When I applied for the job, I thought, Why not? I need full-time work, wasn’t that the reason to start the PhD after the house-fire and fuck-you-get-lost-rejection from the insurance company? What solution do I have? Maybe academic work since I already teach once a week just for fun. A full-time teaching job has a great salary and if you stick around, it rises further not to mention summers, sabbaticals, and being able to say I’m a professor at barbecues. Ample solution. When the interviewer asked me why I applied, I said because I was looking for a full time job. Moments later I knew that was a fail re:interview test etiquette. Damn, wrong answer. don’t be truthful, ordinary and conversational. Only later I remembered all the other reasons like how many people don’t show transparency or kindness or insight or the capacity to admit they don’t know. Those are also the reasons I thought i would enjoy the work but was not what i said in the moment. It’s funny how an interview is a test for a job when the real test is placing someone inside the work, seeing how they do. You can’t know in advance if Skully will realize he should try landing on the Hudson after the engines fail following all those birds flying into the engines.

Three years ago, the classmate who sticks out the most to me, the one who brings up his participation in an anti-racism reading group at least every class and now uses the spelling folx instead of folks, asked our cohort why we were doing our degrees. He wanted to go around the circle and share. That kind of day. I watched them one by one, offering careful sanitized answers: “I’m here to deepen my critical engagement with post-colonial epistemologies,” or “I just can’t stop thinking about Derrida.” I am reminded of soloists playing the same “improvisation”. The classmate who sticks out has three kids, is in his forties. He answered, “I’m here for the conversations.” The conversations, I thought. Right. Because that pays the orthodontist. The idea of saying, I want this job because it will make my life materially better, is impossible. Must not break character. The time allowance for the Zoom meeting ended without getting to my turn but I was ready, even though it was the wrong answer: I need a job. Probably would have landed like admitting you joined the monastery to get free housing.