When the Personal Intrudes on the Professional

By Samara Madrid, Joseph Flynn, and Andrew Kemp

Samara Madrid: I look once more at my eHarmony account and realize that no one has responded to my "start communication" requests. Could it be the Ph.D.? Maybe it's my disclosure that all of my reading is related to academe? Or perhaps it's because I listed my "interests" as work, food, and sleep?

How does a 38-year-old single heterosexual female assistant professor find the time and courage to develop a healthy and meaningful romantic relationship while trying to write grants, attend meetings, publish articles, and get decent teaching evaluations?

As of now, I have communicated with two men on eHarmony, both of whom seem to be impressed that I have a doctorate. One likes to refer to me as Dr. Madrid in most e-mail messages, and the other asked me to send an abstract from my latest article. How romantic.

But there have been no innuendos, flirtations, or sweet nothings. No, they want to know how academic life is treating me. I tell them that I am online looking for dates, not collegiality, which pretty much sums up my social life in my first year at a new university: nonexistent.

DeKalb, Ill., is a wonderful town, surrounded by cornfields and located about 60 miles west of Chicago. In the winter it's a very snowy and cold small town. It takes me a minute to drive through the heart of town. Literally. I timed it today. Needless to say, the excitement and "heat" in my social life comes from my excursions with another new faculty member to Wendy's for a Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

I had some spice in my life prior to becoming an assistant professor. In fact, I had a boyfriend up until a few weeks ago. The problem was that he lived six hours away. When I became an assistant professor and moved to Illinois, I also left behind meaningful personal and professional relationships that I developed while getting my Ph.D. in Ohio. As much as I would have liked to sustain those relationships, it's not so easy when you put two states, the high cost of gas, and a demanding schedule between yourself and those you've left behind.

A friend jokingly mentioned that women have to be nuns to get tenure. Is that true? Will I be left navigating, by myself, the landscape of a new town, profession, and social identity for the next five years? Do I need to take a vow of celibacy to make it in academe? And most important, is it all worth it?

I think so. Despite the lack of a social life, I find myself thanking the universe and the university for bringing me to this campus, for no other reason but this one: A few months ago, driving above the required speed limit, listening to Natalie Merchant, looking at the Chicago city skyline, I was overcome with a sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Being here, alone, and doing this felt just right. No rationalizations, reasons, or explanations.

I will try to remember that epiphany the next time I pull up my eHarmony account and find that my new love "match" lives 120 miles away, has been married three times, and lists the word "fishing" in every description about his life. But hey, I do like sushi.

Joseph Flynn: Race dominates my life. Partly because I am a black man and confronting race is often status quo. But I also choose to investigate race, specifically whiteness. Our society cannot fully address racism until we have a clearer understanding of the role that whiteness takes in shaping institutions and social relations. My personal beliefs are joined with my professional agenda. But that highway of the personal and the professional takes unexpected turns.

A few years ago, I was teaching a course that focused on structural inequity. We were discussing white privilege, and the students were contemplative and engaged. Then a white student sitting in the middle of the class interjected, "All this race stuff wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for people like you and the NAACP." Wow.

I did not respond to the assertion for I was not sure what would come out of my mouth; I let the students respond. I was happy that the comment was met with criticism that pointed back to the course materials. I was also happy that a student with a challenging opinion felt "safe" enough in my class to voice it. My professional side was vindicated. But my personal side? The sting lingered; it was not merely an admonishment of high-minded ideas. It was about me. "People like you," the student had said. At that moment the demarcation of identity no longer mattered. The professional was the personal.

But let's look at that intersection another way because I am not always the innocent victim of those opposed to my ideas.

Around Christmastime, I was out shopping for a printer at one of those chain photography stores. When I walked in, I found a great deal, a $100 rebate, and went to ask about it. When I got to the counter, I pulled out my earbuds and a young brotha, about 30 years old, greeted me. I told him what I wanted and he told me that I had to buy a camera to get the rebate.

I protested, "It doesn't say that in the ad!"

He went to check and came back with, "Sorry but you gotta buy a camera."

I flipped. "Well I want to speak to the manager!"

"I am the manager," he pleasantly replied.

I asked with surprise, "You're the manager?!" Right after I said it, I realized what I had done. I always tell teachers in training, "Don't prejudge your students," but on this day I was guilty of that myself.

What made it worse was that I had assumed the manager would be white. I could say it was the stress of the holidays, but it wasn't. The fact of the matter is, I am flawed. Despite what I profess and study, I struggle as well. But I did that to another brotha and I know exactly how he may have felt, being slighted and questioned about his status and knowledge because of his race. I am sure that some day, in the classroom, I will recount that story to help students see that addressing race is a lifelong process.

I later returned to the store and apologized to him. It's funny. I know all these theories that help explain so much of our social world, but at the end of the day, I am still learning how to be a person and a professional.

Andrew Kemp: Finding a position on the tenure track was stressful: the preparation, the interviews, the completion of my dissertation, the waiting, the negotiating, the acceptance, and now the job. Those sources of stress have been replaced with new ones: publication, committee work, new preps, politics, teaching, advising, doctoral committees, and the like. But in truth, my job stress pales in comparison to the stress of life, in particular, the stress of picking up and moving our family across the country.

When I accepted this position, I was just finishing my dissertation at the University of Central Florida. When we moved here, we bought a beautiful house, wildly above our expectations. Our daughters were at a new school that was walking distance from the house. My wife found a teaching job at a local high school. We were living a dream.

However, my wife's job was not all what it had seemed to be. She hated the working conditions. She hated the drive. She hated the job. Slowly, her indignation toward the place turned into anxiety. After a few months, she quit. Soon, she found herself sleeping a lot, lacking energy, and just feeling bad. She didn't seem like herself anymore.

Soon I found myself taking on most of the responsibilities of the household. I was making most of the meals, getting the girls ready for school and then for bed. I was doing most of laundry, most of the cleaning, and most of the day-to-day parenting that my young children needed.

I found it harder and harder to sleep. Every noise made me jolt awake. My wife's condition made her dizzy and unbalanced. I worried that if she got up in the night, and she often did, she would fall down the stairs. Just before Christmas, after a call to 911, we ended up in the emergency room. She had passed out and started throwing up blood. What was happening to her? To me? To us?

Here I was, professionally, having the job of a lifetime, and here she was having trouble having a life. How had our dreams, our new life, our new house, our new adventure, turned into pain, anxiety, depression, blood, and the emergency room? I called my faculty mentor to explain my situation. Her only advice: family first. The job would still be there.

Things are slowly improving, though we still have some bad days. We found out that much of the anxiety that my wife was feeling, was well, anxiety. Leaving her job had helped. But part of her problem was gallstones. Her doctor found that she had hundreds of them, and said she had probably been having gallstone attacks in the middle of the night that were waking her up and throwing off her sleep patterns. That, combined with the stress of the move, took a toll on her body and mind. Over the winter break, she had surgery. Since then, she has gotten a little better. So have we.

All Three of Us: Being a new professor is a time-consuming, stressful, rewarding, and exhilarating space to live in. We have found that the professional is the personal, and vice versa. Getting an assistant professorship is a dream come true, but it still has the same problems and pitfalls of any other job. We have to learn to balance and embrace our social identities in both spheres and not let one dominate the other. We are colleagues, teachers, and researchers. We are friends, lovers, and parents. Most of all we are human, both personally and professionally.