Because there’s no petition like repetition, and it’s that most wonderful time of the year again, here’s an oldie, from four years ago when the world and this blog were young and pulling the gowans fine. It’s still the first blog post that comes up when you google my name (don’t google my name), so we might as well run it again. For the rust is on the leaves and the rime is on the meadow, and autumn breezes are blowing into our mailboxes the inquiries of would-be graduate students – so many more than there are spaces for. Here then is an avuncular saying, as from a sadder and a wiser man.
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.
27 comments
November 15, 2011 at 4:04 am
andrew
Sometimes Professor Q has a name shared by more than one professor in the same or in similar fields. Try not to refer to the work of the wrong Professor Q in your e-mail to Professor Q.
I know a couple of people who did this, but as far as anyone knows, it did not actually hurt them in the admissions process.
November 15, 2011 at 8:07 am
silbey
Sometimes Professor Q has a name shared by more than one professor in the same or in similar fields. Try not to refer to the work of the wrong Professor Q in your e-mail to Professor Q.
*cough*Ari*cough*Kelman*cough*
November 15, 2011 at 10:02 am
Student
I love his book on Yiddish Radio and the Sand Creek Massacre.
November 15, 2011 at 1:58 pm
Moby Hick
You are not being invited to Platonic Ideal History Department.
Not until you publish a couple of decent papers, you aren’t.
November 15, 2011 at 4:22 pm
JP Stormcrow
I wanna tell you ’bout Yiddish Radio and the Sand Creek Massacre
Comes out of the High Plains washes
Melodic and fast with plenty of instrumentation
With a back story of sorrow and sad disaster
November 16, 2011 at 4:32 am
J. Otto Pohl
You know this is a primary reason why US academia has problems. Applying for a job is a lot, lot more work than the actual job itself. If you only had to do a dozen or so applications to get an interview it would be tolerable. But, to go through all of this work for each application hundreds or even thousands of times for a job that has a comparatively low salary, $30,000 or so a year, is ridiculous. I know no American academics see it this way because they all see themselves as so special and unique. But, really there is not a whole lot of difference in teaching European history at UCI and teaching European history at North Dakota State University.
November 16, 2011 at 7:07 am
eric
Otto, in my experience of academia outside the US, this advice applies there too. Indeed it applies in nonacademic contexts. Everyone wants to know that you’ve taken the time to do a little homework. If nothing else it shows you’re willing to think about something other than yourself.
November 16, 2011 at 7:49 am
Moby Hick
You are willing to think about something other than yourself only for long enough to get yourself a job with tenure so you don’t have to think about people other than yourself.
November 16, 2011 at 8:14 am
J. Otto Pohl
My experiences regarding the application processes I have gone through in Asia and Africa have been very different than the conduct in depth research on the institution itself that you describe as necessary for getting a job in the US. My current institution was far more interested in knowing about my research and teaching than whether I had an extensive in depth knowledge of their research. I can only conclude that Africans are far less vain and much less narcissistic than US academics.
November 16, 2011 at 8:40 am
eric
Really? That’s how it’s going, to continental stereotypes? It’s not possible that maybe it’s (a) good manners to know the research of the people you’re talking to or (b) the market is much, much more competitive in the US, and prospective employers can afford to be more selective?
November 16, 2011 at 8:41 am
eric
Moby, sure. But the same argument applies to, say, evaluation for tenure: you publish so you can get tenure. Afterward there’s much less pressure to publish. But we all hope that the established habit of publishing before tenure indicates an interest in publishing for its own sake. Same goes for good manners: if you show them in one instance, you’re more likely to show them in another.
