the wait

There is something fundamentally inhuman about this process. I was speaking with a friend of mine yesterday, tenured at a big research university here on the east coast. She changed jobs a handful of years ago, from a similar institution on the west coast. We were speaking of the silence, the wait, the responses and replies and timetables of all that comes next, after the interview. She had interviewed for 2 tenured positions, and one was strongly courting her; at the other there were two candidates. Time drifted by, and she contacted the chair of one of the two via email: days pass. Another email, this time to more people in the department, and again silence. 4 days later, a brief, perfunctory email from a dean/administrator, thanking her for applying, and saying the position had been filled. If this is the casual, cruel, brusque treatment at the senior level, what hope for the bottom of ladder?

That said, there were some flybacks announced before MLA was over. Smaller, more efficient departments? I'm waiting to hear from institutions on the much much larger side, so who knows what spectacular depths of Byzantine bureaucracy are waiting in the woodworks to slow down the decision process. So instead I'm analyzing, obsessively, the rumor and hearsay, the one email exchange after the fact with a committee member on a wholly different topic. What does the use of the word "thang" indicate, or the collegial and mildly critical observations about a panelist? Sigh. Hurry up and wait.