At any rate, there is now.  I have accepted a job at a large public university in Georgia, and will be moving there on March 12.  I’ll be living about 45 minutes northwest of Savannah.  While I’ve already announced this in other not-fully-public forums, I have yet to put something out on the inter-web in a fully open manner.

Basically, the job is the next step up from the one that I currently do.  I’ll be supervising a few people who work as Resident Directors, and will be doing some other stuff, too.  The area is nice, and the school has a really good ‘vibe’ to it, but it is a little bit in the middle of nowhere.  This isn’t terrible, but it will be an adjustment from living in Oakland.

This is something that is both exciting and neat, but also sad and a bit scary, too.  I really like living in Pittsburgh, and I suspect that it will always be a target area for me in future job hunts.  Right now, however, there just doesn’t appear to be any ‘next step’ positions for me here.

As I have mentioned through this medium before, this spring I started a job hunt. I figured that after 3 years of being a Resident Director at Pitt, I was ready to move on. As with my search three years ago, I concentrated on using the Placement portion of the ACPA (which was joint w/ NASPA this year) Convention as the main conduit for my search. I applied to about 18-21 jobs for which various schools were interviewing in Orlando¹. This resulted in me taking 12 first round interviews at the conference. I had to turn down a few interview requests from schools to which I applied, as 12 was about as many as I could take at the conference with my other obligations while there. Out of these 12 first round interviews, I ended up visiting 4 campuses.

Contrast this with my search from 3 years ago. I applied to 70-something schools, which yielded only 12 first round interviews (versus this year’s 20 – 12 ratio). Out of those 12 interviews I only received 2 invitations to campus, and ended up with a job at Pitt.

Needless to say, I was feeling really good about my search going in to the campus interviews. My ‘cone’ (the term I apply to my numbers of applications->interviews->campus visits->job offers) was much ‘wider’ then it was last time, and I was feeling really confident.

<tangent> Amarok just popped on the 1998 Rhys Fulber remix of Skinny Puppy’s “Warlock” from the Remix DysTemper album. I had mostly forgotten about that track, and how much I think it rocks. It’s a great take on Warlock. </tangent>

My campus visits were scheduled for the very last week in April and the first week of May. I visited Hofstra University, Chatham College (now University), Carnegie Mellon University, and Duke University. Each of the schools (and positions) had their high and low points, but I felt that I could be happy with any of the four positions. I left each interview feeling pretty good about how the day went, and felt that with 4 campus interviews that I felt were solid behind me, that I’d be sure to have at least one offer coming my way by the end of May.

It’s funny how things don’t always work out the way we want them to.

As of Friday afternoon, I’ve heard back from Duke, CMU, and Chatham, and found out that each of them have gone with other candidates. In 2 of the cases I was told that it came down to a decision between me and one other candidate. I’ve yet to hear from Hofstra, but seeing as how they were my first interview over one month ago, that they haven’t called to check my references, nor returned my calls requesting an update on their search, I’m pretty sure that I’m out of the running for that position, too.

All of this is a really big letdown, as I was really excited to move on from my current position for next year. After 3 years as an RD, I feel there’s very little challenge left in it for me, and it’d be nice to get past the sort of ‘life on hold’ feelings that living on campus inevitably raises for me. The positions each offered some really interesting opportunities to further my career at a time when I feel it’s important to stay challenged in order for me to keep my interest in student affairs as a career.

What now? Well, I have my current job; it hasn’t gone anywhere. Staying on at Pitt for another year has always been the fall back option. However, this week I’m going to take a look through the listings on higheredjobs.com and other similar sites to see what’s out there at this point. If I see some interesting postings, I’ll probably throw my resume in for consideration, but I don’t feel that I have the energy to start a full-on search again. The again, the thought of having to go through the whole process again next year, which would be necessary if I stay at Pitt², is not appealing either.

There’s been a whole boatload of other things going on for me lately as well, but I’ll get to those some other time.

________________

¹I was contacted by about 30 other schools requesting interviews with me, but almost universally these were RD level positions, just like my current job. The few mid-level positions for which I was contacted out of this bunch were from schools in geographic areas I had ruled out.

²Staying here for a 4th year is one thing, but doing a fifth year as an RD is simply NOT an option for me if I want to stay sane.

In poker news, I took down The Wheatie last week raking in the first place prize bucks. I’m not going to go and say that this was any great feat of poker talent on my part. I was getting hit in the face by the deck, mostly on the flop and after. Like the time I flopped the nut flush and 4 other people in the hand bet like crazy. That was great. I went into the final table with a massive chip lead (about 3x the chips of the 2nd place player) and kept it for most of the time. I did manage to make a couple of big mistakes and loose the lead at one point, but I was able to get it back. Heads up play only lasted 2 hands. Anyway, I think any mostly competent player could have gone deep in the tourney if they were getting the cards I was. I’m not sure I’ll have the time to play tomorrow, but I hope I do. Next week I obviously won’t be able to play while in Orlando.

