Make that an even half-baker's dozen

In the 12 or so hours following my rant about job searching being utterly fruitless and hopeless, I got some nibbles, naturally. Karma? Perhaps. Or maybe it's divine intervention.

Seriously. You laugh, I laugh, we all enjoy a hearty chuckle, but hear me out.

I'm sitting around the apartment still in my pajamas past noon, as usual, reading and editing Colleen's paper on medieval German cultural hegemony in Central Europe, when I get a phone call. It's the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, and they want to bring me in for an interview tomorrow. Score!

Well, it's exciting, yes. But it's not the end of my search. Not by a long shot. First, I actually have to wow them enough tomorrow morning to get them to offer me the position. But even then, I'll still have to keep searching for work. See, this job is only part-time, as in 10 to 15 hours a week, and it's only 10 bucks an hour. Not quite enough to live on, but enough income to cover most of my expenses, at least for the time being. At the very least, I'd still need to find a second part-time job to earn enough to pay all of my bills, and hopefully still manage to save a little dough for grad school.

But this wouldn't be a bad gig. For one thing, I'd be doing something useful, namely researching religious violence for the upcoming Parliament of the World's Religions, to be held in Barcelona this July. In and of itself, just getting to do research of a social scientific nature is an exciting prospect, because this should really utilize my talents quite well. And it'll look good later on job applications (or, perish the thought, a second round of grad school apps in case I don't get in where I want this year). Plus, there's always my faint hope -- likely to be dashed tomorrow -- that I might get sent to the actual Parliament, which means a one-week working vacation. In Barcelona. During the summer. There's also the matter of getting to do something for a pretty good cause, which is important and rewarding in its own right. (And even if, improbably, this turns out to be as bad as the HistoryMakers job, at least it's an hourly job instead of salaried, so I'd get paid for all the extra time spent working.) Also convenient is the fact that the position is supposed to run until August, or roughly about the time when I'd ideally be bolting Chicago to begin grad school. So at least I can be perfectly honest and upfront about my plans in my interview without fearing it will come back and bite me in the ass and prevent me from having a job. Additionally, they told me they'd make a decision and let me know early next week, meaning I could be working and drawing income fairly soon, which is good because at the end of next month I'll have about tapped out my bank account. All of these are reasons why this job could potentially be a good thing.

With any luck, I'll nail my interview tomorrow morning, then begin applying for a bunch of second jobs. Hopefully if I land this one the days and hours will be sufficiently flexible to accommodate another job. I imagine it should be, since the job announcement said it was seeking a graduate student, who presumably would have kind of an irregular schedule. If anything, I almost feel like this is like a graduate work-study position, one where I can more or less set my own hours and work in a pretty casual environment, only with a much better wage.

And when I got the mail this afternoon, I received a notice from a place I applied to a couple of weeks back, called Facing History and Ourselves, which is an organization that develops curricula about genocide and other historical atrocities to use in schools so that children can learn from the sins of the past. It's the sort of mission any historian should believe in fully. The job I applied for is as an administrative assistant, so there's a lot of office work, but also some development and public relations stuff. I tried to play up my actual knowledge of history, which one would assume would distinguish me from a lot of the people who apply for an administrative position, but you can never tell. The letter I got was just sort of the snail mail equivalent of the auto-response, and it was dated 13 January, with a postmark of 15 January, meaning it took two full weeks to arrive from the group's Massachusetts headquarters. It just said that they'd send my application to the search committee, which could potentially contact me to schedule an interview. I'm not really banking on this, but then maybe they're just waiting for the application deadline (1 February) to pass before deciding on whom to call for interviews. And, they did say they'd at least let everyone know when the position is filled, so I can count on getting definite word that they aren't interested in me, should that be the case.

In any event, things are looking a little less bleak, at least for the time being. Hopefully they'll all work out. I mean, I guess on a fundamental level, I'm an optimist and believe that it'll all turn out in the wash. After all, if I were an absolute pessimist and wholly convinced that I'm destined to destitution, I'd probably be in a lot worse shape. So hurray for small achievements.