If your graduate school was anything like mine, it was full of rumors and gossip: Professor A had slept with Professor B; Professor C got the job only because she had once had an affair with a dean; Professor D left a spouse to marry a graduate student. You get the picture. As a graduate student, I listened to such stories along with everyone else, by turns amused and appalled. Rarely did it occur to me to question a story's veracity.
But after discovering my own starring role in an absolutely fictitious gossipy tale, I now question sources and motives when I hear such rumors. My own story took shape over the course of six years, and was, oddly, connected to my teaching.
When I entered graduate school, I had several years of experience teaching at middle and high schools but knew little of the academic world. I thought it was all about the work: the teaching and the research. I didn't know the extent to which personal relationships could help, or hinder, your career.
I initially thought my schoolteaching experience might be useless in a college context, but that fear was dismissed by my division head. She assured me it was invaluable, and her assertion quickly proved accurate. I settled easily into the routine of graduate seminars, teaching assistantships, and small teaching-support meetings. I quickly made several friends, many of whom I would now place in the lifelong category, among my cohort. Slower to come was any comprehension of the politics involved in graduate school, or the ways that behind-the-scenes gossip and accusations would come to shape my experience.
In the spring of that first year, I was approached by two advanced graduate students, whom I'll call "Rosemary" and "Stella." They asked me to join them in a group proposal for a conference. I was delighted and, once our proposal was accepted, nervous about the prospect of presenting my first paper the following fall. We casually made plans to drive to the conference and to room together.
Around the same time, at the encouragement of the department's teaching coordinator, I applied for a position as a teaching adviser. If I got the job, I would help plan the fall teaching orientation for graduate students and guide the weekly support meetings. As a first-year graduate student, I had little understanding of how my fellow students viewed this position in terms of perceived perks or pecking order. And I didn't know who else had applied for the job. Once encouraged, I simply applied: I wrote a letter of application, interviewed with the administrator, and a few weeks later learned I'd gotten the position. I spent the summer working on orientation plans.
My second-year seminars began smoothly. The fall orientation went well; my friendships with people in my cohort continued unabated; and I was dating a man in my program (who is now my husband). Things were going, as they say, swimmingly — until I tried to nail down the transportation and hotel plans for the conference I was supposed to attend with Rosemary and Stella.
The previous spring, they had seemed so pleased to write the proposal and make travel plans with me. Now, suddenly, they weren't available and didn't respond to my e-mail messages. When I ran into Stella, she seemed flustered, said something about not wanting to "get involved," and apologetically explained that she would be traveling and staying with her husband instead of with fellow graduate students. "OK, sure," I thought. "Involved in what?" Through the grapevine I learned that Rosemary, too, planned to go to the conference with someone else, and that I was not included in their plans.
I was hurt and confused. Why couldn't I drive the few hours with them, or share a room? What had I done? For weeks I obsessed about the issue, concerned not only about the personal aspects but also about how I would pay for gas and a hotel room by myself. Luckily two friends in my cohort came to my rescue, deciding at the last minute to go to the conference and stay with me.
After the conference, I talked with a friend in a different program who suggested that the students ahead of our cohort disliked us as a group because we were a comparatively large class who had quickly gelled as friends. He suggested that Rosemary and Stella simply felt left out, and that I had somehow been chosen to bear the brunt of their jealous discomfort. His explanation temporarily quelled my concerns.
Months later, I learned that my disinvitation to their conference travel plans was far more personal, and was, confusingly, connected to my position as a teaching adviser.
Turns out Rosemary had been denied the teaching-adviser position the year before I arrived. She had applied again when I had, and had assumed that her seniority meant she would automatically get the job. When she didn't, and found out I did, she did something I still cannot comprehend: Rosemary began telling other graduate students that the administrator and I were having an affair.
I racked my brain to think of some misconstrued moments that could have led her to legitimately believe that, but there were none. My interactions with the administrator at that point in my graduate career had included: (a) a three-minute hallway conversation during orientation about my first-year teaching load; (b) two seminars, one required, both taken with several others in my cohort; (c) the open-door interview for the advising position (with a secretary present in an adjoining room).
Because none of those interactions could have led to an even quasi-legitimate suspicion that we were having an affair, I can only assume that Rosemary made up the rumor and spread it out of spite. I was dismayed but decided the lack of merit would speak (or had already spoken) for itself. I assumed that the accusation had been limited to whispers among my fellow graduate students, and affirmed my previous suspicion that Rosemary and I would never be friends.
The following year, the story became more complex. My boyfriend took a class with Rosemary (who was apparently unaware that we were dating), and was audience to her telling a story about how this same administrator had once yelled at her. She claimed that she had merely asked him why she had not gotten the teaching-adviser job, and that he had summarily screamed at her and dismissed her from the room. I cannot put into words how out-of-character such an incident seemed for an administrator renowned for his calm demeanor, and I listened to my boyfriend's retelling with a mixture of confusion and disbelief.
Nothing more happened with the story for years. I continued to work as a teaching adviser, eventually becoming teaching coordinator and getting to know the administrator well enough to ask him to chair my dissertation committee. Rosemary and I avoided each other, interacting guardedly but congenially when necessary.
By the time of my graduation, the administrator and a fairly tight-knit group of his advisees had become friends. We gathered to celebrate both graduation and our new jobs, and after a few drinks, I started to share the crazy affair-accusation story with a small audience that included the administrator and his wife. "You'll never believe what Rosemary was apparently telling people when I first got the advising position," I began. The administrator nodded and interrupted me: He did, in fact, know. Beyond that, he knew because Rosemary, along with our division head, had come to his office to accuse him, and he had blown up at them.
I was shocked: that he knew; that Rosemary had brought our division head into something so utterly baseless; and that he had actually yelled at Rosemary, but under circumstances far different than her version suggested.
I had thought the accusation was my personal cross to bear, a story that had been transformed over time into a harmless cocktail-party tale. But it had much farther-reaching consequences. My faith in my division head is, if not shattered, certainly diminished. How could she have joined in making such an accusation about me and this administrator, her trusted colleague, with no evidence? Was Rosemary's invented tale really that believable? And could the division head still harbor suspicions?
Back when I believed that the story was known among only a few graduate students, its potential damage seemed slight, merely personal. I had no inkling of its reach, and I still have no idea how many people know or believe Rosemary's fabricated version of events, and whether that has affected or could affect my career. The administrator seems to have come through unscathed, helped no doubt by his impeccable ethics and trusting wife. Even baseless, the accusation could have had dire professional and personal consequences for him.
My hope in sharing this tale is threefold:
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For those inclined to gossip and accusation, well, evidence would be nice, and perhaps a dose of humility before you decide to attack.
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For those who listen to gossip, consider the tales as entertainment, not fact, and be wary of the source's motives.
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For those who are unfortunate enough to be cast in the role of villain or adulterer without any action remotely akin to either, live honorably and hope that the people who matter will figure out the truth. Then move on with your life. Or maybe write a pseudonymous article for The Chronicle to purge the experience.
