I've always been interested in the emotional attachments we develop in this profession--attachments to people we know, people we don't know, and people we'll never know. For the most part I'm not talking about those we would identify as friends; professional friendships, like all friendships, may have their ups and downs and misunderstandings, but they're basically mutual: both people have roughly the same stakes in and understanding of the relationship.
The kind of attachments I'm interested in are the asymmetrical ones. Whatever your actual relationship to the person in question, the psychic real estate they occupy is disproportionate. Mentors, grad school professors, and dissertation directors are one obvious category, and in years past I've written a lot about those. Colleagues are another. I admit, to my chagrin, that I've been known to conjure up much more elaborate relationships--she hates me! he resents me! what if I accidentally offended her and we can never work together again?--than there is any evidence for in the phenomenal world.
But lately I've been thinking about the relationships we have not with our seniors or peers, but with those who are, in at least a limited or temporary sense, our juniors. I'm thinking about the people I've written fellowship or tenure letters for, or the awesome job candidates we didn't hire, or scholars whose work I've recommended for publication. Occasionally these are indeed friends, but the act of reading and thinking about someone else's work and qualifications is an intense and intimate thing, quite unlike the ordinary business of friendship.
There are people who have never met me whose careers I now follow with attention, as well as people who do know me but who probably have no idea how deeply I've thought about their work or how invested in their success I've become. The degree of my investment varies, ranging from sunny goodwill to a more aggressively sororal or maternal advocacy, but it always strikes me as a little peculiar and a little out of proportion. I don't know these people! But I believe in them.
And of course, feeling this intense attachment to people I don't really know has made me reflect on how others might feel about me. With rare exceptions, I don't know the names of any of the reviewers who have taken the time to give me detailed and encouraging feedback on my work--and though I do know the names of those who have written me job or fellowship or tenure letters, in those cases I don't have access to the letters themselves. So my experience of those relationships involves a certain amount of distance: I may feel grateful and indebted, but either I don't have a specific person to tie those feelings to or I don't have a clear sense of exactly what opinions and evaluations I'm feeling grateful for.
So I've never thought too hard about who might have what investments in me: I've imagined my referees as just doing their jobs in a dispassionate or dutiful way. But lately I've been wondering, and every once in a while my antennae will twitch: maybe someone I've always suspected was a reviewer on that essay of mine makes a point of introducing herself at a conference, or someone whose work I admire but have never met starts following me on Twitter. These might just be people who like other things I've written, or who've noticed that our social circles overlap (or who read my blog). But I wonder, sometimes: do we have another kind of relationship? Do I mean something to him or her that's not apparent?
It's disorienting and a little vertiginous to think about all the unacknowledged and asymmetrical relationships we might be a part of. But there's also something nice about it: I like the idea that one of the sustaining forces of the profession might be an invisible web made up of attachments like my own--investments to the work and careers of others that we don't cop to or talk about, but feel deeply all the same.
Showing posts with label Mentorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mentorship. Show all posts
Saturday, October 08, 2016
Sunday, July 24, 2016
The cohort problem
We go through most events in life on the same time-table as our peers. Some of this is about biological development--what the human body and brain are capable of when--and some of it is about the way we're socialized, but we experience most major milestones at roughly the same time and in roughly the same sequence as our peers.
Because if we don't, we find new peers.
Finding new peers isn't about shunning those who aren't like us (though, okay: sometimes we do reject a particular life narrative), but about the fact that we depend upon others to help us understand and navigate our lives. We need the example and support of those who have made similar choices or have had similar bad or good luck. If you have kids early, you're going to need other parent-friends no matter how much you may cherish your old ones. And if you remain single or childless long past the majority of your peers, you're likewise going to need at least a few friends who can see the world through similar eyes.
Because it's not just about knowing people who have experienced the same thing (whatever that thing may be). It's about knowing people likely to have had the full range of emotions that go along with it: the fears, anxieties, and expectations; the way the rest of your life gets reshuffled and redefined around that event. Because just as there are things that people who have been bereaved can't talk about with people who haven't--no matter how well-intentioned--there are things that I can't say to my parent-friends about being childless, or to my single friends about being married, or my nonacademic friends about being an academic. Or rather: I can say some things about those topics, maybe even a lot, but I can't say everything, or expect the same level of immediate understanding, advice, or mutual interest that happens when I'm talking to someone who's been there and is equally as invested in figuring out What It All Means.
Grad school is an obvious example of a peer-group reshuffle: When I was twenty-five and twenty-eight and thirty, I felt as if I'd stepped off the conveyor belt that was delivering my college friends to their destinies: they were buying cars and houses and getting married and advancing in their careers when I didn't have so much as a cat (and the most expensive thing I owned was an aging laptop). But grad school gave me a new set of peers and a new narrative, a sense of what follows what, and people I could talk to about all of this--including our collective sense of having been left behind by adulthood.
But such shuffles aren't necessarily permanent. Indeed, the big discovery of my thirties and forties has that both "cohort" and "life stage" are less rigid than they'd seemed. In high school and even in college it's a big fucking deal to do anything even a year or two before or after everyone else. But now, at age 41, I'm in roughly the same place as most of my age peers--whether I met them in high school or college, grad school or after: most of us are married and with mortgages; most of us have had some career successes and some career failures; and most of us have suffered at least one major loss. Those things didn't all come at the same time or in the same sequence, but in their outlines our lives look more similar than different.
Because even if the parameters expand, age remains central to how we define our cohort. Not everyone who's forty is my professional peer (some entered graduate school much later or advanced much more rapidly than I), and my cohort includes people half a dozen years older or half a dozen years younger. But I still have a very real sense that my cohort encompasses people of roughly my age and roughly my professional stage, because the two intersect.
But the problem with bonding so strongly with those of our cohort is that the next life or career stage remains perpetually mysterious and difficult to imagine. This is why we sometimes reshuffle our peer groups--to find a narrative that fits better or has greater explanatory power--and it's the reason for many midlife or midcareer crises: not so much the inability to see what's next (at a certain point, we know the major likely moves) as the inability to know how we'll feel about or be able to live inside those events when they come.
Sometimes when I feel angsty about the future I have to remind myself that people have actually done this before. People I know! Whom I see at work or at conferences, some of whom I even know well enough to gossip and get drunk with. Nothing my peers and I are going through is completely new (though the conditions of the profession may have made certain things easier or harder). But I don't generally have deeper and more existential conversations with those I feel are in a cohort above mine; the sense that we're at different life stages and that such conversations couldn't possibly be reciprocal is hard for me to overcome.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t value knowing that my seniors have gone through whatever I'm currently confronting. In my early years in the profession I'd feel a sort of electric shock whenever someone a decade ahead of me would say something kind and off-hand--and I'd suddenly realize that, holy shit! She gets it. She was here. (And she survived.)
I hope I do the same with my juniors, but I also realize that I, too, am not exactly who they need. I may think I understand what they're going through, and maybe I even do (though the temptation of the senior party is always to assume that nothing's changed and that our experiences remain exactly relevant), but they're at earlier professional and life stages. What they need, most of all, is the support of their peers. And I'm not that.
Or at least not yet. Cohorts don't retain their boundaries; both our seniors and our juniors may someday be our peers.
And then, perhaps, all will be known.
Because if we don't, we find new peers.
Finding new peers isn't about shunning those who aren't like us (though, okay: sometimes we do reject a particular life narrative), but about the fact that we depend upon others to help us understand and navigate our lives. We need the example and support of those who have made similar choices or have had similar bad or good luck. If you have kids early, you're going to need other parent-friends no matter how much you may cherish your old ones. And if you remain single or childless long past the majority of your peers, you're likewise going to need at least a few friends who can see the world through similar eyes.
Because it's not just about knowing people who have experienced the same thing (whatever that thing may be). It's about knowing people likely to have had the full range of emotions that go along with it: the fears, anxieties, and expectations; the way the rest of your life gets reshuffled and redefined around that event. Because just as there are things that people who have been bereaved can't talk about with people who haven't--no matter how well-intentioned--there are things that I can't say to my parent-friends about being childless, or to my single friends about being married, or my nonacademic friends about being an academic. Or rather: I can say some things about those topics, maybe even a lot, but I can't say everything, or expect the same level of immediate understanding, advice, or mutual interest that happens when I'm talking to someone who's been there and is equally as invested in figuring out What It All Means.
Grad school is an obvious example of a peer-group reshuffle: When I was twenty-five and twenty-eight and thirty, I felt as if I'd stepped off the conveyor belt that was delivering my college friends to their destinies: they were buying cars and houses and getting married and advancing in their careers when I didn't have so much as a cat (and the most expensive thing I owned was an aging laptop). But grad school gave me a new set of peers and a new narrative, a sense of what follows what, and people I could talk to about all of this--including our collective sense of having been left behind by adulthood.
But such shuffles aren't necessarily permanent. Indeed, the big discovery of my thirties and forties has that both "cohort" and "life stage" are less rigid than they'd seemed. In high school and even in college it's a big fucking deal to do anything even a year or two before or after everyone else. But now, at age 41, I'm in roughly the same place as most of my age peers--whether I met them in high school or college, grad school or after: most of us are married and with mortgages; most of us have had some career successes and some career failures; and most of us have suffered at least one major loss. Those things didn't all come at the same time or in the same sequence, but in their outlines our lives look more similar than different.
Because even if the parameters expand, age remains central to how we define our cohort. Not everyone who's forty is my professional peer (some entered graduate school much later or advanced much more rapidly than I), and my cohort includes people half a dozen years older or half a dozen years younger. But I still have a very real sense that my cohort encompasses people of roughly my age and roughly my professional stage, because the two intersect.
But the problem with bonding so strongly with those of our cohort is that the next life or career stage remains perpetually mysterious and difficult to imagine. This is why we sometimes reshuffle our peer groups--to find a narrative that fits better or has greater explanatory power--and it's the reason for many midlife or midcareer crises: not so much the inability to see what's next (at a certain point, we know the major likely moves) as the inability to know how we'll feel about or be able to live inside those events when they come.
Sometimes when I feel angsty about the future I have to remind myself that people have actually done this before. People I know! Whom I see at work or at conferences, some of whom I even know well enough to gossip and get drunk with. Nothing my peers and I are going through is completely new (though the conditions of the profession may have made certain things easier or harder). But I don't generally have deeper and more existential conversations with those I feel are in a cohort above mine; the sense that we're at different life stages and that such conversations couldn't possibly be reciprocal is hard for me to overcome.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t value knowing that my seniors have gone through whatever I'm currently confronting. In my early years in the profession I'd feel a sort of electric shock whenever someone a decade ahead of me would say something kind and off-hand--and I'd suddenly realize that, holy shit! She gets it. She was here. (And she survived.)
I hope I do the same with my juniors, but I also realize that I, too, am not exactly who they need. I may think I understand what they're going through, and maybe I even do (though the temptation of the senior party is always to assume that nothing's changed and that our experiences remain exactly relevant), but they're at earlier professional and life stages. What they need, most of all, is the support of their peers. And I'm not that.
Or at least not yet. Cohorts don't retain their boundaries; both our seniors and our juniors may someday be our peers.
And then, perhaps, all will be known.
Friday, November 20, 2015
Advice: promoting an applicant
So I find myself in the in-many-ways-enviable position of recommending a terrific student for admission to doctoral programs. This is a student whose application I feel good about in every way, including the whole what-if-there-isn't-a-job-at-the-other-end part (among other things, the student is older, with lots of work and life experience).
And it turns out that, at one of the programs to which s/he is applying, I have a valuable contact: an eminent senior scholar whom my student would be very interested in working with. I'm aware that reaching out to such people on behalf of one's students is A Thing One Does, and it's something I want to do for my student. . . but I'm feeling a bit stumped by the genre, especially given the nature of my own relationship with Eminent Senior Scholar.
If this were truly a friend, I'd probably just drop him or her a brief note saying, "Hey, I have this once-in-a-lifetime student who's applying to your program to work in your field, and I think you'll find them as impressive as I do. I'd love it if you could keep an eye out for their application."
