A very hard deadline and my job search story - Brady

Yesterday I reach 37 weeks of pregnancy - full term! Here are my latest belly shots:

What I really want to talk about today, though, is this MASSIVE JOB SEARCH I'm doing. That's right. My five/six years of grad school are ending, and soon, and I've got to find something to do with myself when I finish up this spring/early summer. 

I always suspected I would want to look for jobs only in Chicago, and that's remained mostly true. I did apply for a couple of positions down in Bloomington at Indiana University because it would be an easy career transition for Kevin and because we have family down there (and because Bloomington is amazing), but everything else has been here, in the city. I've actually been pleasantly surprised at how many academic positions have come open in the area. I think I have about 13 jobs, total, I plan to apply for. 

Here's my story, for those who are interested: 

Right now I'm ONLY looking at traditional, tenure track, academic jobs. (The exception is a grant I'm applying for that would keep me at Northwestern for 2 more years as a post-doc on a really cool project.) I'm doing this because (a) being a professor is my top job choice and (b) academic job deadlines come around much earlier than "industry" job deadlines. Works out well for me. It also works out well that all of the tenure track deadlines are in October or early November. When I'm on maternity leave, the job market goes into a bit of a dormant period when colleges are reading your applications and deciding whether to interview you or not. 

There's a VERY good chance I won't get any of these jobs. There's a pretty good chance I won't even get an interview, anywhere. The academic job market is really tough, there are tons of applicants for each position, and I'm definitely limiting myself by applying only in one geographic area. I'm totally okay with this. I've decided being where I want to be location-wise is more important to me than getting my number one top choice job. There are PLENTY of jobs out there I'd be happy to do, and I can always try for a tenure track position later. 

If I don't get any of these jobs, I'll keep an eye on new openings during my maternity leave and certainly in the winter and spring when I'm back at school/work. Most postings at that point would be for post-docs (kind of like a fellowship for a few years where you're suspended somewhere between grad student and professor...the idea is that if I got one of these I'd go back on the tenure track job market as the post-doc was finishing up). Or the postings would be for "industry" jobs - research positions at big education policy firms or organizations like Teach for America, One Goal, Ounce of Prevention, etc. I would be completely fine doing any of these things. In fact, some people think getting a post-doc before a regular job is better for your career in the long run because you can publish a bunch of stuff before your "tenure clock" starts ticking. 

It's going pretty well so far! Now that I have good drafts of a cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, etc. drafted, it takes me about a day to apply for each job. I've sent in 8 applications and have 4 to go. 

I had an especially nice moment this morning. I woke up, made myself coffee, and sat down in front of my computer to focus on kind of a hard application. It's an instructional position at University of Chicago, and they ask you to pick a classic text in the social sciences and write about how you would teach it. After struggling for a bit, I narrowed in on one book (Emile or On Education) and finally figured out what I think will be a cool way of teaching it (I won't go into boring details, but it involves pairing it with the movie An Education). It got me really excited about the possibility of working with college kids. I also remembered and felt again that surge of excitement from teaching high school when I would come up with a creative way of explaining a concept. And it felt good to be so productive on a Sunday morning. 

So that's my life these days! I fill out job applications. I walk Molly. I take some time to watch my stomach bop around as this baby kicks me. I spend some quality time with Kevin (we've been trying to do one "moderately priced date night" per week - last night we had veggie brats at this cool bar/restaurant called Northdown Tap and saw a movie musical called God Help the Girl at the quirky Musicbox Theater). I do yoga. Life is simple and good and I think we're just about ready, house-wise, career-wise, relationship-wise (give us just a few more weeks!) for our son or daughter to come into the world and shake it all up. 

Never Say Never - Brady

Life in Chicago has been plugging along. It's been a gorgeous fall full of beautiful leaves, camping, apple cider donuts, hot lattes, and runs with our now much more energetic puppy dog.

It's also the time of year when people in their last year of graduate school start to think about the job market. Academic positions are posted almost a year in advance of the start date, so before you even have substantial work done on your dissertation you have to start strategizing about what you'll do when it's finished.

