Recurrent Second-Guessing

Spinning another strand off Leuschke's post on pseudo/anonymity among academic bloggers, profgrrrrl writes about the factor of dress (especially for female academics) and the ramifications of one's sartorial choices. (She writes about other factors, too.)

Reading posts like that makes me realize the truth of Tim Burke's comment about grad school having an indelible effect on one's psyche, or, more to the point, the lingering effects of academic "failure." This weekend I was cheerfully flitting from one preoccupation to another -- spinning, knitting, reading about dye plants and growing flax at home, transplanting old plants and starting new ones (mint and lavender and several other herbs), ju-jitsu, yoga, animals and pets -- and thinking that work is really irrelevant in my life except as a source of income and internet access. Then I swing back to wondering about life in academia and the factors that led to my no longer having one.

As I noted at profgrrrl's, I've already second-guessed myself regarding my teaching (not inspired enough, not devoted enough, too lazy, too easily bored, sucking at lecture-writing), my research (too esoteric, not enough publications, not enough breadth, too interdisciplinary), even my voice (nasal, whiny, hyper) and body language (fidgetty, seemingly inattentive). Add dress to the mix -- unprofessional, too young, too informal, too hip, too something (I often interviewed in a light colored pant suit -- quite classy, but obviously out of place among the black skirt suits)...

The list goes on and on -- and what I think it demonstrates is the profound degree to which I've absorbed the rhetoric of self-determination. That is, I've been firmly socialized into the belief that all success or failure can be attributed ultimately to personal effort and worth. Paradoxically, given that my training and education makes it easy for me to see structural forces at work in other people's lives, grad school and academia in general serve to reinforce that belief. If your work is not up to snuff, it's no one's fault but your own. If your paper is late, it's because you didn't work hard enough or efficiently enough. If your reading of the text is at odds with your classmates' and professor's, it's because you didn't read carefully enough. And so on.

On one level, I think this sort of critical hyper-responsibility is a good thing -- if nothing else, it encourages people to think about the larger implications of their individual actions -- but personally... As much as I hate encountering the clueless and self-absorbed out in general society, I have to admit there are times when I envy them as well. What would it be like to live life blithely confident of one's abilities and success? To not give a rat's a-- about the judgements of others? Coupled with ignorance and selfishness, these are appalling traits -- but imagine if they were combined with an informed awareness of the world's complexities and compassion for others? That would be amazing indeed.

Which is seemingly a long way from the question of whether it's good to blog under one's own name in academia, but I think the connection is less tenuous than it first appears. Pseudonymity allows me to be more authentically me (albeit within self-imposed constraints) without the distorting veils of appearance and physical presence. It may well be that many academics blog pseudonymously to avoid real-life consequences of their blogging (which is indeed partly the case here); I would argue that it also offers the chance to be judged on the "content of one's character" rather than superficial things like dress, skin color, hair style, etc. At the very least, the words and ideas tend to come first, images of the poster later.

Indeed, it is this opportunity to engage with people and ideas on my own terms without the complications of personalities and appearance that drew me to academia in the first place. Shows what I knew!

Comments

[ladygoat]

I too was drawn to academia because it seemed so pure, just ideas and hard work and careful thought. It didn't take long to realize how just like the regular world it is: based on politics, images, alliances, who you know, etc. It was most disheartening.

[yami]

Is clueless self-absorption really compatible with an understanding of complexities and compassion? I don't think I've ever met anyone who fits both those descriptions. It seems like clueless self-absorption would by definition preclude that gut-level sense of "there but for grace go I" that produces so much empathy and understanding, without which one gets a sort of well-meaning but puzzled niceness. I've felt it from people who've never experienced a mood disorder, and I think I've given it off to some of my math tutees... it's better than nothing but not always very helpful.

[Rana]

Hmmm. You're right. I was thinking more of the serene confidence that often accompanies cluelessness, rather than cluelessness per se.

