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?

Running Lately

I did not have as much time as I thought I would to start running again in the latter half of this year so instead of setting more unrealistic training plans for the millionth time, I’ve been trying a new approach – to not have a training plan. Even with just one class this semester, there has still a lot getting in the way of a training plan. Without a training plan, every run is an unexpected bit of happiness in my week. I don’t feel bad for not getting in a scheduled run – instead I’m excited that I actually get to run :)

My friend Catie convinced me to run the Pittsburgh Penguins 6.6K in early October. It actually didn’t take much convincing since I had been looking for a race to run in Pittsburgh. It was my first race even though I have lived here for almost two years!

The course was really neat and ran all through the city of Pittsburgh. My time was 43:35 which is a 10:23 pace. Our race bibs got us into the Penguins practice that day which gave us access to the bazillion food options inside Consol. We’re pretty much experts at refueling….with beer and nachos!

Last month I ran Fast Freddies Five Mile Foot Feast on Thanksgiving. It’s a tradition in my family to run the race before stuffing ourselves full of delicious food and pie! Every year, the top 500 finishers get their names on the next year’s shirt. I was a little bummed going into the race because I knew I wasn’t going to make the top 500 this year. I got over that really quickly though when I realized that given my situation and the amount of time I’ve had to train – I was right where I needed to be. I finished in 48:22 which is a 9:40 pace and was super pumped about it. I finished 580 out of 928 runners.

I don’t have any races scheduled for December or January but with graduation right around the corner, I’m excited to have more time to run. Who knows – there might even be time to have an actual training plan :)

How do you fit runs/exercise into your busy schedule?

What races do you have coming up?