In the final years of my graduate program, I attended a number of job-seeking workshops at my university's career-placement center. One of those workshops focused on negotiating job offers. I was told that everything is negotiable: salaries, moving expenses, course reductions, research leaves -- even what kind of computer you get.
The one thing that nobody thought to mention, however, was office assignments. Apparently, you angle for a plush office if you're a Wall Street type, but not if you're a would-be English professor.
I suspect that offices didn't make it into our negotiation workshop because academics in the humanities tend to have limited needs when it comes to office space, and departments in the humanities tend to have even more limited resources. And then there's the fact that penury compels most graduate students to figure out how to work in whatever space they can find -- dumpy apartments, library carrels, coffee shops. Even as it teaches us to live the life of the mind, graduate school trains us to ignore the life of the body.
Now, I'm not saying that I could have wheedled my way into a corner office if only my career counselor had alerted me to the possibility. My various attempts to negotiate teaching contracts have demonstrated that I don't know much about negotiation. I do, however, know a thing or two about offices.
In the four years that I've been teaching full-time, I've had four different offices. Each of those offices has been quite different, yet each has impressed upon me the relationship between material conditions and scholarly accomplishment. Although academics like to focus on the ways in which systems of thought structure lived realities, the obverse is also the case. Our environs have a significant impact on what and how we think. The physical spaces in which we write and read play a bigger part in our intellectual lives than we acknowledge.
My first office was something of a consolation prize. A generous department head at my degree-granting institution assigned it to me when I failed to find a job following my dissertation defense. She also scraped together enough money and enough teaching assignments to keep me on as an adjunct.
I was grateful to have been given the means to support myself, but I was profoundly disappointed in my unsuccessful job search. In an attempt to recoup some of my lost self-esteem, I often reminded myself that even though I wasn't on the tenure track, I now had a credential (Dr. Richardson), a title (visiting assistant professor), and -- most important of all -- an office.
The office, of course, wasn't really mine: The full professor to whom it belonged was away on a research leave. His name remained painted on the door while mine was scrawled on a notecard and taped over the top. The daily delights of a private office, however, quickly obscured the realities of ownership.
Seated at a massive desk and surrounded by shelves sagging with books, I found the impression of authority too exquisite to ignore. The office seemed to give validity to the professorial persona I was trying to fashion. Delighted with the legitimacy it lent me, I really made myself at home in that office.
And -- for a brief stretch of time -- that office became my home. My family and I moved in for several days when a winter storm left us without electricity. I took up residence along with my postpartum wife, my two newborn twins, and my visiting mother-in-law -- the most unconventional band of refugees the university has ever seen.
The setup led to some strange student consultations. Although I gamely tried to play the part of the knowledgeable and concerned mentor, my performance was undermined by the altered state of my office. It was like trying to do Greek tragedy on the set of a sit-com. I learned firsthand the difficulties of being erudite when your pillow and pajamas are in plain view.
The most awkward moment, however, was when the office's true owner unexpectedly returned. What do you say to a senior scholar who opens the door to his office and discovers an entire family sleeping on the floor? My nervous attempt at nonchalance was obviously insufficient.
The following year, I found work filling in for a Shakespearean on sabbatical. In addition to taking over her courses, I took over her office. Much more sensitive this time around to my transient, squatter status, I took pains to keep things exactly as they had been left. That included the enormous and imposing portrait of Queen Elizabeth I hanging right over the desk.
I thought I would eventually get used to Elizabeth's imperious stare, but she continued to frighten me for two full semesters. She even scared my students. Upon entering the office and encountering my royal gargoyle, many of them jumped back in visible surprise.
It was unsettling to advise students in front of the former queen of England. I felt a bit like a newly licensed 16-year-old with a stern parent in the passenger seat. Queen Elizabeth's authoritarian presence made me painfully self-conscious. As a recent Ph.D., I was unsure of both my knowledge and my role. I think I half expected Elizabeth to interrupt me indignantly during student conferences to correct my errors.
After cowering beneath her for a year, I finally found a tenure-track job and moved into the first office that I could officially call my own. Not that anyone would want to.
It was drab, windowless, and empty. Moreover, my furniture didn't arrive for several weeks, forcing me to work out of cardboard boxes like some sort of professorial hobo.
Even the arrival of my desk and shelves, however, didn't entirely dispel my sense of impermanence. That's because my office wasn't actually in the English department. It wasn't even in the building housing the English department.
The building housing the English department didn't have any vacant offices, so I had been assigned space on another part of the campus. My nondepartmental neighbors were unflaggingly polite, but they were understandably less than eager to endure my interloping presence for long.
Our morning pleasantries increasingly concluded with the pointed question: "Any word yet on a new office for next year?"
After a year beyond the pale, I was recalled from my colonial outpost and assigned an office among my departmental colleagues. They welcomed me back with warmth, but their enthusiasm gave way to perplexity when I told them which office was mine.
"202A? Where's 202A? Do we have a 202A?"
It's easy to see how the office could have been overlooked. It turned out to be the ancillary office to the converted broom closet office. The custodial supplies got stored in 202. I got stored in 202A.
Even though there's scarcely room for a second chair, an enormous elephant somehow stations itself in the middle of my current office whenever anyone stops by. My students conscientiously avoid remarking on its size, but their furtive glances and quizzical expressions speak volumes. While students are largely oblivious to the tenure hierarchy, caring little whether one is a full professor or a part-time adjunct, they aren't inattentive when it comes to the highly visible hierarchy of office assignments.
I feel compromised -- as if the office I have been given signals my insignificance. Embarrassed about the space in which I receive student visitors, I suspect that I compensate by being more accommodating and conciliatory than I ought.
In my cramped quarters, critical thinking has taken on a different meaning. Instead of contemplating deep textual cruxes, I spend most of my time asking such questions as "Is it dark in here, or am I going blind?" and "What is that smell?" It's hardly the stuff of literary or scholarly brilliance.
The crunch for space on university campuses is such that there aren't any easy solutions for my struggles. And because many professors work primarily from home, office assignments aren't the most pressing issue on the academic agenda. Moreover, most of us feel lucky just to have landed tenure-track jobs, let alone jobs with private offices.
I should probably just count my blessings and focus on the feeling of gratitude that comes over me when I see my name on an office door, instead of the sense of disappointment that steals over me when I open that door.
Nevertheless I wouldn't mind an office upgrade. Firsthand experience has made me a firm believer in the enabling effect of a good office. Well-appointed offices, by instilling a sense of achievement and authority, can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Crummy offices, of course, swing things in the other direction. And if this year is any indication of the future, it looks like it's going to be a bit of an uphill battle in 202A.