But this scholar and I are only friendly in the been-on-some-panels-together kind of way. S/he has been extraordinarily warm and gracious to me, but we're not close. I'm also a bit of a fangirl, and s/he is the kind of person likely to review my book--or my next book, or write a letter for my promotion file--and that's making me really overthink the degree of familiarity I can assume or the tone I should take.
Obviously, I'm writing a letter for my student's application that will go into detail about all the wonderful, extraordinary things s/he has done and why the program should admit immediately if not sooner. . . but should I recapitulate some of that information? How much?
Friends, if you've either written or received emails of this sort, I'd appreciate all the advice you can give me about this genre: length, content, tone. I want to help my student put the best possible foot forward (and avoid looking like a freaky weirdo myself).
And it turns out that, at one of the programs to which s/he is applying, I have a valuable contact: an eminent senior scholar whom my student would be very interested in working with. I'm aware that reaching out to such people on behalf of one's students is A Thing One Does, and it's something I want to do for my student. . . but I'm feeling a bit stumped by the genre, especially given the nature of my own relationship with Eminent Senior Scholar.
If this were truly a friend, I'd probably just drop him or her a brief note saying, "Hey, I have this once-in-a-lifetime student who's applying to your program to work in your field, and I think you'll find them as impressive as I do. I'd love it if you could keep an eye out for their application."
But this scholar and I are only friendly in the been-on-some-panels-together kind of way. S/he has been extraordinarily warm and gracious to me, but we're not close. I'm also a bit of a fangirl, and s/he is the kind of person likely to review my book--or my next book, or write a letter for my promotion file--and that's making me really overthink the degree of familiarity I can assume or the tone I should take.
Obviously, I'm writing a letter for my student's application that will go into detail about all the wonderful, extraordinary things s/he has done and why the program should admit immediately if not sooner. . . but should I recapitulate some of that information? How much?
Friends, if you've either written or received emails of this sort, I'd appreciate all the advice you can give me about this genre: length, content, tone. I want to help my student put the best possible foot forward (and avoid looking like a freaky weirdo myself).
Friday, September 11, 2015
More like mid-career MAGNIFICENCE
A friend who's also a savvy and pro-active department chair recently set up a fund to encourage associate professors to keep building their careers beyond whatever competencies helped them get tenure. Monies wouldn't be awarded just to go to a conference or deliver a paper; the idea was to encourage faculty to think about what else they might like to do: invite speakers to campus, organize a symposium, participate in a summer seminar or master class.
When I heard about this, I thought, now that's a guy who knows what it is to be an associate professor.
Moving jobs means I haven't yet succumbed to mid-career malaise. Since everything is new--all the applications, all the processes, all the funding sources--I've also been more attuned to new opportunities; right now my brain is whirring with professional-development ideas. Still, I can see and even feel how easy it is to get into a groove that becomes a rut, doing what's worked before, and no longer bothering to try new things, especially if they've been discouraged or denied in the past. So when my friend mentioned that applications to this new fund had been underwhelming, I kinda got it.
But for those of us who aren't in a rut and don't want to be, I'm interested in thinking through what it means to be at mid-career, and how we can conceive of this as a distinct stage with new goals and opportunities. Because the reality for most of us is that there aren't that many truly new things to do. To get tenure, most people have been publishing, going to conferences, applying for grants and fellowships, and doing some amount of professional service. Maybe you haven't yet published in that journal, so it remains a goal, or you got a small fellowship and now are hoping for a big one. But the game remains the same.
For me, then, the easiest way to conceive of mid-career as a distinct stage is by connecting it to Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development (which Cosimo is obsessed with). After stages that are mostly about finding oneself and developing a sense of mastery and security comes the midlife stage, which, according to Erikson, should be marked by "generativity" rather than "stagnation." By "generativity" he doesn't mean an individual's personal productivity, but her contribution to her profession and society at large.
I like that. And in thinking about what the next level entails and what I want to achieve on my way to full professor, I'm trying to look outward more than inward, focusing on making connections and expanding my range rather than obsessing over my C.V. and what might be missing or look good there. If before I was pleased to get a request to review a book because hey! free book! line on the vita! And someone knows I exist!, I'm trying now to think about where I can be a useful reviewer, and hopefully a generous one. Being at mid-career means having obligations to others, but feeling good about them: I want to give professional acquaintances feedback on their book proposals, to write tenure and job-market letters, and put in a good word for them with someone more senior.
Now, I still feel a certain amount of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have things I was still eager to get on my C.V. or wasn't haunted by a sense that if Book Two isn't done by X date I'll have fallen behind. But being at midcareer means I know that none of those things is urgent; that for now my career is what it is; and that nothing much rides on whether I do A a year earlier or later--or change my mind and do B.
Still, if I had access to those mid-career faculty funds, I have about six things I'd spend that money on toot-sweet.
When I heard about this, I thought, now that's a guy who knows what it is to be an associate professor.
Moving jobs means I haven't yet succumbed to mid-career malaise. Since everything is new--all the applications, all the processes, all the funding sources--I've also been more attuned to new opportunities; right now my brain is whirring with professional-development ideas. Still, I can see and even feel how easy it is to get into a groove that becomes a rut, doing what's worked before, and no longer bothering to try new things, especially if they've been discouraged or denied in the past. So when my friend mentioned that applications to this new fund had been underwhelming, I kinda got it.
But for those of us who aren't in a rut and don't want to be, I'm interested in thinking through what it means to be at mid-career, and how we can conceive of this as a distinct stage with new goals and opportunities. Because the reality for most of us is that there aren't that many truly new things to do. To get tenure, most people have been publishing, going to conferences, applying for grants and fellowships, and doing some amount of professional service. Maybe you haven't yet published in that journal, so it remains a goal, or you got a small fellowship and now are hoping for a big one. But the game remains the same.
For me, then, the easiest way to conceive of mid-career as a distinct stage is by connecting it to Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development (which Cosimo is obsessed with). After stages that are mostly about finding oneself and developing a sense of mastery and security comes the midlife stage, which, according to Erikson, should be marked by "generativity" rather than "stagnation." By "generativity" he doesn't mean an individual's personal productivity, but her contribution to her profession and society at large.
I like that. And in thinking about what the next level entails and what I want to achieve on my way to full professor, I'm trying to look outward more than inward, focusing on making connections and expanding my range rather than obsessing over my C.V. and what might be missing or look good there. If before I was pleased to get a request to review a book because hey! free book! line on the vita! And someone knows I exist!, I'm trying now to think about where I can be a useful reviewer, and hopefully a generous one. Being at mid-career means having obligations to others, but feeling good about them: I want to give professional acquaintances feedback on their book proposals, to write tenure and job-market letters, and put in a good word for them with someone more senior.
Now, I still feel a certain amount of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have things I was still eager to get on my C.V. or wasn't haunted by a sense that if Book Two isn't done by X date I'll have fallen behind. But being at midcareer means I know that none of those things is urgent; that for now my career is what it is; and that nothing much rides on whether I do A a year earlier or later--or change my mind and do B.
Still, if I had access to those mid-career faculty funds, I have about six things I'd spend that money on toot-sweet.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Shall never see so much, nor live so long
Yesterday one of my professors from graduate school died. Though she didn't work in my field and we hadn't kept in touch--I think I ran into her at an MLA reception or two--she was a major part of my graduate experience.
Linda was the department chair when I began my program, and had been instrumental in implementing a number of changes for the better before I arrived; she taught the teaching practicum the year I took it; she taught a creative writing class for which I was a tutor; she was the outside-field member of my dissertation committee; she was the job-placement officer when I was first on the market. And through it all she was a singularly humane and generous presence, maternal in both her kindness and her brisk efficiency.
But it wasn't just a fluke, or a peculiarity of timing, that led to her large role in my life; she was committed to graduate education throughout her career. Facebook friends who went through the program a decade before and those who went through it a decade after all seem to have had identical experiences. And in lieu of flowers, she asked that a fund be established to support graduate student research and conference travel.
Though Linda's death was untimely, it's still a reminder that we're all aging, and that none of my mentors is as young as I persist in imagining. I suppose it's normal to only become aware of others' aging as you become aware of your own; when I was young, no one seemed to age. Grown-ups existed in some timeless bubble called "adulthood," and 35 and 55 looked much the same to me. But aging may also be more apparent in academia than in many other professions.
Academics often keep working long past a "normal" retirement age; dissertators in their twenties may work with men and women in their seventies, and there's a healthy sprinkling of septuagenarians and octogenarians at most conferences. Academia is also a profession where age is still respected; the young want to talk to their elders and get their advice and approval, and a wizened and white-haired gentleman may generate rock-star-level enthusiasm when he walks into a room.
Equally as importantly, we see many of our colleagues only at conferences and thus only once a year--or once every few years--which makes aging more apparent. I'm continually struck by how suddenly old this person or that person looks, especially the junior faculty I became attached to when first going to conferences as a grad student. They struck me then as cool older siblings: successful, but also zany, funny, and kind. Most of them are still those things, but they aren't young any more. They're fiftyish, and I'm older than many of them were then.
And the people who were then in the prime of their careers are now retiring. Or dying. Or I hear about health scares big and small. They may still be rock stars or dedicated teachers and colleagues, but I recognize them as mortal and fragile in a way that I didn't when I was twenty-eight, when the only fragility I could perceive was my own.
R.I.P., Linda. May we all give as generously to our colleagues and students as you did; and may we all take the time to remember and thank our mentors while we can.
Linda was the department chair when I began my program, and had been instrumental in implementing a number of changes for the better before I arrived; she taught the teaching practicum the year I took it; she taught a creative writing class for which I was a tutor; she was the outside-field member of my dissertation committee; she was the job-placement officer when I was first on the market. And through it all she was a singularly humane and generous presence, maternal in both her kindness and her brisk efficiency.
But it wasn't just a fluke, or a peculiarity of timing, that led to her large role in my life; she was committed to graduate education throughout her career. Facebook friends who went through the program a decade before and those who went through it a decade after all seem to have had identical experiences. And in lieu of flowers, she asked that a fund be established to support graduate student research and conference travel.
Though Linda's death was untimely, it's still a reminder that we're all aging, and that none of my mentors is as young as I persist in imagining. I suppose it's normal to only become aware of others' aging as you become aware of your own; when I was young, no one seemed to age. Grown-ups existed in some timeless bubble called "adulthood," and 35 and 55 looked much the same to me. But aging may also be more apparent in academia than in many other professions.
Academics often keep working long past a "normal" retirement age; dissertators in their twenties may work with men and women in their seventies, and there's a healthy sprinkling of septuagenarians and octogenarians at most conferences. Academia is also a profession where age is still respected; the young want to talk to their elders and get their advice and approval, and a wizened and white-haired gentleman may generate rock-star-level enthusiasm when he walks into a room.
Equally as importantly, we see many of our colleagues only at conferences and thus only once a year--or once every few years--which makes aging more apparent. I'm continually struck by how suddenly old this person or that person looks, especially the junior faculty I became attached to when first going to conferences as a grad student. They struck me then as cool older siblings: successful, but also zany, funny, and kind. Most of them are still those things, but they aren't young any more. They're fiftyish, and I'm older than many of them were then.
And the people who were then in the prime of their careers are now retiring. Or dying. Or I hear about health scares big and small. They may still be rock stars or dedicated teachers and colleagues, but I recognize them as mortal and fragile in a way that I didn't when I was twenty-eight, when the only fragility I could perceive was my own.
R.I.P., Linda. May we all give as generously to our colleagues and students as you did; and may we all take the time to remember and thank our mentors while we can.
Friday, June 12, 2015
Teaching without teaching
I've been thinking about what we learn from our advisors, and how: the doctoral candidate may design the topic and do the work, but the resulting dissertation is often recognizably "the kind of thing X's students do."
