Long journeys part 5: Rebecca Bamford

(This is the fifth installment of our series of philosophers who have been on the job market for a long time - submissions - anonymous or named, are still welcome). 

I am currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy (tenure-track) in the Department of Philosophy & Political Science at Quinnipiac University. I received my PhD in 2004 from Durham University, in the UK. I had a one-year visiting position at the University of Bradford in 2003-04, after which I held an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Rhodes University in South Africa (2004-06), and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University (2006-07), which brought my husband (who is not an academic) and I to the US. 

I went on the US job market in 2006, immediately after arriving at Emory, and with no idea what I was doing. Some Emory faculty kindly read over my materials and patiently explained some of the basic expectations surrounding the US academic job market. I got three offers, all for non-tenure-track, multiple year positions. In retrospect this was a huge stroke of luck: I had no teaching evaluations from US institutions available, my transcript (which uses the UK grading scale) looks to US eyes as though I failed everything (so much so that I ended up putting an explanation of the grading scale on the front of it), and had published/in press something like four articles, which looking back, was nowhere near enough. I accepted an offer from Hunter College, CUNY, to become what they call a “Substitute” Assistant Professor for a year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year.

I tried the job market again in 2007-08 (somewhat reluctantly, because I was enjoying my time at Hunter) and - knowing I had a four-semester limit on my CUNY contract - for a third time in 2008-09. The latter was, as we all know, a disastrous job market year because of the financial crisis. At pretty much the last minute, just as I was resigning myself to unemployment, I was recruited to a tenure-track job in a new interdisciplinary health sciences program at the University of Minnesota Rochester. I was grateful to get the position and learned a lot from my students and colleagues, but I decided to go on the job market again after three years in order to find a position where I could teach and do research focusing on philosophy. I was lucky enough to secure my current tenure-track job in the 2011-12 job market season.

In total, I moved institution five times between 2003 and 2012 - across three different continents - before finding a tenure-track position in philosophy. 

To make this possible legally, I spent two years on a temporary residence permit in South Africa (my husband is a South African citizen, so was able to move there without needing a visa). I then spent three years in J (exchange visitor) status and a little over 6 years in H1B status in the US - with my husband in J and H dependent spouse categories - before we both became US permanent residents this year. My husband was permitted to work when he was in J2 status (provided he did not earn more than I did), but he was forbidden to work while he was in H4 status. Moving so much, and needing to jump through various complex immigration process hoops multiple times, has taken up a huge amount of time, and has affected our finances long-term. As a non-permanent resident I found I was not actually eligible for every job advertised, and I once had to reapply for a job to which I had already been appointed, owing to an issue with how the job had originally been advertised. 

Not all US institutions provide full support for the costs associated with e.g. H visas/permanent residence, and one cannot necessarily trust that every university is up-to-date with the correct, current immigration law and procedures relevant to international faculty. When negotiating, it is vital to be as well informed as possible yourself, to get clarity about what is included as support from the institution, and to get whatever is agreed upon between the university and yourself in writing. Also, seeking the advice of a lawyer can necessitate shopping around - some attorneys charge flat-rate fees, while others charge an hourly or part-hourly rate - and you should always work with an attorney you are comfortable with. Moreover, if traveling with a spouse, it’s important to be aware of how government regulations may impact on them, relative to visa status. I was very glad to hear that earlier this year, the US government finally changed the rule that forbade dependent spouses in H status from undertaking paid work. While this happened too late to benefit my husband or myself, I think it will do a great deal to help many other people in the future, financially and psychologically. 

Every time I moved, I lost months of productive work time to dealing with immigration and associated hassles. When I moved to the US it took me a while to get a credit card, and I found getting an apartment or a car loan was often somewhat difficult because my credit record was too short. During my years in J and H status, I was perpetually terrified of losing my job, which would have meant not only loss of income but also deportation. For similar reasons I was also terrified of something going wrong when I re-entered the US after international travel. Because of the constant uncertainty, even something so mundane as buying bookshelves, or books for that matter - let alone major life decisions - became fraught with complexity; planning too far ahead seems pointless. I think it is important to point these sorts of issues out so that the less visible aspects of peripatetic academia are made more apparent, but at the same time, I am very much aware that as a white British citizen, I have consistently benefited from privileges associated with race and national origin. For example, I have had far fewer experiences of xenophobia, or of difficulties in re-entering the US from abroad, compared with some friends and colleagues. 

My path has not always been easy, but even so, I would not choose differently: I am able to do what I can do now chiefly because of my experiences. For example, I developed knowledge of a range of branches of philosophy scholarship, took up research opportunities, developed competence in diverse teaching methods, can draw on the expertise of philosophers from all over the world, and have opportunities to participate in scholarly organizations. I have had many worthwhile opportunities to learn about diverse institutional structures and organizational planning, which has been helpful in my current position, in which I am contributing to implementation of a new B.A. in Philosophy (our major was inaugurated in 2012). 