[Michelle]

Rana, I think that "serene confidence" accompanying cluelessness could be adequately termed as satisfied with one's self? I've struggled a bit with the biting judgment calls in me that seem to come snapping at the heels of people who appear smugly satisfied, and then I realize I've added much of the "smugness" to their character via my own projection and it is their very nature of being satisfied, and the elusive nature of that for me, that prompts me to think they must be "clueless" because after all, who could possibly be satisfied! (What an extraordinarily long tortured sentence.)

Interestingly though, I found myself perhaps at the other end of that spectrum in blogging. I'm not sure if it is my perhaps questionable decision to be open, or if it's my nature to not be private, or if it's the disconcerting feeling I had at one point that no one could really understand me and what I was saying and what my life was like if they didn't know what I looked like. The various factors: my history, my physical appearance, my brain, my ideas, do seem to be all bound up in who I am.

That said (re: the anonymity of physical presence in the blogosphere), I've been surprised that some people look rather much as I thought they would. Maybe sometimes it is more cohesive.

And btw, I think a neutral pantsuit sounds awesome. Many in academia can't dress worth a dime, anyway. :p

[bitchphd]

Then, of course, there's the second-guessing of the people who *haven't* left academia. Like, god, maybe if I go do something else I can stop being a self-absorbed neurotic freak ;)

[wolfangel]

As I mentioned at infavorofthinking, though, pseudonymity is not enough -- though many of the recent additions to academic blogs are challenging some of the issues. Discussions of sex and looks, but I'm also looking to see a little bit less norming of *styles* of writing in blogs. Yes, there are exceptions, but mostly among the marginal members (in the IA-ish definition of marginal).

Don't dress too much up; or too much down (unless you're tenured and male, in which case you can be as scraggly as you want).

It's easy to blame yourself for everything; it's also easy to blame yourself for nothing. It's not too hard to find a reasonable balance for other people, but much hardest to find it for yourself.

[Michelle]

"unless you're tenured and male, in which case you can be as scraggly as you want" -- Love it and am LMAO at that, WA! Isn't that the truth.

(LMAO=Laughing My Ass Off for anyone who doesn't know. My SIL is teaching me all these groovy new abbreviations that all the mommies use on the mommy boards she visits, ha.)

[Rana]

Hee! I'm laughing at that one too (as I have seen some VERY scraggly tenured males!).

It is tricky to imagine a form of confidence that doesn't rest on cluelessness or smugness (the first being born of ignorance and therefore vulnerable to cluesticking, the second due to a belief in others' inferiority). More accurately, as I think about it, it's difficult to imagine HOW to develop that type of confidence -- I _can_ imagine a sort of yogic or Buddha-like serenity, which is what I think I was groping toward.

Confidence confuses me -- can you tell?

[wolfangel]

Yes. It's really hard to feel "Yes, okay, I'm able to do these things", without the "and no one else is" or -- I can't get the balance, either. I guess I don't know (m)any people who have proper balance of confidence to learn from.

[Graham]

OK, I'll be the token dead white male contrarian (it's been a long day of wrangling with movers, so I'm all warmed up).

Tim Burke's essay on grad school is embarrassingly bitter and ill-considered. I presume that he meant well (and I do see a need for prospective grad students to hear his points), but all that really comes through is his feeling of betrayal. For a comparison, imagine that I had written a post saying, "Should I start a non-anonymous blog? Short answer: no. Long answer: maybe, but only if you are willing to lose your marriage, your friends, your job, and your self-respect."

I understand that I am but a simple data point, but I am a counterexample to Tim's claims. I did go to grad school because I couldn't think of anything better to do, and it was absolutely the right thing for me. I learned a staggering amount about mathematics, and about myself. I got lucky in a hundred different ways, and I am grateful for all that luck (not to mention the people in my life at the time). But grad school can be something other than pure misery.

Also, Rana says, "Pseudonymity allows me to be more authentically me (albeit within self-imposed constraints) without the distorting veils of appearance and physical presence." I'm torn about this one; on one hand, I want to cheer, because that's great. On the other, I don't know why physical anything has anything to do with it. I don't think anyone here knows what I look like, and I certainly don't know what they look like.