When I started graduate school, I swore there was no way I would take more than five years to complete my program. I initially aimed to finish in four, a year early, actually, which obviously didn't work out. However, now that I'm faced with the realities of the life after school I've begun to understand why you might stretch our your studies for an extra year. It's hard, as you might imagine, to feel ready to job applications and interviews when you don't have any study findings yet. And I still don't feel totally ready to say "Yes, we're staying in Chicago for sure" or "No, we're open to moving other places."

It's funny how life works. You think you have things all planned out...you have a list of things you'll absolutely never, ever consider doing...until you do.

After talking to Kevin, to my fellow grad students, and to my advisor, I've decided, basically, not to decide right now. My strategy is to continue to work as if I'm going to graduate in June or August of this year. However, right now I'm only applying to jobs I'm really excited about - jobs that would be perfect. For example, a position in the department of education at a liberal arts school outside of Chicago opened up a few months ago, so I put my name in for it. I'm also considering applying for what's called an "Education Pioneer" fellowship which would mean a year or two of working with a school district or charter network as a data analyst and researcher. But I'm not doing the full-scale, send-my-resume-out-to-any-job-that's-remotely-related-to-my-interests search that a lot of graduating students do.

If next fall rolls around and I haven't found anything, I can stretch out my dissertation a bit. Do more complicated, in-depth data analyses. Present at more conferences. Add an element to my study. And I can look for jobs again, this time being less picky.

I'm not entirely comfortable with this plan. The no-nonsense part of me says, "You've been in graduate school for over FOUR YEARS already. Finish this up, get out, and get a real job." Six years seems like an indulgent amount of time to spend getting a PhD. But the fact is, Kevin and I aren't open to me doing a national job search. So since I'm not 100% flexible on geography, I'm trying to be flexible in any other way I can. And giving myself a potential second year to wait for the perfect job to be posted and for me to be in a better position to get it is one big-time way to be flexible.

Life In Chicago, Fall 2013 - Brady

You know, the tagline for this blog is "Three Sisters and the City of Chicago." But I feel like every time I drop in to post, I write about some trip I've been on.

That has happened, I think, because it's a little bit what Kevin's and my lives are like in the summer.  As much as we love days in the city, we end up leaving almost every weekend - to go to Lake Wawasee, to Denver, Michigan, etc. This year we consciously tried not to fall into this pattern, but it happened anyway.

So now it's the first fall weekend here in our beautiful city and we've predictably followed the second half of our yearly routine. We get fed up with packing and unpacking and never feeling caught up with the kinds of chores you only get done during weekends in your house and one of us insists on a full Saturday and Sunday at home - no commitments. This usually happens at the end of September or beginning of October (check), we marvel on that Friday night how amazing it is to not be going anywhere (check), we are reminded how great a place Chicago is to be (check), and we spend the next two days working and cleaning and doing all of our favorite neighborhood things like the outdoor Green City Market, a nice long run, and coffee at Intelligentsia or Bow Truss (check, check, check, check, check).

So in the spirit of enjoying being home, here are a few little things about my everyday life that have been particularly nice recently.

- Baking. Last fall, totally out of the blue, I kind of got into baking. I made carrot bread and pumpkin bread and cinnamon bread and regular bread, blueberry muffins, lots of cookies. I got the itch again the other day and made some...wait for it..."browned butter, sea salt, nutella chocolate chip cookies." They were excellent, I must say. Kevin says they're the best homemade cookies he's ever had. Then we had all this nutella sitting around so I HAD to make a nutella pound cake, right? I think going forward, though, I might focus on choosing slightly, um, healthier baking projects. It got kind of ridiculous last fall and winter.

- My new desk. When the veteran grad student in my office finished her dissertation I, as the new senior advisee in my research lab, got to move to her HUGE, next-to-the-window desk. This isn't a great photo - I took it with my cell phone - but my new space is spectacular.

- My snuggly dog. As the weather's getting cooler, she's getting much more willing to cuddle with Kevin and me. (She's also getting much more energetic...morning walks have been interesting the last couple of days. Let's just say she and Kevin have a game called "Let's run crazy!" and sometimes Molly wants to play it with me and I have trouble keeping up.) Here's a picture of her the other afternoon when I was trying to get dissertation work done.

