My Track Record

If you tried to deduce what last year was like for me based on my irregular scattershot posts during the year, you probably wouldn’t do very well. So, for a less cryptic view of my 2016, read on. In brief, there were three main themes.

TRUMP

No surprise here, right? Donald Trump was such an unbelievable character that even I, with my modest interest in politics, felt compelled to read and (eventually) write about him throughout the year, for better or worse.

Among the many, many Trump stories that I saw, my favorite was a post-election piece by Seth Stevenson of Slate.

There was something else. An uncomfortable suspicion taking hold in me. I became convinced we [journalists] weren’t at these [Trump] rallies to observe. We were there to be observed….

Perhaps I’d been naive, but it only now dawned on me, in the final week of the campaign, to my great horror, that the real reason they put us [journalists] in the pen was so they could turn us into props. We were a vital element in Trump’s performance. He never once failed to invite his crowds to heckle us. He was placing us on display like captured animals.

And it worked. The press pack, collectively, looked nothing like the crowds at Trump events—particularly in more rural towns. We’d file into these places with our sleek luggage and our expensive tech gear and our better haircuts. We were far more diverse than the people in the stands. When the crowds lustily booed us, we’d sit there impassive and stone-faced, and this only further served to convince the rallygoers that we were snobby, superior pricks. The pen was an amazingly efficient means of othering us.

Behold, Trump said to his fans, I’ve rounded up a passel of those elites you detest. And I’ve caged them for you! Allow me to belittle them for your delight. Here, now you take a turn—go ahead, have at it! Do it again, don’t be shy! Under President Trump, the other elites will be in cages, too. We’ll lock them up, just like the chant goes. Just like you wanted. You’ll be their captors.

As one of the journalism-valuing, anti-bullying “elites” against whom Trump raged, I struggled mightily to comprehend his candidacy, much less respond to it. But my open letter to my students was a useful contribution to the conversation, I think.

JOB APPLICATIONS

2016 was also a really hard year in terms of job-searching. My tale of one of my near-misses was published on a friend’s academic blog last month.

I felt unstoppable. Fourteen years after finishing my Ph.D., I would finally be settling into a stable position that I really wanted and totally deserved.

And then I got a call from my department chair. “I’m afraid I have bad news,” he began. I hadn’t gotten the job -– either job. I was a well-liked, already-successful internal candidate, and I couldn’t even place in the top two.

Up to now, I’ve been hesitant to air such laments publicly. (I wrote the above post only after a less personal version [eventually revised and posted here] was declined by my friend.) I guess I’ve been worried about being perceived by prospective employers as a whiner or a loser. But it’s time to stop worrying. If you pre-judge me as unworthy simply because I think there’s value in acknowledging and discussing one’s failures, well, that’s your prerogative — and your loss.

PREGNANCY

On to happier stuff! My wife has blogged about this (here, here, and here); the bottom line is that we’re expecting a baby boy on or around February 5th.

For me, the best part was after the MRI … when the radiology technician showed me some of the images and even a video…. I was astounded to see my favorite little alien moving around in there — it looked like he was having quite the dance party! It put a huge smile on my face the rest of the day to have a mental image of what was going on down below every time my stomach turns and tickles.

2017 should be really, really interesting.

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