Empty-Office Syndrome

Have you ever had the academic version of “empty nest syndrome,” which I’ll cleverly call “empty office syndrome” since I don’t have a better name for it?

Have you ever experienced a profound sense of loss when a graduate student does exactly what a graduate student is meant to do, is trained to do, and is expected to do—which is to leave?

Have you ever had a graduate student who worked so closely with you that she or he became a real friend and a virtual member of the family, thereby causing you to feel bereaved even when you’re celebrating her or his deserved and welcome new faculty position at another institution?

I’m experiencing empty-office syndrome right now, which is the very reason I don’t have a better name for it: Karen isn’t here to help me figure out how to sound smarter than I actually am. Along with teaching, writing, editing, publishing, playing softball, and having a life, it’s what she’s been doing for the past couple of years.

Karen got her doctorate and got a job. She’s that good. And because she’s been in my office and in my life for four years, on and off, as a research assistant, as well as a managing editor for LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, I’m going to be bereft without her.

I know, I know—I’ve gone through this before and the results have been nothing but wonderful. I can sing stories of triumph from former grad students who have set up homes, careers, and classrooms in Georgia, in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, and in—especially helpful right now—Arizona.  The shrinking emotional and geographical space offered by Verizon, Orbitz, Ethernet, and Skype make empty-office syndrome less awful, if not less noticeable. I know I’ll be able to call or email to ask, for example, “What’s the worst movie made before 1975 about evil children?” and Karen will be able to answer.

You remember Karen. Karen was the one who wrote the posts about zombies taking over the MLA. She also guest-posted a piece asking readers what she needed to know when writing letters and going for interviews (and since your advice worked, by the way, you should also feel proud). She’s been the inspiration for countless other pieces not only for Brainstorm but for every other place I publish, and her ability to distinguish a passable line from one that might come back to haunt me has been an uncredited but wildly important contribution to my writing.

I can’t take credit for her achievements in her field, however, since she was not my advisee—she’s an Americanist. In many ways, I’m sure that rendered our relationship less complicated and less fraught than the advisor/advisee duo with its choreographed dance steps and its necessarily formalized boundaries.

But at least I can give myself credit for noticing her wit and insight beginning with one of the first classes she took after entering the program. I still recall lines from the paper she wrote on Ford’s The Good Soldier for my Modern British Lit course and I wasn’t surprised when she won an award for it. She was a winner from the start.

With her closest family members all living overseas, my family and I enthusiastically dragged Karen into our own clan. Karen has come for Christmas Eve celebrations and for birthday parties, for long dinners with other friends and for drinks on the back porch. We’ve gone to New York together to meet editors and she’s given me cards for Mother’s Day that made me weep. She’s introduced me to music, writers, and movies I’d otherwise have never known (or would have dismissed—who knew I’d enjoy Drag Me to Hell except for Karen?)

It was Karen who proved to me that YouTube could actually contribute to life rather than detract from it.

Karen adopted a kitten from the colony of feral cats in the neighborhood—the rest are now neutered—and when her older beloved cat died we buried the body beneath two trees in the far end of the back garden so that Karen would always know where Gypsy was. We dug the small grave one afternoon last autumn after work in our good shoes and teaching clothes, finishing the job right before the rains came. Karen did most of the work, but I was trying my best with a too-short shovel. My attempts were feeble enough to make her laugh through her grief, proving that occasionally we are most useful when we least expect to be.

I wish I could be more help to her right now, but I know that there are others who are, and that there are others who will be.

Karen is leaving town this week, heading west with a UHaul.

She’s that good: that independent, that capable, that adventurous.

For most of us, this is simply a week in the middle of the summer. For Karen, it’s the start of an odyssey.