in the real world, Ms. Mentor knows, you might be stereotyped not as lazy, but as “crippled,” with all the unspoken bigotries that evokes. You might be patronized, or your disability might be used (covertly) as an excuse not to hire you: “Can we afford…?” The Americans with Disabilities Act, like Affirmative Action, encourages well-intentioned people and smites the most egregious, but it cannot tell Ableist U. that they must hire you.
And so what you have is an educational challenge: How do you teach possible bosses to see past your disability to your many unique talents? How can you make your disability unimportant—or even turn it into an advantage?
You've already mentioned the simplest way out: to pretend you don't have a disability at all. But that entails risks (“I might hurt myself”). And over a two-day visit, you know you'll need to sit down often, while your hosts might be expecting you to hoof long distances in snow and ice.
You could be “found out.”
Here Ms. Mentor reminds her learned readers that academia today is a tough world. Your choices aren't really whether to be hired “as disabled” or as “not disabled.” The real question for any job candidate is: How can I get hired at all?
And so Ms. Mentor proposes a different strategy for your consideration: hiding in plain sight. Rather than concealing your disability, you might decide to flaunt it, by getting a crutch or a cane—a wooden one, so that your disability seems temporary. You can casually tell hirers ahead of time that you've been injured and will be using a “sympathy stick.” The point is to make the disability visible—but transcendable.
Before your talk, you can prepare small talk and little jokes about your new implement. You can freely say that since you've had the crutch or cane for only a couple of weeks, you're not completely comfortable with it. You hope that everyone will sympathize; you don't know how long you'll have to use it.
In a presentation, you can tell your audience, “I wish I had two legs to stand on.” If it's germane, you can comment on famous characters with disabilities—on Lord Byron's clubfoot, or Alexander Pope's crooked spine, or the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You can note that Charles Dickens's Tiny Tim and his crutch are still trotted out to do good every Christmas. (If you feel, as Ms. Mentor does, that Tim is a mawkish little twit, surpassed only by the truly insufferable Barney—you should keep that critical insight to yourself.)
You can even complain with gentle humor, “I wanted to get ribbons for my crutch in your university's colors, but they didn't have them where I live.” Ms. Mentor predicts that your hosts will find this enormously flattering—and before you leave campus, someone will almost certainly come up with the ribbons, and maybe even a pennant.
Is this deceptive?
Has anyone lied?
No. And you will also have shown possible future colleagues that people with disabilities aren't freaks, self-pitiers, cripples, or fragile pieces of glass. Your good humor about your disability cannot help but be winning, like the cagey wit of Lily Tomlin's paraplegic character Crystal. (When a kid asks, “Are you a ride?” the wheelchaired Crystal says she's the best ride there ever was. And unlike walkies, she never has to worry about getting hurt.)
Ms. Mentor recommends that you listen to Lily Tomlin's routines, memorize them, and filch lines shamelessly: telling a story well is one sign of a good teacher. Unless your hosts have hearts of stone and souls of steel, those who meet you will root for you. They'll feel good watching you succeed; they'll be kind to you; they'll laugh with you.
You'll also have won in the main challenge for all job candidates, disabled or pre-disabled: How do I stand out from the crowd and make them want me?
When the hiring faculty makes its decision, you'll be memorable: “the woman with the crutch and the terrific sense of humor.” They'll like your style; they'll congratulate themselves on having the good sense to hire you despite the “handicap” they witnessed. (And if they don't offer you the job, some of them will feel very guilty. That's good.)
But even Ms. Mentor cannot guarantee that you'll be hired—whether you hide your disability or flaunt it. Some faculties are hopelessly dour and sour, dedicated to shooting themselves in the foot. Two decades ago, for instance, the University of Wisconsin rejected a stellar junior candidate because they felt she was “too lively”—and she now edits the major journal in American literature.
But for now, Ms. Mentor emphasizes, all you need is a foot in the door. After that, your hip and the rest of you will follow.
Any university will be lucky to have you, and for your best asset: your brain.
Telephone Tremors
Q: As a job seeker, I've experienced a new form of hiring torture: the telephone interview. I have come close to only two tenure-track jobs in two years. Both have used telephone interviews to narrow their field of candidates from ten to the three they would invite to campus.
The first phone interview came at 8 P.M., with a male interviewer who introduced himself and asked if this was a good time to talk. He mentioned the name of his school, and quickly reaching for pen and paper, I wrote a note to my companion to retrieve my application file. I had applied to 104 colleges that year and had absolutely no recollection of this particular school. The conversation went poorly; the interviewer was not in my discipline (he held a fine arts degree in photography); and I didn't know the needs of his institution. I vowed never to let myself be taken by surprise like that again.
So, the following year, I developed a strategy. If a phone-interview call came out of the blue, I would politely express great interest in the caller and the institution, but say that this was not a good time to talk and suggest that we arrange a convenient time for the next day. Then I'd have twenty-four hours to get to the library, read the catalog, and prepare my answers.
Another call did come, and I used my line. The caller assured me that this was not a phone interview—just a check to see if I was still interested and available. Of course I was, and wanted to sound enthusiastic. But then the conversation became very uncomfortable, though I tried to remain open and friendly and buy myself time to do my homework.
The caller (a woman) wanted to know if I had questions: in particular, did I need information about elementary schools in the area? Did I plan to buy a house? She was obviously fishing for information about my marital and family status.
As I later learned, the college is in a tiny, insular community with fewer than thirty faculty. I wonder if an unmarried young woman would have been a threat to this interviewer or the college community, for it was clearly a screening call. The interviewer asked no questions about my qualifications or experience, and though I politely asked twice to talk at a better time, she kept insisting that this was not an interview.
She finished the half-hour phone call by assuring me that the committee did not yet have a process for narrowing the field of candidates and that they would be contacting me within the next week. She arranged for the school to send a large packet of information, which I read carefully; I also studied the catalog on microfiche. But after hearing nothing in ten days, I called the school and was told that three candidates had been invited to the campus and I was not one of them.
Was there anything I could have done? What can I take from this to be better prepared for the next round of hiring?
A: Ms. Mentor was deeply saddened by your letter. Torture by telephone—now you hear it, now you don't—is very cruel.
Yes, of course, Ms. Mentor knows why departments do such things. They are
