Hello Everybody! How
to talk about Boston. I’m leaving the Bay State today, heading off to Logan
Airport and then back to Illinois. Thank you to all those who have supported me
thus far in my interviewing and job searching. It’s been hectic, and this blog
post is an attempt to talk about some of that for those who haven’t had the
benefit of my recaps on the phone. It’s also something of a permanent record
for me that I will look back on in times to come. So, Boston … if you’ve never
been there, know that it’s expensive. Even residents admit that it’s
comparatively expensive. That being said, I found it to be a place with a sense
of its heritage and identity. Boston definitely knows where it comes from.
I landed at
Logan just before 4:00 on Wednesday afternoon, and the first thing I heard was
the Boston accent. Anyone who knows me at all knows how passionate I am about
accents, and I couldn’t resist. I find that if I tell people that I do language
and linguistics and that accents are interesting to me, they open up. So I got
three people’s tips on my own Boston accent while I was here starting with Gale
in the airport. Some of you may be cringing, imagining this conversation, but
being a linguist, I can ask about sounds and vowels and what not and nearly always
get away with it without causing offense. The folks I asked about it seemed
intrigued that someone actually makes it a business to study how accents work,
though that’s not my main research as you know. My talk of languages continued
with Constantine, the Russian cab driver, who talked about what a great
international city Boston is and how Russian’s such an interesting language,
which it absolutely is. The staff at the hotel spoke with me in Spanish from
time to time, and I’d never heard the types of Spanish that some of these folks
spoke. In a word, it was intriguing.
I got to
the hotel, The Boston Hilton Back Bay, and God’s sense of humor was visited
upon me. I was originally booked into room 1700. Being the perverse person I
am, I asked whether room 1701 was available. The poor hotel desk clerk had no
idea why I would even ask, but she bemusedly rebooked my room assignment when I
indicated I wanted 1701 instead. John, the concierge who walked with me up to
1701, understood immediately. Being a fan of the original star trek himself, he
knew that 1701 is the serial number of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and his amusement
was reserved but plain. My amusement was and is unreserved. So I wound up in
1701, what I call the Enterprise Room.
I found the
Hilton easy to get around. Most of what I needed was right off the lobby, and
the Hilton employs so-called ‘journey ambassadors,’ roving concierges as it
were whose job is to watch for guests who appear to need something and then to
fill that need with dispatch. The first thing I needed was to find a relieving
area for Delaney. John’s first suggestion was, “well, there’s a park a couple hundred
yards down the way. That might work. “No, I’m afraid not. I settled on this
poor, miserable little sapling planted in front of the hotel in its own patch of
dirt. There is a row of trees in front of the hotel, and I’m sure in Spring
they’re beautiful. When it’s 8 degrees in early January though, they’re
probably not at their best. I had to train Delaney to pee and poop here, showing
her that it was an ok spot and that, small as it was, it was all the spot she
was going to get. I couldn’t let her range on her leash and walk back and
forth, because on one side of the tree there was an active parking lane with
cabs zooming in and out, while on the other side, guests arrived and left,
walking up and down the sidewalk where I was standing. One illustrative moment
happened the first day. There I am, bending down with a baggy over my freezing
right hand,. A cab was pulling in at my left ear in the parking lane, and on my
right side, I hear this cultured, older gentleman’s voice say in a classic
Boston accent, “a bit backwaads, farthah back, there you aa.” Nice!
Now on to
food. I’ve had more clam chowder in the last five days than I’ve had in the
last five months, and every bowl was delicious. The hotel’s chowder and that of
the Cheesecake Factory were what I normally expect in a cream-based chowder,
but the Summer Shack, a seafood restaurant adjacent to the hotel, has a spicy
fish and crab chowder made with a dark rum that is to die for. The food was
excellent overall, and I was able to find decent prices. My father watched me
eating corned beef hash and eggs with some skepticism, but for my own part I
liked it.
The
interviews started the next day. I first had to replace my convention badge.
Then there was the question of how to get to the interviews. Had I chosen, I
could have walked the extensive indoor mall of the Prudential Center and made
it, eventually, to the Weston where the interviews were taking place. It was
more practical, however, to take the ADA shuttle there and back. I needed to
ask for directions to the ballroom and thence to the tables where my
interviewers were sitting. That was not the easiest place to negotiate. In one
case, a professor from one of my schools came to meet me at the door to the
ballroom and took me to the table himself. I was not expecting that, and it was
very kind of him. For the Grinnell interview, rather than going to the big
exhibit ballroom where most interviews took place, I went to the 34th
floor of the hotel. Thank Heaven there was braille signage on the doors,
because I walked around that whole floor, Delaney in tow, before locating the
room I needed. Note to blind job seekers everywhere: get to the location early, always. Delaney
attended all the interviews and she was perfectly behaved.
