Persistence and Professional Acknowledgement

Please give me persistence. I need it. The job hunt is quite a depressing process, but I KNOW that my research is awesome, that I'm a great teacher, and that I get things DONE.

I love it when people notice-- and I've gotten some nice professional acknowledgement recently. Today a scholar who wrote one of the books that has influenced my research the most, in other words someone I deeply respect, asked me to co-chair a section of SEM (the Society for Ethnomusicology). I'm already a newsletter editor for another section of SEM. That society is the most vibrant place for encountering research on performance of all kinds. Yes, they focus on music, but they understand how it is interconnected to dance, theatre, etc.. I'm also currently a candidate in a professional election, the Committee on Korean Studies of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS is the other professional association I am most committed to-- there are lots of amazing papers presented each year, I struggle to see even a small fraction of the interesting panels). There are five people running for three seats, and I'm far and away the most junior of the five, but... why not?!! It shows what sort of person I am that I received enough nominations to get on the ballot, and if I'm not chosen this time, it'll happen in a couple years.

Although it is hard, I have to be persistent. Right now I seem to be getting noticed in these two professional associations, and hopefully that will lead to getting noticed on the job market!