As an older graduate student who returned to doctoral studies after a significant period of time away from the student role, I realize that by the time I finish my dissertation I’ll probably be ready to collect my Social Security checks. While I know that this places certain limitations on my future vocational options, this has had its liberating effects. Especially, I worry much less than I did when I was younger about what my advisors wanted or what my classmates thought of me, and I feel more confident in accepting that I have my particular interests, strengths, and weaknesses. Hey, if I’m not exactly what the Academy needs or wants – and even if I am an imposter – the world’s not going to come to an end. Just my career, perhaps, but life goes on.
Still, despite my supposedly ‘liberated’ attitude and carefree disregard for what others think, I hear the faint sound of a blade being sharpened behind my back. However, I don’t know exactly where the sound is coming from, and that makes me a little anxious. Some recent clues:
1. In the politest terms possible I recently wrote an e-mail to a senior professor recommending that he, in effect, stop nitpicking the minor details on a project, which was agitating a colleague – a fellow graduate student – to no end. The project’s success depends on my colleague, who’s overburdened by multiple and conflicting demands, as it is, many of them caused by the sort of mindless criticisms that are intended to be helpful but, in their cumulative bulk, are in fact astoundingly counterproductive. The professor wrote back and accepted the recommendation, but in such curt language that it was clear that it wasn’t accepted with pleasure.
2. Earlier this summer, a professor in my academic program asked me to put together a newsletter. Since I’ve been doing newsletters since high school, I find such tasks tedious and boring in the extreme, unless I can find some way of making it ‘interesting.’ This time, I used the newsletter project as an opportunity to teach myself some new desktop publishing skills. As a result, I am finishing the newsletter only now, when it was supposed to have been ready by mid-September. This has caused more than a little exasperation for the professor who commissioned the newsletter. On the other hand, I do think it looks smashing.
3. But…there’s been one absurdly inane sticking point: the newsletter identifies the program’s faculty. A simple and informative touch, I thought, but I should have known better. I belong to a multi-program department. Apparently, some of my program’s faculty have gravitated out of the program into other, neighboring programs; while faculty belonging to the other programs have become actively involved in ours. So: should we identify only the official program faculty? Should we list faculty who are, in fact, contributing to our program, regardless of their official affiliations and assignments? The professor who initiated the newsletter has one idea, but it’s not a consensus opinion. Someone said to me: it’s your newsletter, your choice, and by the way, whatever I choose is likely to make someone really unhappy. Great.
4. My out-of-department sociology advisor reads my blog on occasion. I knew that but for some reason it didn’t sink in until recently. Fortunately, I’ve written nothing to suggest that he’s been anything but a fountain of wisdom, sanity, perspective, and intelligence. Am I right? On the other hand, I did mention somewhere in a previous post that the qualification exams I took last month were ‘just hurdles’ (when it’s far from clear that I jumped them). And I might as well take this opportunity to say now that I’m perturbed by the fact that he has many more Facebook friends than I do. In fact, I’m perturbed by any evidence of communicative sophistication and techno-cultural awareness on the part of the professoriate, since it’s supposed to be one advantage that we subalterns are supposed to have – a way of communicating about our superiors behind their backs.
Well, no sense losing sleep over it. But it is 2am, and I’m suddenly afflicted by insomnia.
Andrew – To comment at a complete tangent to what you’ve written, I clicked through to the article you linked above, and found myself inadvertently fascinated by the snarkiness of the comments – particularly by the sheer nastiness of some of the folks who wanted to criticise commenters who were talking about their own bad graduate experiences… I’ve occasionally written about the hazing dimensions of graduate programs – some of those comments illustrated some of the reasons that sort of thing plays out: folks who’ve had very bad experiences, snarking at other folks who are complaining about similar bad experiences, on the grounds that the bad experiences, once gone through, somehow cease to be bad, and become… what? somehow essential to academic training? At any rate – apologies for the random association (didn’t want to post it over there, lest people rush in to tell me how intensely I must have deserved whatever poor experiences I’ve had as a grad student… ;-P). (Note that I didn’t read through the entire discussion – perhaps this sort of exchange was only characteristic of a small portion…)
Getting back to your actual post: I do, though, agree that being older both helps – and doesn’t help – with a graduate degree. A bit easier to stand my ground; a bit more able to predict and offset potential reactions to whatever I’m doing – and much, much more aware that my world won’t collapse if I do something else. But strange tensions are generated, as well, by approaching academic work in this way, at least in my current setting – hard to articulate, but I think there’s a certain level at which I’m perceived not to be “paying my dues”… Although this could be an inaccurate perception on my part – or caused by something else… Not sure…
As for being perturbed at your advisor reading your blog: I find it more unnerving, personally, when students read mine. I had an awkward situation at one point where I had been interacting with someone who also maintained a blog. Either they hadn’t mentioned, or I had just missed, that they were a student at my university (they were older; it was a second degree for them, etc.). Long story short: I had an absolutely uncanny experience in a class discussion one day, suddenly realising that this person in the back of my classroom was the same person I’d been interacting with – discussing theory, but very informally – online for some time… Very unsettling – particularly to have the realisation sink in “live” during the actual class…
#2 is something I do as well – one of my faults is not saying ‘no’ often enough. I worked out my billable + non-billable hours for a month [approx. 2 years ago]… when I figured out the per hour including the free help, it was low. Kathie Lee’s factory low.