- Chicago theater. Have I talked about how Nate invited Kevin and me to be his special guests for the opening night of his play? I probably have, because I'm obsessed, but he did. We got to use his "comp seats" and then go out for drinks after the show with all of the actors and IT WAS A CHICAGO DREAM COME TRUE. I love theater in this city and really want to somehow become more involved and this made me feel like a big shot for a night. Plus, the play was really great - and Nate was excellent in it. I performed with Nate in high school, and I thought it was neat to see how good someone can get when they make acting a career. Here's an illegal picture I took in the theater of his name in the program.

- Grad school. I passed my proposal defense back in July, so I'm officially ABD ("all but dissertation"). I actually applied for a faculty job a couple of weeks ago. I'm co-teaching a class this fall. My dissertation is slowly humming along. Life at work is stable and good, and I know things will change fast as I move toward the end of this program, so I'm trying to enjoy the quiet and the routine right now.

So that's what "real life" has been like recently. We'll be around the city much more in the coming months...looking forward to enjoying the perfect fall weather Chicago usually gets, getting back into the swing of things as the school year starts, watching the Chicago Marathon, re-doing our bathroom, welcoming family for our annual Vegetarian Thanksgiving and family Christmas shopping trip, and celebrating the holidays. I'm always sad when summer ends, but this weekend has been the perfect way to get excited for everything that's to come.

Take Note! - Brady

Today, August 18th, 2013, is the first day I ever thought, regarding my dissertation, "This is impossible."

From what I hear there are many, many more days like this in my future.

Now if you don't mind I'm going to throw in the towel for the evening and cook out on my balcony with Kevin and my sisters.

So Long To My Champagne Bubble Bath - Brady

Three years ago I applied for a three-year fellowship for Northwestern students interested in research in education. It was an easy application. As I remember, I wrote a couple of pages about my interests, sent it in, and thought "that's that." Three of the five women in my entering grad school cohort also applied.

We all got the fellowship. It turns out it fits really nicely with our grad program's goals and philosophy, so we were basically shoe-ins. (Ridiculously, I almost turned down the fellowship because it required me to take a couple of extra classes. I remember writing to an older student to ask her advice and she told me flat out I'd be "crazy" not to accept it.)

Anyway, the three of us now refer to this fellowship as our "champagne bubble bath." It's been an absolutely incredible opportunity. It fully funded us for three years, meaning it took care of our grad school tuition, health insurance, and living stipend. This means, quite simply, we didn't have to scramble to find TA jobs or research assistantships every quarter. (In fact, when I did TA, I was paid extra money on top of my living stipend. I actually made more as a grad student than I did as a high school teacher.) On top of that, we received $1400 every year for research expenses (this is how I funded my dissertation study) and $3000 a year for travel to professional conferences. We were also invited to attend tons of private workshops and meetings with "famous" professors and really interesting, exceptional, smart, and creative people.

Very, very sadly, tomorrow I leave for my very last fellowship activity. I'm presenting a paper at the American Psychological Association annual meeting in Honolulu. Two weeks after I return, the fellowship expires. I'm back to regular grad student life. They're pulling the plug on my champagne bubble bath.

Below is one picture from each of the conferences I attended (except there was one Washington D.C. conference where I didn't take pictures for some reason). Looking back, I learned an enormous amount from each experience. I presented papers and posters, attended tons of talks, and met amazing people who will remain important professional contacts throughout my career.

Seattle

New Orleans

Vancouver

Alberta, Canada

San Francisco

The Twin Cities

Luckily, Northwestern is giving me what's called a "dissertation year fellowship" that starts up as soon as my current fellowship ends. So I'll still have tuition, health insurance, and a living stipend taken care of, but my conference travel will slow way down and my research budget will shrink to, oh, about $0.

As I creep day by day, step by step, analysis by analysis, dissertation paragraph by dissertation paragraph toward the end of graduate school, I feel so grateful for all of the opportunities I've been granted. Northwestern accepted me. My advisor has worked hard to keep me on track, and this fellowship has set me on just about the best professional footing I can imagine. All I can do now is try my best to write a really excellent dissertation and find a really amazing job so I can somehow figure out a way pay it all back.

When Does it Get Easier? - Brady

Blah. After several weeks of feeling good/excited about school I'm back to the old nerves. Well, not THE old nerves. They're not nearly as bad now. But I just haven't been able to completely shake them yet.