I completely agree with Michelle about projection and confidence.

Finally, I know lots of scraggly tenured males, well-dressed tenured males, scraggly male grad students, well-dressed male grad students (fewer of these), and all the female versions of all those, with maybe "frumpy" subbed in for "scraggly". What was that again about ignoring physical appearance?

Harrumph. Ok, now I'm done being a jerk for today.

[Rana]

Eh, you're not being a jerk, just cranky. Crankiness is okay. Heck, if it were banned here, I wouldn't have a blog!

The part about Tim Burke's warning I was thinking of specifically (and would have linked to if there were targets available) was the section where he says that the effects of grad school on one's psyche are un-do-able. It's true. I can't turn off that highly refined and trained critical analysist aspect of myself, even when looking at my own life. Would I be a better or happier person if I hadn't earned my doctorate? Who knows -- but it's pretty clear (to me at least) that I would be a _different_ person. So now I've come out on the other side, into an environment where those trained reflexes and habits of thought are both irrelevant and often actively damaging to my mental and employment health, yet they are still there. What to do? I don't know, so I end up blogging about the effects of the mismatch -- again, the inner critic can't help it. Round and round...

And most days, I _liked_ grad school!

As for physical appearance and pseudonymity -- if you know my real name, you can find pictures of me online. And I'm self-conscious about my appearance -- I often feel gawky, fidgetty and oddly proportioned, and I hate the sound of my own voice (which you wouldn't know to hear me babble on and on and on...) -- so existing in a space where *I* don't have to be aware of it is refreshing. In real life, I tend to take the view that other people can take a flying flip regards my appearance -- and I suspect that this has, at least in a few instances, worked against me.

Which is where I think the "scraggy guy with tenure" thing comes in -- if you're male and tenured, appearance can usually be ignored or forgiven or treated as a charming eccentricity. If you're female, or new, what you wear does matter in how your colleagues judge not only you, but your ideas. It's stupid, but I don't make the rules. (I just blunder into them and stub my toes.)

[wolfangel]

I know lots of well-dressed academics of both genders and lots of poorly-dressed ones. But the particular brand I'm thinking of -- torn jeans, old t-shirt -- has been, in my experience, limited to tenured male professors. Not most of them, but only them.

Most people don't think grad school was pure misery. But it's not unallayed joy, either; it's not the life of the mind where nothing else -- looks, how you feel about music or food or wine -- matters.

[Graham]

Yes, wolfangel, but if you're going to restrict your sample that much, you're going to get similar results. Also, I have been known to wear both torn jeans and old t-shirts (the latter more than the former), and am definitely not tenured. Finally, there is a female tenured faculty member here at Toronto who wears exclusively jeans and t-shirts (she's the next associate chair).

It's possible that discipline plays a role here: mathematicians, and hard scientists in general, are more likely to wear the uniform you describe than most other academics, in my experience.

Rana, I understand the reluctance to open yourself up to image-googling. I think, though (and it's absolutely possible I'm way off base here), that the danger of having your readers google you if your real name is known, while real, is smaller than you think. But if you're going to be safe, you're doing the right thing.

You're right, wolfangel, grad school is not a paradise where nothing but the contents and speed of your brain matter. And if people think that going in, they should be disillusioned. But I don't think there isn't any such thing, and if there were, I wouldn't want to go there. Sounds awful -- no wine or food? Why isn't it enough that you get to spend your days working to understand things that are interesting to you, maybe even beautiful, using your best talents as best you can? And someone pays you to do it? (Admittedly, not very much, but plenty for beer and spaghetti, anyway.) Plus there's the whole molding-young-minds angle.

[Rana]

Well, I'm not _that_ worried about image googling per se, though the thought of people messing around with my picture bugs me (do men worry about women fantasizing about their photos, and, if so, is it threatening or enticing? I'd guess most women do worry, and not think it a good thing) as does the notion that someone might walk up to me on the street someday, having recognized me from my picture. But image googling and name googling go hand in hand, and name googling is more of an issue.

