FIRST PERSON

Becoming a Colleague

A Ph.D. in economics makes the transition from graduate student to potential colleague

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines An Academic in America Yearning After Books Why are so many artists and writers preoccupied by the so-called demise of bookish culture? First Person What Am I Doing? Shouldn't seven years of graduate school have helped me avoid taking a job just to have a job? Career News Too Much Information Colleges encourage the use of cellphones for emergency-alert purposes, but professors have begun to worry that students can use their phones during exams to cheat off the Web. First Person Moving a Step (or 3) Up the Ladder Why would a newly tenured associate professor in the sciences decide to go on the job market? Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By CHARLES ST. CLAIR

You put together a working draft of a solo-authored paper to send out, showing what kind of economics research you can do now and potentially in the future. You fill out 100 or so applications. Your kitchen table becomes job-market central, filled with vitas, research papers, cover letters, envelopes, and stamps. Your wife sighs.

You wait for word about the applications. You make sure your references get the letters written. You make sure they upload them correctly into the myriad online application Web sites. You make certain your department administrator mails out letters in a timely manner. You check your in box and cellphone every half-hour.

You gear up for battle at a national conference where you interview with 20 or so universities and research organizations. You don a game face of sure-footed confidence and intellectual curiosity, Gatorade in hand, PowerBars in pocket, spiel memorized.

Then you wait to get invited to a second interview. You traverse the country, flight after flight, giving 90-minute talks surrounded by 30-minute meetings. Each of them finds you hyperaware, well-caffeinated, and fearful of missteps. You are treated like a colleague by a person whose work you have admired since your first year of graduate school. You are wined and dined, both you and your interviewers aiming to impress.

And finally, you wait to see if someone will hire you; if they will call you up to the big leagues. Well, someone did.

When I began chronicling my search for my first postdoctoral position in economics, I wrote that I planned to apply to universities, investment banks, and other financial institutions. I ended up with a wonderful position at a financial institution that will allow me a good amount of time for independent research. It was a partly cloudy day when my cellphone rang and I received the offer. Before accepting, I had to check one other possibility. That phone call went like this:

"Congratulations on that wonderful offer! Let me tell you where we're at: We've made an offer to someone and they have a week to consider it." Pause. "I'll be honest, you are not number two on our list."

"Thank you for telling me," I said. "May I ask, am I third?"

Chuckle on the other end. "No."

"Thank you very much for the opportunity," I replied, knowing that that put me in fourth position since only four of us had made the shortlist.

After that, it was easy to accept the offer and end my job-market odyssey. The entire process had been disorienting and heady. But once I returned to earth — job in hand — I found one rather large obstacle left in my path: finishing and defending my dissertation. Forget about things that disorient and go to your head; this task was just plain tedious.

It seems appropriate that my last few months of graduate school made me feel as much like a student as any other moment during my five years here. The job market had left me viewing myself as a professional, a potential colleague. So I went from the heights of that experience to the depths of plowing through computer code and LaTeX to get numbers and formatting just right. For several months, I waved goodbye to my circadian rhythm and spent my days pulling all-nighters, drinking a lot of coffee, and sleeping in fits and starts.

In the end, my defense went beautifully, my dissertation was accepted, and I traded my graduate-student hat for the potential-colleague version.

I am no longer a graduate student, I am a Ph.D. But it will take some time to feel that I've moved on. My adviser has been helpful with the transition. Almost immediately after I earned the degree, he changed the tone of our interactions — from student-teacher to colleague-colleague.

Colleague.

I've used that word here a few times. I am getting used to it, and to the idea that I have officially been inducted into the society of economists. How fully vested I become in that world is up to my own decisions and productivity. But I feel like a definite hurdle has been passed. It feels unsettling but good.

The big lesson I learned from the job market is that people on hiring committees are looking for colleagues. I had heard that before, but the experience of going on the market made me realize it's true. Now I understand why the hiring side of the job-market process is tiring, too — those people are making decisions that lock them in, if not exactly to the person they hire, then to the possibilities they forgo. You want to make that decision carefully.

It was hard to appreciate the difficulty of making that decision while I was on the other side of the interview table. Now that I am past that stage, I think I understand.

Some goals in life are unrealistic (like my junior-high school dream of being in the NBA). Some goals are mundane (like intending to do the dishes before I go to bed). Then there are those wonderful goals that require years of hard work, but are realistic and within reach. I just this year accomplished two such goals: receiving my Ph.D. and getting a job about which I am excited.

The only advice I would offer is twofold: Keep in mind that getting a Ph.D. is not an accident, and it is not trivial. The luster comes off that goal as you work day after day toward accomplishing it, but it is still a wonderful and attainable goal. Also keep in mind that it is possible to get a job you will love. After all, isn't that the reason you started the Ph.D. in the first place?

Charles St. Clair is the pseudonym of a Ph.D. in economics at a research university in the West. He has been chronicling his search for his first postgraduate job. To read his previous columns, click here.