*eyeroll*

[shadesong]

Okay. So we're doing a faculty search. We advertised that we were looking for a topologist.

Only about one in every ten applications is from a topologist.

Seriously. What makes these people think that we're going to hire them, when we already have two people in their speciality and no one in topology? Sheesh.

45 minutes til I get to go home. Then I just have to stay awake til like 9 so I don't b0rk my sleep schedule.

Comments

[yendi]

With Miss Kid staying up until 9, I don't think staying awake will be too tricky. And once I've tucked her in, I'll tuck you in.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Yay.

Sleepy little me.

[velvetknife.livejournal.com]

The job market is bad enough that people are willing to apply for anything. If you don't have work right now and you're trying to find it, you can't really afford to limit yourself to anything as specific as a field of study.

Wayyyyy offf Topic

[gythiawulfie.livejournal.com]

M'lady... you are ... er... contagious.... lemme explain

A mongooses age of posts ago, you used the word *squee* instantaneously I understood *squee*.... squee was contageous... I found myself saying it outloud in the *squee* voice.

Co-workers have heard me say *squee* when something just totallyr rocks my boat... like a new office machine/toy.... I work for an environmental education center which is a branch of the College of Education at FAU.

Now other members of the staff have been over heard saying *squee*, not in the exact tone I do (I guess they can't truly *squee*) but they do.

It like when we all adopted another co-workers saying of "Bless their pea pickin' hearts"

It's hillarious...

Re: Wayyyyy offf Topic

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Heh. *squee*!!

[silme.livejournal.com]

Well, I keep hearing that the US economy is awful. And I know the academic job market is tight. Perhaps they're hoping that nary a topologist will apply, and the university will be forced to hire someone with a slightly different speciality.

[terracinque.livejournal.com]

Shoot, I could be a topologist.

I should see if they want me.

[noiresque.livejournal.com]

I once got a job in my field by applying for a job in a similar department but wasn't qualified for on a lark at a bank. I got a call from the boss saying that he'd gotten my resume from the guy offering the job who'd forwarded it to him saying I was a good fit for HIS job. That job wasn't advertised that I saw. It's always worth hitting a company opening with a resume. To me at least.

[zigurat.livejournal.com]

What in the crap is a topologist? Everybody acts like they actually know what it is, but for the life of me, I can't see how. To answer my own question after a search, topology is some strange form of geometry. In which a circle is the same thing as a square, but not as a figure eight. Apparently.

Go figure.

geometry and topology

[fmi-agent.livejournal.com]

a bit of math evangelism from me. the short explanation is that "number of holes" is a topological property of shapes.

the longer explanation --- take with a grain of salt, or a shakerful ... i hope that the following discussion makes more sense than whatever web page you were reading.

• suppose you use a stencil to draw a triangle on a piece of paper. then you lift the stencil, rotate it, move it to a far different spot on the paper, and draw another triangle with it. now, the two triangles are Different: they occupy different locations, they lie at different angles on the paper. but they are also in some ways The Same: they have the same area, the same side lengths, and so on. these properties are known as geometric properties, precisely because they remain unchanged for a given shape after rotating the shape and/or moving it around.
  
  
• now for a different and more bizarre scenario: suppose you've got a very large piece of paper, made from some extremely strong-yet-malleable material. you can pick any two points on the paper and pull them farther apart. or, you can shrink the space between them so that the two points are as close together as you want them to be. you can't let the two points touch, however. (you want to preserve the existence of whatever lies in between the two points. that stuff can be squeezed into any tiny space between the two points, but it vanishes if you eliminate that space-in-between altogether.)
  
  now draw a circle on this silly-putty sort of paper. with just the right stretching and shrinking of that paper, you can distort the circle so it looks like a square. but you CAN'T distort the circle so it looks like a figure eight -- not without making two points on the circle touch each other. it's impossible to create a two-hole shape out of a one-hole in this way, and vice versa.
  
  "number of holes" is a topological property because it's invariant under stretching and shrinking.

i hope that this was not unhelpful ...

Re: geometry and topology

[shugenja.livejournal.com]

I generally hate math of any sort, but that was oddly interesting.

Re: geometry and topology

[islandisee.livejournal.com]

That was a pretty damn good topology explaination. I took a class on this, and when faced with describing the concept, failed miserably. :-)

Re: geometry and topology

[fmi-agent.livejournal.com]

*bows*

just don't ask me to explain any topological properties more complicated than that :)

Re: geometry and topology

[zigurat.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's very similar to the web page I found. I was exagerating my confusion. I can see how that could be useful in solving some complex problems, and I think I get the basic concept.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

When I was doing job counseling, we told people to apply for anything they thought they could do, even if it wasn't in their field, on the odd chance that they might land an interview and get hired.

It can be annoying, but sometimes it works out to everyone's satisfaction.

[remotesensing.livejournal.com]

Example from where I work:

1 opening for a full time staffer.

73 resumes arrived.

71 of the 73 used the SAME resume template from Microsoft Word.

30 of the 73 were liberal arts majors. (Sorry, we're looking for engineering/physics/math, people.)

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Ah, but see, I worked in the Employment Unit at the welfare office. Our aim was to get those liberal arts majors employed and off the rolls. Period. Once they were employed, they were free to look around for a better fit.

Word has resume templates? Suddenly, I feel like Dawn in the Buffy episode where she learns that there's already a translation of the spell she's been translating.

[fortunavirilis.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the Shiny Happy World of HR where I get 10 good resumes for every 200. Because apparently most executive assistants secretly think they are Accounting Managers and Engineers think it is cool to apply for scheduling positions.

Yes, I get to read all of the resumes for every position in every department of the company.

[harpseal.livejournal.com]

Se... with my degree in psychology, and my experince in computers i'm qualified to do nothing, and everything. So probally most of them like me give resume's to any anevery job in the hopes domeone might find ours skills useful.

I'm still waiting.. and waiting.. and waiting.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

Faculty jobs are different, though. For most other jobs, unless they're highly specialized (engineering, accounting, etc.), if you have related skills, they might take you on. But for a faculty job, you're only interested in the area you're lacking. We don't have a Shakespeare scholar (ours retired.) That's all we're interested in. It's great you've done so much in Victorian/postcolonial/postmodern literature, but we need someone to teach Shakespeare.

[remotesensing.livejournal.com]

The school I work at has even tougher requirements-- they need all faculty members to be US Citizens.

Talk about limiting your applicant pool, especially in physics and electrical engineering.