And I read all the reviews of prospective advisors’ books. Actually, I did some of this reading after applying, in order to make a better decision and never quite made it to one of the advisor’s books.
I did make a campus visit where I was ignorant of much of the faculty outside of the fields I focused on in my application, but this was after being accepted. I ultimately chose a different school.
I also looked for articles and book reviews by – and reviews of books (if any) written by – pretty much everyone whose talk I attended or seemed interesting to me even if I did not attend at my grad school campus.
December 5, 2007 at 5:17 am
kelmanari
Yeah, Lucy commented. Now that’s what I’m talking about. Or whatever King Lear said. Seriously, you can’t comment because you’re on the federal payroll? That just seems weird.
December 5, 2007 at 2:13 pm
eric
Yeah, Lucy commented. Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Also, eb made a joke. The commenters are on a roll.
December 6, 2007 at 1:15 am
felicity
Um, I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do and yet I still walked away with a masters…maybe this only applies to people who want PhDs?? I actually recall writing in my application-essay something along the lines of, “I am applying to your program because it’s nearby, seems interesting, and my school department is paying for it.” Now I’m flummoxed that they accepted me (because they are smart folks!)
December 6, 2007 at 3:20 am
Lauren
Some schools however don’t want you to tie all your dreams to just one professor. That is, explaining why the program is a good fit is sometimes more compelling than explaining why you must work with this one amazing professor (what if they go on sabbatical, etc). That still requires research though which yeah doesn’t happen enough.
December 6, 2007 at 3:52 am
ozma
This seems a bit idiosyncratic to me. For a job candidate I don’t recognize any of these actions as indicative of someone’s quality as a scholar or a colleague. First, some job candidates have 10 or more interviews. Are they really required to that much research in the few weeks they have? They may apply to 50 jobs. Do they have to do research on all 50–that includes reading the papers of more than 50 people (since they would have to read papers of more people in the department).
Also, are candidates truly required to want to work in a department because X person is in the department? It seems kind of crazy to me that they will be terrible colleagues because there is some book or other they haven’t read that is written by someone in the department before getting the job. I could read and do nothing but read and there will be some book in my field I haven’t read. I don’t have so much prep time prior to a campus visit to truly engage with someone’s work. I’d have to skim and do some kind of facile thing of faking interest in their book if I hadn’t read it already.
Rather, I’d mistrust someone who was skimming my book just to see what they can say to flatter me. Intellectual honesty is a more collegial trait than someone who can skim a book in preparation for an interview.
People who want that kind of obescience are people who I would rather not have as colleagues myself. When looking for a job of course, one has no choice.
December 6, 2007 at 3:54 am
ozma
Oops. Before shooting my mouth off, I should mention I’m not in history.
Apologies. Take everything I said with a large grain of salt.
December 6, 2007 at 3:58 am
eric
It’s a lucky historian who has 10 interviews.
And the advice about wanting to go somewhere because X is there is meant for graduate applicants.
There’s a line, if maybe a fine one, between preparing and sucking up. The right advice is probably, be prepared, don’t suck up.
And no need to apologize. All lack of clarity inheres in the original post, I’m sure.
December 6, 2007 at 4:22 am
i.
So how do you negotiate a balance? I’m in my first year (coincidentally at your same Edge) and I can do the BS article skimming ozma mentions.. but it seems *so* artificial and more out of flattery than anything else. I understand the necessity for your adviser or whatevs, but what if it I just want to introduce myself and chit-chat about some random common topic with someone in the same field? This whole “read-my-entire-cv” thing can be a little intimidating if I just want to be friendsies. What do you think?
December 6, 2007 at 5:46 am
ari
Hi i. I’m of the opinion that, as Eric says, there’s a line. And, if I’m reading you right, it’s probably not even that fine. For a student, like you, introducing yourself and chatting is a-ok. No need to do homework for a chat. But once you’re on the market, the onus is on you to do the research Eric suggests. Even then, though, you don’t have to read everything a prospective employer has ever written; just make sure you know what they’ve done, how your work might intersect (or not) with theirs, and that sort of thing.
December 6, 2007 at 5:48 am
ari
Hi Felicity. Thanks for visiting. Things *are* different for MAs, largely because faculty members don’t usually have the same investment in those students that they do in students who are pursuing PhDs. Why? Because we have to try help our PhDs get jobs. The MAs are pretty much on their own.
December 7, 2007 at 11:44 pm
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December 12, 2007 at 9:51 am
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December 18, 2007 at 12:42 am
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December 3, 2008 at 8:16 am
Barry
Just in case somebody comes back to this thread (after it was lined further upblog):
felicity: “Um, I did everything I wasn’t supposed to do and yet I still walked away with a masters…maybe this only applies to people who want PhDs?? I actually recall writing in my application-essay something along the lines of, “I am applying to your program because it’s nearby, seems interesting, and my school department is paying for it.” Now I’m flummoxed that they accepted me (because they are smart folks!)”
An MA is really an intense extension of a major in a subject. You take 30 credits of much harder, far more specialized courses (which assume more prerequisites), and you’re done.
A Ph.D. is different – my not realizing that was one of the reasons that I don’t have a Ph.D., and is something that they don’t tell you.
A Ph.D. is an apprenticeship in research, preparing you to become a professor or researcher.
December 3, 2008 at 9:59 am
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December 30, 2008 at 6:19 am
sp
I was going to talk about why almost all job talks are bad and how to fix them…
—-
This would be really helpful. I think most of the ‘how to behave at interviews’ is pretty much commonsense and portable (to and from) other professional settings, but job talks are peculiar to academia, aren’t they? Why are almost all job talks bad?