'How Do I Answer Questions About The Academic Job Market Without Bringing Everybody Down?'

Small talk can be a gift, a bulwark, and a morale-booster, or a crushing obligation

Section of Raphael’s School of Athens

Last week I invited readers with a low-stakes problem of etiquette to send their questions to me, and I’m answering the first of them here. I may spin this off into a second advice-only newsletter so as not to crowd the Chatner, but in the meantime, here we go!

Dear Daniel,

I've never written to an advice column before, but I realized I actually do have a question to do with low-grade suffering and politeness. I'm currently on the academic job market, which has been a source of great existential despair for me, because I have no ability to decide where I will live or work a few months from now, or even if I will have a job at all. The trouble is, when people are making small talk, they often ask about how my job search is going, or how school is going, or where I plan to move next (I have previously mentioned leaving my current state). How do I respond honestly but without making people uncomfortable with my level of suffering?

One of the hardest things about experiencing a drawn-out job hunt is dealing with your friends and loved ones’ ever-increasing hunger for good news. They want something to work out for us so badly that we can often feel their desire like a physical presence, even on the occasions where they don’t ask questions. If the wait lasts long enough, we can start to feel (at least I can) like we’re letting down the team by failing to provide them with relief: Not only haven’t I been able to secure a job, I can’t even stop my friends from worrying about me.

In the early days of a job hunt, sympathy and reassurance cheers me up, reinforces my self-confidence, enables me to see the future as a short struggle with a minor challenge or two, which I will easily win, and thereafter enjoy a life of certainty. After a few rejections (and worse, non-responses), I no longer want to hear “I’m sure you’ll get it” or “They’d be crazy not to pick you” or even “Good luck.” It makes me feel as though I’m being lied to, although I don’t think anybody is: Why do my friends think I’m so qualified for all of these jobs, and nobody else seems to agree with them? I become paranoid and legalistic, and inclined to take a friend’s cheerful “You’ll be one of the best candidates for this, I’ll bet” as a promise from the universe that an offer is forthcoming, rather than a personal gesture of support.

After a few weeks of fruitless job-hunting I start to find affectionate concern almost completely unbearable. I no longer want sympathy or reassurance from my friends; I don’t want anything from anybody that isn’t a job offer. I think of myself as an endurance athlete who needs to strip his pack down to the absolute barest of essentials in order to make it over the finish lines. I don’t want to socialize, I don’t want to discuss anything personal or intimate, I don’t want to think about backups or worst-case scenarios, I just want to send out more and more applications in silence, and panic in private afterwards. This is not, in fact, the best plan for coping with professional setbacks; it is the voice of anxiety, which often tells me that unless someone is going to immediately solve a problem for me in the next five minutes, there is no point in telling them about my fears or asking for either emotional or logistical support. No one else can really help you, so keep your mouth shut and keep doing the same thing over and over again, with greater intensity and desperation, until things work out for you is not very good advice — and yet I often catch myself following it.

Because so much of hiring is opaque and seemingly random to the applicant — we never know how many other people might be applying for the same job, what unnamed candidates might secretly be the front-runners, what arcane, internal budget limitations and departmental idiosyncrasies might interfere with the process of selection — it often generates a certain type of magical thinking. And there’s a winner-takes-it-all element to job searches that can add to the maddening sense of uncertainty. Whether you were the second-best candidate or the absolute worst, the result is the same: They don’t offer you the job. I usually experience this as a sort of homeopathic anxiety: If I want to attract job offers, I should first appear successful, since people are drawn to success. If I admit that I’m worried, that I’m running out of ideas and options, that I don’t know what I’m going to do if things keep going on like this, then no one will want to offer me a job, because I’ll look like I need a job too desperately.

I also begin to place irrational amounts of hope in the powers of cheerfulness: If I am very, very cheerful, and conspicuously plucky, and take every disappointment on the chin, someone is going to notice my wonderful attitude and reward me. It happened to Hans Brinker, and to Heidi, and if I am just cheerful for long enough, it is going to happen to me, too. Of course, I do not possess either Hans Brinker or Heidi’s fictional determination, and I am never cheerful as long as I think I am going to be; inevitably I turn snappish and irritable when my invisible reward does not arrive, and then I feel more hopeless than before.