The
interviews themselves were challenging, but thanks to the extensive preparation
and advice I had from my present and past professors, I went in loaded with
information and strategies for dealing with the questions I knew would come.
They happened in this order: Kansas
Thursday, Georgia and Grinnell on Friday. For each interview, I carried a
manila folder containing stacks of photocopied course outlines, both for
courses they have that I could teach and for courses they don’t have which I
could offer. The Hilton’s staff was invaluable here, because I chose to use the
business center to print and sort my materials. Each course outline was copied
for the number of interviewers that were there, and the folders each contained
different sets, depending on who got what course outlines. So every time a
course was mentioned, the folder opened, and out came the outline. This is, I
hope, being taken as evidence of my preparedness and forethought. With Georgia,
it actually became humorous since course outlines just kept coming out. At one
point, one interviewer asked, “now I’d like to switch gears a little bit and
talk about Germanic linguistics. You don’t have anything about that in your
folder, do you?” Pulling out sets of outlines for two relevant courses, I said,
“I do, as it happens.” And in a follow-up question, another professor on that
committee went, “my syllabus for next week isn’t finished yet. That’s not in your
folder too, is it?” As I said, a humorous moment.
The
questions were not unusual, though one school did ask some disability-related
questions. Rather than do what a blind professor friend of mine did and tell
them they can’t ask those questions—the best way of insuring that you don’t get
any more offers from them—I faced the questions head on, answered them calmly
and thoroughly, and invited them to ask any other blindness-related questions
they might have had. They seemed to appreciate my willingness to be open about
my disability, and while there were no more questions bearing on blindness and
my work, I suspect that how I handled those very tricky questions at the start may
have set the tone for the rest of the interview. Let’s face it. The interview could
have died right there, but I decided that openness and being receptive to their
very real questions was a much sounder strategy than dwelling on what is or
isn’t a ‘legal’ question or taking any offense at the questions they asked. While
I wasn’t sure how that interview was going to go since it started there, I was
pleased to see that it turned into a relaxing and enjoyable experience. That’s
not to say the questions were easy. They weren’t. But I wasn’t caught
flatfooted by anything. Mind you, I can think of better ways to answer just
about everything I was asked, but while I am totally blind, my own hindsight is
still 20/20.
My father
and his wife arrived in Boston Friday afternoon, and he took us to dinner at
the Cheesecake Factory Friday evening where we all had rib eyes. Diabetes be
darned, I had one of their cheesecakes. I felt bad for him, because I knew I
was exhausted, worn-out from two interviews in one day. He understood though. I
took that opportunity to tell him about Nicole’s and my wedding plans, and his
reaction was good. While not without reservations, he said that, given all the
contributing factors, it makes a certain logistical sense for us to marry when
and where we are just so long as we don’t have kids right away. We’re going to take
steps to see that we do not. So it was good to have his support, reserved
though it might be. Having a job offer in hand would, of course, be much more
ideal, and I’m working hard to see that happen.
Yesterday,
Saturday, was another important day. I was scheduled to present my dissertation
data in a conference session. My father was apparently thrilled to see my name
on the actual program. While I hadn’t thought about the fact that it was there,
I suppose if I had a son, that would be a thrill for me too. I had to get the
two of them special badges so that they could attend the session. It took place
in the early afternoon, and only two of us made it in to present. I kept my
presentation short, around 15 minutes. The questions I fielded were many, and my
father, who was observing the audience, told me later that the audience was
highly engaged with my material, nodding, looking at me as I spoke, etc.
Overall, the presentation went very well, and for my part, I enjoyed the
questions more than the talk. The talk, after all, I can give any time. I’ll
give it at my doctoral defense, but not every audience has those people who
will ask those questions.
I passed a
quiet evening last night. Though, I did venture out to the Summer Shack a block
over. I wanted to have the full experience and to order food that I couldn’t
get just anywhere, at Red Lobster, for example. So the fish and crab chowder
was excellent, as was the swordfish. They also had bananas Foster, and I had it.
I’d never had bananas Foster before. It’s the sort of dessert you see in the
movies or in books, but no one seems to really serve it. What can I say? It was
great! I had all this, including an appetizer of fried clams and a soft drink,
for $50. I call that a bargain. So I recommend the Summer Shack at 50 Dalton
Street in Boston if you’re ever in downtown.
That’s it
for Boston. Now, I keep my fingers crossed for callbacks. In this case they’ll
be emails. The schools told me they’ll notify applicants from mid-January to
early February depending on the school, and they intend, it seems, to let us
know regardless of whether we succeed in being invited to a second-round
interview. So, I’ll be praying now for second-round interviews. My thanks to
all my professors, past and present, who have helped and who continue to help
me prepare, and my thanks and love to Nicole, who literally watched all of this
since the first cover letter was drafted over three months ago. Now, it’s time
to head back to Champaign.
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