Partly it's not wanting employers to know me, but, honestly, it's more personal than that. I don't want my friends and family and colleagues idly surfing the web (I know for a fact they do google me!) and stumbling on the blog. It's not so much that I think that they'd think less of me, but that they would react inappropriately to what I post. I want to whine and rant and opine and get it out of my system and go back to my ordinary routine afterward. While I love feedback from people who've taken the time to read my posts and get used to my style and frets, it would be terrifying for people who know *me* to be reading this and surprise me with their knowledge. A few trusted friends do read this blog and know who I am -- but I know that they will not suddenly start looking at me with worry in their eyes if I melt down from time to time. If my mother, on the other hand, were to read this, it would make discussions about babies and marriage even more of a landmine than they are -- and she loves and supports me!

And I do know that there are some creeps out there probably reading this blog. It's a cost of having a public life, even as small a one as this -- but, as I said, I've been stalked in real life, and I don't intend to make a repeat experience easy for potential stalkers.

On clothes -- I'm glad you worked for a relaxed department. None of mine were that much so, at least when you were "on-duty" for teaching or faculty meetings (as opposed to popping in to pick something up). And there was a double standard; I wore a baggy flannel shirt to campus once, on a day I wasn't teaching, and it was pretty clear that this was too informal for even my relaxed colleagues. And I've heard too many catty remarks at conferences or job interviews to believe it's not a factor.

And on the last point -- I agree with you in some regards -- living the life of the mind at grad school was exciting and interesting, and in some ways I'm quite glad I went through the experience. But in others... in retrospect I probably would have had fewer negative ramifications relative to doing so if I'd waited until I was in my 50s or so. Too much important time -- especially biological time, which affects female people far more -- has gone under the bridge for me to feel happy about having spent seven years playing with nothing tangible to show for it.

I mean, geez, I'm working an entry-level job that makes no use of my training, for pay only slightly better than what I made as a TA, and still living in a rental apartment with no real furniture other than folding bookcases, and no clear intimations that I'll ever have much more than that. Some days I'm okay with this, even content, but others I am very much not.

I'm not saying that this is grad school's fault, nor that life would necessarily have been roses if I'd dived straight into corporate work as a B.A., but, delightful as living the life of the mind was, the cost has been high for indulging myself in it at that point in my life. Whether it's too high remains to be seen.

[Timothy Burke]

Graham, I myself am very happy about the overall outcomes of my graduate training, very non-bitter, something which I got a lot of flack about when I expressed it on my blog.

Moreover, as I note in the essay, some people have a great time in graduate school. I certainly had some very good *experiences*--the group of other students I studied with changed my life, and my main advisor was a terrific mentor in every respect.

The main thrust of that essay is simply this: that graduate school is for the most part about professionalization and socialization, NOT about exploratory learning. And I think many potential grad students are unprepared for that. The consequence of this is whether it's a good experience or a bad experience, it can't be undone: it transforms your sense of self, your social identity, your metrics for what is good and bad, smart and dumb. So I really don't want anyone approaching grad school as an experiment, something they'll see whether they like or not. It has very permanent consequences.

It also has very high opportunity costs for students in the humanities and some of the social sciences. This is where your experience was different in a more structured way that has to do with what you studied. The natural sciences and some of the social sciences offer many more possible uses for doctoral training, many more outcomes if you change your mind about academia or find it difficult to get a good job.

Moreover, I'd say that graduate education in the sciences tends to be more fundamentally about the acquisition of knowledge and to have a more structured and professional system for integrating graduate students into the work of their mentors. The sciences are fundamentally collaborative; the humanities are largely entrepreneurial and individualistic. So I think many students in the humanities find to their dismay that what they liked about the humanities as undergraduates is largely lacking in graduate education, and that there is a much higher level of essentially bullshit kinds of stuff going on. The professionalizing character of graduate education is more at odds with the flourishing of productive, generative inquiry in the humanities, in my opinion.

