The Fine Line Between Stress and Total Hysteria

I've been back a brief two days from my glorious trip to Cali and already loathing the Florida heat and humidity. Blargh. But, I have no time to bitch about that because in a few hours I'm heading off to Boston for a wedding!

That's right, I'm going to chill with Monkey and attend her sister's nuptials. I'm super excited because this is actually the first wedding I've ever gone to. When I tell people this they give me a look that says, "Oy, are you a freak or what?" I suppose it might seem odd that at the advanced age of 27 I have yet to see anyone get married. But that's how it is. Anyway, I'll finally have a wedding to add to my roster and from everything I've been told I'm anticipating that it will be so spectacular that I won't really need to go to a wedding ever again. I'll have seen the best and the brightest first off. Yay!

All happiness and joy aside...I think I've finally entered the full blown anxiety state that accompanies every Ph.D. candidate's entrance onto the job market. Honestly, I'm freakin' out and it's not quite July yet. But I've already seen job ads with October 2nd deadlines, which means:

1. I have about 2 months to complete drafts of 2 more chapters.
2. I will be attempting to do this while concurrently teaching a summer class and devising a syllabus for my fall class (a new one).
3. I need to get cracking on finishing my draft of a cover letter and making my CV spiffy.
4. I should be sending out a shortened version of the chapter I'm currently revising to some journals and try to add another publication to my list.
5. I must contact all my committee members, update them on my status, get them to read some material, and prostrate myself before them in order to get brilliant letters of recommendation well in advance of the typical November job application deadlines.

I'm not sure why, but recently some departments have started making their application deadlines MUCH earlier than is standard. Usually one needed to submit the first round of materials (CV, cover letter, abstract) in early to mid November. Now it seems that more universitites are requesting ALL materials, up front, by the beginning of October. This is a bit stressful. Largely because so many professors are used to the November deadlines and are not exactly jumping with joy at having to write reference letters right at the start of the fall term. I feel like I can have all of my stuff ready, but will I be able to get the kind of letters I need that much in advance? I sure as hell hope so. Although I am a bit worried about one of my committee members...but that's a whole different stressful situation that I don't care to go in to today.

In the face of this stress load, which is making me mildly hysterical these days, I do have one shining ray of happiness. My articles is out! Woot! I got my complimentary copies of the journal in the mail the other day and spent about ten minutes just staring at it. The surreal nature of the experience cannot even be put into words. But seeing my work in print for the first time was both thrilling and frightening. The whole process has taken about one year to bear fruit, and so it started to seem like this abstract event that would eventually happen in some distant future but not any time soon. Holding the finished product in my hand, therefore, nearly sent my mind reeling. But it was also a huge relief because now I've got a major publication under my belt and some of the pressure is off. I now have much better chances of getting a job. A fact of which I shall have to remind myself daily once the job hunt commences in earnest.