Thanks for the thought, Dow, and I wish it would work for us. The problem is, we've never gotten to choose where we wanted to live. It works like this: The chance of any particular college or university having an opening in physics is fairly small. A lot of places can go years without having an opening. If a university decided to hire a physicist, they would be looking for someone with a particular specialty. If it wasn't David's area of expertise, he wouldn't be eligible. Unversities are normally required by accreditation rules to do a national search when they want to fill a position. That means they adverstise all over the country and get about 100 resumes for one opening. About half of those 100 resumes will be individuals who are clearly not qualified for the position, but that still leaves 50 eager, willing and qualified candidates for one position.
It's a crapshoot. You send out a ton of resumes and if you are lucky you end up with a job, but it's doubtful you would end up in a particular city that you were interested in.
Karen
