Supplements

Over the past few days, every time I worked on preparing the supplemental materials for the job at Big West Private, I felt tired, or distracted, or... I really want this job. That adds to the nerves. But, I'm being realistic. I may not even get a campus interview. But it's that excitement, and fear, that kept me from simply sending everything off.

I wanted to rework some of my earlier work, maybe submit it to a journal, so I could mark it as "under consideration." But, in the end, I decided that what I am today is what I have to offer. As Jim Lodz put it, this is the chance I have to represent myself as I wish to be represented. I just need to be me. Frankly, I'm most interested in landing a post, where I don't have to pretend. So, I sent a bunch of stuff, mostly brief (except for my dissertation distillation article, which numbers 35 single-spaced pages of 10 pt font).

There's:

1. The dissertation distillation article.
   
2. An invited commentary on a target article.
3. Two abstracts for upcoming conferences: the first already accepted; the second I'm hoping will be.
4. A description of my [Logitudinal Project].
5. Student evaluations [oops, just got an email from the administrative assistant saying please disregard their earlier request for student evals. So I sent a reply asking her to disregard their inclusion in the email I already sent].
6. [Oops oops. Sent another email to attach yet one more item] A conference paper I gave in 2003, which seems particularly relevant to this position.

I like that this group prefers electronic submissions over hard copies for these materials. It says something about them being in the 21st century. Of course, their retraction of the request for student evaluations seems to put them even further in the research category. I'm okay with that. As I've heard over and over, I look like a researcher. I do want to teach also, and it would seem that this position would give me that opportunity, but likely not overburden me with lecture hall service courses.

The good thing is, it's done. I sent everything off, cc'ing my recommenders, following up with personal emails to each of them. Now, I can try to forget it. My excitement for this post has all but swallowed up my worrying about Western-Flagship. That's good. Best to not think about them. I'll either get the calls or not. I'll either be invited to campus or not. I'll either be offered a job, or not. Those I have no control over, certainly not at this point.

So, I keep plugging away at my work. Fortunately, I'll have a break as well. The au pair is going with a friend to South America for Christmas, leaving tomorrow night. She'll be gone nearly two weeks. As I wrote yesterday, my brother and nephew arrive on Monday. They'll be staying until Sunday. My wife's parents arrive on Tuesday, and they'll be staying until Monday. It'll be a full house here at the Articulates. Good thing I like to cook, eh?

And now that I'm done with my emailing and blogging, I'm off to my (temporarily I hope) internetless office to do some work that requires silence and concentration. Hopefully I can sneak away a few hours each day while the inlaws are here, to continue. It's work that I haven't been doing for months now, but which feels really good to get back into. It's also work that needs to be done for my February/March conference talks.

***On another note: I finally made contact with someone at a local field site, who can help me get started on data collection for my [Longitudinal Project]. I'm quite excited, though nothing is settled yet. Have you ever tried to get a longitudinal human subjects project off the ground with absolutely no institutional help? Cultivated naivety, that's the only way. Don't tell me it's impossible. I'm not listening. Na na na.