Valentine’s Day and the old academic hiring calendar

This year’s unusual combination of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday brings to mind the other incongruous pairing that used to be quite common: Valentine’s Day in the old academic hiring calendar. Let me explain.

For three years in a row, from 2008 to 2010, I spent Valentine’s Day on a campus visit. Back then, there were still some jobs in academia, and the academic hiring calendar was still relatively standard. It meant preliminary interviews for academic jobs were held in January—usually at a large academic conference for the field, aptly nicknamed “the meat market.” Then campus visits came in February. And so, as you can see, one had rather high odds, if on the job market, of having a very special Valentine’s Day dinner with a search committee.

A friend told a story of once realizing with a start, as he was on a campus visit and wearing a red tie, that this was Valentine’s Day. He ended up at a fancy restaurant dinner that night with just one other (male) member of a search committee. The waitstaff assumed they were a couple. They politely declined the special offer of splitting a romantic dessert à deux.

I don’t remember much about the 2008 Valentine’s Day, except that the college where I was interviewing was in the middle of nowhere in WA state wine country. At every meal, the faculty insisted on showing off the local vintage, rumored to be excellent. As a non-drinker, I would repeatedly turn down politely, but somehow a glass would still get poured. “Oh, but you have to try it at least.”

2009 involved four campus visits in four weeks, and I can’t remember which one was on Valentine’s Day. I was just very glad when February was over, and I got a job out of it.

Valentine’s Day of 2010 turned out to be very significant, but I didn’t realize it at the time. My dinner with the search committee took place at a run-of-the-mill Chinese place in the small town of Carrollton, GA. Seated across from me was someone I had never met before, named Dan. He seemed very serious and more than a little intimidating. Based on what he ordered, it was clear that he really liked broccoli.

Later on, I would learn that the department had a number of difficult searches and difficult hires in its past. The previous ancient historian, whose replacement I was hired to be (a position in which I stayed until walking away last summer), was a colorful character. For years after his departure, his bookie would periodically stop by the department. By contrast, I was vanilla. I’ve never even met a bookie.

And then there was the epic tale of how the department blew its one chance of hiring a Medievalist.

‘Twas in the late 1990’s, the story goes. One of the candidates, an expert in Medieval warfare, brought to his teaching demonstration on campus a miniature replica of a trebuchet that he had built himself. He also brought a bag of golf balls, all with pedagogical purposes in mind. The first shot sailed over the heads of the shocked students and faculty, hitting the back wall of the auditorium. Calmly the candidate said, “ah, I need to adjust my aim.” For the next twenty or so minutes, until he emptied out his bag, he proceeded to keep shooting golf balls at the audience, as students and faculty ducked and cowered.

You will be shocked to hear that he did not get the job. But then, maybe his campus visit wasn’t on Valentine’s Day. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Another candidate in that search was thereafter nicknamed “the Mooning Mennonite.” He was, you see, a Mennonite. And he accidentally mooned the classroom during a teaching demonstration when he had dropped the chalk.

There was, it seems, a third candidate, about whom no one recalled anything—at least, not in comparison with the other two. It was a failed search at the end. The administration never approved a do-over. Someone mentioned a concern when I was interviewing for the position I got: was it really wise to bring another military historian to campus? Do they all arrive with homemade siege weaponry? (I didn’t. Post-9/11, it’s much too difficult to fly with a ballista).

But let’s get back to the story about a guy named Dan, Chinese food in Carrollton, and that awkward Valentine’s Day dinner of 2010. Dan asked a lot of questions during that dinner and during my campus visit, and I had that awkward feeling the entire time that my answers were never satisfactory. While I was eventually offered the job, I later learned that he did not vote in favor of hiring me.

A year and a half later, at a time of crisis in my life, he would play a significant part in leading me to Christ. Then four and a half years after that Valentine’s Day interview meeting—reader, I married him. Life is full of surprises and plot twists. Some of these, like this one, bring the greatest joy.