Finis

I'm done. Last night in the hotel and I have no more preparation to do. My interviews went, for the most part, smashingly. I didn't punt any questions, flub my lines, make any atrocious gaffes.

All of them, in fact, were really enjoyable conversations, and I'd be happy to work with 28 of the 31 people who I met. It was a lot of names to remember, though. Kanbrashoma had seven people interviewing me, including (and this is just weird) two grad students. Seems like a great department and a good job, despite the location. The interviews are already starting to run together, and indeed they did so during the interviews. I had to ask my New Amsterdam interviewers if I had already mentioned the senior seminar in Ventriloquizing Renaissance Women. I had. Lots of young male faculty with the same haircut, lots of interchangeable queer theorists, lots of polite and polished feminist department chairs. Some things that stand out:

• The genial medievalist at Cowpoke State who looks like a gently shaking Santa Claus, and who asked me "what on earth could possibly induce you to move here?"
• The intimidatingly brilliant and poshly British bloke at Pipedream College who had read my writing sample already, when it came out in the journal;
• The extremely tricky question posed by the Slalom State chair, "Tell us about a difficult roadblock in your research, where you had to change course or abandon your thought process, and how you made that productive;"
• Trying desperately not to let out a mozzeralla fart in my best interview;
• Running into a friend coming out of the interview room I was about to enter (that thing they tell you can sometimes happen, but doesn't ever really seem likely)

As I said, they're starting to run together already. Which school requires its MA's to take Shakespeare? Which of them have a two-part British Lit survey? How many times can I possibly summarize my as-yet-unwritten book? How many times can I make it seem as if my talking points have just occurred to me? Was this a drama job or just a Renaissance job? Is your name Judith or Sharon or Joy or Janet?

Doesn't matter. It's out of my hands now until mid to late January, and that's a good thing. There will be celebratory room service for breakfast.