Job Market Mentoring: Interviewing Strategies

The DoD is delighted to announce its second installment in this year’s job market mentoring workshops.  As ever, our sessions focus on how to secure employment as a Deviant in a world gone Normal.  Our second session will feature mock interviews and we are delighted to announce that Professor Pierre Menard has agreed to reprise his now legendary performance as That Guy.  For those who missed last year’s rendition, just a few teasers:

That Guy will ask whether, despite your deviance, you can talk to Normal people, in their language and non-disruptively. 

That Guy will want to be reassured that while you will eagerly teach every single last thing not addressed in the Normal curriculum (preferably in a single course), you have no designs on the curriculum itself and are happy to have nothing you teach be required. 

That Guy will want to know whether anything you study is actually intelligible, because he read something once and didn’t think it was. 

That Guy will have some pet theory he’ll want to pursue with you, whether it be benign explanations of an exceedingly narrow canon or stories about how non-white and/or non-male people have lots of better things to do than study Normality. 

That Guy will want to make sure that if you are non-white and/or non-male, you’re not, like, an angry revolutionary about it.

That Guy will unironically free associate about your subject matter while also opining on the critical importance of high standards of rigor.

That Guy will somehow slip into conversation the fact that “not everyone” in the department is convinced they need a Deviant.

When he’s not actually talking, That Guy will doodle on his notepad while occasionally sighing theatrically. 

We can never be sure just what That Guy will do and this uncertainty is only half the adventure!  The rest of it is figuring out how to respond while neither laughing nor crying.  So, come to this session and marvel at That Guy while also learning valuable techniques of self-control and tactical conversational evasion.  

Job Market Mentoring: Sit, Stay, Roll Over Edition

It’s that time of year again, that time when senior deviant graduate students everywhere must begin to prepare their job applications.  We here in the DoD are acutely aware that our graduate students lack “pedigree.”  While we would revel in a world populated by a happy chaos of mutts, alas, we are not in charge.  We recognize that mutts too need to eat.  And so we are doing our level best to help them find jobs that will pay for groceries and even vet checkups. 

To that end, we are offering job market mentoring, the first session of which happens this Tuesday.  This session will be devoted to problems arising when one lacks Kennel Club recognized lineage. 

We will address how to appear non-threatening and well-behaved, even when your scrappy ancestors were not.  Students will thus learn how to judiciously measure exposure of their deviance so as not to alarm the pure breds.  We will also talk about how to make your coat shinier and glossier than anyone would expect of a mutt.  Some say that a mutt who can simply walk upright will impress, but this is likely not enough to win a job in the present market.  So we’ll discuss how to perform elaborate tricks sure to pleasingly shock those who expect little of you but soiling carpets.  Finally, we will conclude with a heartening tour through tales of mutts-made-good, detailing exemplars of the type and sussing out just how they managed to win their jobs.