Job Update

Long have I yearned for gainful employment. Quite seriously, the anxiety of job searching had gripped me. My hope was not exhausted, but there was a dearth of expectation.

Fortuna, however, smiles in her own time. In early June I was contacted by St. Edmund (or Teddy) Hall, University of Oxford, and was asked if I could be interviewed on Friday, June 13. I managed to say, 'that would be superb' or something to that effect, though I'm not sure how, as my throat had clenched into a swallow of elation fused with terror.

My colleagues at Exeter arranged to give me a practice interview on Thursday, which went more or less well. Though I felt I handled several questions disastrously and certainly needed more preparation. But the payoff was great, as they anticipated the questions asked in the real interview with remarkable precognition.

Friday came and I decided that Friday the 13 would be a day of bad luck - for the competition. Indeed, I arrived at Oxford by trains 5 minutes a head of schedule (likely the first early train in England for decades) and roughly 2 hours prior to the interview itself. I bided my time by locating Teddy Hall, wandering briefly around town, and taking time to practice my presentation over espresso at Starbucks. I went to the Blackwell's bookshop by the Bodleian, went to the politics shelves, and prayed.

The interview went as well as I could hope, and I had rectified the dilapidated performance of the day before. I even managed to borrow a joke from my supervisor. Even ignorant of the final result, it was a relief that I had shown them quite properly what I'm made of. I left having been told that I would probably be informed of the results about halfway through the next week.

My first move after saying fair well to my interviewers was back to Blackwell's. I decided I the first thing I would do would be to buy a new book on Locke for my collection. I have no illusions about being anything other than a eccentric academic. Much to my astonishment, when I left the bookstore I found that a message had been deposited on my phone. I called voicemail to discover that the interviewers had several questions which they forgot to ask. Being close, I marched strait down the Queen's lane and toward Teddy hall, my mobile phone in hand a prepared to dial back.

So not twenty-five minutes after the interview, I was on the phone with Dr. Karma Nabulsi (the lead Politics lecturer at Teddy Hall). The first thing she told me,

'We want to give you the job'.

I immediately said yes.