You try to get an academic job..
Statistics has never been your strong suit, but now you understand exactly what it means that, in many fields, universities are cranking out more Ph.D.s than there are academic jobs to hold them. You are living the statistic.
You move across the country several times, from a one-year position to a two-year position to another one-year position, always trying to befriend students and faculty, particularly any who may have influence on the committee that fills the next available tenure-track position.
You politic, you shmooze, you flatter. You re-cast your research interests as often as necessary to improve you chances of getting a secure position. Your personal life is a shambles—friends made and abandoned at each stop on the tenure-track express, romance stressed, strained, potentially broken by every move.
Stick it out—academia is where you belong.
Give up, and get a real job.
Get creative and start a satirical linguistics journal.
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