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I'll Bring the Salad

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By Julie Striver

The rules of departmental socializing are as ironclad as they are invisible, and I spent a nerve-racking five years on the tenure track trying to find and decipher them in my large humanities department.

Publishing a book and articles, teaching new graduate courses, serving on committees, moving to an entirely new part of the country where I knew no one -- none of that was as hard as dealing with a strange new social scene.

Here at Remote State U, every weekend means another round of departmental socializing. What's a quiet person -- a quiet untenured person -- to do, when her department head says, "Oh, Julie, you are coming to Elaine's costume party this weekend, aren't you? We'll look forward to seeing you there!"

Now, the kindly senior professor is just trying to welcome the junior person and help her feel part of her new department. But the untenured faculty member feels a cold horror (at least this one did): What costume can I imagine, find, create, and afford that will not make me look like a fool but will endear me to my new colleagues, while convincing them of how clever I am?

My book, my articles, and my teaching won't matter if I'm not also an asset to the social life of the department. The pressure's on.

The annual costume party is just an extreme example of a chronic problem. Every weekend in my department people have parties, go out to dinner, stay in for dinner, attend musical events together, have potluck suppers, play golf or tennis, and so on. Alliances are made and broken in this so-called non-work time.

It's been a misery for me, made worse because most of my colleagues are genuinely nice, good people whom I don't want to offend by saying, "Look, I just need some down time."

For the first year, I imagined fabricating a long-distance partner whom I could conveniently visit every weekend. The reason I didn't? Not any honesty or virtue on my part -- I would lie like a dog if I thought I could get a free weekend. No, I knew that my imaginary friend would be expected to visit me sometimes, and, yes, attend social functions. So instead of inventing a fantasy life elsewhere, I gritted my teeth and made a salad for the next potluck.

Salads are good choices for the untenured, since they pose no risk of offending the vegans, the lactose intolerant, or the low-carb dieters in the department. Yet I needed ingredients that would also convince my colleagues -- even the carnivores, a powerful faction -- what an asset I was.

No iceberg lettuce would do: I'm no hick, I know my arugula from my radicchio. Although I had won a national grant, it was surely the choice of flat-leaf parsley (not curly) that would seal my tenure case. But the organic raspberry poppy-seed dressing? Would that make up for the fact that I didn't pull down the university's junior teaching award for our department? Only time would tell.

When it's not a potluck, the questions multiply. Do I bring flowers, candy, or a bottle of wine to my hosts?

Thinking to err on the side of generosity when attending my first department dinner, I splurged on a bottle of very good champagne. When I presented it to my hosts at their door, I learned that they were recovering alcoholics. Not a great start. (They, however, were charming about it, and politely left my silk-ribboned bottle with my coat for me to take home as I left.)

The expenses of departmental socializing are hard on a single person. While I want to reciprocate, the steady stream of invitations makes it difficult and costly to do so.

Couples in the department entertain on healthy dual incomes, but I was entertaining on an assistant professor's budget. For them to invite me means using disposable income from a two-salary household to invite one extra person; for me to invite them means deciding whether to make the car payment or make a roast beef dinner for the six colleagues to whom I owe invitations this week.

I do reciprocate -- for that's the strongest unwritten rule of all -- but I serve a lot of spaghetti. I flatter myself by thinking that I'm providing not so much food and drink as warm hospitality and a convivial evening.

But some colleagues have made it clear that they wanted, well, more than a meatless meal and better than a cheap table red. I overheard one colleague remark with irritation, "Another lentil dish at Julie's? When is she going to cook something decent?" I got over that little sting; the real question is how such things affect one's career.

Then there are the factions. If you accept dinner at Professor X's house, you must not let Professor Y know it, and you must be sure never to mention having gone to the home of one when in the presence of the other. Multiply that by 60 professors in the department -- at least 45 of whose votes you'll need for tenure or promotion -- and the unspoken rules get very tricky indeed.

In general, I tried to accept the first invitations I got and to decline politely those that came in later, but without explaining or naming names. "Sorry, can't make it, I'll be at Professor Y's dinner party" will not endear you to Y's nemesis. However, "Thanks so much, but I already have plans; hope we can do it another time" keeps your name off the bad-lists.

Try not to turn anyone down twice. I recently learned that a favorite colleague was carrying hurt feelings and developing a grudge because I had declined a couple of invitations in a row. A frank talk and an invitation to one of my pathetic spaghetti dinners turned things around, thank goodness. But what rocky shoals for an assistant professor to navigate while writing, teaching, doing research, and serving on committees.

I'm silently grateful to my few senior colleagues who don't insist on entertaining.

Some would say I'm lucky to have a department in which people actually spend time together, especially in such a remote area with few cultural activities. It's certainly better than a hostile, poisonous department where colleagues don't speak.

Yet it's no fun to work hard all week, and then work some more at socializing in my so-called free time. If you add department and university events, my work week runs close to 60 hours.

Of course the unspoken expectations for socializing vary greatly among campuses and even among departments on the same campus. If you can bear another dinner party, try one outside your department: Observing other tribes' unspoken social rules helped me better understand my own. I also regained some much-needed perspective and escaped briefly from the same people having the same conversations. (And I didn't have to come up with yet another impressive salad recipe.)

Perhaps academics are more likely than the general population to be introverted, and thus less happy socializing. We have, after all, chosen a life of intellectual inquiry. Most professors I know outside of my department prefer happy stretches of solitary time.

Two recent books on introversion in modern life, Party of One and The Introvert Advantage, have explored how American culture penalizes reflective, solitary sorts.

Academe would seem to be a refuge for the reflective, especially in certain disciplines: A literature and theory professor like me will probably have a lot more happening inside her head than on her party calendar. Personally, I like it that way. I chose the profession because it suits my temperament.

My department, however, shows little sign of tolerating, much less supporting, the quiet scholarly life I want. The unspoken rule that I must not only socialize but do it regularly and with style is a bewildering and unwanted burden.

The life-of-the-party types seem to fare well, career-wise here. One colleague is so genial that he socializes several nights a week; that has translated into professional gains for him (a named chair, for instance, despite his thin publication record). Likewise, an extroverted junior colleague also has benefited professionally from her ability to give lavish parties in her two-income household. Is that some unjust reprise of 7th-grade popularity contests, or simply a natural result of our remote location and sociable departmental culture?

It's a lucky thing, then, that I recently got tenure; my struggles to fake enjoyment of the forced fun must have been just convincing enough.

Finally I can spend more time on research and teaching and less time worrying about juggling invitations, avoiding factions, creating the right costume, and budgeting for those spaghetti dinners. Or can I?

Although it's clear that "collegiality" here is about much more than getting along easily with others, the unwritten rules for socializing still baffle and annoy me. And I'm concerned that those rules, with their unrewarded work and serious losses of personal time, may in the breach entail professional penalties.

For now, I have a strong CV and a repertoire of salad recipes. But should promotion to full professor really require a perfect Beef Wellington in addition to teaching, service, and a well-reviewed third book?