We are entering the season of job searches, interviews, and (hopefully) offers. Here are a few interview tips for the newly and nearly minted academics on the market.
First, be as clear as possible about your own career goals: do you want to teach at a seminary? a university or college? aiming for research and writing or administration? So you are invited for an interview. If you accept, think about the school and the fit first. For instance, is the school in your own religious tradition? Is the school too liberal or too conservative? After you accept the invitation, realize that an interview is an opportunity for the hiring unit and the candidate (you) to discover whether they can work well together. So, your preparation for the interview is very important.
It seems to me that job searches are all about being authentic. The time-consuming preparation of application materials can really be an opportunity for a person to re-examine her/his direction in life. This idea of “vocation” guides my thinking on this matter. To what am I being called to do? The reality is that I have had to revisit that question several times in my life.
“Why are you doing a PhD?” – Drs. Manigault-Bryant and Walton encouraged the first-year students to find the choruses in our praisesongs for the Ph.D. We were in search of, as Dr. Walton succinctly identified, our animating impulse for the next four to ten years. I first said out loud: “I don’t know.” I then gave pieces of the puzzle in an effort to make narrative meaning of my presence. The “I don’t know,” at the moment, felt like enough. Indeed, Dr. Iva Caruthers challenged this year’s group of motley doctoral fellows with a charge: we do not have to know the right answers to the wrong questions, Caruthers contended. Rather, we are able to say “I don’t know” in the face of the right questions.
“Why are you doing a PhD?” – a right question.
As it is always on the cutting edge – making space for new scholars, engaging esteemed faculty, and unapologetically re-shaping the space of the religious academy – FTE has once again found an opportunity to point emerging (and beginning) scholars of religion and theology into a critical and apropos dialogical interrogation. By acquiring a new moniker for the summer gathering of doctoral students and faculty, this fellowship program has simultaneously instigated several questions and challenged the ways that we might have uncritically approached them.
Over the past two days, I have been inspired to reflect on my contribution to the academy, in relation to a gifted and talented group of colleagues, in the context of a significant historical shift. We are African American leaders. What does that mean? What does that mean today amidst the current political climate?
"What season are we in, and why are we sometimes hesitant to discuss what that season really means?"
On May 22, 2010, I will be in the Princeton University Chapel, adorned in my commencement regalia, eagerly anticipating the moment when my name will be called and I am welcomed into the company of scholars. As hard as I will try to maintain my cool...
