My final scavenger hunt results

Despite writing the scavenger hunt myself I completed just over half of the items on it! I completed numbers: 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 13, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24, 27, 29, and 30. I wish that I had put seeing a scared employment services candidate on the list. Did anybody else notice how terrified ASA Bear was before his interview?

I consider my biggest ASA failure this year to be the fact that I never came across the unisex restrooms. I thought that they may have been nonexistent until I got home and noticed that they were marked on the map distributed upon check-in. If anybody saw them, I’d love to have a picture for the SLACer archives!

And now, the fall semester awaits.

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ASA: Cool theorist buttons at the Norton booth

In case nobody has told you yet, there are some cool buttons featuring social theorists at the Norton booth in the Convention Center at ASA. Collect all seven! (By that I mean “stand at the jar blocking other people’s access to the buttons until you’ve found all seven”.) Too bad it isn’t on the scavenger hunt.

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Sunday scavenger hunt update

Unlike Friday, my scavenger hunt pace slowed on Saturday, though it picked up a bit again this morning. Yesterday I crossed numbers 5 and 6 off the list. Number 6 was interesting since the technical difficulties were due largely to the fact that the presenter forgot his glasses and couldn’t find his PowerPoint on the computer everybody was using. Then, when he found it, he couldn’t figure out how to get it started. This morning, I crossed numbers 2, 3, and 4 off of the list. There were only three papers, which made number 3 easier!

In addition to the scavenger hunt, the conference has rejuvenated my interest in sociology, which is always a good thing heading into a new academic year! I hope that your own scavenger hunt and conference experiences are going well.

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Saturday scavenger hunt update

Day one of the inaugural ASA scavenger hunt has come and gone and I’ve already made some progress despite not arriving in Denver until Friday afternoon. I covered #16 and #17 at my graduate department’s reception last night, I covered #21 and #22 in the cab from the airport to my hotel, and I covered #27, #29, and #30 last night at the Colorado Rockies game. That gives me a total of seven out of 30 items without attending a single session! We’ll see how many of the first seven items I can cover today (I’ve already passed up my chance at #4).

Good luck to my fellow hunters!

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Another year, another job market

As we approach August and the unofficial beginning to the ’12-’13 job market at ASA, the pressure is already starting to show at the Sociology Job Market Forum, where those who are new to the market and those who have been through everything before combine to see who can worry the most. There is a lot of useful information on the forum, but it can also be a haven for showboating (“I have five single-authored papers in ASR and twenty other papers in lesser journals, do you think I will get a job?”), frustration (“I have five single-authored papers in ASR and twenty other papers in lesser journals and I didn’t get a job”), and things that make me wonder if some people slept through every sociology class they’ve ever taken (“I have five single-authored papers in ASR and twenty other papers in lesser journals but I didn’t get a job because I’m a white male.”). I think that the most dangerous aspect, though, is the potential for nitpicking every part of the process (“I prefer 12-point Times New Roman but my advisor said that he won’t even read applications that are in anything but 12.75-point Helvetica.” “What color should I wear to an interview to maximize the potential that it is similar to the favorite colors of my interviewers?”).

Beyond what I’ve written on the subject in the past (and ignoring the fact that since my department can’t even get approved to hire somebody, I really have no idea what I’m talking about), there are two major pieces of advice that I gave to a friend who is new to the job market this year: 1) try not to worry about things that you can’t control, and 2) once you apply for a job, try to forget that you sent the application! The worst part of the job market seems to be the uncertainty, so the less you can dwell on it (and the tiny details that are outside of your control), the better!

Good luck to all of you!

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