Thursday, March 6, 2008

Job Talks

Isn't it just incredibly aggravating when one goes to job talks and candidates deliver really exceptional presentations about their dissertation research (highly-specialized, of course, by definition) that offer all sorts of possibilities for further discussion during the Q&A session, and yet the same characters always raise their hand to demand how the candidate's work articulates with their own (highly-specialized) research on an entirely different topic and time period and area? I just want to say "get over yourself--the rest of us did a long time ago." And, this reflects all the more poorly on them when the candidate is able to go where the hijacker demands, but with far more sophistication than they could have ever have possibly mustered in the same position. While it is clearly important to see if a candidate can make theoretical and topical connections, it just looks stupid and/or self-centered to always ask pretty much the exact same question; one that is, moreover, all about oneself.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hahaha...that totally happened in my job talk and I swear I could feel the impatience emanating from the other faculty in the room.

auto ethnographer said...

Two more opportunities to observe this phenomenon are coming up this week and next. I hope I'm not going to these talks just to see if "the" question is slightly rephrased, but at this point, I'm more interested in *that* than in the candidate (it's not my department). And, I'm quite sure this will happen in every single job talk that you ever give (or attend).