MS. MENTOR

Disgruntled and Distressed

Without routine friendly interaction, many an academic turns to brooding, fuming, and toting up injustices

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Question (from "Hall"): I should know better. After 20 years as a staff member at Regional U, I left last year for a similar job at bigger, supposedly better Prestigious Flagship U. That meant moving 100 miles away from my spouse, but our children are grown and gone andmy new job seemed like a chance to make it in the big time.

It's turned into a horror show. The budget is being slashed, the people are hostile and negative, and the dean couldn't care less. Two households are expensive, and I'm contemplating what might be career suicide: taking an administrative job at Small Community College just to get back to my home. Will I be burning all my bridges if I do that?

Question (from "Mill"): Just finished my fourth year on the tenure track, and I'm reeling from the hostility and misdeeds of my senior colleagues. One full professor foisted a major administrative task on me, then took credit for the results. Another one scheduled a meeting that included me and the department chair, then rescheduled it for a time he knew I couldn't come, making me look like an irresponsible no-show. Now a recently tenured colleague has taken to publicly belittling my entire field of study.

A few years ago, the former department chair discouraged me from even reading my teaching evaluations, but his successor raised a huge stink over them when I applied for contract renewal. That led to two years' surveillance of my teaching. I was vindicated but lost my research life during that period.

I once loved teaching, but now I can barely stand the sight of students. I was once a highly productive scholar, but now I struggle even to remember my research projects. I used to be sociable, but now I regard many of my colleagues with pure fear and loathing. I'm not yet 40, but I've already become a bitter, cranky, broken-down academic.

I now have a new, more sympathetic chair, some supportive senior colleagues, and I have a yearlong research sabbatical. But I'm still struggling with mental and emotional burnout. Can I recover my love for my work, my idealism about the classroom, my interest in my research, and my ability to feel good about myself?

Answer: Now is the summer of our disgruntlement.

Summer gives you time for less-than-sunshiney thoughts. Without routine friendly interaction, many an academic turns to brooding, fuming, and toting up injustices. Mill has a long list, and Hall is working on one. And while Ms. Mentor believes that untenured academics should keep careful career records, an enemies list is a blueprint for burnout.

Ms. Mentor would never claim that academic bosses and senior colleagues always behave uprightly, generously, and fairly. Academic life is often disillusioning to newbies, especially at research universities where, as the saying goes, the fights are so intense because the stakes are so small.

Everyone, everywhere, occasionally finds big dollops of awkwardness, jealousy, and competition. Ms. Mentor might call this (sigh) the Human Condition. Academics, though, have more privacy, control, and intellectualexcitement — including the chance to forget last semester's failures. Unless you do the same thing the same way every day, or choose to give repetitive lectures fromyellowed notes, you'll never get carpal tunnel of the mind.

But sometimes the adventure falters. Hall's leap from Regional to Prestigious U (Midlife Challenge!) looks more like a pratfall. Indeed, the lure of "prestige" for underpaid academics has always struck Ms. Mentor as a little silly — a vigorous and valiant attempt to impress shallow people, most of whom you don't even know.

If love and meaningful work are the things that really matter, Hall has neither at PU. Ms. Mentor sees no reason for Hall to stay there, loveless and scorned.

Haul on home, Hall! advises Ms. Mentor, but do it without burning bridges or making enemies.

"After highly productive and gratifying years at Regional U. and PU," you can write, "I'm expanding my horizons with yet another new challenge: an excellent position at Small Community College. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity with PU." Wave graciously, smile as you leave, and know they'll miss you.

Mill is a tougher case.

Newbies often think that entrenched professors and administrators are in cahoots: They want to make Mill squirm. Yes, there are bullies in academe, Ms. Mentor admits, but it's rarely in anyone's interest to attack and belittle a new colleague. (Departments that become known as "snake pits" have trouble hiring.)

Some of Mill's woes may just be unlucky timing, being around and available for some things and not others. Ms. Mentor hopes that Mill always follows up with cordial, good-soldier memos, despite the provocations: "I'm glad to have had the opportunity to do the administrative task" and "I'm eager to meet with you at your earliest convenience."

The colleague who disses Mill's field should get a gracious smile: "Thanks for sharing your ideas."

As for those who criticize Mill's teaching: "I'm working on my pedagogy. I'm attending sessions at our teaching and learning center, I'm putting together my teaching portfolio, and asking award-winning colleagues for advice."

No doubt Mill would like to cudgel someone. But being gracious and dedicated to self-improvement makes you look (and sometimes feel) saintly. You want to learn. You want to grow. You want to get good recommendations.

The only behavior you control is your own.

Mill is already getting the medication that is most often prescribed for burnout: a sabbatical. During that year Mill can mend fences (lunches and coffees with colleagues), read about and study good teaching, and learn how to get better teaching evaluations. Mill can schedule part of each day for renewal: sleep, music, exercise, good food, and exploring the world outside academe. Like Thoreau, many people find that a sabbatical smoothes edges and brings back the enthusiasm. Others decide to change and re-create their own lives.

Mill, feeling beleaguered, may not really want to be an academic. The jostling and the animosities may have killed the joy. Teaching may be terrifying.

Sabbatical is a safe time to peek outside the ivory tower, interview for other possibilities, and plot a gracious escape. Sometimes a burning bridge is really an opening door.

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Question: Having been a victim of rude, inconsiderate hiring committees, am I a Bad Person if I hope that the worst one hires an alcoholic creationist embezzler who bought his degrees online?

Answer: Er …

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Sage Readers: Knowing it is never too early to plan one's job hunt, Ms. Mentor recommends the long-running Career Talk column (see http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/archives/columns/career_talk), The Chronicle's forums (see http://chronicle.com/forums), and the latest (fourth) edition of The Academic Job Search Handbook by Julia Miller Vick and Jennifer S. Furlong.

Ms. Mentor rarely answers letters personally, but she reads and digests them all and always welcomes new problems to solve. All queries, rants, rumors, and dream reports (of which there are many) are confidential, and Ms. Mentor has already forgotten your screen name.