On the interview

Anomie has posted some links to resources with advice for academic job interviews.  Included in her post is a link to another list of questions to ask.  I would add two caveats to this list: Know your audience.  A number of the questions are geared toward research universities, so you should obviously refrain from asking [...]

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Murdoch contextualizes intent

In determining somebody’s intentions, context is important.  Rupert Murdoch belatedly recognizes this on behalf of the New York Post: As the Chairman of the New York Post, I am ultimately responsible for what is printed in its pages. The buck stops with me. Last week, we made a mistake. We ran a cartoon that offended [...]

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Hot potato with a time bomb

A nice video examining the credit crisis: The Crisis of Credit. See also Frontline: Inside the Meltdown. Both go a long way toward demystifying a complicated problem (which is not helping the fact that the job market sucks).

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Racism in context

Last week Shamus posted the above NY Post cartoon on scatterplot, which the editor of the Post claimed “is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy” but I argued was “a clear parody of two [...]

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Education and economics

A recent post on Crooked Timber examines school improvement and the achievement gap.  While the post includes a number of good points, I have to disagree with the following statement: For a lot of schools this is very likely indeed right now, because the economic crisis will result in more kids being more disadvantaged, and [...]

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Ten years of Office Space

Just like the job market, work sucks.  Celebrate both of these facts by watching Office Space today on the tenth anniversary of its release.  Afterward, check out Mike Judge’s cinematic follow-up Idiocracy, which has a brilliant concept but is lacking in its execution.

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Further insight from Voltaire

Since Voltaire clearly wrote Candide as an allegory for the academic job market, I thought that it would be fitting to share a few more of his insights into academia: On leaving graduate school for a tenure-track job: “We are going to another world,” said Candide; “it is there, without doubt, that every thing is [...]

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Asking good questions

Having prepared answers to frequently asked questions on the job market can make the interview process a lot smoother, but I think that it is also important to prepare good questions to ask.  I first realized this a few years ago when I heard that faculty members laughed when a fellow graduate student asked what [...]

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Candide on the academic job market

Being on the job market this year, I was frequently reminded of Candide by Voltaire.  This occurred whenever friends, family members, or my advisor told me that everything would work out for the best.  My advisor repeated this mantra after I ended up with a job at my second choice of the schools that had [...]

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Race in games

Darion White on the portrayal of African American video game characters: Black characters in video games aren’t difficult to find, but rare is the well-rounded and positive black protagonist. Black characters in games habitually range from stereotypical to non-existent. In contrast, black gamers consume a great deal of the medium and are a vastly growing [...]

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