Murderers You're Murderers, We Are Not the Same as You

Oh my god, this piece in the Chronicle is pure gold. It's by someone who spent fifteen years working on HR-related crap, writing books and teaching seminars on how to get jobs in the non-academic world I keep hearing so much about. But now she's finishing up her PhD in something business-y, and she's been out of the academic job market three times. Why three times? Because—wait, wait for it—her non-academic job-seeking skills are totally fucking irrelevant! Can you believe it? I know! Who could have guessed?

The thing about the piece is the tone. The author isn't just talking about how different the academic and non-academic job markets are. She's talking about how utterly fucking gobsmacked she is about the differences. Her realization that the markets were different was an “epiphany”, and she “continues to marvel” at just how different the markets are.

The point isn't that the author made some serious rookie mistakes. The academic job market is really weird and fucked up. Who isn't going to make mistakes the first (or second, or third) time out? The point is, why is it such a fucking revelation that the academic job market is nothing like the non-academic market? Why is it so hard to convince some non-academics that, no, you should not be making follow-up calls about your applications, and their advice to do so is terrible, terrible advice?

-- PGS