by Ashley
I just got the email I was hoping for….I’ve been asked to do a campus interview!!! This is for the job I recently had a phone interview with (I talked about the phone interview here) and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I’d receive the campus visit request. I felt the phone interview had gone well but its been a full month since then and, even with the holidays, I thought I would’ve heard back before now. So I was thrilled and pumped to see the email!
I’ve been asked to prepare two separate talks. The first (and longer) talk is about a specific content area (which happens to NOT be my area of expertise. A little odd and will require some prep, but no biggie). The second, shorter, talk is supposed to be about my vision of higher education in reference to technology, different modalities of teaching, etc. Academic friends – thoughts on this topic? I assume the best bet is to research the University’s and Department’s strategic planning to make sure my thoughts are in-line with theirs, but this is certainly an interesting thing to talk about. Not what I’d expected, but interesting to be part of the interview.
And in reference to my birthday money I’d talked about, it now has a purpose! I’ve decided to put some of it toward getting an appropriate interview outfit (no, I haven’t done that yet) and some of it toward getting my hair professionally cut/colored for the interview. This will be my first professional hair cut/color since BEFORE I started blogging here (my last time was back in early March 2014). Although I think I’ve done a decent job doing my own hair (I do my own cuts & have just done all-over boxed color), I think its important to look one’s best on a job interview and the confidence boost I’ll get from having professionally done cut/color can’t hurt, either. Even after my last botched experience, I decided to purchase a Groupon for the hair cut/color. This time, though, the Groupon is for a really fancy salon, and I paid $65 (retail value of $185). I’m hopeful that my experience this time around will be lightyears better than last time. I have no idea how much the interview suit will cost. I know there’s a huge range and I’d like to stay on the lower-mid-cost side of things, while still scoring a really nice outfit. If birthday money is leftover after that, it’ll be going toward debt.
Fingers crossed for finding a decent interview outfit! My interview is scheduled for January 26th, so I’ve got a couple weeks to find something.
Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
Good luck on the interview. I pay a huge amount of money to get my hair done every 8 weeks (read more than your salon without the Groupon). But I feel that it is important for my overall appearance, especially in my profession. It ain’t fair, but it is what it is. Gotta look and feel confident for your interview!
Congrats and good luck! That question sounds right up your alley, with your experience teaching online courses. You’ll do great 🙂
Good plan for the hair. For the suit, check out consignment shops. I’ve gotten some perfect interview/professional clothing from consignment that was way beyond my budget. Hit several if you can. You never know what treasures await!
Sounds like a good use of your birthday money!
Ashley-
You are in luck that you are buying the suit in January, it is the best time of year to get great deals on clothing. You should definitely head out to find something as soon as possible though, you will want to be sure to have time to get it tailored if need be, for this kind of thing you want it to fit perfectly! As well as checking out consignment shops you can also consider department stores, at this time of year the sales are incredible.
Cheers,
Meghan
Thanks for the tip! I’m going today to try to see if I can find something suitable (har har! “suit”-able) ; )
Congratulations on the interview!
Congratulations!! I hope your groupon experience is much better this time, I agree that for things like this you need to have a polished look that’s kind of hard to achieve from a home haircut and color!
Try Ann Taylor clearance rack/ online clearance. I got a really nice wool suit there around this time of the year a few years ago for a great price. Found the perfect fitting jacket at one store and some pants that could be altered to fit which I bought. But then I went to another store and found the perfect fitting pants that match so I didn’t have to get any alterations and I took back the first pair. I think I spent around $160.
Best of luck, can’t wait to hear how it goes!
Congratulations!!!!! This is awesome! And a great way to start the new year. What a wonderful, thoughtful way to spend your bday money. I think that is the best part about monitoring spending: it makes you spend thoughtfully.
As for the second talk looking up the department philosophy is important, but also make sure it’s something that you support and are passionate about. Plus this is definitely in the university consciousness, I just gave a talk with new faculty about teaching which focused on my excitement about new technology with teaching and how I think its important to teach about factually supported resources. As well as, Emphasizing how to identify them (there is a lot of junk out there!) to the students so they can facilitate their own learning track based on interest.
What do you mean by “factually supported resources”?? Are you talking about the differences between using an academic search engine versus google?? Or are you talking about some specific type(s) of technology?? I’d love to hear a bit more if you want to elaborate!
Sorry for the late reply on this! I was talking about specific technology. In my classes I teach the use a lot of molecular biology resources for genome browsing (ucsc browser, enzymex, ape, etc.) as well as programs to look at protein structure (jmol, pymol) and statistical packages (typically r or matlab)