So now when I take on projects I try to do exactly what you pointed out – use it to my advantage to augment this skill or catch up with information on that. It’s increased productivity *and* make it a lot more pleasurable.
Hey NP,
No worries about writing at a tangent – I do it all the time!
Rereading my midnight musings in the clear light of the morning ,I realize that what was intended to sound wry and amusing actually comes across as slightly paranoid.
For instance, re: 4, I’m hardly perturbed but actually flattered by the fact that my advisor, or anyone really, bothers to drop by now and then to read my posts – and I welcome anyone who really wants to join the world of blogging and who can find profit in its variegated conversations. That being said – and as we and others have discussed before – there are aspects to this whole business of communicating and networking via blogs, social network sites, etc ., that are still being worked out; conventions and protocols exist but only in hazy form. As you point out in your example, the conjunction of feelings of familiarity and distance that are generated through blogging become unsettled when we realize that we’re both more and less familiar with some of our readers and interlocutors than we previously thought. It’s at those moments that I do appreciate, even if only for a second, the desire for a kind of complete anonymity where I can escape from any potential awkwardness of revealing myself too much.
Yeah, I too am amazed by the vituperativeness and mean-spiritedness of some of those comments in reaction to the ‘imposter’ article. I myself feel quite lucky to be where I am, doing what I am but I am always a little surprised at the thinness of the tissue of reciprocity and consideration that exists between academics. I’ve worked with faculty and with students together and separately on projects, and the frontstage/backstage discrepancies in behavior can be disconcerting, even startling. I was only joking about hearing a blade being sharpened behind my back, but I think some of the reactions to the Chronicle article reveal a little bit of the consequences of the kind of hazing you mention.
BTW, I was motivated by your work with L Magee to go and hear Robert Brandom the other day. He was on campus for a three-part lecture series: missed the first and third, but went to the second, which was on autonomy and (positive) freedom. Unfortunately I arrived late and was forced to listen to most of him while sitting under a coat rack behind a wall in an adjoining room. Needless to say, not a situation conducive to concentrated listening.
Matthew, ‘Kathie Lee low’: LOL. Haven’t thought about *that* fiasco in a while. But I agree, free work can be deadly to one’s time and budget.
There’s just something pricelessly metaphoric about this:
In its own way, it might be up there, as a metaphor, to Adorno and Horkheimer’s discussion of Odysseus and the sirens – you can hear the call of freedom, but you only hear it too late, and while barred from seeing where it’s coming from, and muffled under commodity kitsch. Or something…
And just to clarify: the lightness of your tone did come across. I was just associating off in my own tangents (and after reading the comments in the piece you linked to, which created their own paranoid mood… ;-P).
This out-of-department sociology advisor of yours: I hear he’s absolutely amazing! But I have it on good authority that a lot of his Facebook friends are young adult children of his colleagues and relatives.
You’re conflating a couple of different issues in your concern about the sharpening of a blade behind your back. From the perspective of a (cynical) outsider, a few of these examples have virtually nothing to do with you personally, even though you may feel as though you are the object of negative evaluations by your faculty “supervisors”. Rather, these are cases of routine academic politics, which are notoriously petty (as the old saw goes, because the stakes are so low.) There are doctoral students in other programs at your institution publishing program newsletters because they’re good citizens and being treated as though they are hired help; hence my claim that it’s not personal. The issue of who “counts” as a program faculty member is particularly contentious at a place like Teachers College, given the prevailing cultural beliefs about resource stress and excessive workloads. My suspicion is that you are disappointed to learn that your professors are engaged in mundane and petty politics, because it disrupts the idyllic myth of the “life of the mind” to which you (and I as well) aspire. The examples you cite are not, after all, about scholarship at all; they’re about how people treat one another.
Dear Anon,
Thanks for dropping by, and I’m not surprised I’m conflating a number of different issues here. Obviously, this was supposed to be a bit humorous and tongue-in-cheek, but as I wrote in my response to NP’s comment, it came out a little more paranoid and snarkier than I had intended it to sound. In fact, my original intention was to write in a joking vein on “How I continue to do things to undermine myself in small and minor ways in the eyes of others.” But, this somehow became a post about the sound of blades being sharpened behind my back, which made it sound personal though I should have made it clear: the blades aren’t necessarily being sharpened for *me.* That much I know.
Certainly, there’s nothing here to suggest a criticism of the life of the mind – which is an unalloyed pleasured for which I’m thankful, to the extent that I’m living it – just a kind of bemusement resulting out of a refamiliarization with some of the petty frustrations of the life of the mind, institutionalized.