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Because I am in a contingent position, and because I have financial responsibilities, I remain on the job market. Admittedly, recent months have seen me only lightly on it; I have been trying to attend to other projects, those of the sort I believe will help me find continuing positions. But I have not ignored it, and I will doubtlessly return to it in force once the new term begins and job postings in the academic world begin again to proliferate.

I send out scores of applications for such jobs, somehow. Many of the application materials remain consistent from application to application. My CV changes, but as I do things and not necessarily in response to the job (my resume does change, however). My teaching and research statements are fairly constant. My transcripts are more or less done; I do not see myself going back to college at the undergraduate or graduate level, certainly not soon, although I may end up seeking continuing education to develop or enhance certain skill sets I currently perceive as lacking. (If any of you have a lead on inexpensive copies of and courses in graphic design software such as Adobe's, I would appreciate knowing.)

Letters, though, are different. I admit that I reuse materials from letter to letter, although it is not the case that my letters are all the same. They do shift from job to job, foregrounding my teaching or my research, and foregrounding different parts of that research as the job posting suggests. Community college jobs and small four-year posts focus on the teaching, to which I had an accelerated introduction and intensive experience. Other academic jobs, which are usually either medieval studies or generalist posts, receive different treatments. In the former, I highlight the beginnings of my dissertation and some of the work I have done at various conferences since. In the latter, I present the fortunate breadth of my coursework and the fact that my research is often diachronic and so suited to general studies.

So far, I have not been successful. I remain contingent faculty, although I am at what is evidently the high end of that category. I am repeatedly told by many people that I have to continue to make the attempt; my typical first reaction is on record here and here, and I do often feel as though I keep my chin up only so that it can be the more easily struck. But I do press on, even if it is because I am too stubborn to concede defeat despite not being able to envision victory. I do cling to the thin thread of hope that I will find a continuing faculty position, despite seeing friends of mine--published authors and Fulbright scholars--seek and fail to find despite their more impressive credentials, better locations, and more helpful demographics. (I do not mean to say that they would be hired only because of their demographics, or that I am not only because of mine, but I do know that an impulse to demonstrate diverse recruiting/redress evident and systematic injustice obtains.) And I am trying different tactics, since the ones I have deployed thus far have not seemed to work.

Perhaps they will work.