5.18.2009

from the desk of... candidate 2

A Chorus of Crickets

Cricket, cricket...

Such is the sound coming from my voicemail and email inboxes...

Yesterday morning I heard from my top choice school that they wouldn't be offering me a position, and within an hour had to be upbeat and smiley to defend my graduate work so that I could graduate in two weeks. That was tough. The two aforementioned on-campus interviews I went on did not pan out. So, essentially, I'm back at square one.

I'm not understanding what went wrong. My nature is to blame it on myself and ask the questions like, What could I have done differently? Did I say something wrong?

My graduate advisor knows me very well and encouraged me to press on. "This market is very unpredictable right now," he'd said. "You are going up against people with years of professional experience, and you are just fresh out of grad school. Keep trying. You are meant to be in this field."

Just an hour earlier I'd been researching other options. Teaching English abroad was something I'd always wanted to do, and after two punches to the gut in the form of rejection calls, it started to look promising. I told my advisor his advice came at a good time.

So in the meantime, I'm constantly checking all the right websites for listings, again. Re-doing cover letters and resumes, again.

It's frustrating. But I've got to keep pressing on. In the meantime, I'll just listen to the chorus of crickets from my inboxes...

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