The other thing I wanted to mention in this post is about food. Specifically, really freggin’ good Indian food. Before going out to join Don and Tara for their bowling birthday party on Saturday night, Angela and I decided to go out for Indian food. We went to Taste of India on Penn Ave, near Main St. I had only been there once before, and didn’t remember much about it. On this visit, though, we experienced some of the best Indian food either of us had ever eaten in this town, the prices were very reasonable, and the staff was very nice. When Angela asked for a box to bring the remainder of her dinner home, they brought it out with fresh rice, with out even being asked to do so. Compare this to that hole India Garden that CHARGES YOU for an extra plate of rice while you’re eating in their restaurant. I asked for my food with a hotness level of 10, and while it still wasn’t hot enough for me, it’s the closest any place in this town has come yet. I’ve found my new favorite place to eat around here, I think.

The downside of the last few days has been that my dieting and exercise has suffered since Thursday. Last Wednesday was the last day I was on the trainer, and there were a few days of caloric excess in there too. Consequently, I gained weight in the last week (about a pound) for the first time since I started the get-smaller campaign on January 22. Also this week isn’t going to leave much time for the exercising, either, and it’s not going to be too easy to be calorie conscious while at the conference. I would say that I will try to use the hotel gym, however, I don’t know if I’ll actually hold myself to it.

There was also a motorcycle-related headache this weekend, but I’ll leave that for another post.

Nothing about departmental policy or anything having to do with my job has changed. Nope, that’s all the same. What’s not the same, however, is that housing decided to have workers start on the renovation of the dining areas below the Towers just as spring break started.

What does this mean? It means that every morning, around 6:45 or 7:00, I get awoken with a start by the sounds of sledgehammers hitting walls or drills burrowing into concrete. Sounds like fun, huh? Not really.

Last week it got really bad and I spoke with people in my department, as it’s one thing that my schedule’s disrupted, but what’s worse is that this work can be heard sometimes up to the 13th floor of the building, which means this is disrupting an awful lot of students’ sleep schedules. On Thursday, our department was finally able to work with housing to get the construction workers to not do noisy work until 9:00 AM. They sent me an e-mail, I was excited…

…until I was woken up with loud banging at 6:45 on Friday morning. I wrote an e-mail, and there was then much promising that the situation would be fixed. Great. Saturday morning…. 7:00 AM…. loud drilling! Great! This morning, 6:50 AM.. BANG BANG BANG!

Looks like I’ll be switching to something like a 11 – 7 sleep schedule. Not a big deal for me, I guess. Now we’ll see how the students like it…

I’m great. Give me a job now.

KTHXBYE,

Mike

As some of you may already be aware, I’m currently in the process of a job search. The “why” of the situation is quite simple: I’m finishing up my third year as a Resident Director, and I feel I’ve gained all I can out of the position, professionally. Also, believe it or not, living on a college campus when you’re 28 years old can get really old. The “how” of the job search is the part about all of this that’s a bit more complicated.

Some of you may remember when I was in this process three years ago, as I was finishing my degree at UConn. The basics of the process are the same. I’ll be participating in the placement at a national convention this year. What’s different this year, though, is that both of the major organizations in my field are having a joint meeting.. which means rather than a 3000-4000 person conference, this is going to be something in the neighborhood of a 10,000 person conference. If a giant asteroid were to impact in Orlando between March 31 and April 5 this year, there’d be a whole lot fewer college administrators around to be disliked.

I’m searching for positions that would be career-advancing for me in one way or another.  This means I’m applying for mid-level Residence Life or Judicial Affairs positions, or more entry-ish positions in Student Activities to broaden my experience base.  With very few exceptions, these are live-off positions.  Those that provide housing are more live-on rather than live-in, which means housing separate from the student population, but still on campus for quick response to crisis situations.

I won’t really be posting the specifics of my search here.  This is public, and I think it would be a little unprofessional to list off the schools with which I’m interviewing at this point.  While Googling my name doesn’t lead to a patch to reach this site until a very indirect root that pops up on the 5th page of results, this is a small field, and you really just never know what information about you could be shared with someone.

I will say that the search started out a little frustrating, but really started to get better this past Friday. I now have 4 confirmed interviews for the conference, and hope to get at least 6-8 more.  After conference interviews, I’ll find out how many (or if I have any) campus interview invitations.  I think that 3-4 campus visits is the most I can manage, though I have saved up a lot of vacation time, knowing that I’d need it for this process.

As far as the “where”, I can say that I’ve pretty much opened the search up on a national level.  I’m focusing more on urban areas, still, though I am considering some places that are more rural when I feel an institutions could be very good fit for me.  There aren’t any job possibilities open for me at Pitt, however I will say that I have some options as far as applying for schools within Pittsburgh.

If the job search doesn’t work out for me, I still have my current job.  However, I really feel like it’s the appropriate time for me to try to move up.   I’ve been very up front with my supervisor during this process, and she knows that I’m searching.  I’m trying to be as fair as I can to the department, too, as if I do leave, they’ll need to hire a replacement for me.  If they do have to replace me, they don’t want to loose out on the best candidates by waiting too long.   The whole thing is a rather delicately balanced situation.

At any rate, I’ll do my best to share my thoughts on the job search as it moves along, as well as make periodic updates about where I am with it.

Less than two weeks until conference time.