Moving forward

So, the dissertation is (for now) done. That means it's time to move into job application world for the next few days, until the students turn in their last senior thesis drafts on Friday, and I go back into grading world. Since job applications are so soul sucking and demoralizing, I'm jumping at the chance to work in any other way, and I'm actually looking forward to grading world. Sad, isn't it? Right now I'm enthusiastically helping a former student with grad school applications because I'd rather help ease her soul-sucking demoralization than leap headlong into my own.

The next job application is pretty easy, since it's just a slightly different version of the only one I've done so far, a postdoc teaching first-year writing. The one after that is incredibly easy, since it's just emailing a CV. Once those are done, however, it's full-tilt musicology job applications until I weep blood.

Okay, that's obviously a melodramatic presentation of my situation. I have actually wept blood before, on three occasions (eye surgery is soooo not fun), and this will be far less physically uncomfortable. However, I think I would prefer physical pain and discomfort to this process. I'm not particularly good at competition or at telling people why they should want me. I'm much better at telling other people why they're awesome, and at coping with pain. Not really related skills normally, but both reasons why I don't wanna do this.

Anyway, time to dive in. Wish me luck. Listening to Turn of the Screw is going to keep me focused on the task, I hope, and not distract me like all the Audra McDonald I just listened to...