Were there but positions enough and time, this rejection letter would be no crime.
When in disgrace with this hiring committee, should you beweep your outcast state, do not curse your fate, wishing yourself like to him with job possessed. Instead, haply think on the lark at break of day.
Cease, bright applicant! To mourn thy ravished CV. When those full professors retire, as retire they must, and all their dossiers laid in dust, perhaps a spot will open. In the meantime, may we inscribe your name in our adjunct pool?
Can we, the search committee, see an applicant’s woe and not be in sorrow too? Can we see an adjunct laborer’s grief, and not seek for kind relief? But think on Tom, who awoke and rose in the dark and got with his bags and his laptop to work. Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm (we have included in this letter information about a temporary emergency fund we’ve established for adjuncts unable to pay their heating bills).
Yes, the gates of this search are shut, and bound with briars your joys and desires. But fear not. We hear Walmart is hiring.
Perhaps you feel compelled to compare yourself to that solitary wretch who hies to the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow, and, measuring views with wild and hollow eyes its distance from the waves that chide below. A consolation: giant horrors wildly wander here. You (uncursed with our student population) do not know the depth or duration of our woe.
Gather ye publications while ye may, Old time is still a-flyin, and this same market that’s shrinking today, tomorrow will be dying… Be not coy, but use your time, and while ye may, go into administration.