Time to Go: specimen #2: Portfolios for Jobs I Didn't Get

In my last year of graduate school (the first of three stints in graduate school), during the recession in the late 1980s, I applied for every available assistant professor position in the United States in my field, all ten of them. Each school required examples of my work, so I put together eleven portfolios, one to keep and ten to send out. To do this, I needed to get PMTs made of all my design presentation sheets. I can't remember what PMT stands for, so I googled it and the acronym dictionary has 59 options for me to choose from, including Post Marital Tension, Pearl Milk Tea,  Percutaneous Mechanical Thrombectomy,  Police Mentor Team, and  Photo Mechanical Transfer. I'm going with that last one. Well, they were too expensive to do multiple times, so I had to find a place that could produce color copies. Two buses and a subway later, I arrived at the professional photocopying establishment, the closest one I could find that had the special equipment and expertise to make color copies. I had to reject the first batch, because the color was off, too much blue. They toiled away for another day and finally created acceptable color copies. The cost: about a hundred bucks ($180.00 today).

I sent away these documents and waited.


Turns out that lots of people in my field apply to be assistant professors when the economy is tanking, people with loads more professional experience than I had. I got nine rejection letters and one, from Texas Tech in Lubbock, telling me I had been short-listed.  They would be bringing me out to interview soon, the letter went on to say, and to look forward to hearing the details in the near future. In the mean time, I dashed off to the library to find out as much as I could about Lubbock, Texas. I found three notable facts about Lubbock.

1. Buddy Holly (of That'll be the Day fame) was born there
2. In 1930 the first authenticated death by hail occurred there
3. The first line of the chorus in a Mac Davis song is "I thought happiness was Lubbock Texas in my rear view mirror."

As interesting as Lubbock sounded, I had mixed feelings about the prospect of moving to Lubbock. My new boyfriend, despite his cowboy charm,  had no interest in relocating to Lubbock and I had never lived so from from the beach. Thankfully, the economy continued to decline and Texas Tech issued a hiring freeze and the job evaporated.


In the end, I had a stack of returned portfolios and my keeper set, that I packed up and toted off to my second stint in graduate school, my solution to living through the dismal economy. The portfolios have sat in my closet gathering dust ever since. So Time to Go.


P.S. I am keeping the one keeper portfolio, since it is the only record I have left of my design school days. Other than that old boyfriend, who also turned out to be a keeper. Our 15 year wedding anniversary is next spring and we may be celebrating in Lubbock. That'll be the day!