I'm going to NOLA

I'm getting ready for my third trip to the Crescent City in the past 9 months. If the snow stops I might make it to the airport for my noon flight.

Don't look for me around Bourbon Street because I'm part of the Appstate interview team (we'll be in black and gold Yosef outfits), I'll be one of the pasty whites that never leaves the hotel room except for vegetable lasagna and at least one AERE session dagnabbit.

If you are in the awkward position of going to a middle-aged male's hotel room for a job interview, Footnoted gives you some survival tips.

Here is my own list of 20 survival tips:

1. Don't reek pot.
2. Don't say "[Your school] is not at the bottom of my list."
3. Don't mention the football or basketball team.
4. Don't mention that your fraternity/sorority has a strong presence on campus.
5. When the greeter at the door on the last day empathizes that the job market is really a grind don't mention that there is no way you could have handled the past three days without getting high.
6. If a questionner asks why you don't pursue [insert difficult extension to your theoretical model] in your dissertation, don't offer that it would be much harder and you need to wrap things up within the next year (the correct answer is I'm going to pursue that extension after my defense due to time constraints).
7. Don't reek Bourbon Whiskey.
8. This advice is likely too late, but anyway, don't post your negative thoughts about the places you are applying to on the internet.
9. This advice is likely too late, but anyway, if you are a serious bodybuilder, time your steroids cycle so that you're not stacking before the interviews. No one takes a bulked up, raging, hairless, infertile PhD candidate very seriously.
10. Don't offer your opinion on your fav for the, ahem, at the risk of self-promotion, Nobel Prize in economics, ahem.
11. Don't confuse "the boss" (Springsteen) with the department chair.
12. Don't read the interviewer's papers, unless they are on your graduate seminar's reading list (e.g., How am I supposed to respond to "Wow, your latest paper in the southern journal of environmental and resource economics and policy/management rocked! How, in god's name, did you do that?" I get that question ALL the time and, self-importantly, it is SO embarrassing.)
13. Don't glance at your watch, worrying about being on time to the next, better, interview.
14. Don't mention blogs, blogging or Freakonomics. Or Mankiw's blog.
15. Don't mention the insightful quirkiness of the E&UE blog.
16. Don't mention your interest in Heterodox theories, unless this is your dissertation. And if so, no offense, good luck!
17. Don't quote Mystery Men (e.g., "I just wanted to say that I had a really great time tonight, and you were really nice to me, and I would love to, uh, take you out some time. But if I don't call you I just want you to know that it's because I'm dead."), Seinfeld (e.g., "Look, Vanessa, of course the market fluctuates. Everybody knows that. I just got fluctuated out of four thousand dollars! ") or Fight Club (e.g., "You don't talk about fight club").
18. Don't sound like you practiced your answers.
19. Don't talk about graduate teaching with schools that don't have graduate students.
20. Don't reek pot.

Comments

[jim casey]

I like that one of your points is don't mention Mankiw and the link is to Mankiw's check out John Whitehead piece. Have fun interviewing people. I like N. am skipping the meeting this year.

[PotU]

I think the pot warnings are highly location-specific. A little interest in such areas might help candidates interviewing with certain schools... But agreed on Fight Club.

Lucky John, that you think you'll actually get to a session. (wait? what? there's a *conference* going on?)