In a limited way, this is just about specialization or methodology: you work with Advisor A if you want to do book history; Advisor B if you're interested in Lacan and gender; Advisor C if your project is on political theology. Grad students may come to their program knowing they want to work on a given subject with a given supervisor, or they're exposed to those topics and methods during their coursework, or they're gently or not-so-gently steered toward a particular approach by the questions their advisors ask or their suggestions for further reading.
But so much of what a scholar does or is known for can't be taught directly. If your advisor is a masterful prose stylist--or has a knack for exciting archival discoveries--or is a brilliant close-reader--or has built a new theoretical paradigm--well, how exactly does one teach that?
When I was deciding whom to work with, I was deciding between two people. I chose my advisor over the other logical choice purely because of what I perceived to be our temperamental or work-style compatibility. Otherwise, I thought the two were pretty equivalent: I'd taken classes from both; both worked on the kinds of things I was interested in; both were smart and well-regarded. I had no sense that their approaches or emphases might differ, or that that would matter.
I don't know, actually, that my dissertation would have looked much different if I'd worked with my other possibility, though I can now see clear differences between the kind of work both do and it seems obvious that I made the better choice. (But then we're back where we started: did I make the right choice because my work was always a better fit for my advisor's interests. . . or does it just seem that way because the work I produced emerged under her supervision?)
But though the overlap in our field of interest is significant, I haven't, in the past, thought much about what I might have learned from my advisor about research, writing, and thinking. Partly this is because we had a very hands-off relationship, but it's also because advisors usually don't teach us the most important things in any explicit way.
Still, I think there's one major lesson my advisor taught me. She communicated it in many ways over the years, but the first and most obvious instance happened at the lowest point in our relationship.
I had just submitted a draft of my first chapter and was meeting with my full committee to discuss it. My advisor and I had met one-on-one a few days earlier, and between that meeting and this I was pretty sure she'd written me off. She said almost nothing, letting the other two members of my committee do the heavy lifting. My draft wasn't great, but they tried to be encouraging, asking questions and making an effort to help me reframe the central text I was analyzing.
Finally, I said, "look: I know this draft isn't going anywhere. But I have this--I don't know, feeling--that this text is really doing XYZ. But that's totally unprovable, and ridiculous, and I know I can't argue it, so I'm stuck."
My other committee members gave no sign that this was any more or less interesting than anything else I'd said, but my advisor reacted as if I'd set off firecrackers in her office.
"YES!" She said. "That! Write that."
It would be wrong to describe this as a major turning point; I left the meeting feeling marginally better, but I still didn't know how I could possibly do the thing I vaguely wanted to do--and that particular chapter gave me trouble well into the revisions for my book manuscript. But in retrospect, I see my advisor as imparting two related lessons:
First, have faith in your own weird hunches, even if you don't yet have good evidence for them--and even if you can't articulate, in words, why the thing you think might be interesting actually is interesting. Not all of them will pan out, but they are, truly, your only hope for originality.
Second, don't be afraid to make a big claim. "Big" doesn't mean world-changing or paradigm-shifting, but something whose stakes are obvious and up front. We tell our students that a good argument should be contestable, and the same principle applies to scholarship: an air-tight case isn't exciting. One that says "okay. . . but what if we looked at it this way?" is.
My advisor and I are very different, and I've never expected to have anything like her career. Still, from this distance, I'm pretty sure that she's responsible for whatever argumentative and intellectual fearlessness I've acquired.
In a limited way, this is just about specialization or methodology: you work with Advisor A if you want to do book history; Advisor B if you're interested in Lacan and gender; Advisor C if your project is on political theology. Grad students may come to their program knowing they want to work on a given subject with a given supervisor, or they're exposed to those topics and methods during their coursework, or they're gently or not-so-gently steered toward a particular approach by the questions their advisors ask or their suggestions for further reading.
But so much of what a scholar does or is known for can't be taught directly. If your advisor is a masterful prose stylist--or has a knack for exciting archival discoveries--or is a brilliant close-reader--or has built a new theoretical paradigm--well, how exactly does one teach that?
When I was deciding whom to work with, I was deciding between two people. I chose my advisor over the other logical choice purely because of what I perceived to be our temperamental or work-style compatibility. Otherwise, I thought the two were pretty equivalent: I'd taken classes from both; both worked on the kinds of things I was interested in; both were smart and well-regarded. I had no sense that their approaches or emphases might differ, or that that would matter.
I don't know, actually, that my dissertation would have looked much different if I'd worked with my other possibility, though I can now see clear differences between the kind of work both do and it seems obvious that I made the better choice. (But then we're back where we started: did I make the right choice because my work was always a better fit for my advisor's interests. . . or does it just seem that way because the work I produced emerged under her supervision?)
But though the overlap in our field of interest is significant, I haven't, in the past, thought much about what I might have learned from my advisor about research, writing, and thinking. Partly this is because we had a very hands-off relationship, but it's also because advisors usually don't teach us the most important things in any explicit way.
Still, I think there's one major lesson my advisor taught me. She communicated it in many ways over the years, but the first and most obvious instance happened at the lowest point in our relationship.
I had just submitted a draft of my first chapter and was meeting with my full committee to discuss it. My advisor and I had met one-on-one a few days earlier, and between that meeting and this I was pretty sure she'd written me off. She said almost nothing, letting the other two members of my committee do the heavy lifting. My draft wasn't great, but they tried to be encouraging, asking questions and making an effort to help me reframe the central text I was analyzing.
Finally, I said, "look: I know this draft isn't going anywhere. But I have this--I don't know, feeling--that this text is really doing XYZ. But that's totally unprovable, and ridiculous, and I know I can't argue it, so I'm stuck."
My other committee members gave no sign that this was any more or less interesting than anything else I'd said, but my advisor reacted as if I'd set off firecrackers in her office.
"YES!" She said. "That! Write that."
It would be wrong to describe this as a major turning point; I left the meeting feeling marginally better, but I still didn't know how I could possibly do the thing I vaguely wanted to do--and that particular chapter gave me trouble well into the revisions for my book manuscript. But in retrospect, I see my advisor as imparting two related lessons:
First, have faith in your own weird hunches, even if you don't yet have good evidence for them--and even if you can't articulate, in words, why the thing you think might be interesting actually is interesting. Not all of them will pan out, but they are, truly, your only hope for originality.
Second, don't be afraid to make a big claim. "Big" doesn't mean world-changing or paradigm-shifting, but something whose stakes are obvious and up front. We tell our students that a good argument should be contestable, and the same principle applies to scholarship: an air-tight case isn't exciting. One that says "okay. . . but what if we looked at it this way?" is.
My advisor and I are very different, and I've never expected to have anything like her career. Still, from this distance, I'm pretty sure that she's responsible for whatever argumentative and intellectual fearlessness I've acquired.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Benefactors, fairy godmothers, and others
The other day, completing my winter blitz through piles of unread periodicals, I encountered the latest in Jenny Diski's series of essays about her extraordinary relationship with Doris Lessing--which began when Lessing, a virtual stranger, took in the fifteen-year-old Diski after the latter's homelife exploded and she was sent to a mental institution.
Reading Diski's account of her anxious and uneasy adjustment to her new home--why had Lessing taken her in? would Diski ever be clever enough to join Lessing and her friends in convesation?--I found myself fumbling to dredge up details from the previous essay: Diski had nicknamed Lessing "Benny," right, for "The Benefactor?" No: that was what Gary Shteyngart called his quasi-parental figure in Little Failure. And was it Diski who described her fear of seeming stupid in front of her boyfriends and their political and academic families? No: that was the fictional Elena Greco, in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels.
It is, I suppose, a coincidence that several of the things I'm reading right now have some overlapping themes and plotlines. But it isn't such a coincidence that three different accounts of intellectual and artistic self-fashioning should involve similar figures and similar anxieties--even though these stories take place in three different countries and two different generations.
On the surface, Diski's experience seems to be an extraordinary outlier: how amazing for an aspiring writer to be literally (if not quite legally) adopted by a famous novelist! But the young Shteyngart has a similarly complicated relationship with a t.v. writer friend-of-a-friend who takes an interest in him and his work; and though Elena has no single comparable figure, Ferrante's novels show her fixating on various teachers, boyfriends, and classmates as models for the kind of intellectual and public figure she'd like to become.
Indeed, aspects of all three experiences are probably familiar to anyone who has struggled to become anything: how does any of us learn to inhabit a new self, if not in response to others?
Most of us don't have a mentor or a patron, but take our models from among our peers. I sure did: in college, in grad school, and in the interstitial years between the two, I fixated on the people I thought of as truly smart--literary, cultured, whatever--and how they talked about things and moved through the world. I was attracted to but abashed by those who spoke well, who had opinions, who knew stuff about stuff. It amazed me that my peers had things to say (circa 1995, circa age 20) about what Tina Brown had done to The New Yorker, or the politics of senators from states other than their own, or the fortunes of American musical theater over the past twenty years. I studied them carefully and tended to have crushes on the men--perhaps feeling that though I didn't have the requisite talents, maybe I could date my way in.
Self-fashioning is always a complicated and anxious process, but if there's any lesson to be drawn from Diski, Shteyngart, and Ferrante's accounts, it's that it isn't any easier with a fairy godmother (Diski's semi-ironic name for Lessing), or a Benefactor, or any other singular mentor or maestro; the people we model ourselves on are also those we struggle to diminish and separate ourselves from: the erstwhile idol becomes only a t.v. writer or only a high school teacher; not really an original thinker--or simply judgmental, unkind, or limited in all the ways that human beings inevitably are limited.
I was never really friends with any of the people I took as my aspirational models, and I'm not friends with any of them now. They were useful projections and fantasies, but equally useful to be able to outgrow.
Reading Diski's account of her anxious and uneasy adjustment to her new home--why had Lessing taken her in? would Diski ever be clever enough to join Lessing and her friends in convesation?--I found myself fumbling to dredge up details from the previous essay: Diski had nicknamed Lessing "Benny," right, for "The Benefactor?" No: that was what Gary Shteyngart called his quasi-parental figure in Little Failure. And was it Diski who described her fear of seeming stupid in front of her boyfriends and their political and academic families? No: that was the fictional Elena Greco, in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels.
It is, I suppose, a coincidence that several of the things I'm reading right now have some overlapping themes and plotlines. But it isn't such a coincidence that three different accounts of intellectual and artistic self-fashioning should involve similar figures and similar anxieties--even though these stories take place in three different countries and two different generations.
On the surface, Diski's experience seems to be an extraordinary outlier: how amazing for an aspiring writer to be literally (if not quite legally) adopted by a famous novelist! But the young Shteyngart has a similarly complicated relationship with a t.v. writer friend-of-a-friend who takes an interest in him and his work; and though Elena has no single comparable figure, Ferrante's novels show her fixating on various teachers, boyfriends, and classmates as models for the kind of intellectual and public figure she'd like to become.
Indeed, aspects of all three experiences are probably familiar to anyone who has struggled to become anything: how does any of us learn to inhabit a new self, if not in response to others?
Most of us don't have a mentor or a patron, but take our models from among our peers. I sure did: in college, in grad school, and in the interstitial years between the two, I fixated on the people I thought of as truly smart--literary, cultured, whatever--and how they talked about things and moved through the world. I was attracted to but abashed by those who spoke well, who had opinions, who knew stuff about stuff. It amazed me that my peers had things to say (circa 1995, circa age 20) about what Tina Brown had done to The New Yorker, or the politics of senators from states other than their own, or the fortunes of American musical theater over the past twenty years. I studied them carefully and tended to have crushes on the men--perhaps feeling that though I didn't have the requisite talents, maybe I could date my way in.
Self-fashioning is always a complicated and anxious process, but if there's any lesson to be drawn from Diski, Shteyngart, and Ferrante's accounts, it's that it isn't any easier with a fairy godmother (Diski's semi-ironic name for Lessing), or a Benefactor, or any other singular mentor or maestro; the people we model ourselves on are also those we struggle to diminish and separate ourselves from: the erstwhile idol becomes only a t.v. writer or only a high school teacher; not really an original thinker--or simply judgmental, unkind, or limited in all the ways that human beings inevitably are limited.
