Ms. Mentor

Academics Have Feelings, Too

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Question (from "Randy"): I've come back to town as a full-time staffer at "Little Religious College," and I'm very attracted to "Dr. Priss," who taught a poetry course I took a few years ago. Even though I'm still a (nontraditional) student, is it OK to tell her I admire her, and want to meet her off-campus?

Question (from "Catherine"): Newly hired at "Roseflower U.," I find that a colleague ("Floyd") is sleeping with one of his students. Roseflower has strict rules against these relationships, and I'm wondering what, if anything, I should do? I've encouraged those with firsthand knowledge to speak to the ombudsman, but graduate students are terrified of "Hurricane Floyd," who routinely berates and humiliates them. I dread being stuck with him for the next 30 years, but he comes up for tenure before I do, and he'll be voting on whether I get tenure.

Question (from "Lara"): I'm in my second year at "Great White North State," I live alone with my cat, and last winter it snowed every day for weeks. Although leaving a perfectly decent tenure-track job for a warmer clime may be career suicide, I know that another winter in this frozen wasteland will kill me. Is "quality of life" or "the death of my soul" a legitimate reason for leaving an academic job?

Answer: Ms. Mentor agrees with Hegel that "nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion" -- yet a lack of passion is part of the social equipment of academics. Academics are supposed to appear calm and bland, without such pesky emotions as longing, loneliness, and fear.

Yet many fledglings in their first jobs away from graduate school feel like strangers in a strange land. Often the locals do not read the books or care about the political ideas that agitate you. They may look askance at your manners and clothes, and titter at your accent.

Nevertheless, you're expected to hop up and assume the mighty professor position -- which makes many new academics ambivalent or sad. Some write First Person pieces in The Chronicle; others write to Ms. Mentor, quietly and tearfully.

They are in culture shock, lonesome and looking for love -- but they've also known all their lives what to do first: Their Homework.

Randy, for instance, needs to pore over Little Religious College's handbook for the rules against sexual harassment and fraternization. For him, an illicit tryst with Dr. Priss might be an adventure. For Dr. Priss, a romance with Randy might be the end of her career.

Randy can, however, honor Dr. Priss by rereading passionate poetry. A lesser man might fume that he's been thwarted. But a truly passionate soul, one who earns the approbation of Ms. Mentor, will find that the bittersweet poetry of renunciation springs to his lips and heals him. "I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more" strikes just the right note. Randy should recite it to himself, renounce his longing for Dr. Priss, and move on.

Catherine, meanwhile, yearns for Hurricane Floyd to move on. Ms. Mentor praises conscientious Catherine for doing what she can through official channels; evidently the ombudsman is supposed to defend student rights. Catherine herself, new and untenured, has no powerful swords of her own to brandish. But no one can stop her from asking senior colleagues, innocently and frequently, "Why does Dr. Floyd yell so much? Is there anything we can do to make him less angry?"

Concerned students might also want to post the sexual-harassment/fraternization policy everywhere around the department. Maybe even under Floyd's picture, on his office door.

If Floyd is known to be overbearing and embarrassing, students will shun his classes, parents may complain, and colleagues certainly won't want him around for 30 years. He won't get tenure, and Catherine and future students will be spared.

As for poor Lara, Ms. Mentor has long meditated about geography and its discontents. Some academics adapt to lutefisk, cockroaches, or football as a religion. Others cannot, and the answer to Lara's question about whether quality of life is a good reason for leaving a tenure-track position is "Yes."

Academics have been trained to suppress their feelings and do what they're told. Perhaps it is the monkish ideal of asceticism. But Ms. Mentor would like them to listen to their hearts and allow themselves to want more than career success -- to seek love and acceptance, good food and felines, camaraderie and congenial climates.

She seconds their emotions.

Question: In the privacy of my own home, may I whine?

Answer: Yes.

SAGE READERS: "I would contend that King Charles I got more from his executioners than Patsy did from you," writes one furious reader of last month's column on hiring partners.

Her correspondent demands that Ms. Mentor and The Chronicle "stop sage pontificating and pious clucking" and go to battle with "the cult of mediocrity, narrow-mindedness, and downright stupidity that permeates the U.S. academic world."

Ms. Mentor welcomes suggestions about how to do so, along with the usual rants, queries, and gossip. She also directs interested scholars to her tome (listed below) or her archive. She reminds readers that she rarely answers letters personally, will not be rushed or bullied, does not open attachments, and adores subject headings, which keep valuable messages from being deleted as spam.

Ms. Mentor guarantees anonymity and always scrambles identifying details, so that at least 10 to 20 people each month feel sure that they've been mentioned in Ms. Mentor's column. They are all secretly gratified.