In which I do not get a day-job
Oct. 15th, 2010 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI did actually apply for one. A regular, full-time day-job. First time in my life. It's okay, though, I didn't get it.
What it was, a local university was advertising for a lecturer in creative writing. So happens that I've taught on that course before, on an irregular part-time basis, as well as having been their writer-in-residence for a year; so I know the course, I know the institution, I know the staff. And I have thirty-some years experience, and on the face of it I'd be a really strong candidate; and I didn't even get on the shortlist.
Happily, I wasn't expecting to. Being me, I need a reason for being rejected, other than "you're just not good enough" - and they gave me one from the outset. I happened to bump into one of the senior lecturers in town, and I asked her if I should apply. She thought about it for a second and a half, and said no. "You don't have a degree, do you?" she said. "You'd be ideal, otherwise - but what we want is you with a degree."
I applied anyway, on the principle of making them turn you down rather than doing it yourself; and behold, that's what they did.
And I have decided to believe that she was right, that my lack of a degree was the deciding factor. It might well have been an excuse, remembered with relief on the spur of the moment, but I'm going to run with it anyway. For a little time there I could have been angry, that my lack of a formal qualification could outweigh all these decades of experience and acquired skillz; but actually I can see how it does make sense from their point of view. It's not about the students, it's about the institution; it's always about the institution (the purpose of a university is not to teach, it is to survive; and it survives by teaching). What does it say about the value of their creative writing course if the most experienced, most widely published lecturer on that course is the one who doesn't have the very thing they're selling...?
I am a living embodiment of the fact that you don't need a degree to be a professional writer. You can see why they might not want me.
At any rate, that's what I'm clinging to. It does my ego a little bit of good, in dark times. And now I must go to my dentist, that he may dig and dig in my jaw for some stray piece of bone that actually I don't believe is there. Hey-ho.
What it was, a local university was advertising for a lecturer in creative writing. So happens that I've taught on that course before, on an irregular part-time basis, as well as having been their writer-in-residence for a year; so I know the course, I know the institution, I know the staff. And I have thirty-some years experience, and on the face of it I'd be a really strong candidate; and I didn't even get on the shortlist.
Happily, I wasn't expecting to. Being me, I need a reason for being rejected, other than "you're just not good enough" - and they gave me one from the outset. I happened to bump into one of the senior lecturers in town, and I asked her if I should apply. She thought about it for a second and a half, and said no. "You don't have a degree, do you?" she said. "You'd be ideal, otherwise - but what we want is you with a degree."
I applied anyway, on the principle of making them turn you down rather than doing it yourself; and behold, that's what they did.
And I have decided to believe that she was right, that my lack of a degree was the deciding factor. It might well have been an excuse, remembered with relief on the spur of the moment, but I'm going to run with it anyway. For a little time there I could have been angry, that my lack of a formal qualification could outweigh all these decades of experience and acquired skillz; but actually I can see how it does make sense from their point of view. It's not about the students, it's about the institution; it's always about the institution (the purpose of a university is not to teach, it is to survive; and it survives by teaching). What does it say about the value of their creative writing course if the most experienced, most widely published lecturer on that course is the one who doesn't have the very thing they're selling...?
I am a living embodiment of the fact that you don't need a degree to be a professional writer. You can see why they might not want me.
At any rate, that's what I'm clinging to. It does my ego a little bit of good, in dark times. And now I must go to my dentist, that he may dig and dig in my jaw for some stray piece of bone that actually I don't believe is there. Hey-ho.