I was never really friends with any of the people I took as my aspirational models, and I'm not friends with any of them now. They were useful projections and fantasies, but equally useful to be able to outgrow.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Manatees looking for mentos
We've been rewatching the early seasons of 30 Rock--and I'm struck, as I wasn't the first time around, by what the show gets right about mentorship.
On the one hand, the relationship between Jack and Liz is a wish-fulfillment, fantasy version of the mentor-mentee relationship: out of nowhere, this powerful, senior person elects you to be his mentee! He's seen your potential, and now he wants to lavish you with attention and give you the benefit of his years of experience.
And that part--well, if you're waiting for that kind of mentor, you'll be waiting a long time.
But the show is right that mentors find you more often than the other way around. Unless the mentor relationship occurs within a formalized workplace program, it happens pretty much solely at the senior person's discretion. Sure, you can take some initiative in getting a potential mentor's attention, but as 30 Rock demonstrates, the mentor's own investments and fantasies are as important as you, your potential, and whatever you actually need. Someone who wants to mentor you is almost certainly someone who likes to think of himself as a mentor. Jack has so much enthusiasm for mentoring it's like he's selling patent medicine.
What follows from that is that a mentor's investments in you (or in your shared workplace or profession) may not always overlap perfectly with what you need from them. When Jack sticks to "leadership" issues, he's got something to offer. But when he starts pitching ideas for the show, he's just another suit who thinks he's got a creative side. So if you're lucky enough to have someone who decides they want to mentor you, think about what you actually need from them, and be attentive to whatever else might be motivating their advice. Usually it's pretty benign--your mentor sees some part of himself in you; he wants to help build up the department you share; he regrets some mistakes he made with his own first book--but it's never purely about you.
The corollary, though, is that a mentor doesn't have to be perfect, or be able to help you in all areas of your professional life--and if his politics or personal life (or even his field of study or theoretical or methodological approach) are totally alien to you, so what? A mentor only needs to be smart and helpful in one area to be a good mentor.
And who knows? Maybe you'll find someone who'll be Michelle Pfeiffer to your angry black kid who learns that poetry is just another way to rap.
On the one hand, the relationship between Jack and Liz is a wish-fulfillment, fantasy version of the mentor-mentee relationship: out of nowhere, this powerful, senior person elects you to be his mentee! He's seen your potential, and now he wants to lavish you with attention and give you the benefit of his years of experience.
And that part--well, if you're waiting for that kind of mentor, you'll be waiting a long time.
But the show is right that mentors find you more often than the other way around. Unless the mentor relationship occurs within a formalized workplace program, it happens pretty much solely at the senior person's discretion. Sure, you can take some initiative in getting a potential mentor's attention, but as 30 Rock demonstrates, the mentor's own investments and fantasies are as important as you, your potential, and whatever you actually need. Someone who wants to mentor you is almost certainly someone who likes to think of himself as a mentor. Jack has so much enthusiasm for mentoring it's like he's selling patent medicine.
What follows from that is that a mentor's investments in you (or in your shared workplace or profession) may not always overlap perfectly with what you need from them. When Jack sticks to "leadership" issues, he's got something to offer. But when he starts pitching ideas for the show, he's just another suit who thinks he's got a creative side. So if you're lucky enough to have someone who decides they want to mentor you, think about what you actually need from them, and be attentive to whatever else might be motivating their advice. Usually it's pretty benign--your mentor sees some part of himself in you; he wants to help build up the department you share; he regrets some mistakes he made with his own first book--but it's never purely about you.
The corollary, though, is that a mentor doesn't have to be perfect, or be able to help you in all areas of your professional life--and if his politics or personal life (or even his field of study or theoretical or methodological approach) are totally alien to you, so what? A mentor only needs to be smart and helpful in one area to be a good mentor.
And who knows? Maybe you'll find someone who'll be Michelle Pfeiffer to your angry black kid who learns that poetry is just another way to rap.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Younger than that now
I'm just back from #shakeass14--my fourth and final conference of the term, which is at least two too many--and as usual I'm filled with many feelings. Though I still don't quite feel that SAA is "my" conference (not being a drama scholar and all), it's the one where I feel most in touch with my corner of the profession, for good and for ill.
That's not so much about the work being presented, but about the size and the nature of the conference and to some degree its timing: it happens in April, after all the job market gossip is out. Even with its recent growth, the conference remains small enough to fit in one hotel and large enough that it seems everyone I know is there. Most importantly, it's a conference that remains welcoming to very junior people and those on the margins of the profession; its seminar format, where works-in-progress are precirculated and everyone gives feedback to everyone (grad students to very senior scholars and vice-versa) is a large part of this. SAA is kind of like Twitter: it's not that there's no hierarchy (or no jackassery), but it creates a space for conversations and friendships that set age, rank, and status aside.
For that reason, I was disappointed that the official conference made some missteps; not only did the programming skew toward older participants, but there were a number of unprofessional, self-indulgent, and/or ungenerous statements made by senior people speaking publicly at various podiums (I witnessed two and heard about two others). That still amounts to only a small proportion of the conference, but it's not a good tone to set. One person is an anomaly. Multiple people getting prime airtime feels like an endorsement.
But if the tone of the conference struck me as less welcoming to The Yoots than it might have been, I myself spent more time with grad students or recent PhDs than I have since I was one myself. This wasn't, like, a project on my part; there just happened to be a critical mass of interesting younger people around--some of whom I'd met at previous conferences or on social media while others were the friends, acquaintances, or grad students of my friends. And they were at the bar and I was at the bar and whether any of us now remembers our conversations clearly, it was still a good time.
Hanging out with fun people is its own reward, but for anyone concerned about the larger profession, talking to grad students and recent PhDs should also feel essential. Our juniors aren't just our future, but our present: the kind of work they're doing is a good index of what the discipline values (and this is true whether they're writing "safe" dissertations or balls-to-the-wall dissertations), and the forms of professionalization and pedagogical training they receive are also worth our knowing and understanding if we hope to hire them. The knowledge-transfer needs to work both ways.
I genuinely believe that most mid-career types want to know, or at least are open to knowing, their juniors. Some don't make much of an effort and others don't know how (whenever I feel slighted, I ask myself: is it possible this person is just deeply socially inept? usually the answer is yes), which is why conferences that foster conversations across rank are so important. But of course, there are scholars, at all career stages, who think the only people worth meeting are those senior to them. And those people suck.
The thing is, the profession is hard on everyone these days. Anyone hired in the past couple of decades either has his own scars or has seen up close and personal those of some dear friends. If you've gone through a hazing process yourself, I don't see how it's possible not to relate to those behind you--and to want to make it easier on them where you can. But as the culture of hazing teaches us, there are those who, once they've made it, buy into its logic, cling to whatever limited status they've achieved, and demand even more obeisance from their juniors than was demanded of them.
Luckily, at the SAA there's an easy way to exorcize such people from one's conference experience: just go to the dance. Those obsessed with status are generally not to be found playing air guitar.
That's not so much about the work being presented, but about the size and the nature of the conference and to some degree its timing: it happens in April, after all the job market gossip is out. Even with its recent growth, the conference remains small enough to fit in one hotel and large enough that it seems everyone I know is there. Most importantly, it's a conference that remains welcoming to very junior people and those on the margins of the profession; its seminar format, where works-in-progress are precirculated and everyone gives feedback to everyone (grad students to very senior scholars and vice-versa) is a large part of this. SAA is kind of like Twitter: it's not that there's no hierarchy (or no jackassery), but it creates a space for conversations and friendships that set age, rank, and status aside.
For that reason, I was disappointed that the official conference made some missteps; not only did the programming skew toward older participants, but there were a number of unprofessional, self-indulgent, and/or ungenerous statements made by senior people speaking publicly at various podiums (I witnessed two and heard about two others). That still amounts to only a small proportion of the conference, but it's not a good tone to set. One person is an anomaly. Multiple people getting prime airtime feels like an endorsement.
But if the tone of the conference struck me as less welcoming to The Yoots than it might have been, I myself spent more time with grad students or recent PhDs than I have since I was one myself. This wasn't, like, a project on my part; there just happened to be a critical mass of interesting younger people around--some of whom I'd met at previous conferences or on social media while others were the friends, acquaintances, or grad students of my friends. And they were at the bar and I was at the bar and whether any of us now remembers our conversations clearly, it was still a good time.
Hanging out with fun people is its own reward, but for anyone concerned about the larger profession, talking to grad students and recent PhDs should also feel essential. Our juniors aren't just our future, but our present: the kind of work they're doing is a good index of what the discipline values (and this is true whether they're writing "safe" dissertations or balls-to-the-wall dissertations), and the forms of professionalization and pedagogical training they receive are also worth our knowing and understanding if we hope to hire them. The knowledge-transfer needs to work both ways.
I genuinely believe that most mid-career types want to know, or at least are open to knowing, their juniors. Some don't make much of an effort and others don't know how (whenever I feel slighted, I ask myself: is it possible this person is just deeply socially inept? usually the answer is yes), which is why conferences that foster conversations across rank are so important. But of course, there are scholars, at all career stages, who think the only people worth meeting are those senior to them. And those people suck.
The thing is, the profession is hard on everyone these days. Anyone hired in the past couple of decades either has his own scars or has seen up close and personal those of some dear friends. If you've gone through a hazing process yourself, I don't see how it's possible not to relate to those behind you--and to want to make it easier on them where you can. But as the culture of hazing teaches us, there are those who, once they've made it, buy into its logic, cling to whatever limited status they've achieved, and demand even more obeisance from their juniors than was demanded of them.
Luckily, at the SAA there's an easy way to exorcize such people from one's conference experience: just go to the dance. Those obsessed with status are generally not to be found playing air guitar.
Monday, February 04, 2013
Mentoring junior faculty
As several of my recent posts have suggested, I'm increasingly preoccupied with the question of mentorship--and, these days, I'm more interested in the giving end than the receiving. (Which isn't to say that I don't still need mentors myself, because God knows I'll attach myself with burr-like tenacity to anyone who shows the slightest willingness to play that role.)
However, I'm still figuring out what it means to be a mentor, and I'm sorting through my own conflicting impulses: it's possible that I'm just looking for disciples to impress and for occasions to wax oracular. But it's also true that we all gain real, pragmatic wisdom as we move through grad school and our first years on a job, and that shit's wasted if we don't share it.
It's not just our grad students or junior colleagues who suffer if we don't share what we've learned; it's our students and our departments, and more broadly our profession. A blogger near and dear to my heart makes this case compellingly in one of the more interesting treatments I've read of the Harvard cheating scandal. Dr. Cleveland suggests that we read that scandal, at least partly, as one in which a junior faculty member was poorly mentored, or rejected mentoring, or both:
There's more, but I'll let you read it on your own. Most of us don't teach at institutions with the kinds of pressures this particular professor was facing--or where the consequences of screwing up a class would be so dire or so public--but it's worth thinking about the ways in which our colleagues' successes and failures are also, to some degree, our own.
However, I'm still figuring out what it means to be a mentor, and I'm sorting through my own conflicting impulses: it's possible that I'm just looking for disciples to impress and for occasions to wax oracular. But it's also true that we all gain real, pragmatic wisdom as we move through grad school and our first years on a job, and that shit's wasted if we don't share it.
