As it turns out, my friends are a very accomplished bunch. Lots of Master's degrees, PH.Ds, fancy post docs, and important jobs that actually make people's lives better. As a result of aiming high, it means that there is a lot of success, but also a lot of experience with falling off the proverbial horse and fighting back.
As my Sensei used to say, increasing success means increasing failures. In theory, the idea is that by increasing the number of attempts you make, you may have more failures, but you will also make enough attempts (and learn from the failures) such that you achieve success faster. In reality, it means having the resolve, the resiliency, and the relentlessness to keep getting up each and every time you fall. And it means having a deep confidence and unshakable faith that getting up each time matters and will cumulatively get you that much closer to your objective.
I've been thinking this a lot as I've seen the stars align or not for me, and for my friends over the last few weeks. One of my beloved friend's succes and a new option might mean a drastic change for another friend in how he looks at his future employment options. Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, another dear friend has worked his everything off to jump through hoops and get all the appropriate initials after his name, to find an environment that not only matches his qualifications and interests, but that allowed him to positively impact others only to give them 2 years and not be invited to keep infecting others with his passion next fall. I have as many friends in academia who have jobs as those who don't, at this point, and let's be clear - these are not just very well trained individuals in their fields, but also some of the smartest people I know in real life.
Of course, I thought I was leaving that game when I Mastered out of my Ph.D. program. And now I lie on my couch and marvel at how people with degrees from MIT and people who have Ph.Ds from top 10 programs in their field are asked to take more time to do post-docs (read: supervised research paid at a very low rate in some OTHER ostensibly "more established" Ph.D's lab) and postpone their career . . . you know, after passing every exam known to man, defending papers and proposals orally, living on pittances for 5-7 years, and achieving graduation from the 23rd grade. Yes, absolutely, more training and waiting to dive in is what makes sense, no? And how can these people not being able to find good employment that aligns with their passions be in common with me?
When I left grad school, it followed what I can only describe as prolonged trauma that made it impossible for me to continue the research I had entered my studies aimed at. That trauma was what caused me to pack the personal items I had in that lab and on my desk and become a nomadic grad in one of the rotating "TA" offices for the year. I spent a semester looking for a new lab and advisor, but politics and circumstance prevented that avenue of soldiering forward as well. So . . . I made plans to exit.
Sounds simple, and logical, right? It was anything but. It was everything but. There were a lot of exit interviews and job hunting, but mostly there were two tapes I had to keep playing in my head and two I had to try and drown out. The two loops I had to try and eliminate from my internal sound-system were, "You're a quitter," and "You will regret not sticking it out." The two tapes I tried to queue up over the top of these were, "You're stopping something that is harmful. You are preventing what amounts to abuse. It's not the same as quitting. Not the same AT ALL." And, equally important," you WILL get a job and figure out what happens next."
I got a job out of sheer will and luck and persistence and putting the time into job hunting over and over and over. But I had to play these tapes in my head diligently every day in order to keep moving forward as options I pursued winked out one by one, moving to different labs, moving to different programs at different universities, jobs I wanted and didn't get. Otherwise, it would have been very easy to feel defeated, which would have been the worst response and would have prevented me from seeing the new opportunities popping up. So, I kept moving forward, choosing to feign faith in the results I had no idea if I would garner.
Failure wasn't an option, and so I made it work that way. I had a six month deadline to get a full time job or else commit myself to summer jobs that it would then be very hard to back out of. And I got a full time job about 2 weeks before I had to set all of that in motion. I "made it so", in Picardian fashion. It wouldn't have been terrible to run 4 weeks of Karate camp and have taught for 6 weeks but it would have meant remaining engaged with the university I needed badly to leave, at least for half of that work, and perhaps worse, I would have had 10 weeks where it would have been very hard to extract myself for interviews or to start better jobs with futures beyond Labor Day. I posted a note in my kitchen saying "Failure is not an option," and adhered to this. This was a throw back to the one or two all nighters I would pull every year in college trying to complete final calculus assignments, take home logic finals, and papers after having worked until midnight or so. (The busiest times for Hampshire's version of RAs to pull off programs and events, do peer level counseling and meetings, and actually work with students during house office hours were . . . go figure, the end of the semester. And of course, this was also when we were hiring staff for the next semester so, what was a 15-20 hour a week job always became a 30-40 hour a week job during the last 3 weeks of the term. at least some all-nighters became expected for me as a matter of reality, not bad planning.) I used to hang this sign off of the nearest book shelf, facing me, as I feverishly revised papers. And it worked.
