The Modern Language Association job clinic
Conant, Oliver
ANXIETY... ANGER. . . LOSS. . . DISILLUSIONMENT. . . CONFLICT. . . CONFUSION. . . . SHAME. . . . The dark words, in tall letters on a large pad mounted on an easel, were being taken down with a...
...Figler's that we mix constantly, getting a feel for the networking to come), the accomplishments were getting a little thin...
...someone ventured at last...
...I was startled when, during a break in the proceedings, he told me that one of the high points of his career was getting the dystopian public policy analyst Jeremy Rifkin to speak at a symposium he had helped to organize...
...To this was added what amounted (in my case, anyway) to a species of moral relief...
...And that's not a small thing, because these emotions are real, and hard to live with—as are the market conditions that create them...
...He paused, facing his audience of thirty-five academics...
...I remember a little group of undergraduates calling out to me as we passed one another on Broadway...
...The next step was to draw up all our newly perceived skills, write them down on large sheets of newsprint—why newsprint...
...Physical coordination," said another, beaming at me...
...Mine was fairly typical...
...It is especially recommended for those considering nonacademic professional careers...
...The occasion was the first session of the 1995 Modern Language Association (MLA) Job Clinic, which was held from 6 to 10 on the evening of December 26, all day December 27, and from 8:30 A.M...
...How much did they charge...
...By the second or third round of this, carried on at other tables among different participants (it was an imperative of Dr...
...It was not to be the most unexpected suggestion: I was also proposed for "TV talk show host" and "standup comic...
...My own accomplishment garnered me all kinds of skills—researching, of course, and "analyzing data" but also "translating...
...Figler is the author of The Complete Job-Search Handbook: All the Skills You Need to Get Any Job and Have a Good Time Doing It, a work we were all urged to purchase and read before we came...
...Provided, of course, that we had given sufficient attention to identifying our "transferable skills...
...I had omitted all dates, reluctant to advertise my practically superannuated graduate student status...
...ANTICIPATION...
...The dark words, in tall letters on a large pad mounted on an easel, were being taken down with a felt-tip marker by a short, dapper man with an unflappable demeanor...
...The setting for this curious scene, in which the atmosphere of a parlor game mixed oddly with intimations of free floating rage and desperation, was a meeting room in Chicago's Fairmont Hotel...
...Their ages varied, although everyone looked and sounded (even the twenty-somethings) distinctly middle-aged...
...The challenge then became to discern in them the skills that had gone into making them possible, matching them to an extensive list of skills—the famous transferable skills—listed in one of the booklets...
...I did, it's true, improve my résum...
...inquired a man, just brightly enough to raise a small laugh...
...a Renaissance literature teacher advanced to a black belt in the martial art of Kendo...
...Learning to drive," rumbled a large Slavicist...
...You did what...
...My accomplishment was having written a study FALL • 1996 • 121 Notebook guide to Hard Times for a publishing rival of Cliff Notes...
...ENERGIZED, wrote the man, with perceptible relief...
...It was my wife who spotted the item first...
...But it's $205...
...DESPAIR and TERROR joined the crowded page...
...The Job Clinic I attended, or some version of it, has been offered at the annual meetings of the Modern Language Association since 1984...
...There were surely a few good Foucauldians among us—there was a young woman from the French department at Duke, an inquirer, she told me, into the fetishistic character of Enlightenment discourse—but neither she nor anyone else was heard to point to the irony...
...Not just academics, he tells us late in the sessions, but ex-military personnel, as well, whose adjustment to the business world might well be even more wrenching...
...Silence...
...Always on the lookout for anything that promised, however remotely, to improve my income potential, obscured since the mid-eighties in pro-bono free-lance writing and a succession of teaching assistant and adjunct jobs amounting to little more than academic helotry, her sharp eye had gleaned a short item under the headline "Job Clinic on Nonacademic Careers" in the MLA Fall 1995 pre-convention Newsletter...
...I don't know— and hold them up to each other, inviting suggestions for possible career directions...
...Anticipation," suggested another...
...Sympathetic murmurings of "no, no" ran around the room...
...122 • DISSENT...
...Worth every penny," she said, "if . . . ." I knew, "if...
...I am," I said...
...Figler's pharmacopoeia will not make go away...
...Would despair be too strong...
...Under skills I wrote "Analyzing," "Translating," "Research," and a few others...
...Like the lady on Saturday Night Live, Figler has made a career out of talking to people about their careers...
...These were then swapped around the tables at which we sat in groups of five or six...
...I just smiled and let them scoff...
...Guarded optimism...
...I couldn't quite make out who he is...
...appears on his business card, on his stationery, and on each page of three Xeroxed booklets handed out at the meetings, pages filled with "Occupational Options," from federal government jobs to work in advertising, computer services, fashion, travel, and hotel/motel management...
...He seemed to emanate pure hucksterism one moment and genuine concern the next...
...Later, back in the depressive atmosphere of the "real" MLA—after the Clinic finally wrapped up in in a flurry of mock interviewing, talk of "Connecting to the Needs of the Employer," "interim jobs," and parting advice from Figler to "smile on the telephone" and "never overlook the power of the thank-you note"—I tried to explain to friends how I had been passing my time...