It's not just our grad students or junior colleagues who suffer if we don't share what we've learned; it's our students and our departments, and more broadly our profession. A blogger near and dear to my heart makes this case compellingly in one of the more interesting treatments I've read of the Harvard cheating scandal. Dr. Cleveland suggests that we read that scandal, at least partly, as one in which a junior faculty member was poorly mentored, or rejected mentoring, or both:
New PhDs do not turn into fully professional members of the faculty overnight, or by themselves. It is the responsibility of a junior professor's senior colleagues to guide her or his professional development. . . . Mentoring junior colleagues is not simply part of an obligation to the colleagues themselves, but to the students. If you put students in a classroom with a relatively inexperienced teacher and you give that teacher no professional feedback or guidance, bad things can happen. In this case, bad things did. A large lecture class ended with at least a quarter of the students suspended and more on probation. The school has taken a beating in the press. And a promising young scholar's career has crashed and burned so badly that I can smell the smoke from here. My question is: where were this person's senior colleagues? Where was his department chair? What advice were these people giving him?
[. . . .]
[E]xactly what was said to him about teaching is an open question. He would almost certainly have been told both that his teaching should be good, whatever "good" means, but also that he should be careful not to spend so much time on teaching that his research suffered. Teach well, but budget the time you spend teaching. That's already a pretty complicated message for a brand-new professor who's working up all his courses from scratch and learning to teach completely new kinds of courses. (No graduate student oversees a course with hundreds of undergrads and a team of teaching assistants.) But then the really thorny question: what does the university mean when it says good teaching? What actual benchmarks does that imply?
Is the goal to keep your teaching evaluation numbers high? That goal could pretty easily lead a new faculty member to turn a large lecture course into popular gut for students seeking easy A's. And teaching such a course would also be less time-consuming, for someone being urged to protect his weekly research time, than teaching a class with more challenging assignments and tougher expectations. So a young teacher creating a popular if notoriously easy class might think he was acting on the advice he had been given. On the other hand, a young teacher developing a reputation as a soft grader might also get pushback from his colleagues, and be urged to shed that reputation. Even at a school where grade-inflation is the norm, standing out as an easier-than-normal grader is risky.
There's more, but I'll let you read it on your own. Most of us don't teach at institutions with the kinds of pressures this particular professor was facing--or where the consequences of screwing up a class would be so dire or so public--but it's worth thinking about the ways in which our colleagues' successes and failures are also, to some degree, our own.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Finding mentors
In the comments to my last post, a grad student, Canuck Down South, asked how I managed to make friends and find mentors among senior scholars. It's a good question, and something I think is important for grad students and junior faculty to start working on as early as possible.
This is partly because it takes time and it's nothing you can force. I'm not a model of success, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about from the moment I got this job: I either already knew or vaguely intuited that, with the exception of my advisor, my recommenders going forward should absolutely not be faculty from my graduate institution. At the same time, there was no one at RU who would be appropriate, since I didn't have in-field senior colleagues. So, if you can't or shouldn't lean on your grad school profs or your colleagues at your first job, where do you turn?
Unless you're already publishing work that gets you unsolicited fan mail, I think the only answer for a junior scholar is conferences, professional societies, or anywhere else you meet people in person (for example, if there's a regional colloquium or working group that draws scholars from institutions other than your own). And your best bets at an early stage are the smaller venues: special one-off conferences, where you might actually get to talk at some length with people who are vastly your seniors; small societies dedicated to a specialized aspect of your research; or conferences that involve workshops or seminars rather than formal paper presentations.
And then. . . you present good work and you seize any opportunity that presents itself. If you see people whose work you admire, introduce yourself and tell them so. Sometimes--not always, not even most the time--they'll ask you about yours. And for goodness sakes, if someone comes up to you after a paper and wants to talk to you about it, keep talking. If you chat with someone for more than a few minutes, and especially if they offer you something in the way of real advice (even if it's not actually immediately useful or relevant), drop them an email after the conference saying how nice it was to meet them and how much you appreciate their suggestions. Most of these people, too, will not turn out to be actual mentors, but as I wrote a number of years back, the point of networking is that you never know.
Gradually, you'll start to know people. And sooner or later, someone will explicitly tell you that they'd love to read your work, or keep in touch about the results of your research. You'll be flattered, but you may not believe them. Believe them. Take them up on it.
Because here's the secret: most established scholars really want to know what younger people are working on, and where their corner of the discipline is headed. Many fear, at least a tiny bit, losing their finger on the pulse of what's happening. This is especially true for scholars who aren't teaching at doctoral institutions, or who teach at second- or third-tier ones. We all need mentors. But many people also want mentees: they're an additional way to stay engaged, an opportunity to give back to the profession--and, yes, a means of extending their own scholarly influence.
When it comes right down to asking for a letter of reference--or seeing whether someone would read an article draft or whatever--there's still usually a point where you just have to ask. And for me, anyway, the cold ask has never gotten easier: even when I'm asking for a letter from someone who's written letters for me in the past, it still takes days or weeks of avoidance before I'll actually send that email. But if you've laid the right groundwork, and the other person is someone who's been sincerely supportive of and enthusiastic about your work, they won't mind. After all: it's their profession, too.
*
Wise and worldy readers, what additional advice would you give?
This is partly because it takes time and it's nothing you can force. I'm not a model of success, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about from the moment I got this job: I either already knew or vaguely intuited that, with the exception of my advisor, my recommenders going forward should absolutely not be faculty from my graduate institution. At the same time, there was no one at RU who would be appropriate, since I didn't have in-field senior colleagues. So, if you can't or shouldn't lean on your grad school profs or your colleagues at your first job, where do you turn?
Unless you're already publishing work that gets you unsolicited fan mail, I think the only answer for a junior scholar is conferences, professional societies, or anywhere else you meet people in person (for example, if there's a regional colloquium or working group that draws scholars from institutions other than your own). And your best bets at an early stage are the smaller venues: special one-off conferences, where you might actually get to talk at some length with people who are vastly your seniors; small societies dedicated to a specialized aspect of your research; or conferences that involve workshops or seminars rather than formal paper presentations.
And then. . . you present good work and you seize any opportunity that presents itself. If you see people whose work you admire, introduce yourself and tell them so. Sometimes--not always, not even most the time--they'll ask you about yours. And for goodness sakes, if someone comes up to you after a paper and wants to talk to you about it, keep talking. If you chat with someone for more than a few minutes, and especially if they offer you something in the way of real advice (even if it's not actually immediately useful or relevant), drop them an email after the conference saying how nice it was to meet them and how much you appreciate their suggestions. Most of these people, too, will not turn out to be actual mentors, but as I wrote a number of years back, the point of networking is that you never know.
Gradually, you'll start to know people. And sooner or later, someone will explicitly tell you that they'd love to read your work, or keep in touch about the results of your research. You'll be flattered, but you may not believe them. Believe them. Take them up on it.
Because here's the secret: most established scholars really want to know what younger people are working on, and where their corner of the discipline is headed. Many fear, at least a tiny bit, losing their finger on the pulse of what's happening. This is especially true for scholars who aren't teaching at doctoral institutions, or who teach at second- or third-tier ones. We all need mentors. But many people also want mentees: they're an additional way to stay engaged, an opportunity to give back to the profession--and, yes, a means of extending their own scholarly influence.
When it comes right down to asking for a letter of reference--or seeing whether someone would read an article draft or whatever--there's still usually a point where you just have to ask. And for me, anyway, the cold ask has never gotten easier: even when I'm asking for a letter from someone who's written letters for me in the past, it still takes days or weeks of avoidance before I'll actually send that email. But if you've laid the right groundwork, and the other person is someone who's been sincerely supportive of and enthusiastic about your work, they won't mind. After all: it's their profession, too.
*
Wise and worldy readers, what additional advice would you give?
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Letting the advisor go
I'm applying for approximately 87 different things this fall, most of which require lining up the ol' recommendation letters. But for the first time in more than 10 years, I didn't ask my dissertation director for one.
Advisor remains the biggest name I could rally to my cause, and a small part of me wonders whether that isn't reason enough to ask: the patronage-model-cum-magical-thinking that sustains grad students hasn't entirely left me. But a larger part of me is relieved not to have to go there, by which I mean to go back there, to that anxious, cringing, supplicatory phase of my life.
It's not about Advisor herself. I could ask, and she'd probably write for me. She's been good to me over the years. Nor do I think it's inappropriate to have one's advisor write on one's behalf many years after the fact: some people remain close to their advisors, in a relationship that evolves into friendship and even collaboration. But that's not true of our relationship: I see her from time to time and send her cards at Christmas and that sort of thing, but she doesn't know my recent work hardly at all--certainly not as well as the mentors I've acquired since graduate school.
More important, though, is my reluctance to revisit that particular phase of my scholarly life. Longtime readers will recall that my experience of grad school was Not Good. It's increasingly clear that the problem was with me, or with grad school as a phenomenological state, rather than with my program or my advisor; I've reflected before that grad school made me incapable of the friendships that I needed and wanted from my classmates, and I was probably similarly incapable of the advisor/advisee relationship that I wanted.
For the first few years after I got my degree, I worked very hard to develop a new, adult relationship with Advisor. And it worked well enough. But there are reasons both personal and professional--matters of temperament as well as specific events in our respective lives--that mean we're never going to have what Cosimo and his advisor have, or what some of my other friends have with theirs.
Once that would have made me sad or frantic: not having my advisor's love, in the way I wanted it, felt like a personal failing, a sign that I wasn't deserving of it. But some relationships are never quite the right fit, and some we outgrow, and most of us manage to find others who do love us in the way we want to be loved.
I'd been planning to ask Advisor for a letter. I'm sure she'd have written a strong one. But when it occurred to me in September that I didn't have to--that I had professional friends who were senior scholars who liked my work, that I didn't have to reenter that particular tortured headspace--I felt so relieved that I almost burst into tears.
Advisor remains the biggest name I could rally to my cause, and a small part of me wonders whether that isn't reason enough to ask: the patronage-model-cum-magical-thinking that sustains grad students hasn't entirely left me. But a larger part of me is relieved not to have to go there, by which I mean to go back there, to that anxious, cringing, supplicatory phase of my life.
It's not about Advisor herself. I could ask, and she'd probably write for me. She's been good to me over the years. Nor do I think it's inappropriate to have one's advisor write on one's behalf many years after the fact: some people remain close to their advisors, in a relationship that evolves into friendship and even collaboration. But that's not true of our relationship: I see her from time to time and send her cards at Christmas and that sort of thing, but she doesn't know my recent work hardly at all--certainly not as well as the mentors I've acquired since graduate school.
More important, though, is my reluctance to revisit that particular phase of my scholarly life. Longtime readers will recall that my experience of grad school was Not Good. It's increasingly clear that the problem was with me, or with grad school as a phenomenological state, rather than with my program or my advisor; I've reflected before that grad school made me incapable of the friendships that I needed and wanted from my classmates, and I was probably similarly incapable of the advisor/advisee relationship that I wanted.
For the first few years after I got my degree, I worked very hard to develop a new, adult relationship with Advisor. And it worked well enough. But there are reasons both personal and professional--matters of temperament as well as specific events in our respective lives--that mean we're never going to have what Cosimo and his advisor have, or what some of my other friends have with theirs.
Once that would have made me sad or frantic: not having my advisor's love, in the way I wanted it, felt like a personal failing, a sign that I wasn't deserving of it. But some relationships are never quite the right fit, and some we outgrow, and most of us manage to find others who do love us in the way we want to be loved.
I'd been planning to ask Advisor for a letter. I'm sure she'd have written a strong one. But when it occurred to me in September that I didn't have to--that I had professional friends who were senior scholars who liked my work, that I didn't have to reenter that particular tortured headspace--I felt so relieved that I almost burst into tears.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Conference-going on the eve of tenure
This year I went to both RSA and SAA, which I vow never to do again--or at least not when they're only two weeks apart. Yes, they were both in great cities, and yes, I saw people I love (and made useful new connections), and I heard great papers and ate & drank well, and I got to trot around in some pretty clothes. And this year I even had Twitter, which definitely beats a blog as a vehicle for catapulting conference observations and irritations into the internet. But it was exhausting.
