Well, so my first…

Well, so my first academic interview is over. I'm honestly not sure how well it went -- we talked for almost an hour, which I think is a good sign, but maybe I was just babbling and they didn't know how to get me off the phone? That's certainly possible. I may have talked theory too much (they asked me about Tagore and somehow I ended up talking about Spivak and the subaltern, oof). I may have talked science fiction too much. I may just have talked too much. Or too little. It's very hard to say. But I know I have a tendency to ramble (this came up at my oral exams, and I should have remembered it before this interview, instead of after, sigh.)

One of the interviewers said she liked the story I sent them ("Monsoon Day"), so that's encouraging, at any rate. I looked them all up on their website/google afterwards, and they're all far more impressive than me, with Stegner fellowships and New Yorker publications and the like. I'm feeling out of my league.

At this point, it'd be really helpful to know whether it was a good interview or not -- even if they don't offer me the job. If I'm lucky, I'll have more interviews at MLA this winter -- it'd be nice to know what I did well or badly. I'm hoping they'll tell Robin about it, and then maybe he'll tell me.

After talking to them, I'm even more interested in the job. It'll be a few weeks before I find out whether they want me, though. (And whether they actually have a position for me, since it depends on student enrollment for next semester). It's just a one-semester position, but perhaps if they like me (and I like them), it might be renewed? Too soon to think about that. Hopefully, they'll make an offer, and I can worry about all that later.

I'm feeling a bit frenetic and fragmentary and over-excited right now -- I'm going to try to drink some tea and get some writing done. I'm now at a cafe, which may help. I don't have a lot of time to spare for writing today, because I promised to go to a staged reading of the Rasaka Theatre Company tonight. But a few hours would be good. We'll see.

Uf da.

5 thoughts on “Well, so my first…”

  1. Totally unrelated, but: What’s the origin of “uf da”? I know at least one other friend who uses it, and I never knew where it came from, and am now curious if there’s a connection…

  2. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Uh — dunno? That’s the sort of question I ask Jed…

    Maybe it’s Swedish? Finnish? I picked it up at some point, along with y’all. They’re useful regionalisms, I think. As is aiiiyo, a Tamil-ism, but I don’t know how to spell that one. You need to hear me say it to understand, I think. There are some situations where no other word will do.

  3. “uff da” (as it’s usually spelled) is Norwegian—I first heard it from my grandmother, who’s of Norwegian ancestry. An uff da page suggests various translations: “oops!” or “ouch!” or “good grief!” or “oy vay!”

    For those who haven’t heard it spoken, note that “uff” has more or less the vowel sound of “book”—it rhymes with “woof” in my pronunciation.

  4. Huh, wacky… One of my hypotheses was that it was a South Asian thing, as the other person who I think of using that phrase is Jessica, who lived in India for a few (?) years as a kid — but now I wonder if she and you both got it from Jed! Hee.

  5. 🙂 That would seem to be a reasonable supposition in the absence of other evidence, but I don’t think it’s what happened, ’cause I almost never use the phrase myself. I’m pretty sure Mary Anne was using it before I met her. I can’t remember whether I heard Jessica say it back in college or not, but now I’m curious where she got it.

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