Tiger2Tiger

I spent the better portion of today (off and on for about 7 hours) job searching. I found as many position openings that I thought might be interesting and set them aside to apply for after some quick research. At the end of the day, I applied for 5 and have 4 more ready to be mailed as soon as possible. Today brings my total of active applications to near 35 and rejections to date to nearly 30. That's kind of a disheartening fact, but I'm hoping to be able to keep the first number higher despite the dwindling job market. There were a few jobs that I consciously chose not to apply for because they were out of my geographic or skills comfort zones or because I honestly shouldn't settle for much less that what I'm qualified to do. This may not be the best policy; however, I feel pretty strongly that I can find a great job that offers me a great opportunity to move up without having to start at the absolute lowest level of the higher ed hierarchy.

Over the last few weeks, I've gotten a few reassuring calls from some colleagues regarding the feedback I recieved from Delaware and my job search in general. It's good to hear from the perspective of those that have worked with me. It also helped me to see that part of the concerns from the interview are simply parts of my personality that I have to work to overcome or deal with in that setting (particularly my observant nature coming off as shyness or discomfort).

I've got a phone interview with a small school in South Florida on Tuesday for which I'm still preparing. I haven't heard from LSU still which, to be honest, isn't the best sign. I'm not comfortable contacting the department or chair of the searhc committee, so I'm just going to operate on that deduction. Hopefully some new interviews or information will come in this week as it's probably the last week before most school's get into their summer orientations.