What I love about conferences is their energy and their serendipity, and this applies as much to the social realm as to the intellectual. But as I get older there's less serendipity and I have less energy. My first year or two after getting the degree, seemingly every conference dinner involved between ten and fourteen people. This was because I'd plan to have dinner with a couple of friends, and they'd each invite someone else along, and those people would already have promised a few friends to dine with them--and we were all so young and so thrilled to be getting to know more people in the profession that OF COURSE everyone was welcome! We'd all get sushi together! And we'd have to wait 45 minutes for enough tables, drinking and gabbing throughout, and by dinner's end we'd all have promised to attend each others' panels (even the ones at 8.30 a.m. the next morning), and we'd leave the conference knowing another dozen people well enough to call friends.
Now, however, I know so many people that I often don't bother to make plans at all. It's impossible to prioritize, for one thing, so unless there's someone I haven't seen in a long while and have specifically been looking forward to seeing, I'm content to let chance do the planning and just see who I run into at the right moment (or who I turn out to be most excited to see, when I see him or her). And I'm not interested in groups larger than six: I want to talk to the people I'm with and I don't want to waste time trying to figure out where to go, or trying to get a table. Everyone else I figure I'll see at the bar.
The bar, too, is a problem: I may still be there every night until the lights go up, but I can't drink (or more to the point, I can't recover from a hangover) like I used to, and it's getting so even the drinking feels necessary, feels like social work: I have to stay there until I've made the rounds and talked to everybody I know, and that means I keep drinking even if I'd be better off in bed.
The other problem with knowing so many people is that I have to consciously try to meet new ones--especially new ones who are not already friends of friends, and especially grad students. It's easy to get lazy and to forget that having any kind of reputation and any kind of stature entails professional and social obligations. My position in the profession isn't a glorious one, but it's secure enough that my opinion actually does matter to a few people, and it's secure enough that I sometimes get read as slighting someone or being high-handed when really I'm just being a moron.
This happened at one of my past two conferences. After one panel a scholar, basically of my own generation, but with an acclaimed first book and an extremely fancy second job, came over to where I was standing chatting with a mutual friend.
I'd been looking forward to an opportunity to meet him, so I immediately stuck out my hand. "Oh!" I said. "We haven't met. I'm Flavia Fescue." And I may have added something about admiring his work.
"Actually," he said, "we have met. At Conference X last year."
"No," I insisted, smiling. "I'm sure we haven't."
He repeated his certitude, I repeated mine--and then he produced a whole conversation we'd apparently had. Based on its specifics, it had to be true, but I had no memory of it. And because I couldn't very well say, "wait, was this at a bar? maybe I was drunk?" instead I said, "oh, huh. I guess we have met."
Someone else came over then, and the scholar drifted away, awkwardly, and I realized that somehow I--who felt like the nobody--had come off as the self-absorbed jackass who couldn't be bothered to remember a person like him.
*
I'm sure I'll always enjoy conferences, but I expect they'll continue to be less purely fun than they were in those few first years. We have less to prove, professionally, and more to distract us: we have to run back to our hotel rooms to deal with departmental crises by email, or to nurse an infant, or to grade papers or work on grant applications. And if we're good members of the profession, as I hope to be, a lot more energy will be expended just trying to stay current: meeting people younger than ourselves, taking an interest in their work, and offering what advice and assistance we can.
Keeping up takes work; it would be easier if conferences were only about hanging out with one's friends for three days straight. But if what I like best about conferences is their energy and their serendipity, I guess it's well not to get too comfortable, to take it too easy, or to stick with the people and the things already known.
What I love about conferences is their energy and their serendipity, and this applies as much to the social realm as to the intellectual. But as I get older there's less serendipity and I have less energy. My first year or two after getting the degree, seemingly every conference dinner involved between ten and fourteen people. This was because I'd plan to have dinner with a couple of friends, and they'd each invite someone else along, and those people would already have promised a few friends to dine with them--and we were all so young and so thrilled to be getting to know more people in the profession that OF COURSE everyone was welcome! We'd all get sushi together! And we'd have to wait 45 minutes for enough tables, drinking and gabbing throughout, and by dinner's end we'd all have promised to attend each others' panels (even the ones at 8.30 a.m. the next morning), and we'd leave the conference knowing another dozen people well enough to call friends.
Now, however, I know so many people that I often don't bother to make plans at all. It's impossible to prioritize, for one thing, so unless there's someone I haven't seen in a long while and have specifically been looking forward to seeing, I'm content to let chance do the planning and just see who I run into at the right moment (or who I turn out to be most excited to see, when I see him or her). And I'm not interested in groups larger than six: I want to talk to the people I'm with and I don't want to waste time trying to figure out where to go, or trying to get a table. Everyone else I figure I'll see at the bar.
The bar, too, is a problem: I may still be there every night until the lights go up, but I can't drink (or more to the point, I can't recover from a hangover) like I used to, and it's getting so even the drinking feels necessary, feels like social work: I have to stay there until I've made the rounds and talked to everybody I know, and that means I keep drinking even if I'd be better off in bed.
The other problem with knowing so many people is that I have to consciously try to meet new ones--especially new ones who are not already friends of friends, and especially grad students. It's easy to get lazy and to forget that having any kind of reputation and any kind of stature entails professional and social obligations. My position in the profession isn't a glorious one, but it's secure enough that my opinion actually does matter to a few people, and it's secure enough that I sometimes get read as slighting someone or being high-handed when really I'm just being a moron.
This happened at one of my past two conferences. After one panel a scholar, basically of my own generation, but with an acclaimed first book and an extremely fancy second job, came over to where I was standing chatting with a mutual friend.
I'd been looking forward to an opportunity to meet him, so I immediately stuck out my hand. "Oh!" I said. "We haven't met. I'm Flavia Fescue." And I may have added something about admiring his work.
"Actually," he said, "we have met. At Conference X last year."
"No," I insisted, smiling. "I'm sure we haven't."
He repeated his certitude, I repeated mine--and then he produced a whole conversation we'd apparently had. Based on its specifics, it had to be true, but I had no memory of it. And because I couldn't very well say, "wait, was this at a bar? maybe I was drunk?" instead I said, "oh, huh. I guess we have met."
Someone else came over then, and the scholar drifted away, awkwardly, and I realized that somehow I--who felt like the nobody--had come off as the self-absorbed jackass who couldn't be bothered to remember a person like him.
*
I'm sure I'll always enjoy conferences, but I expect they'll continue to be less purely fun than they were in those few first years. We have less to prove, professionally, and more to distract us: we have to run back to our hotel rooms to deal with departmental crises by email, or to nurse an infant, or to grade papers or work on grant applications. And if we're good members of the profession, as I hope to be, a lot more energy will be expended just trying to stay current: meeting people younger than ourselves, taking an interest in their work, and offering what advice and assistance we can.
Keeping up takes work; it would be easier if conferences were only about hanging out with one's friends for three days straight. But if what I like best about conferences is their energy and their serendipity, I guess it's well not to get too comfortable, to take it too easy, or to stick with the people and the things already known.
Thursday, January 05, 2012
All scholarship is collaborative scholarship
Tenured Radical's latest post on the value of collaborative work--which is also an exhortation to teach collaboration to graduate students and to find more ways to recognize such work within the profession--resonates with some of what I've been mulling over as I work through yet another round of book revisions.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that all our scholarship, and maybe all our work, period, is collaborative in a deep but also deeply unexamined way. However many pages our acknowledgments sections may stretch to--with thanks given to our peers, our friends, our dogs and our gods--we still prefer to think of the work that we and others do as the product of our own brains and our own brilliance: those other readers and interlocutors were just helping us to say, better, whatever we were always intending to say.
And that's true, to a degree. All the mentors in the world won't make a mediocre project a great one, and much of the best scholarship seems rooted in a radically individual intelligence: a mind that may have been trained in the same way as hundreds of others, but that has a fierce peculiar temper all its own.
But the thing is, we have all been trained in the norms of our disciplines, in more or less the same way, and we've all read thousands of works of scholarship; everything we do involves applying or building on the work of a multitude of forebears. We're none of us, really, advancing a radically new perspective or inventing a wholly new field--and none of us truly works in isolation even if she writes in hermetic solitude and never shows her prose to anyone until the day it hits the desk of an editor at one or another journal or academic press.
I haven't been much of a scholarly collaborator or sharer myself in the past; I didn't have peers who read my work in grad school, and I didn't get a lot of guidance from my dissertation advisor then or afterward. In the past few years, I've started sending bits and pieces of my work to friends, and I've been grateful for their feedback, but until recently I never felt that they were really shaping my work--just giving me things to think about, new sources to read, and that sort of thing.
But for whatever reason, in the throes of what I hope will be my last round of substantive revisions and after getting two thorough-going readers' reports from senior scholars, both of whom seem to be in subfields a bit aslant or adjacent to my own, it's hit me how absolutely impossible this book would have been to write without all the feedback I've gotten--major and minor--on my work over the years and all the panels I've attended and all the conversations I've had about the state of the field. The exact focus of my book is peculiar, and if I hadn't written it I doubt anyone else would have done so any time soon (which, uh, isn't a boast; it's weird enough that I'm not sure who will want to read the thing). But it is certainly not the case that I had a clear and lucid argument from the beginning, or probably even two years ago, and if I have one now it's only thanks to the pushing and prodding and sometimes enthusiasm and sometimes baffled irritation of my readers and interlocutors. I love that I've had them, and I love that I can drop three emails in three days to friends with different areas of expertise, just saying, "hey, I think this thing might be true--is it? or if not, can you save me from sounding like a jackass?"
I'm smarter now than I was when I started this project ten years ago. But if I'm ever to publish a second book, I know it will depend at least as heavily on the advice and expertise of others.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that all our scholarship, and maybe all our work, period, is collaborative in a deep but also deeply unexamined way. However many pages our acknowledgments sections may stretch to--with thanks given to our peers, our friends, our dogs and our gods--we still prefer to think of the work that we and others do as the product of our own brains and our own brilliance: those other readers and interlocutors were just helping us to say, better, whatever we were always intending to say.
And that's true, to a degree. All the mentors in the world won't make a mediocre project a great one, and much of the best scholarship seems rooted in a radically individual intelligence: a mind that may have been trained in the same way as hundreds of others, but that has a fierce peculiar temper all its own.
But the thing is, we have all been trained in the norms of our disciplines, in more or less the same way, and we've all read thousands of works of scholarship; everything we do involves applying or building on the work of a multitude of forebears. We're none of us, really, advancing a radically new perspective or inventing a wholly new field--and none of us truly works in isolation even if she writes in hermetic solitude and never shows her prose to anyone until the day it hits the desk of an editor at one or another journal or academic press.
I haven't been much of a scholarly collaborator or sharer myself in the past; I didn't have peers who read my work in grad school, and I didn't get a lot of guidance from my dissertation advisor then or afterward. In the past few years, I've started sending bits and pieces of my work to friends, and I've been grateful for their feedback, but until recently I never felt that they were really shaping my work--just giving me things to think about, new sources to read, and that sort of thing.
But for whatever reason, in the throes of what I hope will be my last round of substantive revisions and after getting two thorough-going readers' reports from senior scholars, both of whom seem to be in subfields a bit aslant or adjacent to my own, it's hit me how absolutely impossible this book would have been to write without all the feedback I've gotten--major and minor--on my work over the years and all the panels I've attended and all the conversations I've had about the state of the field. The exact focus of my book is peculiar, and if I hadn't written it I doubt anyone else would have done so any time soon (which, uh, isn't a boast; it's weird enough that I'm not sure who will want to read the thing). But it is certainly not the case that I had a clear and lucid argument from the beginning, or probably even two years ago, and if I have one now it's only thanks to the pushing and prodding and sometimes enthusiasm and sometimes baffled irritation of my readers and interlocutors. I love that I've had them, and I love that I can drop three emails in three days to friends with different areas of expertise, just saying, "hey, I think this thing might be true--is it? or if not, can you save me from sounding like a jackass?"
