Following your interviews, you will eagerly check e-mail and voice-mail for the good news of an on-campus interview. Be prepared to consult your faculty advisers for advice on negotiating your job offer if and when that good news comes. You will also likely be pursuing local contingent employment and your chosen non-academic options. Rest assured you will make a contribution wherever you land a post. I cannot offer the specialized advice you will need to solicit from your advisers or from your university’s office of career services at this point. I hope, however, that this booklet has been helpful throughout the early stages of graduate school and going on the market.
Author’s Notes
I would like to thank Jacqui Sadashige of the University of Pennsylvania for writing the original version of this handbook back in the early 1990s, and for her permission to expand it to its present long form. After so many years, few passages of her original booklet remain, but I immensely appreciate her exemplary effort to make the profession and its professional habits more transparent. I am grateful to Evan Jewell for sharing his insights into recent developments (as of 2021) in the interview process.
This document is intended to express my informed opinions, which are in turn informed by a number of colleagues in the field. Under no circumstances should these comments supersede advice offered to prospective job applicants by other knowledgeable individuals, especially faculty in their home departments. It is intended as an informal introduction to graduate school in Classics and other humanities fields and to the steps involved in seeking employment. It does not aim to represent the final word on any matter. It is not designed to encourage increased corporatization of an already thoroughly corporatized profession; it aims to supply civil advice and comfort to those caught up in the machine.
Comments, suggestions, and constructive criticisms are welcome. Please contact me at joyconnolly@me.com.