The Final Offer

The final job offer came through this week. This makes five total. So, here's the lowdown:

• 21 first round interviews
• 12 flyouts
• 5 offers

Of the 12 flyouts, he cancelled the final 2, which leaves 10. Of those 10, 1 told him that he was their first choice, but they knew that one of his other offers would win out (no contest), so they made an offer to another candidate. That leaves 9. 2 of those 9 made decided not to make any offers, one because of financial reasons, and one b/c they couldn't reach consensus. That leaves 7. Of those 7, 2 were flat out "no, we gave the offer to someone else who was in a different area."

5 out of 10 is a really great rate. Really, 5 out of 9, excluding the school that got its funding taken away. I don't think anyone else from his university has done as well. The other guy in his department who has four offers doesn't have quite as good of a spread, and he only got offers from places that hadn't seen DH. Anywhere that had to pick between him and DH at the flyout level picked DH. So there.

This 5th offer is from a department at a university that he has already gotten an offer from (another department), so it doesn't add a new geographic possibility. Good thing, too. It is getting too confusing!

Latest job market update

Wow. The job market has gone really well for us. I say "us" because I view my husband's success as my own success. He has four offers, one from a top 5 department, and 3 from well-respected departments in other areas of the universities. We expect another offer from a top 10 department this week.

We will be taking a tour of the top 3 schools and their respective geographic areas, two of which we both are pretty unfamiliar with. There are so many things to think about. Do we go with the swanky, old-money town? Or the ghetto-but-regentrifying town? Or the big city, with tons of people of my ethnicity and career opportunities (both academic and industry) galore? Where can we buy a house? How much house can we afford? What about schools?

In reality, the geographic concerns are relatively unimportant. All of the top 3 are located in places that I think would be acceptable. Now, if we visit a place, and I hate it, that would mean something. But right now, the most important thing is the academic environment that is most conducive to my husband's success. His advisor even took us both out to lunch, ostensibly to "strategize," but in reality, we just ended up talking about my family, his wife and kids, and all his former roommates/grade school friends who are in positions such as Chairman of the Fed, dean of the nation's best law school, top professors in similar fields, etc. He has his own opinion about where my husband would be happiest, and we take this opinion very seriously. I think he and my husband are a lot alike, so his recommendation holds weight with me.

His advisor is now on my good side, after getting off to a rocky start. The first time I met him, he insulted me. It was the summer after our first year, and my husband had rocked his exams. I mean, completely blew everyone away. His exams were at the beginning of the summer, and mine were at the end. He mentioned this to his advisor upon introducing us, and his advisor replied, "Well, there's no way she can do better than you!" He was trying to compliment my husband, but instead, insulted me. He apologized to my husband later that day, but I was the one who was insulted! Wasn't I the one who should have received the apology? Harumph.

He completely redeemed himself this summer, though, after my car broke down 90 miles from home, four days before our anniversary, when driving to my husband's university, where he was (approximately 400 miles away). I couldn't just leave the car (I did rent a car and drive back home), the repair shop had a hard time finding the part (it was a part that was still under warranty and shouldn't have broken). Our second anniversary was just days away, and it wasn't immediately clear that I would be able to make it there. We didn't really have the money for a plane ticket, and we were stressing out that we wouldn't be together on our anniversary. We weren't together on our first anniversary (he had a really important conference, I had my sister's wedding), and we were really angry that we might be apart again!!

My husband happened to have a meeting with his advisor that day, and when his advisor asked "How are you?" my husband launched into the whole story, leaving out the plane ticket money part. His response was, "That is terrible! You definitely need to be together on your anniversary! There is no excuse for that! How much is a plane ticket?" My husband replied $120, and his advisor just pulled out his wallet, and pulled out 6 $20 bills, handed them to my husband, and said, "Happy anniversary!" Since that day, his advisor is now on my good side. He is also really good to my husband, and is a terrific advisor, so that helps him too!

People keep asking me, "Where do YOU want to go?" Truthfully, if I were single, and just looking to move to a new place, I would pick the big city. Obviously. One of the strange things about marriage, though, is that my interests become almost indistinguishable from his interests. Almost. Not entirely, but if he does poorly, I end up suffering as well. We will have to move (rather than deciding to move, and moving to a similar or better university with a pay increase), he will be more unhappy and less pleasant at home, and he will have to work harder to accomplish the same amount. We will ultimately go wherever we think he will be most successful.

