Ms. Mentor

Should I Move On?

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Question (from "Lawrence"): During my four years as a part-time adjunct teaching composition, I've struck out every year on the job market. How much longer should I keep trying for a full-time, tenure-track job?

Question (from "Yvette"): I'm tenured at a college that I've hated since the first day. My colleagues do nothing but teach: no research, nothing truly intellectual. I have some friends, but our book club flopped after a few months. I've applied fruitlessly for other jobs (I'm in English), but with my heavy teaching load, my first book's still not done. I'm drowning in a sea of mediocrity in "Ruralville," where there isn't even a museum. How can a tenured associate professor move to a new job?

Question (from "Sally"): My spouse was a loved and admired professor at the university where I'm also tenured. But after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he retired, and has been lingering in late-stage dementia in a nursing home for the past four years. I continue to work and pay his bills (no long-term insurance) as well as mine. In the past year, I've reconnected with a college sweetheart, and after considerable soul-searching, we've decided to make a go of it, together. I've started bringing him to campus events and introducing him as "my friend" to those who knew my husband. It's awkward, but I'm over 70, and life is short. Am I wrong to introduce him as "my friend," or should I use a more generic "acquaintance" or "neighbor?" Or should I not introduce him and let people wonder?

Answer: Ms. Mentor is reminded of morbid poets like Thomas Gray, who described a "mute inglorious Milton" -- one who never did get his writings published. She also thinks of Edwin Arlington Robinson, whose "child of scorn," Miniver Cheevy, found daily life far too crass for his refined romantic tastes -- and so he "kept on drinking."

Which brings Ms. Mentor to today's correspondents, two of whom have unfulfilled dreams, and all of whom have kept on thinking.

Lawrence, pondering his options, is also plundering his wallet. On an adjunct's salary, which may be as little as $1,200 a course, Lawrence cannot pay back loans, raise a family, have a health crisis, travel outside his immediate vicinity, or do very many things that adults ought to have the right to do. A couple of lattes at Starbuck's could wipe out his book budget.

How long should he wait for that elusive tenure-track job, while his degree grows older? Ms. Mentor wonders if he has unusual accomplishments: a book on the verge of publication? A prestigious national award? Lawrence could still get lucky by networking with community colleges. He could win the lottery -- or become notorious for something. But he needs a flair factor to lift him above the herd.

Otherwise, adjuncting becomes more like an expensive hobby. Lawrence's teaching and writing talents would be better rewarded in public relations, advertising, computer work, nonprofit jobs, activism, tutoring, editing, technical writing, speech writing, or ghost writing. Or his adjuncting may suffice as the day job to shore up what really matters to him, such as music or film making.

But long-term adjuncting means losing self-respect. Friends and family rarely know the odds, that only 40 percent of English Ph.D.'s will ever get tenure-track jobs. Nonacademics rarely know that one has to be able to move anywhere, to strange and unknown locales, to land a semi-permanent, reasonably-paying job. Since the average Ph.D. in English takes 10 years to get the degree, Lawrence may be 40ish by now, very angry and very worried.

Ms. Mentor grieves for Lawrence of academia, and knows that adjuncts will spit and hiss about Yvette: "I should have such problems," they'll say.

Yet if Yvette stays in Ruralville, she will never find the joy in learning that she yearns for. She can change her criteria ("I've discovered quilting, and I love it"), or find an intellectual community online -- or spend the rest of her days in quiet desperation, as an academic Miniver Cheevy.

Meanwhile, unless it proves to be a best seller, Yvette's book will not hoist her into a new, wildly desirable category. Most departments with tenure lines hire new assistant professors or multipublished superstars -- and her book won't make her any more enticing to community colleges, the growth area where teaching is most important.

Yvette might get a job elsewhere as an administrator, if she can run a composition and rhetoric program, or has the experience to be hired as a dean.

Or she can take a big risk, and push herself away from Ruralville for a year.

It may be a sabbatical, or an unpaid leave, or a faculty exchange -- but she should move to a city where she would like to live. She can be a temporary office worker, as a way to meet "real world" people. She can devote each day to networking and schmoozing, making herself known, visiting the real-world places where an "English person" might work. It may turn out to be grueling, and she may discover that Ruralville is a pleasant womb after all.

But if it still sickens her, she should be bold, and quit.

Yes, that is a frightening thought, for academics -- as the late Leslie Fiedler wrote -- have a great tolerance for boredom and an enormous fear of risk. Yet if Yvette accepts stagnation, that will be her life. There is no second life coming; there is no vista of unlimited years in which to make a change, suddenly grow wings, or live in Paris. Yvette must seize the time -- as Sally has.

Sally could have immured herself -- spending her days at her beloved husband's nursing home and telling herself, against all reason, that enough loving care will somehow heal the broken synapses in his brain. The world is full of expectations that women will sacrifice themselves. Like adjuncts whose contracts are renewed only if they please and amuse adolescents, young women too often move to the rhythms of others. Only later in life, when most of the hurly burly's done, do women get to ask themselves, "What do I really want?"

That is what the late Carolyn G. Heilbrun called "the last gift of time," and Sally's gift to herself is the man she has chosen, the partner she deserves to call publicly, with all affection and respect, "my friend."

Miniver Cheevy spent his life railing against fate, and Lawrence and Yvette could do the same. Or they could refuse to wallow in the winter of their discontent, and instead follow Sally's example, knowing that for everything there is a season.

Question: I'm a new teacher with a go-getter student who wants to put his student-government election poster on my office door. But my senior colleague says it will look like I'm favoring one student over another and grossly electioneering, and it'll cause bad feelings that might fester. Am I a horrible coward and a traitor to the lofty goals of academic freedom if I decline the poster?

Answer: No.

Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor is currently being lambasted ("fogey!") by more than a dozen readers who do not share her amused, detached view of Facebook.com. It is not merely a teenaged playground, her correspondents insist. They love it for sharing pictures and news with friends and family, "but we always use privacy settings." Ms. Mentor was feeling archaic until, within a few days, a Maryland sorority was put on probation for drunken Facebook photos, and a Maryland university president had to apologize for tacky vacation photos (including a nude tapir) that were not supposed to be publicly available. Now Ms. Mentor wonders about Maryland as well as Facebook.

As always, Ms. Mentor welcomes queries, rants, and queries. Testy and bilious jibes are especially invited for the holiday season. Anonymity is guaranteed, and identifying details are always disguised. Ms. Mentor rarely answers personally, and she directs truth seekers to her archive, to The Chronicle's online forums, and to her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. Her Chronicle address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com

Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Chronicle.