Things are really going fine, though, when I look at it objectively. Classes are interesting, people are really nice, and I've gotten to get involved in some interesting research already. I'm normally busy but usually not overwhelmed. Some days I really do feel great about being there. It's really nice sometimes to grab some hot tea (no coffee to try and combat said nerves) and walk to a class on the pretty campus. The trees are gorgeous up there right now. Living with Kelly is really fun, I see Kevin all the time, etc. I really need to stop complaining. A post on Kelly's blog from 10/23 is a good "stop feeling sorry for yourself and just enjoy your life" reminder.

Anyway, in other news, where is Amy??? I know I've been slacking on the blogging, but so has another sister of mine.

5 Year College Reunion - Brady

Kevin and I went to our 5 year college reunion last weekend. I had a lot of fun - it was so weird and good to see all the people I graduated with again. I also had a great conversation with my favorite professor, Andrea Sununu. She basically urged me to not worry about finding a job after graduate school since the decision to go has already been made, and encouraged me to just focus on doing well when I'm there. She also made it sound like she thought jobs would be out there when I (eventually) graduate. Also, just being at DePauw made me really excited for school and to be a professor. I remembered how much I like reading, writing, and doing research and how at home I feel on a college campus (aren't they the best places in the world?).

By the time I go to my 10 year reunion, I should be done or almost done with my PhD! Whoa.

In other news, Kelly should have landed in Chicago by now. She left Charlotte this morning. Hopefully she'll give us an update of her move when she gets a minute.

Here are some pictures from the reunion weekend with one of my college graduation.

The board where they post names so you know which of your classmates have arrived. We were the first ones there. Geeks. Also, aren't small colleges adorable?

One of the dorms I lived in.

The first dorm I lived in.

East college. I took a bunch of classes, went to tons of talks, and defended my senior thesis here. Kevin and I had to leave early to get to a wedding. That's why we're all dolled up at 9 a.m.

The room I lived in senior year at my sorority.

Marvin's. Classic DePauw food. No visit back is complete without it, although I think I still might be recovering from eating so much of it.

Well thank you very much, friendly lamppost sign. I'm happy to be here.

The dorm room we got to stay in. Hey - does anyone remember how GROSS dorm bathrooms are? I do.

The "Greek Pride" and "Met and Married" ribbons we got to wear.

From our graduation with Dr. Andrea Sununu. We met in her class and have stayed in close contact with her since we left.

The Revolving Door - Brady

In the comment I made about Amy's last post, I referred to our potential apartment as "having a revolving door." Here are the wonderful circumstances and coincidences I hope will make that the case:

- Kevin and I lived in Chicago for two years before we moved to Fort Wayne and loved it.

- Many of our siblings and friends heard us talk about how much we loved Chicago. A year into living there, Kevin's sister Lesley called us and said she had accepted a job offer downtown.

- Lesley got together with Paul, my now future-brother-in-law and all-around great guy, right before she moved to Chicago. He accepted a job in the suburbs (sorry Paul, I can't remember exactly which one - Barrington maybe?).

- Lesley and Paul got engaged and bought a condo in Arlington Heights, a suburb northwest of the city.

- Kevin and I moved to Fort Wayne.

- Paul switched jobs and started working downtown near Lesley.

- Missing Chicago a lot, I looked especially hard at graduate schools there.

- Kelly, missing her home region of the country and loving Chicago too, applied for jobs in Chicago and New York and preferenced Chicago.

- On February 6th at 7:37 p.m., I got a text message from Kelly saying, "I got the job in chicago!!"

- On February 11th at school I got an email from the professor I applied to work with at Northwestern asking me to call him. After a brief interview, he told me I'd been accepted.

- I still went to a recruitment weekend both there and at University of Michigan to make a more informed decision, but chose Chicago pretty quickly - I emailed all of the schools where I'd applied on February 26th to tell them where I was going.

- Amy told us she was going to look for jobs both in Chicago and La Porte. The three of us decided to live together if we all ended up in the city.

- Roger, Amy's boyfriend, found a job in Lombard, another Chicago suburb.

- After a lot of conversation, Kevin and I decided he would continue with his job in Fort Wayne and that we would travel back and forth to see each other every week.

