A dreary conclusion, though eerily familiar. Do we all have a “just shut up and smile” job interview memory? Or is it only those of us who do jobs where personal opinions expected to be predictable.
Speaking of predictions… don’t get the creepy crawlies. I’m another of those Unitarian Universalists.

I don’t have an issue with the UU Church thing per se… it just was a wee bit strange that it seemed like the whole faculty were members, like I’d accidentally beamed into a UU commune or something.

I’d probably have the same feeling in a department where everyone was a Baptist or Mormon or Methodist or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist.

Re: Slippery Rock…that’s just creepy! I guess it is good you found out during the interview rather than after you’ve accepted the job.

Done in by Noam Chomsky. That Bastard! (shakes head)

Lawrence—the only undefeated men’s basketball team in the nation, at either the NCAA or NAIA level

There’s a misunderstanding here. UU is the complete opposite of a “cult of personality!” Catholics, in contrast, are much more hierarchical and tend to focus on individual clergy such as the Pope. This I would call a cult of personality.

Lemme see here… not counting the interview at [Redacted Rust-Belt City] (since I’m assuming they’ve not made a decision yet), you’ve mentioned four interviews at which you can pinpoint the moment at which you screwed the pooch in the interview,, and out of those four interviews you got two job offers.

Offhand, I’d say that not only is your spider-sense fallible, but it looks like it’s indistinguishable from a fair coin-toss.

:-)

Like I said in comment #2, it was more the creepy vibe that everybody was a Stepford academic than the UU thing itself; the UU thing was just the manifestation of their Stepfordness.

It’s about the same feeling I have when I walk into a methodology panel at the Midwest…

Yeah, the spidey sense doesn’t work all that well. Then again, it could just indicate that other people screwed the pooch even more spectacularly than I.

Incidentally, the interview was for a one-year at a liberal arts college in [Redacted Small Town] about an hour south of [Redacted Rust-Belt City].

What’s worse is not being able to pinpoint the moment you lost the job (because someone else was getting the job even before you landed on campus…but you don’t know that until a couple weeks later and an insider explains that to you after the fact)....but you do sense you’re not getting the job while you’re there (even though most people are nice to you and treat you like a true candidate).

The tip off could be something like…. you thank your host after dinner for taking the time to have dinner with you, and they say, “Well, it was a free dinner anyway…” Or maybe that the Dean mentions they have another offer out to X-person, which no one in the department has mentioned, and though you know they are doing two hires in your subfield (comparative), you realize that X-person also studies your region of interest and is a senior hire….

True story.

Re #5: I believe they lost an exhibition game against Wisconsin this season (it was one of the nights during my interview visit), though I guess that one doesn’t count in the standings.

Ouch. That one’s never happened to me.

Then again, usually I sense I’m not getting an interview (much less the job) when I send in the application. :) As a heuristic, it’s a pretty accurate one.

But you’d hope that if you’ve got a campus visit, you’ve got a fighting chance…not that an offer has already been extended to someone else. :)

fo’ shizzle.

RE #11: Yes, they did, but like you said, it didn’t count.

I would hate to be part of a campus interview not knowing that I’m just a charade to fill the hiring process because they have to have three candidates to interview (or two). Five years ago, I did go on such an interview to the midwest somewhere. I was called and the department chair basically admitted that they wanted to bring me in because their process required two people to come to campus adn one of their top two had dropped out.

I went ahead and went. It was a free trip to a state I’d never seen and allowed me to practice the art of the academic interview. But I knew I didn’t have the job (or want it, frankly), which is quite different from wanting it and not knowing you don’t have it.

Why would it be a complete waste of an undergrad’s time to get mentored about going to grad school if he or she wasn’t currently attending a top-25 school? I’m waiting to hear back about grad applications now, so of course this interests me…

It’s hard getting an academic job and coming from a non-“Top 25” program only makes landing a job even more difficult.

Re: #17: That’s not what I said (or meant to say, at least): rather, it would be a waste of the student’s time to go to a grad school not ranked in the top 25, or declining programs within the top 25. (It isn’t a “coming from” thing.)

Of course, it’s hard to get into one of those schools unless you went to a good school yourself… but good students from Lawrence and other selective liberal arts colleges should be able to get into top-25 programs (heck, I know for a fact that very good students from mediocre public universities have gotten grad school offers from Duke).

Cool, thanks.