7 Degrees of Separation

Here I am nursing the last few sips of my hot tea. I just finished drafting an email to an old pianist friend from 2001. My goal: to have her email or call the chair of a search committee on my behalf. And this is not the first time I've tried to solicit phone calls or emails for the purposes of making my job application stand out from the pack. Yet, each time I do this, I feel awkward. Why? I guess a small part of me still believes that I can win a job based solely on my qualifications. Experience tells me that you need to make professional connections and those contacts help you win a job, yet I still want to do it all on my own. So every time I apply for a position, it's like playing the 7 Degrees of Separation game...who is on faculty at this school and who is the search chair and who do I know that might have a connection to those people. Hey, maybe I'll feel less awkward about the whole thing if I approach it like a game. After all, I love playing games...And I guess there will be some paying it forward once I finally win a career job. Fingers crossed that it happens in 2009! Well, my tea has mysteriously disappeared, so I must go.