A post I’m not proud of

Next week, on a day when I will be on campus for thirteen solid hours, meeting in conferences with students, teaching classes, and attending that other type of meeting, the chair of another department has thought nothing of compelling me to meet the new hire in her department. This new hire has no family in or near town and is reportedly so miserable that her work is being affected.

Of course, since we (well, I) have only just wrapped up back-to-school week, I’m a bit skeptical of how much damage the new hire’s homesickness can have done. On the other hand, I keep hearing people invoke Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and citing vague references to studies that report how students make up their minds about us in the first thirty seconds of class. Well, in that case, I can just phone it in the rest of the semester, because my first week’s classes rocked. Yeah, I’ve had the dismaying experience, too, of having a class turn on me after a rousing start. What do you think of that, Mr. Gladwell?

But, as usual, I digress. My first reaction to my senior colleague’s request—which was really a demand—was resentment, since I’d been careful to describe my schedule that day. My resentment soon resolved itself into jealousy for this new hire, whose chair is so concerned about her success as to set up a play date with a playmate who’s being run ragged by work.

As I’ve written here, my adjustment last year was surreal in its awfulness. I too didn’t know anyone in town. Hell, I didn’t even have anywhere to live when I arrived, because my apartment was being belatedly bombed for bugs, because the exterminators the management company hired didn’t do the work before I moved in, as they’d claimed. My chair and many members of my department were aware of my situation, but no one particularly cared about my adjustment. To pleasantries about how the move was going, I’d straightforwardly reply that I was living in a hotel because my apartment was so infested that termites had eaten the bottom clean off of a box of books my movers had delivered in my absence. And this was not the only horrendous detail of my move. There were variants on this response, none of them drawn-out or self-pitying. People would mutter, “Wow, that’s awful. Good luck with that.” Perhaps the problem was that I would always follow up my gruesome anecdote with humor, or go on about some exciting lesson or bit of research I was working on. Accentuate the positive, you know. Was I feigning cheerfulness too convincingly?

So I wonder, if I got through last year’s horrors, why can’t my new colleague in an unrelated department (well, I guess all departments are related, since I met the chair while working on a committee) figure it out for herself? For a moment I regretted not having bought a t-shirt that said, “Fuck you, I already have enough friends.” Never mind that I don’t wear t-shirts in public, and never mind that its sentiment is not true for me or, I’d guess, anyone. (And by the way, I didn’t buy the t-shirt because it contains a comma splice, so I certainly wouldn’t be caught dead in this one.)

I understand that I’m being childish, that moreover I feel like a neglected older child jealous of the attention being lavished on a new arrival and resentful of being obligated to look after someone who didn’t usurp me in the first place. There the analogy breaks down. I guess people who’ve been around awhile feel the same about how new hires always get paid more, get better research support, teach fewer classes, etc., just so the university can compete for decent candidates. Everyone thinks they had it harder back in the day.

At the same time, I am aware of why my colleague chose me out of all the smart, accomplished women among the junior faculty on this vast campus. I haven’t figured out how to blog about this, but I’m genuinely baffled that people here see me as some kind of rising star. Perhaps naïvely, I really never paid much attention to my reputation, and I am genuinely surprised by what I’ve heard, particularly from the people who make the decisions here, since until I get tenure I’ll remain convinced I’m a fraud.

The other reason she called on me probably has to do with the personality I’ve learned to perform. I’ve blogged about how nonsensical and inconsistent Meyers-Brigg temperament sorters have been for me. Yet the first letter of my “type” is stubbornly consistent: “I” for introvert. Out of professional necessity, I’m one of those painfully shy people that everyone thinks is an extrovert with a big, flashy personality. They don’t understand—and I think wouldn’t believe me if I told them—that I find meeting new people extremely stressful.

I dread the meeting. I dread the day. After all, how do I know that the new hire isn’t some psycho whom I’ll never shake off? On the other hand, she may be just like me, which just might be worse.