So at this point, if someone asks me how the job search “is going,” I feel like I have two options: One is to completely fall apart in front of someone I believe cannot actually help me, since they cannot offer me a job, and I am convinced that nothing besides a job offer will help me with my problems. The other is to politely lie and say things are “humming along” or “going fine” or “I’m sure something will turn up soon” in a way that makes me feel totally alienated from someone who cares about me.

This is where the question of small talk comes in, I think. At its worst, small talk can feel trivial and alienating, but at its best, it can protect us from unwanted public breakdowns, shield our vulnerability, free our acquaintances from misplaced guilt or discomfort, and help us get out of our own heads and think about the feelings of others. (None of this is to imply, letter-writer, that you share any of the faults I have described here; I merely confess to them in the hopes they may prove useful to you, but I do not for a minute imagine that everyone undergoing a difficult job hunt shares my personal character defects.)

I do think it’s a good idea to have a go-to stock answer, as a general rule, when people ask you about your job search. I don’t think you ought to say “It’s going great” when it isn’t, but neither do you have to get into the stressful details just because you bumped into an acquaintance on the bus or at the library. Something along the lines of “It’s tough, but I’m hanging in there,” without actually using the expression “hanging in there” if you can help it. As long as it communicates 1) You are still on the market and it’s been challenging and 2) You are not looking for this conversation to provide you with complex emotional support or help planning the next year’s worth of contingency plans for your life. You can, I think, deliver this in a tone that makes it clear you’re not looking for sympathy or follow-up questions, a tone that instead communicates a certain brisk resolve.

It’s a good tone, I think. It belongs to the same family as the expression “Oh well, can’t complain,” which is of course at this point a little stale, but the underlying meaning is a good one! It tells your interlocutor “I like you, and I want to be honest with you, but I also want to be considerate of your time, and acknowledge that a five-minute catch-up in the grocery store isn’t the place to get into difficult details.”

Similarly, if someone asks where you think you’ll be living next year, I think restrained honesty is still the way to go: “You know, I’m still not sure where I’ll be next year — which I’m sure you can understand is a little stressful. I hope I’ll know more soon.”

(If anyone is ill-mannered enough at that point to respond with anything like “Boy, time’s running out!” or “You’re going to have to figure out something pretty soon, huh?” I think the only correct response is to answer “Yes,” then change the subject.)

I do hope, though, that you will set aside some regular time to make non-small talk with at least one or two people on this subject. It doesn’t have to be huge talk — let’s say medium-sized — but at least once a month, if not more often, it might help to pour out some of your troubles and try to talk through some of your options with someone you trust. You can, of course, stress that you’re not looking to make those friends responsible for solving your problems, and bring the subject up a bit in advance so you’re not springing it on them at a difficult time — but you can, and should, share your suffering with your friends at least every once in a while, perhaps even especially when you both know they won’t be able to resolve the situation.

The worst mindset, and the one I most hope I can help you avoid from my own experiences, is this one, I think:

1. Only getting a job offer will solve my problem

2. None of my friends can give me a job

3. I am already burdening my friends by experiencing uncertainty

4. The least I can do for them, since I’m already at a disadvantage, is to keep my fears to myself, so they don’t have to worry about me any more than they already do

5. I feel afraid and alone! Better keep that to myself, since no one can help me with it. Instead I’m going to privately think about every job I’ve ever quit with terror and regret, and wish I could turn back time and retreat to the last place of safety. [See step 1.]

I don’t know what the next year will bring for you, or how this will all turn out. It feels a little wan and useless, but I really do wish you the absolute best, and I hope the academic job market turns up something splendid for you, something that you are uniquely suited to do well, and that enables you to be useful to your fellows.

In the meantime, I hope you will set aside some time to share your suffering with someone else. Even if they can’t fix it for you, they can help you feel less alone as you navigate it, and there’s a great deal to be said for that.

Thanks very much for reading! If you have a question you’d like me to answer, feel free to reply to this email.

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