Introducing: THE MAP

I haven’t talked about The Boy in a few posts so I figured I should give you an update on what he’s been up to down there in Kentucky.

He’s [FINALLY] starting to wrap up his PhD program at UT while teaching at Centre College. When he’s not busy researching or teaching, he’s starting to apply for jobs! His application process is unlike any other job application process I’ve ever heard of. For those of you who don’t know, The Boy wants to be a college professor [#NERD] and has been busting his butt these last few years to become the best Econ professor in the world!

Source: yes, you can actually buy this... 

In this strange world The Boy is living in, you start applying for the 2015 academic year in the fall of 2014. That means he started applying for jobs back in September. The average Job Market Candidate applies to over 100 schools while job searching. To keep track of all the schools The Boy applied to, we hung up: THE MAP.

Although it started with one little blue star, the map slowly started to fill up as Justin sent in applications all across the county. We are excited that there are tons of schools in PA and near KY that have job openings for 2015. 

The Boy is still submitting applications, but we’re now partially into Phase II of the process: waiting for interviews. The average Job Market Candidate (what they call students searching for jobs) will get 6 or 7 interviews. These interviews take place at the American Economic Association Annual Conference every year in January. Although it is still early in December, The Boy has already begun to receive calls for interviews from a few schools! We decided to mark the interviews with green stars on our map :)

The next few weeks will be pretty stressful for him as he finishes applying, accepts interviews, and preps for the AEA conference (and continues to teach and research). I’ve got my fingers crossed for a few schools closer to “home” to call him for an interview (home meaning Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana…or pretty much any state in the Midwest…or Florida or California…).

By the time the New Year rolls around, we’ll know all of the schools that The Boy has interviews at and we’ll be heading to Boston for the Job Market so that he can get his interview on. After the first round of interviews, there will be a second round, and then [fingers crossed] the job offers will start rolling in.

Stay tuned for hopefully LOTS of silver and gold stickers in January and February (aka second interviews and job offers!). This process has been quite the adventure for the two of us and we are looking forward to finding out where The Boy will eventually be teaching.

If you could pick any state to live in, where would you live?

Is anyone willing to admit that Economics was their favorite subject in school?