What else is there?
On the bus to class the day I left for Ruritania, I ran into the guy from the Department from Hell who still recognizes me.
He said hi and asked “So are you teaching now?”
I didn’t hit him. I swear I didn’t. Not least because I do teach, now and then, and at Rohan I’d be teaching part of their library-studies undergraduate minor—which minor, by the way, I think is a remarkably cool idea that should be emulated elsewhere. I don’t know too many people whose lives wouldn’t be improved by fifteen or so credits of library studies.
Anyway, I told him about being close to library-school graduation, and about interviewing in Ruritania, and about digital librarianship. He gave me that face that lifetime academics give you when abruptly confronted with the notion that the world is larger than academia. (You know that face, right? The confused, slightly repulsed, but secretly somehow attracted face? That face. I had that face once. Haven’t used it in years.)
I will admit to wanting to smack him, though. It’s precisely that insularity that annoys non-academics about academia—and despite their noble cries about working toward an understanding of the entirety of humanity, humanities and social-science scholars are the likeliest to exhibit it, in my experience. My dad had it in spades, and (to my shame be it spoken) before I washed out of grad school, so did I.
Really, it’s no wonder people who leave academia at whatever stage get lost. When a fair plurality of those supposed to be their mentors and guides look at the profession with a clueless “What else is there?” well, what else is there? And who’s going to tell the apprentices they need to prepare for it? And who’s going to help them do that?
And who’s going to say the hard things? Things like: if you wash out here (which you very well may) you will start at the bottom of whatever profession you choose next; people with BAs and the years of experience you’re foregoing by being here will win over you every time. Things like: you can’t be monomaniacal about the academy, because it isn’t monomaniacal about you back. Things like: a professional degree or some other sort of professional or trade certification is a good defensive move.
Nobody. Nobody’s going to say these things, that’s who. Because, really, what else is there besides the professoriate, if the professoriate can see nothing but itself?
Seems to be a gender issue lurking, too. A couple of months ago, when David and I hit a rough spot over his (non-)plans to join the academic rat race, I got a lot of sympathy and excellent advice from women—female academics, wives and significant others of academics or proto-academics, others.
They sensibly told me that I was being silly. I’ve done the work and put in the time for the career I want; he hasn’t. It’s not just silly, it’s insane to put myself back in the service-sector mill, giving up everything I’ve worked for, on the off-chance his number will come up in the academic lottery. There’s sacrifice and then there’s martyrdom, they said, and we don’t recommend door number two.
What’d I get from the guys? One email. “Of course he wants an academic job,” it read (more or less; I haven’t gone looking for it). “What else does anybody get a Ph.D for?”
Insularity. Insularity. Insularity. And gender expectations. It is not coincidence that the advice I got diverged by gender.
I, you see, am simply expected by people such as the correspondent above to sacrifice whatever I have to in order that my husband realize academic ambitions (even when they are nebulous at best and entirely unrealistic at worst, an unfortunately common outlook that academia does nothing whatever to discourage in its apprentices). What does he have to sacrifice to enable me? Nothing. Nothing at all. Because hey, I’m only a girl and a librarian. He’s the Man and the Scholar.
Of course it’s not working out that way, fortunately for our marriage, our finances, and my sanity. I was about to go to the wall on that, to tell the truth. I’ve played Proto-Faculty Wife (and earned my Ph.T—Putting Hubby Through—degree in spades) for some years now and enough is bloody well enough. And after things between us blew up such that he couldn’t avoid thinking about it any longer, David decided he more or less agreed with me. And now things are better.
For us, at least. I can’t speak to the larger academic world; all I can do is shake my head at the brief glimpses I’ve been getting of it lately.