the day of two job interviews

Actually, before I get going, sanj, nu already?  (I now see that I must have missed your 3/3 post of cautious optimism etc. because it was posted while I was out on the tiles.  In fact I'd completely forgotten that I'd read the 3/3 post of excitement, until I saw my own comment down at the end.  Um, yeah.)

So, today, two job interviews for me.

One is for a 12-month contract two days a week as an editorial assistant in linguistics at the Oxford University Press.  It's two days a week because it involves sharing a desk, computer, etc. with the three-day-a-week admin-type person, which, whatever, but it actually reassures me that there will be less of the admin whatnot involved in the job I'm applying for.  Am optimistic, apart from the fact that they'd like the contract to begin mid-April and I've kind of got some stuff going on until sort of late June.  But, as some friends here have pointed out, there will be at least two days out of any given seven that I'm not actually working on the thesis (until 28 April) or studying for exams.  So this will be something remunerative to do instead of slacking.  It's a relatively decent point.

The other is for a four-week gig teaching Writing Skills to kids who have just completed 8th and 9th grade.  Remember, the summer program for privileged high school kids?  Yeah, that -- I was offered an interview for the third of three classes I suggested I could teach, which I was annoyed about until a) I learned that Son of a Preacher Man wasn't offered an interview at all, and b) Queen P pointed out that it's likely there wasn't a high enough demand for History of the English Language (or, for that matter, History of Science, which is SoaPM's subject) among the high school kiddies, which is probably why we weren't offered interviews to teach those classes -- they won't be running in the first place.  I'd also offered English Literature, but I imagine they have someone lined up who's actually qualified to teach that.  (I had a minor in English all those years ago; it's not the sort of impressive credential they like to flaunt on their website.  [g])  So, this Writing Skills thing could either be three hours a day, six days a week and another hour and a half a day, three days a week, or just the three hours-and-a-half (but not the six three-hourses).  Naturally the pay for teaching both 'major' and 'minor' versions of the class would be better than teaching just the minor, but funnily, I almost prefer they only run it as a minor class, because -- hey -- then I could take the above OUP gig as well, assuming they offer it to me.

A series of Ifs, actually:  if OUP offers me the editorial assistant job (which they may do this afternoon, in fact), of course I'd ask them for some time to consider it with regard to my academic work.  And if the summer school people offer me the teaching job, I won't know until several weeks from now.  I may be able to get them to tell me sooner whether it's the all-day option or the three-afternoon option; and if it's the three-afternoon option, and I decide to take the OUP thing, I can go ahead and do that without worrying.  But if the summer school people tell me they're running Writing Skills both as a major and minor class, and I won't hear whether they're asking me to teach it until the beginning of April, how long can I keep the Press on pause while I wait to decide?

Worse yet:  I don't have enough paper (or black ink in my cartridge, as it happens) to print more copies of my resume and sample syllabus!  Errands before the interviews for me, then.

man, me and office supplies

I return, bearing paper and ink cartridges, as well as a box of thumbtacks drawing pins, and envelopes in two sizes.  I managed to be very good about resisting the lure of pens, notebooks, desktop shredders, and so on.

I think I may get a new fountain pen as a self-present when I hand in my thesis.  I can use it to write my finals.

Hmm -- it looks like the "skills" section of my resume could use some overhauling.

interview update

One down, one to go.

Post-mortem on the Press interview:

I feel like it went well, but I almost always feel like my auditions go well, too, knowwhatImean?, so who can say.  I'm absolutely qualified for the job and would do it well, but the fact that you sing beautifully doesn't always mean your audition is any good.  The good news:  guy tells me the hours are much less rigid than one might expect, so although at the beginning there'd have to be some semblance of normal business hours for training and supervisory purposes, once everyone was in the swing of things a person could do the job at any hour of the day or night.  The building is always open, he says, apart from Christmas and Boxing Day.  (Him:  Because the sun never sets on OUP projects.  Me:  So even though the Empire is gone, the Press remains?  Him:  Yes, exactly!)  So that'll work out well, if I get the offer -- in fact that works out better than I'd figured, because it's no longer such an issue if I also get the offer from the teaching people I'm interviewing with later; by July, one will be well in the swing of things, and thus the fact that I might be called upon to teach 9-12 six mornings a week including Tuesday and Thursday wouldn't be an issue.

I did admit that the mid-April start date made me a little nervous.  He said Oh, it could start as soon as possible, actually, and I said the thing is, that's not what I mean -- I'm just freaking out about my dissertation being due the 28th of April.  And of course I have exams after that, but obviously I'm not trying to get a start date quite as late as that.  Just trying to push back a couple of weeks, to the end of April or beginning of May.  And he said he'd think about it, and he appreciated my frankness -- because the point I was making was, it's not just that it would be better for me to start a couple weeks later than he was talking about, but I'd do better work for him once the dissertation was off my desk.  So we'll see.  I'm the third of four people he's interviewing for the job, so that may have been a self-inflicted foot wound of the first order, but I'd have felt really dishonest not bringing it up (or even not bringing it up until he'd made an offer), so at least I'll sleep well tonight.

He did give me a book!  He'd brought down a book on ... some kind of discourse analysis to do with judges' language, I don't remember the title, but it looked interesting in a socio sort of way, even if the back cover quote was from Deborah Tannen; but after he asked me about my research, he swapped it for a new book about compounds, which may turn out to be useful to me as well as interesting.  Go interview guy!

Also, I scored a totally unintentional bonus point on the way out.  He'd left me in the sort of lobby while he went wherever he went to exchange the books, and I was looking at an old Monotype machine they've got there like a museum piece.  And he came back and said Isn't that great, when I first started in publishing we were still using those, punch here, a whole line of blah blah blah, feed through here, see, this is the length of the galley -- all obsolete now, of course.  And I said Yeah, my last year in high school I think was the last year the school newspaper had to paste up each issue and then send it to a printer who could print broadsheets -- after that they could just send the printer the floppy disk, but when I was there we had to print everything out on letter-sized paper and cut it up and paste it down, and I was the only one who cared enough about lining up the columns perfectly and not having gaps between the lines when two bits of the same column were pasted together, so they put me in charge of pasteup.  Like, Fine, it's that important to you, you do it.  And he said, Well, that's good, that kind of -- (and I said, obsessive attention to detail that makes other people nuts?) -- that slightly anal tendency (the interviewer used the word 'anal', I swear!), in publishing.  Good for you.

In short:  he expects to make a decision by the end of the week.  I'm thinking of sending along a note of thanks, but while I know this should be done, I'm always crap at coming up with what to say in such things.