9 WDL What I Won't Miss

 COCC just finished its spring hiring process.  We got an email from the VPI's office today letting us know about the newly hired, all in a list.  (In the past, the announcements would come out individually so one had a better sense that life was happening all about one, what with the announcements of new hires, the fruit trees blooming, and the horrible pine and juniper pollen blowing in the wind.)  There were some failed searches, however.  Hearing about them reminded me of all the search committees I've been on and how it was one of my least favorite jobs on campus.

Being on a hiring committee is a difficult task for a caring person.  The automated rejection notices are no big deal, of course, even though the committee member probably experienced the pain of similar missives in the past.  Nor is it all that difficult to say no to applications that don't satisfy the basic requirements, like regulation spelling and a letter that hasn't been tweaked to fit the particular institution at which it arrived. 

But it is tough to bring people to one's campus, spend time with them, and then have to call them and say, "You didn't make the cut."  It's even harder to tell someone that one has seen every week for a year or more that the outside candidate got the prize. 

In an article in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, Rebecca Schuman wonders why Academic Rejection is so crushing.  She sees that many academics have their whole sense of self tied up in their work.  The academic rejection can feel like an attack on the individual's Self.  It can feel as though one is being called "worthless."  She would like to figure out why people experience rejection in this particular industry so deeply and work to reconfigure people's perception of the academic brush-off.

"The goal should not be to avoid rejection in a profession where rejection is unavoidable. The goal should be to address the core existential issues that make said rejection so painful."

The best way to address this pain, she says, is through compassion -- compassion for the rejected self and also for the people doing the rejecting -- the hiring committee that is probably doing the best that it can with a difficult charge. 

But I'm not sure that compassion is enough.  I think that another mental attitude is just as important:  detachment.  Detachment from outcomes and detachment from ego can also modify the grinding pain people feel when having their way of being in the world questioned by an academic rejection. 

Also, I'm not sure about the claim regarding academic rejection.  Does it really feel worse than other forms of rejection?  Is this even something that can be measured?  I'm sure rejection from other jobs also feels bad.  Perhaps academics just suffer more loudly than others.