Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Bad Grad school interviews

I think it's pretty clear that I am desperate to land an academic research job interview.

Today's post over at feMOMhist got me thinking about the bad interviews I've had in the past. I wish that my interviews improved as I got older and the interviews held potentially more meaning , but I know that bad interviews can happen at any time.

Maybe it's just my luck, but I've had my share of bad interviews, especially when looking at graduate schools. Some were due to institutional flaws, while others were due to outside circumstances (arriving in the middle of a blizzard that dumped 3 feet of snow and closed the airport so I couldn't return home). 

Here's a short list of the worst of my interview experiences:
   1) Being told that they wish they didn't have to go to the grad school they were in, but it was the only one that accepted them
  2) Being hit on by a noticeably inebriated Junior faculty member. Some may call it reverse discrimination, but I just call it awkward and inappropriate. 
  3) Being asked to go to a strip club after the faculty dinner (and struggling to find a tactful way to decline)
  4) Watching faculty members get angry and yell at each other over campus parking issues.
  5) Inappropriate drunk dancing by graybeards (usually with their opposite-sex students)
  6) Random blizzards shutting down the airport. I was then told that was pretty normal for the area, and that you just got used to the roads becoming impassable during time sensitive experiments (just do your time-coarse experiments in the summer, they said)

I have more, but I'm curious what other people have experienced.Anyone care to share?




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