In the meantime, we are imagining that things like grocery stores and housing prices matter. Ooh, which place has a Wegman's? Which place has Trader Joe's? What about Whole Foods? Where do we live? How far is the commute? It's fun to pretend that these things will actually impact our decision. In reality, we feel very fortunate that we have any choice at all. It is not the normal outcome.

Job market update

My husband is kicking ass on the job market. It is a huge relief. He has 11 (count 'em! 11!) flyouts, 10 of which are for really good schools. The 11th is also to a good school, but a troubled department within that good school that doesn't seem like it would be the best fit. He wasn't sure whether or not to take it.... even though he has 10 other great flyouts, he didn't feel like he is in the position of turning down flyouts, which I guess means that he would take an offer from them over going into industry, which I had thought wasn't the case.

I went with him to his big conference, to provide moral and practical support while he did 21 interviews in 2.5 days. Wow, did he ever need it.

What we did not expect:

1) He would sweat through his shirts by lunch time. We had planned to have an extra shirt for each day in case he spilled something on himself, but hadn't planned on undershirts. I had to go to Marshalls to buy more. I also had to take shirts to the cleaners, because some of the "extra" shirts weren't that nice.

2) the fashionable but still nice looking blue striped tie was TOO fashionable. Go conservative. One of his interviewers, whom he had interacted with previously, saw him after lunch in the new shirt (white) and different tie (red with traditional looking stripes) and said, "Oh! I'm glad you changed your tie." It didn't really matter that much, but it freaked us out.

3) He would throw up at least one meal a day, out of sheer nervousness. Huge drag and very demoralizing. We should have expected this, and kind of did, but we didn't expect how annoying this really was. Also not great for energy levels. However, apple juice and fruit seemed to be relatively successful when it came to keeping food down and energy up, at least temporarily.

4) How bad we would sleep. Not hugely surprising, but I really thought we'd sleep better than we did.

5) How stressful and exhausting it would be for ME, the spouse. I was doing a lot of running around and errands, etc., plus his performance affects the rest of our lives. Talk about stress for both of us.

6) How fast the flyouts would come. He had 3 by Saturday night, and he hadn't even finished his interviews yet. We were expecting Monday at the earliest.

He is getting them all done by the first week of February. Maybe we will have an offer by Valentine's day!

Busy

Hey folks (if anyone still reads this anymore....)!

I haven't been updating lately because I have been busy with school. I have a big deadline in a few months; I basically have to pass to candidacy by then, and they sprung the new deadline on us a couple of months ago. Yark. I think I can do it, but by no means is it a sure thing, so I have been doing a lot of work lately. I got one paper off to my committee, and I'm working on the data analysis for my second.

My husband is also on the job market, so we have been really involved with that. It is going okay- we wish it were going better, though- he has a high number of interviews, but only a couple at top-notch departments. His committee has been assuring him all along that he will do well, etc., (by well, they mean "place at a top 30 department"), but the students that his advisor had kind of dismissed are getting few interviews, but the ones they are getting are the top places. So this is sort of nerve-wracking.

We are not worried that he will not get a job; he will, but we (well, really me.) are concerned that he will be at a crappy school or in a crappy location, or worse, both. The crappy location is not so bad if he is at a good place, because he can go on the market again in a few years, but the crappy school is worse, and crappy school/crappy location is a really bad combination. If he is at a crappy school/crappy location, we will probably have to go on the market again in a few years, and then again a few years after that to try to claw up a little bit. I have had to explain to my parents that, no, you can't really move up. The exceptional people can move up a little bit (my advisor had a student who moved from a second-tier no-name research university to an excellent state school after a couple of years. He had a major publication come out after getting his first job, and I think that helped him move up. People that I know who have moved up have gone on the market again practically immediately- maybe they waited two years.

He just has to get an academic job that is better than working in industry. He is not very inclined to work in industry. He would do just fine in industry, but is more suited for academia. If he wanted to go into industry, he would have done it already and skipped the academic path totally.