Last time I went to ask about my program of study, his crotch was—well—bulging.
I am grossed out.
A: Do you have a sympathetic woman professor who can subtly tell Dr. Crotch to knock it off?
If not, there is no easy way—given his power over your career—to confront him honestly and openly. What he is doing is a kind of sexual harassment, a “micro-inequity” that is difficult to combat. If you try, by filing a complaint, you might be accused of “making a mountain out of a…” Well, you get the point.
As there is no clean way to confront Dr. Crotch, Ms. Mentor sighs and offers a sneaky way. One might, for instance, leave an anonymous note in his mailbox: “We, the graduate students, suggest that you not put course lists in your lap when you're advising us. We do not like to look at your crotch. Thank you!”
This should do the trick, especially since Dr. Crotch will have no idea who sent the note. He will suspect everyone. But if the note does not change his behavior, and if—as is often the case with Dr. Crotches—he is hyper-heterosexual or even homophobic, you can torment him with a second anonymous note: “We, the grad student guys, love it when you hold the course lists in your crotch. Keep up the good work!”
After such a truly dirty trick, the superstraight male who won't change his behavior, pronto, is beyond hope.
Don't Know Much
Q: I have returned to graduate school to get a Ph.D. in women's literature. When I was originally an undergraduate back in the 1950s, I chafed under what I have learned to call the requirements of the patriarchy—to read and appreciate literature by men that demeans or makes invisible women and girls. Back then, I just called it being bored by the bullshit.
However, I was what was then referred to as “well educated” : I was well read in the literature, history, and philosophy of the white boys. I'd had my three years of Latin and two years of French, I'd done a research paper in high school every year since ninth grade, I'd taken English classes where we'd been required to read one novel, one play, and some poems every month that school was in session, etc. I'm sure you're familiar with the Old Curriculum. After all, Ms. Mentor Knows All.
Now, forty years later, I return to a completely different world. And I don't like everything about it, you can bet. One of the main things I don't like is the loss of the concept of the educated person. Most of my professors, who are at least one generation younger than I am, seem so unbelievably limited in what they know, in what they have read. I don't understand why that is. I hope I am not being ageist, but I do believe that my range of knowledge when I was their age was broader and deeper.
I love all the new things I am learning in Women's Studies and women and literature courses, but one of the things I love most of all is comparing those things with what I already know, adjusting my understanding of the true nature of reality, history, etc. But it is really weird to see that my co-students and most of my teachers don't have any basic other knowledge to add to this new material.
These are a bunch of observations, and I know they can easily be written off as manifestations of one or another sort of -ism, some social disease of the politically incorrect, but inherent in this set of observations are some questions. I know that in your wisdom you will discern the questions I am too chicken to ask outright.
What do you think, O Wise Ms. Mentor?
A: In other words, does Ms. Mentor think the current generation is dumber than yours? Well, probably. Certainly every older generation thinks so, and Ms. Mentor is as old as the hills.
Usually, though, each generation's knowledge is different. Your fellow students almost certainly know television and popular music (“media texts”) better than you do. They, and your teachers, may also be more skilled at speaking and writing the jargon of postmodernism (“indeterminacy,” “discourse,” “slippage”). You, like Ms. Mentor, may think much of that jargon is silly, pretentious, and senseless—but it is part of today's concept of what makes an educated person. (Ms. Mentor has more faith in Karl Marx's claim that any great idea can be expressed simply.)
Your underlying questions may be varieties of the bright young person's typical observation when starting a first full-time job: “I'm Surrounded By Idiots.” It is true, unfortunately, that many of the things you value, or at least know well, are no longer valued very much by anyone, including the self-satisfied white males who sanctified them in the first place. You can deplore that, but you can't do much to change it.
What you can do is steel yourself and embrace the “discourse.” Or you can regard it as an anthropologist might, as a quaint set of bizarre native customs. Simply from living longer, you know a great deal of history and psychology, both of which should encourage you to view everything with an analytical, if not jaundiced, eye. You may decide to learn what you like, and in the privacy of your own room, write satires about the rest.
Ms. Mentor has been doing that all her life.
Ungraded, Degraded, Misgraded?
Q: With the exception of one professor, all the professors I've had so far in graduate school return my papers with an A grade, but no comments. And they don't discuss the papers with students in office hours, either. Is this the kind of feedback that will prepare me to publish rather than perish? I'm worried.
A: Ms. Mentor will begin by commending you for your superb perceptions. You have psyched out what pays in academia.
At research universities, where graduate students are trained for whatever paltry positions might someday emerge, teaching is the daily work that is often unmentionable. Meeting classes is talked about, wryly, as the dues that faculty pay in order to pursue the really prestigious fun: publishing books and articles; poking holes in others' obscure or obtuse arguments; posturing at conferences or flaming opponents over the Internet; or pursuing administrative posts through which to protect or punish.
In research universities, teaching provides many psychic rewards (which few faculty will admit), but prestige and money come from writing. If your professors are particularly candid, or rude, they may claim to be modeling correct professional priorities for you: students are little swarmy things to be swatted away in the interests of Pursuing Knowledge and Power, which come through publishing.
Ms. Mentor hopes that once you are a professor yourself, you will not subscribe to the publishing-is-all-that-ever-matters creed. But to aid you in achieving that blessed state, Ms. Mentor suggests these ways to wring some feedback out of invisible or recalcitrant pedagogues:
• Use the graduate student grapevine to finger the most responsive professors. Often they are newer and younger and filled with zeal and grand ideas. (As Jill Ker Conway notes in True North, she was advised to take her Harvard classes from junior faculty. They hadn't already put all they'd ever know in their books; they weren't burned out.)
• If there is no grad student grapevine, create one: a graduate student organization, or brown bag lunches, or coffees. These are not just for gossip or mutual moaning (though those are valuable). Grapevines can spawn writing groups, support groups, and pals who'll help one another get jobs and opportunities.
• Create or join a writing group, with ground rules: How often should the group meet? What should each member be expected to bring or distribute beforehand? How precise should comments be? (Global? A paragraph at a time? Grammatical nitpicking?) If face-to-face writing groups aren't possible, try e-mail (writers' magazines have some suggestions).