So, why hasn't it worked for my friends? They too need jobs and not to need to take steps backwards. Bills to pay, households, marriages, and responsibilities to tend to. They need to not do stupid things for money, and things that take them away from their chosen professions . . . at which, I would add, they are not only very well trained, but exceedingly skilled and good at. And, why hasn't it yet worked for me in this job search? In this case, I do not have stupid summer jobs lined up. Failure really, really, truly, really-really is not an option. I can tutor for $13 an hour this summer, and find some other part time job to try and fill that gap. But, in actuality, that's going to put me in a hole pretty fast. So, for reals now, a job before my birthday is what's needed.
I shall note it on my birthday list.
I'm of some different thoughts about why the failure isn't an option strategy isn't getting results now, for me, or for my friends. On the one hand, finding the right job, the job that makes you want to get up in the morning, the job that pays you well enough and allows you to have the work-life balance that works for you and yours, the job that excites you enough that you're willing to pitch in on the un-thrilling days . . . well, that's a bigger problem to solve than finishing a paper. That's a bigger problem than trying to finish four papers . . and that's saying something since my papers at Hampshire were often 30+ pages! You can't just will it. I mean, I did, but (and here's the other thing) - that was six years ago. So, yes, that's right, I am going to reference how bad this job market is (for what I believe is the first time on this blog). Six years ago was a different story, for shiz.
I also think that it's possible that we three have not had exactly the failures we need yet. That, in reality, of course, failure is an option and may be what paves the way for success. That failure has uses, even when it feels . . . untimely or inconvenient or even beyond uncomfortable. As in, "Ok, it seemed like a good job on paper, but now that I've interviewed I see what they really meant when they said ____ in the posting and that should've been a red flag," or "Hmmm, next time I should follow up on that app sooner so I can stay on their radar."
Or, it's just possible that this will be like what one of these very friends mentioned above told me once, on a bitterly cold night in January as we waited for a bus. He said, "At the moment I give up, it will arrive. But I can't tell myself to give up and fake it out. If I'm only saying I give up, then it won't show. But at the moment I truly am done believing then the universe will provide."
This is hard to explain to people who don't know him but this was the first moment I knew my friend to be a hopeless optimist. Possibly glass overflowing, sappy, optimism at times. He may, occasionally, show some sand-paper to the world rather than baring his skin. He also is steeped in how to make things better and in his world, this means being very clear about what is NOT optimal. To some this looks like complaining, but to me, I know it comes from deep belief that things CAN be made better and a logical progression that requires him to fist be explicit about what needs to be improved. I didn't know it until he talked about how giving up being related to how good things happen, But he believes in some structure of the universe. Some force for good. Some way of creating balance with the force.
It may seem strange that I've tagged this post about failure with "optimism" but I think what I'm saying is, failure sucks. For me, it hurts and wounds and leaves bruises. It makes me want to give up and pull covers over my head in the moment. But sometimes it makes me step out of things that weren't working for me. I failed to get a Ph.D, but succeeded at standing up for myself, getting a Master's, and finding a job in my field. I have failed, so far, at finding the right new job in 2012 (but I only have to get it right once, eh?), but have succeeded in purging a lot of demons from my head, and reconfiguring how healthy and ambitious can align in my life moving forward. And while I've had some very disheartening interviews and frustrating almost-job-offer situations in this four months of unemployment, I've also honed in on a closer approximation to what kind of jobs could turn into the right ones for me. It only takes one thing to change and turn all of that into total success - and not just success that looks like a paycheck, but success that looks like a wholly renovated life for me where all those failures stack up to me sitting in a completely different place, with a much better view than when I had my last paycheck.
I think that I still think that the universe will provide. And I think I still think it will happen before my bank account hits zero. And I think my friends will find what they need for right now, and, eventually, in the long run. So, even though the glasses have some failures in them, and though they may not be half full, I think there's enough there to keep us going. That is the most I can ask for today . . . but watch out when my birthday approaches because I will certainly feel free to ask for more then.