I'm smarter now than I was when I started this project ten years ago. But if I'm ever to publish a second book, I know it will depend at least as heavily on the advice and expertise of others.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Going home again, again
This second, longer portion of my stay in INRU-land is winding down, and I'm pleased to report that either all those previous selves are merging into something coherent--or I've created a much more agreeable self with a much more agreeable relationship to this city.
I've joked for years that my love for my alma mater is not clearly distinguishable from Stockholm Syndrome, but now that I have no obligations to and more distance from the institution, I'm free to remark on how very pretty the campus is and indulge in nostalgia without feeling vaguely complicit. I'm purely an alumna now, is perhaps what it is: I still know how to navigate the library stacks, make a fast escape from every building, and locate the nearest restroom at any given moment--but the need for fast escapes (if not always for restrooms) is less urgent than it used to be.
Another relationship that's been continuing to transform is that with my dissertation director. (This bulletin is, I know, the latest in a long and increasingly boring series--but just imagine, my dears, how boring it is to live it.) I had lunch with her earlier this month, and though I'd been so wound up the night before that I'd had a hard time sleeping, the meal itself was rather lovely: we spent most of the time chatting about our personal lives, teaching, and politics--and when the conversation eventually rolled around to my latest chapter, her comments were largely helpful.
At one point, though, as she was exhorting me to follow a particular line of argumentation, I interrupted: "See, that's what most interests me, too. . . but don't you think that's kinda--well--unscholarly?"
She flipped her hand dismissively. "Who's to say what scholarship is, anyway?"
Which is a fine attitude for the person who's published fifteen or twenty books to have, but perhaps not for the person who's published none (just to eliminate confusion: I'm the latter rather than the former). Still, she was generally encouraging about and pleased with my proposed reorientation of the project Formerly Known As My Dissertation--even though I think her remarks basically amount to "shine on, you crazy diamond." (Given that I tend to think of what I do as being stodgy, if anything, Advisor's not-infrequent application of words like "eccentric" and "unusual" to my work is somewhat concerning.)
On the whole, then, it's been a lovely several weeks. I haven't felt as isolated as I sometimes did on my fellowship this past summer, and I'm close enough to several other cities to have spent most of my weekends visiting and catching up with old friends. Next weekend I return to my actual home--and to a semester for which I am entirely unprepared--but I'm happy to have spent so much time back in this one.
I've joked for years that my love for my alma mater is not clearly distinguishable from Stockholm Syndrome, but now that I have no obligations to and more distance from the institution, I'm free to remark on how very pretty the campus is and indulge in nostalgia without feeling vaguely complicit. I'm purely an alumna now, is perhaps what it is: I still know how to navigate the library stacks, make a fast escape from every building, and locate the nearest restroom at any given moment--but the need for fast escapes (if not always for restrooms) is less urgent than it used to be.
Another relationship that's been continuing to transform is that with my dissertation director. (This bulletin is, I know, the latest in a long and increasingly boring series--but just imagine, my dears, how boring it is to live it.) I had lunch with her earlier this month, and though I'd been so wound up the night before that I'd had a hard time sleeping, the meal itself was rather lovely: we spent most of the time chatting about our personal lives, teaching, and politics--and when the conversation eventually rolled around to my latest chapter, her comments were largely helpful.
At one point, though, as she was exhorting me to follow a particular line of argumentation, I interrupted: "See, that's what most interests me, too. . . but don't you think that's kinda--well--unscholarly?"
She flipped her hand dismissively. "Who's to say what scholarship is, anyway?"
Which is a fine attitude for the person who's published fifteen or twenty books to have, but perhaps not for the person who's published none (just to eliminate confusion: I'm the latter rather than the former). Still, she was generally encouraging about and pleased with my proposed reorientation of the project Formerly Known As My Dissertation--even though I think her remarks basically amount to "shine on, you crazy diamond." (Given that I tend to think of what I do as being stodgy, if anything, Advisor's not-infrequent application of words like "eccentric" and "unusual" to my work is somewhat concerning.)
On the whole, then, it's been a lovely several weeks. I haven't felt as isolated as I sometimes did on my fellowship this past summer, and I'm close enough to several other cities to have spent most of my weekends visiting and catching up with old friends. Next weekend I return to my actual home--and to a semester for which I am entirely unprepared--but I'm happy to have spent so much time back in this one.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Don't be so sensitive
When I saw Advisor a couple of weeks ago, we had an amusing exchange that has provoked two very different reactions among those I've told the story to.
Guy is typical of one response. "Oh, man," he said after I'd narrated the episode to him. "I'm sorry."*
"Huh?" I said.
"I'm really sorry. That sounds awful."
"Oh!" I said. "No no no no no. It was good! I mean, those were totally left-handed compliments she was giving me, but it was--I don't know--playful? Not, like, mean."
I know Advisor pretty well, but as I found myself trying to explain to Guy and several others why I didn't read the interaction negatively, it struck me that another reason for my interpretation may be that I myself give a lot of left-handed compliments.
Now, I give a lot of genuine compliments, and I believe that, on the whole, I'm good at letting people know when I admire their work, appreciate their efforts, or totally love their outfit. But every now and again it's brought to my attention that people consider me--oh, how to say this?--excessively judgmental.
(This shocks you, I know.)
The first time I was aware of this perception came in my senior year of high school. I was chatting with my friend Andy, and during the course of the conversation I commented that, hey, I liked his shirt. He broke off whatever he was saying, gave me a nasty look, and said, "Oh, thanks a lot! You know, Flavia, you could just not have said anything." It took me a full five seconds to register that he thought I was being sarcastic. I reassured him that actually I just thought it was a pretty cool shirt--and chose not to let myself contemplate what it meant that even my friends assumed no compliment I might give could be sincere.
Yes, I was a teenager, and probably one who laid on the sarcasm more heavily than most; I have neither the tone nor the attitude now that I had then. But I do give an awful lot of mock faint praise and left-handed compliments. (An easy example might be my saying to someone I've recently started dating something like, "Hey. You know? I think I like you! Or at least, more than I dislike you.")
I don't consider the meaning behind such remarks to be ambiguous. It should be obvious to my friends and intimates that I like them--I wouldn't waste time on them if I didn't. Giving them a hard time is just a way of playing around.
Indeed, until I started thinking about that interaction with my advisor, it never occurred to me that any reasonable person might interpret my teasing as otherwise than affectionate, but I guess there is something aggressive there: not unplayful or unaffectionate, to be sure, but implicitly about asserting oneself while keeping the other person firmly in his place.
All of which is to say? Maybe we get the advisors we deserve and/or resemble.
--------------
*The other interpretation was basically my own: that Advisor was communicating her pleasure at seeing me and with my progress.
Guy is typical of one response. "Oh, man," he said after I'd narrated the episode to him. "I'm sorry."*
"Huh?" I said.
"I'm really sorry. That sounds awful."
"Oh!" I said. "No no no no no. It was good! I mean, those were totally left-handed compliments she was giving me, but it was--I don't know--playful? Not, like, mean."
I know Advisor pretty well, but as I found myself trying to explain to Guy and several others why I didn't read the interaction negatively, it struck me that another reason for my interpretation may be that I myself give a lot of left-handed compliments.
Now, I give a lot of genuine compliments, and I believe that, on the whole, I'm good at letting people know when I admire their work, appreciate their efforts, or totally love their outfit. But every now and again it's brought to my attention that people consider me--oh, how to say this?--excessively judgmental.
(This shocks you, I know.)
The first time I was aware of this perception came in my senior year of high school. I was chatting with my friend Andy, and during the course of the conversation I commented that, hey, I liked his shirt. He broke off whatever he was saying, gave me a nasty look, and said, "Oh, thanks a lot! You know, Flavia, you could just not have said anything." It took me a full five seconds to register that he thought I was being sarcastic. I reassured him that actually I just thought it was a pretty cool shirt--and chose not to let myself contemplate what it meant that even my friends assumed no compliment I might give could be sincere.
Yes, I was a teenager, and probably one who laid on the sarcasm more heavily than most; I have neither the tone nor the attitude now that I had then. But I do give an awful lot of mock faint praise and left-handed compliments. (An easy example might be my saying to someone I've recently started dating something like, "Hey. You know? I think I like you! Or at least, more than I dislike you.")
I don't consider the meaning behind such remarks to be ambiguous. It should be obvious to my friends and intimates that I like them--I wouldn't waste time on them if I didn't. Giving them a hard time is just a way of playing around.
Indeed, until I started thinking about that interaction with my advisor, it never occurred to me that any reasonable person might interpret my teasing as otherwise than affectionate, but I guess there is something aggressive there: not unplayful or unaffectionate, to be sure, but implicitly about asserting oneself while keeping the other person firmly in his place.
All of which is to say? Maybe we get the advisors we deserve and/or resemble.
--------------
*The other interpretation was basically my own: that Advisor was communicating her pleasure at seeing me and with my progress.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Recommenders: advice
So I'm applying for fellowships of various sorts for the first time since grad school--which means that, also for the first time, I'm confronted by the need to start finding recommenders from places other than grad school. Many of these fellowships only require two recommenders, and for those I'm set: Advisor is writing one and a good professional acquaintance (a well-known mid-career academic whose work I very much admire) has agreed to write the second.
However, at least one of these fellowships requires three recs, and I'm uncertain where to turn for that third one. My department chair would do it, and she's an excellent letter writer, but she's not in my field and I'm not sure that a letter from her would be remotely useful or appropriate. I could call upon another professor at INRU whom I've known since I was an undergrad and who's read pretty much everything I've ever written--but (a) s/he has gone above and beyond in writing me recommendations for everything imaginable for more than a decade now, and (b) I really want to get away from grad school recommenders, both because I think it will look better for my applications and because I'm genuinely interested in forging new relationships with mentor-type people.
Now, I have another possible third recommender, but I'm worried that we don't know each other well enough and that it might be presumptuous of me even to ask. We met less than a year ago, but we've had some fun interactions over meals at conferences; s/he read one of my articles and then engaged me in very complimentary conversation about it; s/he offered to read something else of mine--an offer that for various reasons I couldn't/didn't pursue. And oh yeah: this person is also kinda famous.
So I'm not sure. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask, but I have deep anxieties when it comes to making other people uncomfortable or putting them under any sense of obligation--and I worry that we might know each other well enough that Possible Recommender wouldn't feel able to say no. . . but would secretly resent the presumption.
Anyone have any pertinent advice, here?
However, at least one of these fellowships requires three recs, and I'm uncertain where to turn for that third one. My department chair would do it, and she's an excellent letter writer, but she's not in my field and I'm not sure that a letter from her would be remotely useful or appropriate. I could call upon another professor at INRU whom I've known since I was an undergrad and who's read pretty much everything I've ever written--but (a) s/he has gone above and beyond in writing me recommendations for everything imaginable for more than a decade now, and (b) I really want to get away from grad school recommenders, both because I think it will look better for my applications and because I'm genuinely interested in forging new relationships with mentor-type people.
Now, I have another possible third recommender, but I'm worried that we don't know each other well enough and that it might be presumptuous of me even to ask. We met less than a year ago, but we've had some fun interactions over meals at conferences; s/he read one of my articles and then engaged me in very complimentary conversation about it; s/he offered to read something else of mine--an offer that for various reasons I couldn't/didn't pursue. And oh yeah: this person is also kinda famous.
So I'm not sure. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask, but I have deep anxieties when it comes to making other people uncomfortable or putting them under any sense of obligation--and I worry that we might know each other well enough that Possible Recommender wouldn't feel able to say no. . . but would secretly resent the presumption.
Anyone have any pertinent advice, here?
Monday, June 11, 2007
Advisor meeting
And, oh yes: I also saw Advisor this weekend.
In short, it was a delight. She was relaxed and chatty, gossiping mildly but not inappropriately about other advisees, former advisees, and people in our field, and telling me repeatedly how good I looked. Perhaps most flatteringly, she seemed genuinely happy to see me and to hear about my life. At one point, after I'd thanked her for a particular piece of professional advice, she said something to the effect that she'd enjoy keeping an eye on me--if I didn't mind her doing so. (To which I said, "I hope you will! Who else is going to?")
