All Dressed Up and OTM: One ABD's View of the Profession

I ask the pardon of those teachers who, in dreadful conditions, attempt to turn the few weapons they can find in the history and learning they "teach" against the ideology, the system and the practices in which they are trapped. They are a kind of hero. But they are rare and how many (the majority) do not even begin to suspect the "work" the system (which is bigger than they are and crushes them) forces them to do.
(Althusser 157)

Passing prelims and starting to work in earnest on the dissertation has given me a new status: not only "ABD" but also "OTM"—On The Market. When I go to my mailbox in the English Department three days a week, stuffed in with late student papers, departmental memos, notices of lectures by visiting scholars, and glossy publishers' promos, I find xeroxes of job announcements from The Chronicle, letters of solicitation from small, obscure colleges, once even the entire October MLA Job List. My dissertation directors' advice focuses on the need to publish, where to publish, how to publish. Talk in the hallways among my generation of grad students is about where the jobs are, who's getting them, who isn't and why.  I'm On the Market, On The Move, Out of The Mines at last, thank goodness, because I'm also Out of Time and Money.