As some of you likely know, I’ve been applying for tenure track faculty jobs.  I’ve learned a ton, and trying to market myself has been a really useful endeavor… People always told me that the search was brutal, and more specifically the rejection is brutal, but I didn’t quite know the depth of the suckiness.. until it started happening to me. Rejection is hard, it’s really really hard. Even for jobs that I knew were a reach, either in terms of the department being able to attract the superstars (e.g Harvard EEB), or just that the search was just outside my focus (but close enough to apply to), its hard to hear no.. Even harder to be rejected in searches where I’ve been short-listed.  This is akin to a good hard kick in the nards..

To date, I’ve applied to ~20 jobs, with about 10 more to apply to in January and February. From these jobs, I’ve been short-listed 4 times, with one of those turning into an on-campus interview (have not gone yet)..  I’m still waiting to hear back from 9 jobs (plus the 10 i have not sent i yet).  I don’t know if this is, good, bad, or average, and the secrecy with which people approach the job hunt is offputting/strange/unnecessary. I’ve obsessed about checking the job wiki, and Twitter has been extremely helpful, but I guess I’m not sure what people are afraid of– it seems unlikely that I’d have much competitive advantage by knowing you, mysterious competitor, are applying to the same job.. Maybe I’m just naive about this.

Anyway, I’ve got several applications out right now that I’m really excited about. And I’m a reasonably impatient person, and the waiting is one of the hardest parts of this whole tenure track job search.

I’ve got a good amount of time before my interview, and man am I excited!! I’m busy working on a super-cool kind of side project that I’d like to talk about for the job talk, and I’ve been reading all the advice online.. I plan to give at least a couple of practice talks, so the talk should be OK (though I’m breaking out in a cold swear right now just thinking about it) ..

Ok, maybe I’m giving a talk tomorrow morning at the Computational Genomics Resource Laboratory at UC Berkeley. I better get to thinking about what I’m gonna say!