- We broke the news to our families that I would be moving to Chicago, Kevin and I would be living apart half of the time, and that I'd be moving in at least with Kelly.


So there it is. I've got my husband, all of my siblings, siblings-in-law, and siblings' significant others in my favorite city at least part of the time. The apartment will be crazy. Kevin will be there often, Amy will be there either all or part of the time, and I bet Lesley and Paul will come stay with us if they're in the city late and need a place to crash. Add to that all of our friends who we want to come and visit and our parents (especially my dad, the city wanderer), and it will be a full house!

Last Day of School! - Brady

Wow. I am DONE as a high school teacher. I thought I might have to go back tomorrow, but I finished everything early.

I feel good! The kids were crazy today. Understandably so, I guess. It was the last day of school, but I was still kind of annoyed. They left at 11. Then, I spent the afternoon frantically trying to finish everything.

It was only when I was done, gradebooks and keys turned in, that it hit me. I spent a little more time in my room, half because I wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything (Definitely forgot something. Ha ha.) and half because I wasn't quite ready to leave yet. I got a Pepsi and kind of sat and started at my empty, dusty room as the clock hit 3:10 - the time I was officially done with my last day of school. I cleaned up a little, read some stuff on slate.com, gathered up my things, looked around my room, turned off the light, and closed the door. I looked back at the school as a drove away because, honestly, I don't know how often I'll see it again! Weird. Then I took my regular route downtown to get Kevin, down Lima Road - a road that I HATE because of all of its strip malls and chain restaurants - away from the Northwest Allen County School District. All afternoon I felt good about forgoing a career as a high school teacher for grad school.

THEN, I went to Kevin's office to check my email. He had some orange and yellow congratulations roses waiting for me:

AND Kelly had sent me some great apartments to check out online. THEN, I went and had dinner and drinks with some very good teacher friends from school. We probably spent three and a half hours at Columbia Street West - my favorite bar in Fort Wayne.

And the best part is...I got to meet a local NPR host that I listen to every morning! She's the neighbor and friend of one of the teachers who was there. Here's a picture of our meeting.

Great day!

Mixed Feelings, All Bad - Brady

Today, the last full day of school for my students and maybe the second or third to last time I will ever set foot in Carroll High School, I experienced a range of emotions - all of them bad. Here's the list.

1) Nerves/Worry

For some reason, drying my hair in the morning is when I get the most stressed out/angry/panicky/fill in other negative emotion here. Something about the normal nerves I feel right when I wake up anyway plus the heat from the blow dryer plus having nothing else to think about causes trouble.

Today, I got really nervous again about this move to grad school. I revisited my old worry that I will never find a job as a professor so I'll probably just be wasting my time. Then I moved on to a new worry - that it will impact my relationship with Kevin to be living in Chicago while he's in Fort Wayne. Both of these are valid concerns to have, I think, and factors I considered when I made my decision to go to Northwestern, but I was unhealthily nervous about it this morning. It definitely started my day off on the wrong foot.

2) Disappointment

This is a little thing, but I did not get the reaction I was hoping for when I passed out these personalized letters I wrote to each of my students. On Friday when I handed them out to the kids who had finals that day, they loved them. I guess that raised my expectations too high, because the reaction I got today was less than stellar. It made me feel like the time I spent writing them was wasted.

3) Frustration and Annoyance

In general, my students were just kind of crazy and punky today. Lots of arguing, lots of talking when they weren't supposed to be talking, lots of attitude.

4) Shame and Stress

Finally, and the worst for me, was something a student said in 7th period. I had him last year in Spanish 1 and now have him in Spanish 2. Last year, he was in this terrible class period. It was a big class, the room was hot, it was the last class of the day, and I had a bunch of troublemakers. I lost control of it somehow early on in the semester and never quite got it back.

Here's how the conversation went. It occurred as I was passing out papers.

Kelsey: Did you write notes for all of your students last year?

Me: No, I thought about it, but I didn't really have time or just decided not to or something. Plus, with some of the classes I had last year, I didn't really feel like trying to think up nice things to say about everybody.

Ryan (kid I had last year): 7th period was TERRIBLE last year.

