Ms. Mentor

Is My Husband an Academic Failure?

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Question (from "Daisy"): When "Chuck" and I married, I was a nurse in Well-Known City, with lots of money, friends, and self-confidence. Chuck was a plodding, nerdy graduate student, but with a lot of potential. By the time he finished his degree and got a tenure-track post at Semi-Rural U, we had two small children. I quit my job to raise them, thinking we'd make a lovely nuclear family. We do -- except that I never see Chuck. I'm coming to think I don't miss him.

Chuck is in a very demanding field (he says), and he's in the office day and night, working on articles that he hasn't sent out. When he comes home, he's tired and snarly. I thought summertime would be for rest and reconciliation, but now he's taking a student group to Australia, a place with no connection to his research, and no brownie points toward tenure. He wants to impress Professor Big -- but even Big says Chuck needs to publish, not travel. Big has also called Chuck a "wimp" for not taking stands on department issues. Chuck seems to be alienating everyone.

It looks like I have a husband who's not apt to get tenure. What should I do?

Answer: Ms. Mentor sees in your letter some hoary and recognizable life patterns: disillusionment, overwork, geographical discontent, and what Chaucer called the "wo that is in mariage." And it's all pretenure, too.

Within five years, Chuck has to get great teaching evaluations (or at least passable ones, if he's at a large research university.) He has to do sufficient publication and research to impress his colleagues as well as peers at other universities who'll write tenure support letters. He has to do enough service (committee work) to seem energetic and committed to his department's "mission" (which may or may not be evident). And he has to be viewed as "collegial" -- bright, cheerful, easy to get along with.

Ms. Mentor knows that many an adviser would tell you, Mrs. Chuck, to "Get off his back" or "Get up and invite his colleagues to dinner, at least." Indeed, there are always rumors -- and academic novels -- in which the loyal, hysterical faculty wife offers favors to the boss "if you'll give my husband tenure." You shudder.

But "this, too, shall pass," cooler heads will tell you. Once Chuck is tenured, they say, you'll have back the nerdy love bunny you married so happily a decade or so ago.

Ms. Mentor is not so sure. Having observed countless human pratfalls, she does not believe in total transformations of character (except, maybe, from miraculous or horrific encounters with drugs). The priorities, the pacing, the social skills that one has in grad school -- those are what people are.

So what is Chuck? By your account, he's nerdy -- which Ms. Mentor takes to mean socially inept. Most academics are, so he does fit in. But he also seems to be academically slow, toiling endlessly instead of writing up and sending out the smallest publishable unit. Chuck may be a single-minded perfectionist -- and right now, you and the little ones aren't really on his screen.

'Tis a melancholy fact that the pretenure period, like the prepartner stage in a law firm or the residency stage of a medical career, can be all-consuming. There is something to be said for a monkish dedication to career and career alone at that time in life -- except that biological clocks won't allow it.

And so the children are with you, and Chuck is not.

You can, of course, nag Chuck (by e-mail, since you don't see him). Maybe you can get him to go to counseling. You can hope that he'll find another academic job after this one implodes. Or that he'll find something outside academe. You can offer him physical or emotional bribes. You can go home to Mother.

You can also remind yourself of the late Ann Landers's famous question: Are you better off with him or without him?

Ms. Mentor, in her perfect wisdom, reminds you that the only behavior you control is your own. Ms. Mentor thinks you know what you must do, to save your sanity and your security.

You must go back to your nursing career, at least part time.

Academia often erodes the self-confidence of graduate students, assistant professors, and their families. But with less financial pressure, and with a wife who has an outside life, Chuck may pull himself together. Or he may not.

But you cannot simply wait and hope, for your youngsters need you. Academic tenure may come or it may not, but the happiest people are those whose moms made them feel loved and safe. That's lifetime security, and it's the best tenure on earth.

Question: Although I have the same meager stipend as all the other grad students, I married well and have a rich husband. Will that hurt me in the job market?

Answer: How?

SAGE READERS: Having survived another academic year, many of Ms. Mentor's correspondents yearn to escape -- from small towns, plagiarizing students, hateful colleagues, dastardly deans, pusillanimous presidents.

Much of it, Ms. Mentor observes, is simply the Human Condition. Everyone's got to be someplace greener (and she wishes no Americans were in Iraq). Braggarts and bigots also flourish everywhere, even in Boston and Berkeley.

Nevertheless, summer is the best time to plot one's escape, and Ms. Mentor urges all malcontents to hunker down in their labs and libraries -- for publication is the only currency that can be spent everywhere. You need a research record if you want to move.

Ms. Mentor's last column, sympathizing with a new professor's stage fright in graduate seminars, did not awaken sympathy from readers to that scholar's plight. Some scoffed. ("You think you've got it bad? Try grading hundreds of papers at Mediocre U.") Others moaned. ("You know, we aren't all academic powerhouses.") One veteran professor still shudders at the memory of snide young profs who taught him: "Colonial Overseers, from the country of All Things Worthwhile, sorting through the poor, moronic natives to determine who might be worthy to serve as flag bearers in the Queen's Overseas Regiment. ... I'd take an older, more secure professor over a Bright Young Bloated Ego any day."

Ms. Mentor welcomes all such rants and lively queries, and especially invites correspondence for future columns on administration versus teaching (Which will kill you first?), religious colleges, coming out in academe, and how much to tell new colleagues about your department's vivid past. Anonymity is guaranteed, and identifying details are always changed.

Ms. Mentor rarely answers letters personally, will not be rushed, will not open attachments, and warns that letters without subject headings may be devoured by her hungry spam filters. She also reminds readers to check her archive, as well as her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.