Apparently, I Suck

I've been sending versions of this message to various people, and at this point, I can't be bothered to come up with anything original to convey the same information, so here it is, cut-and-pasted:

With regard to my miserable job-search experience: having heard nothing from two schools that told me that they'd be making their decisions known "within a week" of the interviews late last month, and having just received a "no" letter from a third, I think it's safe, as we reach the end of January, to conclude that my Campus Visit To Interview ratio is 0 for 4.

Which sucks.

A lot.

I'm trying hard to reconcile myself to this failure, but it's not easy. I suppose there's the need to be mature and take the long view and recognize that not getting the job is the rule rather than the exception and so forth. But, undignified as self-pity is, it's kind of difficult not to give way a bit. There's the obvious temptation to give way to arm-waving tantrums of "I don't see what I could have done any different!" and, that being so, the obvious segue to "What's the point of even trying?!" Probably unavoidable to feel that way a bit right now--I mean, I JUST opened the letter from a school I really liked--and while of course there's the old "Well, at least I got the interview" cold comfort (a lesser version of the "Well, at least I got the campus visit" cold comfort), I'm not really feeling like anything other than "someone who wasn't good enough" right now. I know, I know, the proper term is "someone they didn't feel was right," but I think that's something we tell ourselves to take the sting out of rejection.

At any rate, such is the unfortunately gloomy update.