November 16, 2011 at 8:53 am
J. Otto Pohl
Doing dissertation type research on the work of people in a university department so I can make them feel important goes far beyond good manners. It comes close to kowtowing or even a form of hazing. It is part of the overall dysfunctional nature of US academia. Do you really think my department should have made become an expert on the history of Ghana and know everything they were doing before they hired me teach other regions of the world? If I serve on a hiring committee in the future to hire an expert on Indian, Chinese, or Iranian history I am not going to care if they have never heard of me. This strikes me as being all about ego and not about manners. So yes the American stereotypes of excessive individualism, unnecessary competition rather than cooperation, and pompous self-importance all seem to be more important factors here than anything else.
November 16, 2011 at 8:56 am
eric
It’s pretty clear there’s a misunderstanding here. If you’re applying to graduate school, you should absolutely know why the department you’re applying to is especially suited to you and your research. If you’re applying for a job, you should know enough about who you’re talking to to avoid saying anything markedly ill-informed. This doesn’t seem to me to be terrible advice or a form of hazing.
November 16, 2011 at 9:43 am
Moby Hick
It’s pretty clear there’s a misunderstanding here.
Becausing thinking about other people, including (especially?) what they say, sucks.
November 16, 2011 at 11:51 am
Dave
Otto, a quick glance at your blog reveals that you have had an interesting and unusual trajectory through academia. This rather suggests a possible correlation between that personal experience and your, shall we say, interesting and unusual opinions. Which way the arrow of causation runs it is not, of course, for me to say, but it might be a point for you to consider that things you appear to wish to be facts may not be seen as such by the majority of your interlocutors.
November 16, 2011 at 11:56 am
ben
An interest in publishing for its own sake strikes me as somewhat perverse.
November 16, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Moby Hick
The university started as a way to train clergy and only later evolved into a means for the generation of knowledge. If you don’t feel called to share the knowledge you have gained in journals and books, you could maybe hark back to older ways by orally transmitting knowledge to a congregation. Publish or parish, as it were.
November 16, 2011 at 12:53 pm
J. Otto Pohl
Dave, yes I have unusual opinions such as ethnic cleansing is morally wrong even if the victims are ethnic Germans. But, the fact that nobody else agrees with me on the internet is really not my problem. I am very surprised, however, that you claim to have looked at my blog. I was pretty sure only my parents and my few commentors had ever read anything I wrote there.
November 16, 2011 at 12:59 pm
silbey
Publish or parish, as it were
You worked really hard to get to that…
November 16, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Dave
Don’t worry Otto, all I did was click on your name, and then skim-read for 20 seconds or so. It’s not like I’m stalking you. I am very surprised that you are very surprised someone would do that obvious thing to try to figure out why you had such a bug up your ass about US academia.
November 16, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Moby Hick
You worked really hard to get to that…
Such is my personality that it would have been more work not to have done.
November 16, 2011 at 1:42 pm
J. Otto Pohl
Dave I am surprised because I did not think anybody cared what or why I thought anything one way or the other. If you are so sure you are right why does my dissent bother you so much? If you think the things I write about are so wrong you can start your own blog praising Stalin, Israel, and the American professoriat.
November 16, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Moby Hick
Dave, if you want to start that blog, I suggest calling it “Stuff non-intersecting sets of Jewish people like.”
November 17, 2011 at 5:47 am
Pauly Shore
You know who I always liked? Neil Diamond, that’s who.
November 17, 2011 at 6:21 am
Dave
Otto, let’s get 2 things perfectly clear:
1. I don’t give a shit about you;
2. I was just curious about how you got to be such a dingbat, I have that answer now, so I won’t be troubling your pageview count again.
November 17, 2011 at 8:59 am
kevin
Doing dissertation type research on the work of people in a university department so I can make them feel important goes far beyond good manners.
You did a wonderful job beating down that strawman. Congratulations, champ.
November 20, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Barry
Otto, “Doing dissertation type research on the work of people in a university department so I can make them feel important goes far beyond good manners. ” is not the impression that I got. I got the impression that ‘looking these people’s work, and having an idea of what they’re saying’ was what was urged.
Perhaps you could help me by pointing out where Eric was saying this.