...the dapper man asked a little pleadingly, turning over the page...
...But here we all were, at the Job Clinic...
...These accomplishments were not, to be sure, on the order of "deciphered Linear B" or "fought the Battle of the Bulge," but they were respectable enough...
...We were the ones to be found in out-of-the-way offices, hunched over student themes, taking our blue pencils to innocent replications of the vulgarity of the air waves and the clichés of popular journalism...
...Figler was there to say that yes, there were jobs out there, and people willing to pay us to do them...
...an Americanist and film student at Yale had produced a documentary film that received some air time in the Northeast...
...Terror...
...in psychology...
...This from a tall Englishman in the back...
...In order to arrive at a sense of what these might be we had all been required in advance to write down a minimum of fifteen "accomplishments" in which we took pride...
...It was true, it had all been extremely wishful, ritualistic, naïve, a three-day immersion in psychobabble and mutual massage...
...The Ph.D...
...Communication Skills," "Computer Skills," "Design and Planning Skills," "Organization/ Management Skills," "Self-Management Skills," "Research Investigation Skills," and so on...
...Energized...
...As a term, "self-initiative" seemed a damned silly redundancy for "initiative," but one was not inclined to quibble...
...a linguist created (in another lifetime, he said wistfully) several original musical compositions, some of which had been performed...
...The moment seemed to call for a slight bow and an icy smile, but I think I just grinned foolishly...
...By translating, my obliging tablemates appeared to mean managing to convey the baroque drollery and satire of Dickens into language that even postliterate high school and lower division undergraduates could understand...
...For his current audience, Dr...
...to 12 noon on December 28...
...Suggestions as to where turned out to be the province of Howard Figler, who described himself as "a career counselor, with a Ph.D...
...The drastic shrinkage of the academic job market, the overproduction of Ph.Ds, and the scandal of adjunct labor—an astonishing 40 percent of college and university instruction is now undertaken by part timers who typically have no voting rights, no benefits, and no union representation—are circumstances that all the bromides in Dr...
...Any positive feelings...
...I think so, if not entirely for the reasons specified in the Newsletter...
...I was met with considerable incredulity...
...But the TERROR of the first day had been a little dispelled—and not a little of the SHAME...
...If it got me out of my rut...
...If it brought me any nearer to solving what I had been coming to think of as the Riddle of The Job...
...I protested, pointing to the announcement's bottom paragraph...
...Here at the MLA, instead of hiding behind our badges and institutional affiliations, instead of perpetually "preparing a face to meet the faces that we meet," we were coming clean—finally admitting, just by our presence in the room, what so many of us had for so long kept hidden even from ourselves: the realization that the academy was not and would not be our home, that for us life's paths looked to be leading elsewhere...
...The group was predominantly white, with only one African-American (male) and a Moroccan woman...
...Any other words for the feelings associated with job hunting...
...Why not go," my wife suggested, "and check it out...
...Eight men and twenty-six women registered for the clinic...
...Analyzing," several people said at once...
...Finding a pair of Ann Taylor pumps—on sale" volunteered, sotto voce, a charming young ex-dissertator...
...It was all a matter of doing what any good salesperson does every day: "needs assessment," "networking," and "informational interviewing...
...About half were from the East (seven New Yorkers, including two from Brooklyn...
...Are you the blue pencil...
...GUARDED OPTIMISM...
...The Clinic, the announcement stated, is intended for members "interested in employment outside the academy," and is "designed to help participants learn to identify career options and marketable skills, prepare effective letters of application and résumés, locate jobs, and improve interviewing and negotiating skills...
...Thus the Germanist, our table decided, had shown, apart from the obvious computer skills, "self-initiative" (a "Self-Management" skill) "persuading" (a "Communication" skill) and several other skills besides...
...I attended all the sessions, undeterred by Chicago's usual Siberian weather or the necessity of cutting short my attendance at my inlaws' yearly Boxing Day party...
...Perhaps the occasion was beyond irony—in that respect rather like the MLA itself...
...Was the experience worth the price of admission...
...Have you ever considered going into the field of health care...
...asked a woman...
...someone asked, after long scrutiny of my list...
...We were a curious bunch: an Awkward Squad, still members of a kind of clerisy, aloof from the getting and spending carried on outside the academic walls, averse to the language of commercialism, suspicious of the governing 120 • DISSENT Notebook assumptions of American life...
...Another long pause...
...At my table, a young Germanist had successfully set up a computer lab to bring technophobic departmental colleagues up to speed...
...any experience of community in the face of adversity can have a cheering effect...
...The new black belt was clearly another case of self-initiative, as were the former composer and the documentary film producer...
...People will think you're hiding something," I was told...
...The rest were from all over the South and the Midwest...
...What really made it worthwhile was, rather, just the experience of being one of thirty-five like-minded individuals, all in roughly the same quandary: discouraged dissertators, Ph.D.s on the adjunct treadmill, full-time teachers recently denied tenure...
...Nothing about DESPAIR or TERROR—but maybe these are assumed...
...Assembling children's furniture— you know, the kind from IKEA," I was finally pressed into revealing...
Vol. 43 • September 1996 • No. 4
