Dear Grace

Thank you for your recent post at Snarky Girls. This hardly qualifies as an application for the position that we so thoroughly adverstised, however, I feel that it merits at least a brief response.

We appreciate your interest in the position of Assistant Professor of Stuff, however, we regret to inform you that you are not the candidate that we had in mind. For starters, we see that you have attended the University of Blah. We never accept candidates from that institution as we have found that they learn stuff that is antithetical to the stuff that we teach and research here at the University of BlahBlah. In other words, you have learned anti-stuff. Thus we fear that you would produce lots of stuff about anti-stuff and teach our students stuff about anti-stuff. We cannot have that as (we are told by our university’s scientists), this would result in a cosmic implosion.

Additionally, I see that your dissertation is about P,Q,R and S. As you know from our seven-line position announcement we are indeed looking for a candidate who works in these areas. However, you appear to have failed to read between the lines. I’m sure if you read the announcement again, you will find that we are looking for someone whose future research program will involve T,U,V and W and whose teaching will concentrate on K,L,M and N (of course we don’t do O here). Perhaps if you had been honest and told us what your real research interests were?

I also note that we are suspicious of your claim that you have received lots of “positive” reviews of your teaching of anti-stuff. As anti-stuff is inherently negative, this must mean that your “positive” evaluations mark you as a bad teacher. After all, teaching anti-stuff should produce negative results and thus negative feedback. We at the University of BlahBlah only want professors who get the right results.

Lastly, you have failed to address the issue of departmental service. No doubt you have been reading the headlines and have noted that our fine institution refuses to bend to the communistic forces of the so-called “working wage” movement. Our intrepid leadership has thus decided that we do not need people who work for minimum wage. Hence the lowest ranked professors in our department are now responsible for a variety of academic services including but not limited to sweeping, mopping, and taking out the garbage.

Thank you for your love, hugs and kisses, but these too I must reject. Additionally, I cannot meet with you as bringing stuff and anti-stuff together may produce, again, a cosmic explosion.

With anti-love, anti-hugs, and anti-kisses, I am yours,

Dr. Aplomb