TNG reader Randi submitted this post.

My two semester-long stint as a teaching assistant ended at the beginning of May, officially making me unemployed.  Although I have been job searching since late April, it is now mid-June and I have been sitting in my pajamas playing guitar all day since the semester ended four weeks ago.  While I feel like a huge loser (living at home and unemployed), my friends and significant other all assure me that I’ll find something soon.  I have had six interviews in the last three weeks.  So far:  two rejections, one offer turned down (trust me, it was not legit), one offer that I accepted and then they decided to go with someone else, one place where I gave the worst interview of my life that I hope to never hear from again, and one place that I am now waiting on.  At each of these interviews, the interviewer has asked me to explain my current academic research.  This is the point of the interview where I freeze.

While most people have no problem talking for 10 minutes about their focus on ________ (insert your own pretentious and convoluted topic), I get nervous because a lot of my research has focused on the deconstruction of what many people take as “given” and “natural” (male dominance, heterosexuality, white privilege).  When asked, I rattle off my list:  representations of gender and sexuality in popular culture (media), identity formation in music subcultures, punk rock feminism, queer/feminist/gender theory, and contradictions of postmodernity in third wave feminism.  When pressed further by the interview to give examples, I usually start off with a paper I wrote about how Disney princess movies teach young girls heteronormative expectations about gender roles and romantic love, and how the neoliberal market encourages these models through commodities (read: girls are taught to expect a Prince Charming and toy stores will sell child size plastic crowns and princess dresses to feed this delusion).  At this point, most of my interviewers have begun to awkwardly shift around in their seats.  I’ve only had one interviewer probe beyond that initial offering.

I wonder what makes them feel uncomfortable.  Is it because I just said “male dominance” to my male interviewer?  Is it because I just implied that heterosexuality is forced upon individuals from an early age?  Is it because my haircut looks more like Ariel’s Prince Eric than it does Mulan?  Or is it because I just accused Disney of being propaganda?  At this juncture, I usually try to rebound with a joke, or something that doesn’t make me seem like a crazy militant against childhood nostalgia, male-identified persons, and straight people.

While I’ve just about given up hope, I’m not about to use my resume to secure a uh toe-hold in the burger industry (brownie points if you know the movie this came from), or browse adult gigs on Craigslist.  I’ve had some terrible summer jobs.  I could tell you horror stories about the summer I spent working at the Target in Wheaton Mall, or the numerous summers I spent lifeguarding and pool managing, or the less than awesome experience I had as an unpaid intern for Unnamed Big Important Washington Entity. (Anoop of American Idol fame was one of my fellow interns, and we once spent a few humid 90 degree days in the back of a tractor-trailer doing inventory on like 900 paper plates and forks.)  A friend told me to take the summer off.  While that is tempting, constantly thinking about my grad school loan coupled with the need for gas money to continue my DC-Baltimore relationship, is the only thing motivating me to keep looking.  I recently went out with some friends from college when we ran into some other folks we knew.  After everyone else had given the obligatory “what they have been up to recap,” everyone turned to me and I said: “One more year of grad school, but right now I’m just hanging out.”

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