A Family Affair

By Polly Alvord

Just as some families used to eagerly await the arrival of the Sears Wish Book at Christmas, our family awaits the fall job listings. It marks that special time of year when we can resume searching for our dream job, the one that will bring us closer to home.

I'm not actually going on the academic market myself. It's my husband, an assistant professor of English, who has quietly begun a new job search. But it's not just his future at stake. Searching for a new tenure-track job at our house is family affair.

Four years ago, Stan took a tenure-track job at a small, Midwestern, liberal-arts college, and we moved there from the East Coast. Newlyweds at the time, we were delighted when he got an offer even before he had defended his dissertation, and excited to start this new chapter of our lives together. The idea of leaving our craggy, Atlantic coastline for the plains of middle America was daunting, but we figured it wouldn't be forever.

Before the moving van left our driveway, I was homesick. We are both very close to our large families, so putting 1,000 miles between ourselves and everyone we have ever known, reduced me to a sobbing mess.

We hadn't even finished unpacking when I started looking for our next job. Stan, however, had other priorities. He poured all of his energy into his new courses and his students. His colleagues were friendly, welcoming, and supportive. He brought new life to the department and new ideas that his colleagues and students seemed to soak right up. In many ways, the job was a dream come true for him.

Before long, I was pregnant with our first child. When she was born, we saw heaven on earth and wanted to give her everything. We especially wanted to share her (and, later, her two siblings) with her grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Living several states away has made that very difficult.

The next autumn, Stan and I agreed that we would look for a job closer to home, and he sent out a few selective applications. When he landed three interviews at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, I practically booked my mother-in-law for weekly baby-sitting gigs. Surely, he'd get an offer from one of them. Perhaps we'd have to choose from more than one offer.

Instead, we got nothing.

Another year passed. We missed our families and friends even more, but despite sending out more job applications and landing a campus visit, we remained in the Midwest.

Last year, we came closer than ever to moving back home. Stan was one of two finalists for a highly desireable job in New England, just down the road from my brother's home.

I was sure the job was ours: All indications from the search committee were that Stan was their man. The location was ideal, the college was top-notch, and his future colleagues seemed friendly. In treating Stan with unfailing graciousness, professionalism, and civility from start to finish, the panel proved quite exceptional among the job committees that we have encountered. I had almost starting packing when the call came from the search committee informing Stan that it had selected the other candidate.

My depression set in almost immediately, and did not really lift for almost two months.

Stan felt different. After some disappointment and anger, he soon became optimistic. He had come so close to a tenure-track job at a top institution that he thought he must be doing something right and that eventually his efforts would pay off.

I only recently stopped thinking that the department would call back, announce that its first choice had fallen through, and ask, "Are you still interested?"

So here we are. It's fall again, and a new job search is under way. Even after all these years, I still check the job listings regularly, sometimes even before my first cup of morning coffee. If I see something I like, I click over to Realtor.com, find the perfect house, and begin mentally moving in. If my husband even applies for the job, I spend the next few months compulsively checking the answering machine, wondering when the search committee will call. I have even stood in my own kitchen and called our answering machine from my cell phone, just to make sure it was working.

I'm sure you're wondering, so I'll just say out right: My husband is comfortable with my involvement in his job search, although he sometimes is troubled by the intensity of my involvement. Year after year, despite his cautionary warnings, I get my hopes up for jobs that he doesn't even come close to landing. And sooner or later I come crashing down.

Although I think my hopes are getting used to a tumultuous ride, I'm going to try to avoid another such ride year. I will try not to obsess over our job search, especially since it has become painfully clear that I have no control over it; nor does my husband.

At some level, though, I can't help it. I want to go home.

When we first moved here, my homesickness and the stress of Stan's new job put a strain on our young marriage. We made a decision at that point not to let that strain tear us apart. Rather, we allowed it to draw us closer together. We worked hard to build a strong, independent family unit. Our children have given us a real purpose for creating and maintaining a happy home, despite the lack of extended family members close by. The distance from our parents and siblings forced us, in a way, to grow up.

Unfortunately, although we've been in the Midwest for five years, it still doesn't feel like home, and probably never will. We have made some friends through the college, and through our children with other parents in the town. Our closest friends seem to be other transplants who are a long way from home.

Because we always feel that we are on the verge of moving East, we haven't bought a house or become too involved in the community. I don't pay much attention to local elections; I rarely read the town newspaper; I don't even have a local Blockbuster membership. I am certain that our failure to establish any real roots is my way of ensuring that we'll leave.

If I start to enjoy life here too much, will I be able to leave when the time comes?

After receiving my master's degree in history, I briefly considered continuing on for a Ph.D. I even applied and was accepted by a few universities. Then I considered what I had learned about the academic job market: Years and years of schooling, debt, and mental angst. Few job opportunities and relatively low pay. Little or no control over where you live. It's not worth it, I concluded.

Just my luck: I fell in love and married a doctoral student. He finished his dissertation, got his degree, and landed a tenure-track job. A dream come true, right?