For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)

As we get further into this week, a lot of people are going to be facing the real possibility that they won't get any APA interviews. (Yeah, there's still time and once somebody got a call on Christmas eve, and blah, blah, fucking blah. But time is running out.) Some people without interviews might be able to cancel their plane tickets. Some of them, on the advice of their profs, will go to the APA looking for that fabled last-minute interview, as if that were a better use of their time than being with the people they love and shifting their focus forward to the spring job market and next year's fall.

The thing is, the job market is, above all else, about rejection--wave after wave of rejection smashing into your ribs, squeezing them so hard you can feel yourself suffocating under the weight of your own failure. I guess the idea is, we're supposed to keep fighting through all that until somehow, some year in the future, we end up with a job. That's the part that takes real work, I think--not the applications themselves, but seeing through rejection after rejection after rejection to the possibility of another shot next year.

So to those starting that now, I'm sorry. It doesn't make sense. There are no reasons to be found here. If you're going to do it again next year, good. Take some time off, and then start strategizing. If this year was your last stand and you're getting ready to give up philosophy, good luck. Now you get to live a life in a city you've chosen, near the people you love, doing a job where everybody's awed every day at how fucking smart you are. It's going to be nice.