Me (Trying not to get into it. I know I didn't do a great job and didn't really want to talk about it.): I know! I was so glad when that class was over.

Ryan: I mean, it was TERRIBLE.

Me: I know!

Ryan: Like, it was the worst class I've ever been in.

Me: (Silence. Trying to avoid more of this conversation. This is my last day with this class, and I really don't want to be talking about what a terrible teacher I was last year.)

Stephanie (another girl I had in that class last year): They were so mean to you. (She means the troublemaking kids in that class.) I felt so sorry for you.

Me (a little annoyed - I don't need high school pity!): Don't feel sorry for me. Other than them being annoying it didn't really affect me (This is a lie - it did make me doubt my abilities as a teacher and really stressed me out).

Ryan: I remember that day we had the Marine as a sub. No one said a WORD.

Me (pretending to be curious): Oh really? (Thanks, Ryan, for telling me how much better things went when you had your Marine substitute teacher.)

Ryan: I mean, those guys didn't SPEAK for the whole class.

Me (finally): Okay, we need to move on to ...

At that moment, I just felt like, "High schoolers - good riddance." No regret about leaving, no idealizing what it's like to be a teacher.

But, based on how I felt earlier in the day about grad school, I'm not jazzed about that right now either.

What a blah day. I'll try to be more positive the next time I write.

And Backs and Forths

I know exactly how Kelly feels. She and I have been having really similar experiences over the last two years: first and second years of teaching, adjusting to cities that are really more like suburbs, and making the hard decision to leave the classroom after only a short time in it. Our current dilemma is just another of those similarities.

Here's my situation. I agreed, pretty enthusiastically, to move back to Indiana when my husband found a job here after being in Chicago for two years. Once I got here, though, I had a huge problem adjusting. I missed living in a big city A LOT. I would even say last year, the first year we lived in Fort Wayne, was the worst year of my life (part of that had to do with being a first-year teacher, which is pretty stressful).

Then, the best imaginable thing happened. I applied to several PhD programs and, after a lot of work and waiting, started to hear back. I was accepted to the University of Michigan, a program I felt unbelievably lucky to have an offer with, and got excited about the possibility of moving to Ann Arbor for a few years. Then, I heard from Northwestern, a school I thought was more than a long shot for me. It turns out the stars had aligned so they were looking for someone with my set of interests and qualifications, and I was accepted. This meant moving back to Chicago, the place I had convinced myself was my real "home," moving in with one or both of my sisters (I was still sad about living apart from Kevin, but the fact that they would be there made me feel a lot better), and going to a great grad program studying exactly what I wanted with a professor who couldn't be a more perfect mentor for me.

Imagine my surprise, then, when a couple of weeks ago I started to second-guess my decision. Spring was starting, so all of a sudden our house, yard, and the city itself looked really pretty. My classes started going really well; I felt like I was hitting my stride as a teacher. I had a couple of great weekends with friends in the Fort Wayne area. I really started to imagine that I could stay here long-term and be happy as a high school teacher.

However, I still truly believe I made the right choice - that staying here is the easy and safe route while moving back to Chicago is a challenge that I'm ready for and that I'm supposed to take. I also believe, as my mom told me when I called her upset about this the other night, that "the day after I schedule a haircut appointment, my hair always looks great." I think there are good things about any place, and it's natural to feel sad about leaving. I'm sure that once I find an apartment, move, get into a routine with Kevin's visits, and settle into school these worries will disappear.

- Brady

Biggie Figures Out the Internet

Ha, okay I really don't want to go by "Biggie" forever on this blog.

Yay, I figured out how to post! Thanks to Kelly for getting the blog set up.

I am super excited to live with Kelly and Amy. However, in the last week or so my naturally nervous personality has made me have...hmmm "second thoughts" is too strong of a word...but quite a bit of anxiety about this big life change.

It's not so much a problem with living away from my husband Kevin or about the work grad school entails. I'm not sure what's getting me - I think it's a realization that I'm making a pretty big, somewhat final life choice (pursuing a career as a professor). I think it's also just nerves about the unknown. I never deal well with that.

So, hello blog-world. My name is Brady and right now I'm feeling very nervous but also optimistic. I think if you keep reading you will discover that's my mood most of the time.

-Brady