[wolfangel]

My definition of scraggly is clothes I would wear to do dirty work in, but nothing else. And I've known, through several institutions, several men who wore those clothes -- but only tenured (or tenure-track and bright-shining-star in Research I schools) men. I've seen this through several disciplines, both science and non. I have, of course, seen lots of women wear jeans. Appearance matters, but in subtle ways. In business, you know what is and isn't proper attire. In academia, no.

Ask -- I think Cindy -- about the "you must love Brie and Brahms!" mentality. There is a certain amount of fitting in with other, non-academic beliefs (as well as some fitting in with academic beliefs and styles, though this part is probably unique to humanities/SS).

But what I was saying wasn't that for the 5 or whatever years you're in graduate school that the only thing that matters is the life of the mind, or that all you talk about with your friends is your research -- it's that some of the things that were supposed to be less important -- how you look, how you dress, what you drink -- are still important. Linguistics is full of ex-science people, so half of the people are sci-fi fans, play board & computer & role-playing games, and these are fine. But there's a certain amount of no! pop culture is bad! mentality, and there's a great deal of attractiveness playing a role.

As much as I am sometimes bitter -- about, also, some aspects I will not make public -- I am very happy I went; and happy I left when I did. Two years did change some of my thoughts about what is and isn't good, relevant, important, and about who I am, and in ways I don't think should necessarily part of academia.

[sappho]

About "popular culture is bad": the longer I'm in academia, the more pronounced this seems (maybe even in the departments that study cultural texts?). Today, I asked a friend (a fellow-Deanite) if she'd seen Howard's speech last night and was told [in what felt like a scolding tone] "I listened on NPR; we haven't watched TV in four years." And we're not even actual academics; we're in administration!!

[Rana]

I have to say that I am _very_ glad that my grad department was never stuffy about popular culture. Opera and symphonies, Survivor, Buffy and Trek, Brie and wine, CheezWhiz and Bud, nylons and suits, hippy sundresses and Birks, button-downs and old T-shirts -- all good (at least in terms of acceptability. I won't drink Bud. Yucky.) :)

On the other hand, that, coupled with an equally informal undergraduate experience, probably meant that I never got the memo about the importance of learning to mask my idiosyncratic tendencies in thought and dress in less-forgiving arenas within academia. I learned, instead, the hard way. Don't discount my experiences, please -- I didn't make them up to make a point. The point is that they did happen, and do happen, often to women and the untenured more than to tenured men, and to imply that they don't while arguing that they shouldn't (I agree) is disingenuous.

Anyhoo, on the pseudonymity thing, I see very few drawbacks to being pseudonymous, and a fair number of advantages. At the same time, I see a lot of disadvantages to blogging under one's real name, and not so many benefits. Obviously -- and this is the most important point -- your mileage may vary. What's the point of challenging others' rationales if what you're doing is working for you?

(Which could apply to grad school and a host of other things, as I think about it.)

[Michelle]

Cons include not always feeling comfortable in posting honest rants. It has been my practice, but lately, I've sometimes been irritated by real-life questions relating to the blog, at times that I don't always want to discuss it. The beauty of the blog discussion is it is yours at will. Answering the phone and having a question posed or an observation about lack of crazed blogging is not exactly what I want from this experience. A minor by-product and usually headed off easily (thanks to the fact that I have, by choice, few friends, and they understand me) but I could see it getting uncannily hairy for some people.

Some of the above comments about grad school... I don't know. My experience with classes has been very positive and with the exception of one class, all much more enjoyable than any work in professional or academic settings in about ten years. For me, the struggle has always been the balance with my family.

I did agree with T Burke's last paragraph comparing the sciences. One of the women I worked with this year is married to the associate dean of the natural sciences schma schma whatever. The attention given to the new faculty, coupled with the attention given to graduate students, oh, along with the mentoring to grad students seeking outside funding for research, really isn't paralleled at all in the humanities, at least where I am.