Overall, I think the experience of traveling widely and working at diverse institutions has been critical to my (ongoing) personal and professional development. In addition to the support of my remarkably patient and good-humored spouse, I have been very fortunate to receive a lot of support and good advice from many faculty and staff members at all of the institutions where I held non-tenure-track positions, as well as from many other colleagues in philosophy. Many offered training experiences, practical advice on writing job/grant applications and on teaching, helped me to learn how to better protect my research time and finish my writing projects, or simply took time out of their days to encourage me. Their support made a huge difference, but I also know that luck has also played a role in my finding my current job (even the invitation to interview for my current position went to my email spam folder - I found it quite by accident).

Comments

[anon]

Thank you for sharing! As a non-citizen looking for jobs in the US, I especially appreciate the bit on visa-related hassles. And many thanks to Helen for organizing this great series of posts!

[Foreigner]

Yes, be warned of the hassles related to moving to the USA. At certain times in the VISA and Green Card process, one is restricted from traveling outside of the country. YES! You can be trapped in the USA for months at a time while applications work their way through the appropriate channels. If you do travel, you risk having to start the application process over again.

[Anon UK Grad]

I really appreciate this series, and this post in particular. There is, generally, too little said about the costs (both financial and emotional) of working overseas, where ever that happens to be for you.

I should also note that, while the OP and commenters have focused on the hassles associated with coming to the US (perhaps rightly given the number of jobs here), there are similar problems with going to the UK. Not every university will support a work visa application (called a Tier 1, if I recall), which means that people who do not have the right to work in the UK are essentially excluded from consideration for those positions on the basis of their citizenship. Worse, however, is that even if the university is willing to support your application, it is no guarantee of success - the Home Office may still reject your application, leaving both you and the university in the lurch.

[blaarg]

I do worry that these stories encourage people to stay on the job market long after they should have left. The recent statistics at daily nous suggest that your chances of getting a permanent job fall quickly after the first year.

http://dailynous.com/2015/09/01/philosophy-job-placement-data-update/

Rationally people should not stay on the job market for more than 2 (maybe 3) years given the evidence. That is, unless you are seriously willing to risk unemployment late in life with no serious career prospects.

Just because some people get lucky doesn't mean you will. In fact, probability tells you your chances of getting lucky, and they aint good!

[Marcus Arvan]

Hi blaarg: Actually, the statistics reported don't show that. In order to know "the chances", you have to know the base-rates of how many people are applying each year post-graduation.

The fact that only 4% of TT hires are of people who have been out longer than three years doesn't show one's chances go down. If 90% of candidates give up looking after 3 years, are you are among the 10% that remain, you might have a 70% of chance of being among the 4% hired. In other words, given the change in base-rates (how many people have given up looking after 3 years), your chances could actually go *up*.

The smart thing to do is not look at statistics in making one's decision whether to stay on the market. It is to look at how one is performing on the market. I stayed on the market for 7 years for one reason only: each year, I got more interviews than the previous year. That indicated something to me--namely, that there was evidence I was getting closer to my goal.

On the other hand, if one is not getting more interviews year by year, then one has evidence one is not getting closer to one's goal.

In other words, I think we should worry less about what these posts "encourage" people to do, and discuss when it is smart for individuals to stay on or give up, given their *individual* evidence.

I hope to write a post on this later today.

[Sam Duncan]

Marcus,

I'm hoping you will write that post. I'd just add that there are reasons besides people dropping out that make it hard to get a job once you're a year or two out. The biggest one might be the adjunct death trap: You need to publish to stay viable, but if you're trying to string together 5 or 6 classes at 2 or 3 schools to pay the bills you're not going to have the time to do serious research or writing. The gut wrenching stress inherent in that type of work doesn't help either. Practically none of the people I know who've gotten caught in real adjuncting gigs (that is by the class no benefits jobs) have managed to keep up any kind of real research for very long. They might manage to get out a paper or two from the dissertation research but that's it. On the other hand that doesn't show you won't get a job if you can publish. The issue here is whether staleness in and of itself kills your career prospects or whether other factors come in that lead many people not to get jobs after a few years. From the evidence, it seems more the latter than the former, and I'm really grateful to you and others here for putting to rest the "staleness as kiss of death" myth. Also, I think it shows just how important it is to try to get a decent VAP job if you don't manage to land a TT job right out of school. I balked on moving to take a VAP/lecturer/whatever you call it job my first year past my Ph.D., but, while this job isn't ideal for research, it's put me in a lot better position to publish than did my adjuncting jobs. I'd also add that the one thing that ought to factor in people's decision to stay in the market is what kind of job they have. I don't think anyone should adjunct in the proper sense of that term for more than a year or two since the jobs are so bad and the workload and environment will likely end up killing your chances to move up if you stay much longer. (Then again if you can manage to publish a lot even in job like that....) On the other hand, while they're certainly nobody's dream job, a lot of VAP jobs really aren't that bad. That ought to factor in when choosing whether to stay or go. I wouldn't be happy to be in my current job five years from now, but I like it okay now and it's not like there's some phenomenal job I'd get right this second if just decided to give up on academia.