But here's the weirdest part:
Almost the first thing that Advisor asked me was how my personal life was going. Since we've virtually never discussed my personal life, this was unexpected. I told her that my boyfriend and I had recently broken up, and I think that I may have added an explanatory sentence or two. She blinked for a couple of moments, saying nothing, and then--as if recollecting the sentiment that was called for here--said, rather awkwardly, "Well. I'm sorry to hear that."
Conversation went on. Ten or fifteen minutes later I said something in passing about GWB, and she interrupted: "I have to admit that I'm not totally sorry to hear that your relationship has ended."
"Um." I said. "Okay. . ."
"Because you can do better."
I had no idea what she was talking about. She should know who GWB is (she was the outside-field member of his dissertation committee, and their intellectual interests have significant overlap), but on the occasions when I've reminded her of his identity it's been pretty clear that she has no recollection of him.
She continued, "You're going to be a. . . quietly influential mover in this field. And you can do better."
"Really." I said. "Okay. Well. Thanks!"
* * * * *
So, I have to ask: what the fuck was that all about? And what does my career--bright as it may or may not be--have to do with anything?
If we assume that Advisor doesn't actually remember who GWB is, we're left with three possible interpretations:
1) She was simply saying, in a maternal sort of way, that whoever the guy in question might be, anyone causing me drama could obviously be done-better-than. And P.S.: you rock and have a brilliant future ahead of you!
2) She meant that any relationship (but perhaps especially a long-distance one) must be a time-suck that I couldn't afford.
3) She thinks that I should go out and attach myself to someone important, who could be helpful to my career.
Now, I really don't think it's #2. As monstrously efficient as Advisor is, she's always been devoted to her partners and family; as long as one is on top of one's work, she approves of romantic relationships. #3 is totally gross, but not for that reason an invalid interpretation. Indeed, the decisiveness with which she made the comment, and the fact that it clearly came after some thought, makes that seem somewhat more likely than #1.
Dunno. But despite the grossness of what I think she might have meant, I left our meeting feeling ridiculously cheery. Because that's the way Advisor is: she makes pronouncements. And even when I know that she can't possibly have the necessary evidence to make those pronouncements, or when I don't respect the values that underly them--I tend always to believe her.
Dissertation directors, man. They're the gods that roam the earth.
In short, it was a delight. She was relaxed and chatty, gossiping mildly but not inappropriately about other advisees, former advisees, and people in our field, and telling me repeatedly how good I looked. Perhaps most flatteringly, she seemed genuinely happy to see me and to hear about my life. At one point, after I'd thanked her for a particular piece of professional advice, she said something to the effect that she'd enjoy keeping an eye on me--if I didn't mind her doing so. (To which I said, "I hope you will! Who else is going to?")
But here's the weirdest part:
Almost the first thing that Advisor asked me was how my personal life was going. Since we've virtually never discussed my personal life, this was unexpected. I told her that my boyfriend and I had recently broken up, and I think that I may have added an explanatory sentence or two. She blinked for a couple of moments, saying nothing, and then--as if recollecting the sentiment that was called for here--said, rather awkwardly, "Well. I'm sorry to hear that."
Conversation went on. Ten or fifteen minutes later I said something in passing about GWB, and she interrupted: "I have to admit that I'm not totally sorry to hear that your relationship has ended."
"Um." I said. "Okay. . ."
"Because you can do better."
I had no idea what she was talking about. She should know who GWB is (she was the outside-field member of his dissertation committee, and their intellectual interests have significant overlap), but on the occasions when I've reminded her of his identity it's been pretty clear that she has no recollection of him.
She continued, "You're going to be a. . . quietly influential mover in this field. And you can do better."
"Really." I said. "Okay. Well. Thanks!"
* * * * *
So, I have to ask: what the fuck was that all about? And what does my career--bright as it may or may not be--have to do with anything?
If we assume that Advisor doesn't actually remember who GWB is, we're left with three possible interpretations:
1) She was simply saying, in a maternal sort of way, that whoever the guy in question might be, anyone causing me drama could obviously be done-better-than. And P.S.: you rock and have a brilliant future ahead of you!
2) She meant that any relationship (but perhaps especially a long-distance one) must be a time-suck that I couldn't afford.
3) She thinks that I should go out and attach myself to someone important, who could be helpful to my career.
Now, I really don't think it's #2. As monstrously efficient as Advisor is, she's always been devoted to her partners and family; as long as one is on top of one's work, she approves of romantic relationships. #3 is totally gross, but not for that reason an invalid interpretation. Indeed, the decisiveness with which she made the comment, and the fact that it clearly came after some thought, makes that seem somewhat more likely than #1.
Dunno. But despite the grossness of what I think she might have meant, I left our meeting feeling ridiculously cheery. Because that's the way Advisor is: she makes pronouncements. And even when I know that she can't possibly have the necessary evidence to make those pronouncements, or when I don't respect the values that underly them--I tend always to believe her.
Dissertation directors, man. They're the gods that roam the earth.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Fingers uncrossed
So I've now heard back from Advisor, and I'm pleased to report that her advice was really very helpful. As I've mentioned before, we work very differently and I don't think she totally understands my intellectual and writing processes; this can sometimes lead to our talking at cross-purposes--and while I might know, rationally, when she's misreading or misunderstanding me, it's still hard for me not to believe that such moments are proof that a) she doesn't think I'm very smart, and b) she's right.
In this case, though, I found most of what she had to say entirely constructive and entirely to the point, and the one comment with which I strongly disagreed made me feel not anxious and doubtful but instead slightly smug and superior (on the grounds that I think there's more to a particular issue than she does, and I'm quite sure the finished product will bear me out). So that's progress.
But as happy and relieved as I was by this outcome, aspects of our correspondence were a little unsettling. This was the very first line of her email:
I'm always, I think, rather surprised by the discovery that I take up space in anyone's head when I'm not actually intruding myself upon his or her presence, and such an occurrence seems still more unlikely when it comes to Advisor, who gives the impression of rigorously purging her mind on a nightly basis of anything not immediately relevant to the next day's business. But this is the second time in three weeks that I've had evidence that I take up some small amount of her psychic space: at my most recent conference--the very same week that I mailed my chapter to her--I ran into one of Advisor's other former advisees, someone with whom I barely overlapped in grad school and barely know. "Hey," he said, "I just talked to [Advisor] the other day, and she mentioned that she was looking at something of yours."
"Really?" I said. I must have looked stricken, because he added, reassuringly, "that's all she said; I'd just asked her what she was up to."
I don't flatter myself that my work is so compelling that--even in draft form!--it keeps people up nights; if anything, this is surely proof of how consumed by our field Advisor is: any new work, any new idea, engages her to the point that she wants or needs to think it through immediately.
Nevertheless, being the vehicle for such engagement is nice, and the wide-ranging nature of her comments--which dealt not just with this chapter, but with the structure of the manuscript as a whole--surprised and flattered me. It's always agreeable to feel that you're worth someone's time. . . especially someone of such monstrous efficiency.
In this case, though, I found most of what she had to say entirely constructive and entirely to the point, and the one comment with which I strongly disagreed made me feel not anxious and doubtful but instead slightly smug and superior (on the grounds that I think there's more to a particular issue than she does, and I'm quite sure the finished product will bear me out). So that's progress.
But as happy and relieved as I was by this outcome, aspects of our correspondence were a little unsettling. This was the very first line of her email:
"I spent a good deal of time last night lying awake thinking about [your chapter]."And no, that's definitely not a joke. Nor had she finished my chapter immediately before going to bed, nor had she just emailed me or I her; in other words, there was no reason for her to have me and my work in mind as she settled in to start counting sheep.
I'm always, I think, rather surprised by the discovery that I take up space in anyone's head when I'm not actually intruding myself upon his or her presence, and such an occurrence seems still more unlikely when it comes to Advisor, who gives the impression of rigorously purging her mind on a nightly basis of anything not immediately relevant to the next day's business. But this is the second time in three weeks that I've had evidence that I take up some small amount of her psychic space: at my most recent conference--the very same week that I mailed my chapter to her--I ran into one of Advisor's other former advisees, someone with whom I barely overlapped in grad school and barely know. "Hey," he said, "I just talked to [Advisor] the other day, and she mentioned that she was looking at something of yours."
"Really?" I said. I must have looked stricken, because he added, reassuringly, "that's all she said; I'd just asked her what she was up to."
I don't flatter myself that my work is so compelling that--even in draft form!--it keeps people up nights; if anything, this is surely proof of how consumed by our field Advisor is: any new work, any new idea, engages her to the point that she wants or needs to think it through immediately.
Nevertheless, being the vehicle for such engagement is nice, and the wide-ranging nature of her comments--which dealt not just with this chapter, but with the structure of the manuscript as a whole--surprised and flattered me. It's always agreeable to feel that you're worth someone's time. . . especially someone of such monstrous efficiency.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Fingers crossed
Today I mailed Advisor a copy of the new chapter that I've been drafting. I know that this is the right time to send it to her and that the project will benefit both from being set aside for a while and from getting an outside read--and since I actually have to set the thing aside for six weeks in order to finish up two unrelated projects, it makes total sense to use that time to get her feedback.
But I had a serious meltdown over the weekend wherein I became convinced that I couldn't send it to her because it wasn't good enough or smart enough, and because it loses its argument a number of times and jumps around and has too many long quotations and doesn't have a conclusion and no doubt makes a number of breathtakingly stupid claims about both the author and the decades I'm covering (which represent basically new material for me).
I knew that there was no point in my putting in another two months to give the thing more polish, since what I really wanted her advice on was the big-picture stuff--but I have a hysterical insecurity about showing her anything less than perfect, lest she get so hung up on the little things that she not see the big-picture stuff (and so conclude I'm a moron).
Now, it's true that the above is actually a pretty accurate description of our first meeting to discuss the first draft of my dissertation's very first chapter--and thus constitutes, I guess, something of a Primal Scene--but my neurotic fear of letting anyone see anything that truly is a work-in-progress didn't begin with her, and I know that my obsession with that one episode in our relationship (and the way I've allowed it to define our relationship ever since) has more to do with the shit in my own head than with how she's actually responded to me and my work in the years since then.
So I'm trying to work through this, and sending her this chapter is one way of doing that. There may be no way to prevent myself from freaking the fuck out on my own time, but I don't want those freakouts to affect my ability to get work done or to seek advice when I need it.
That being said--y'all are still welcome to send your good wishes, or a gift certificate for some CBT, or a big bottle of whiskey, or whatever, my way.
But I had a serious meltdown over the weekend wherein I became convinced that I couldn't send it to her because it wasn't good enough or smart enough, and because it loses its argument a number of times and jumps around and has too many long quotations and doesn't have a conclusion and no doubt makes a number of breathtakingly stupid claims about both the author and the decades I'm covering (which represent basically new material for me).
I knew that there was no point in my putting in another two months to give the thing more polish, since what I really wanted her advice on was the big-picture stuff--but I have a hysterical insecurity about showing her anything less than perfect, lest she get so hung up on the little things that she not see the big-picture stuff (and so conclude I'm a moron).
Now, it's true that the above is actually a pretty accurate description of our first meeting to discuss the first draft of my dissertation's very first chapter--and thus constitutes, I guess, something of a Primal Scene--but my neurotic fear of letting anyone see anything that truly is a work-in-progress didn't begin with her, and I know that my obsession with that one episode in our relationship (and the way I've allowed it to define our relationship ever since) has more to do with the shit in my own head than with how she's actually responded to me and my work in the years since then.
So I'm trying to work through this, and sending her this chapter is one way of doing that. There may be no way to prevent myself from freaking the fuck out on my own time, but I don't want those freakouts to affect my ability to get work done or to seek advice when I need it.
That being said--y'all are still welcome to send your good wishes, or a gift certificate for some CBT, or a big bottle of whiskey, or whatever, my way.
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