Too Much Information?

Question (from "Kara"): For an on-campus job interview, I was picked up at the airport by "Tammy," the administrative assistant of the department chairman, "Ted." To my surprise, Tammy also joined Ted and me for dinner. Most peculiar: They made me sit in the back seat. Weeks later, I found out that Ted and Tammy are conducting an affair that everyone knows about but no one mentions. Being with me was evidently one of their rare opportunities to be together in public at an elegant restaurant.

Question (from "Louella"): At my on-campus interview, Professor Up-and-Coming Lady took me for dinner with a graduate student from the search committee and Lady's best friend, not even an academic. After a few obligatory minutes, Lady spent all of her time talking (to her friend) about her recent breakup. I learned every juicy detail about her relationship with the dude, and what she was planning to do with their son, and how she could make enough money to support herself in the style to which she had become accustomed -- maybe by wheedling money out of her common-law mother-in-law, a hoity-toity rich lady of some local importance. Well, it was all fascinating, but what about me?

Question (from "Myrtle"): Recently I had to have a hysterectomy (fortunately, I didn't want children). When I came back to work, one of my (senior male) colleagues asked if I still had my ovaries, because if I did, I wasn't sterile since I could have a child with a surrogate. I know we are biologists, but this attention to my reproductive capacity seems ridiculous, at best, and more offensive than funny. The same colleague has also asked me why I am not living with a man. (I don't live with anyone and don't consider it his business.)

Answer: Ms. Mentor's first impulse is to grab a newspaper, smack a few snouts, and bellow, "No! No! Bad doggie!" But what differentiates scholars from schnauzers is the ability to be civilly silent, no matter the provocation, without having to be swatted first. (But lest she be misunderstood, Ms. Mentor notes that she does not support the swatting of any animals, except as a metaphor.)

Kara is rightly annoyed to be used as Ted and Tammy's cover for their clandestine romance. (Are they each married, or living with others? Is there some very strict don't-date-your-underlings policy?) Ms. Mentor also thinks it tacky to plant a job candidate in the back seat, as if she's a tyke riding along with them to McDonald's.

Still, Kara had the job candidate's opportunity of a lifetime. If she wisely ignored any meaningful glances, and stayed out of the way of anyone playing footsie under the table, Kara had the chance to find out how things really work at Ted College and in Tedville.

No one knows more than administrative assistants do. Tammy most likely grew up in Tedville and has lived there all her life. She knows about safe and slimy neighborhoods, adept and atrocious beauticians, markets and arts, sports and schools -- and ptomaine palaces and sadistic dentists to avoid. She knows the university better than Ted does: who's really in power, and what it takes to get tenure. She may not know much about your arcane field of study, but she knows all the department lore, and who buried which bodies.

Ms. Mentor hopes you befriended Tammy, slipped in a little self-promotion for your groundbreaking dissertation, and left them both with warm feelings about your charm and discretion.

Less-lucky Louella was barely on the same train with Up-and-Coming Lady, whose tale of sex and greed must have been even more stunning to the graduate-student committee member. One might say, gamely, that Lady was multitasking: interviewing a candidate, sorting out her own life, catching up with a friend, all on the department's time and dime. She might make a model administrator some day.

Ms. Mentor hopes that Louella was able to salvage something besides good gossip. Maybe Louella managed to slip in a sound bite about her cutting-edge dissertation. Maybe she managed to ask, "What's the best thing about Lady U?" (Never ask "What's the worst?" as it makes you seem like a fault finder or a depressive.) Ms. Mentor hopes that Louella was able to do more than smile wanly and feel embarrassed in front of the graduate student.

Maybe Lady needed a little kicking under the table, but a job candidate must always be serene and polite, no matter the provocation.

Ms. Mentor groans, and then ponders: Is it better to be ignored -- or to be singled out as the former possessor of a uterus?

At first Ms. Mentor thought Myrtle's colleague might just be socially maladroit, with the kind of odd-duckiness that, nowadays, is sometimes attributed to Asperger's syndrome. But Myrtle's colleague should have learned, or been taught, that one doesn't discuss private parts with less-than-close associates.

No matter how tempting, he should have known not to ask "Why?" about anything personal. "Why aren't you living with a man?" is on a par with "Why aren't you Christian?" or "Why don't you do something about your skin?" Ms. Mentor could go on, but there's already been too much information sharing. She doesn't want to know.

True friends learn to lie ("You always look great"), but all professionals should know when to remain silent -- and tutoring her colleague in basic social etiquette is not in Myrtle's job description. If Myrtle is tenured and has the bracingly rude temperament of Alice in the "Dilbert" comic strip, she can always yell down the hall after her nosy colleague: "None of your business, you freaking moron!"

Or Myrtle can write that to a friend, add a little rant, print it at home, read it aloud, feel a little guilty, and laugh herself sick. Then if there's an intrusive question later, she'll have gotten rid of her bile, and she can just smile or frown and say, "Thanks, but I'd rather not discuss that." If her colleague insists, she can shake her head and walk away.

When you're new and professionally vulnerable, you often have to be strategically silent, drinking in the gossip and averting your eyes from things you ought not to see. But once you're secure, you control the flow of information swirling around you. You can decide that silence is golden.

Or you can really swat back.

Question: Sometimes I dream it's the end of the semester, there's a course in advanced Turkish I was supposed to teach but didn't know about, and now I'm naked in front of the class, and I just remembered I don't know a word of Turkish. Is this dream normal?

Answer: Very.

Sage Readers: Ms. Mentor invites readers' thoughts about what should be said and what should be dreamt. She wonders if the classic academic anxiety dream -- I missed my class, I'm a fraud -- ever loosens its hold on the academic psyche. Are there any scholars who become less neurotic with age?

As always, Ms. Mentor welcomes gossip, vituperation, and queries. She regrets that she can rarely answer personally. All communications are confidential, and identifying details are changed in published letters. Your nightmare is safe with Ms. Mentor.

Ms. Mentor also directs interested readers to her archive and her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia. Her new volume, Ms. Mentor's Perfect Wisdom for the Academic Soul, will be out soon.