The play date with my new colleague in another department has come and gone, and boy howdy was it a waste of time. She was twenty minutes late. She was reticent and awkward to interact with. She had table manners that made me gasp; e.g., with her tongue she deposited little wads of chewed-over broccoli fibers onto the edge of her plate mid-sentence, reminding me ever so vaguely of Lena Grove’s inner monologue in Faulkner’s Light in August: “Like a lady I et. Like a lady traveling.” And she was a downer. Before her department chair, she lamented her two-block walk to the parking garage, JPU’s surly and unresponsive students (already?), the danger she perceived lurking in the dark shadows of big bad funky new city, the difficulty of meeting people here, the tightness of her shoes, whatever. I hope I didn’t sound like her last year. I was relieved to have had less than an hour for lunch, because I was exhausted by the time I choked down my cupcake and sped off to meet with students. I don’t consider myself a new age-y person, but every now and then I encounter people who siphon off my energy. These people are emotional black holes, and I fear them.
Newbie is one of those people.
Lunch was so draining that I despaired of having to meet both of my classes over a five-hour marathon. Meeting with students buoyed me back up somewhat, but not quite to my normal teaching levels of hyper-enthusiasm. I am utterly spent.
What was particularly exhausting was that Newbie’s chair insisted on being at our historic meeting and seemed pretty desperate for me to sell JPU on our new colleague, to help lead the cheers for a place about which I have increasing reservations. I performed what tactful, neutral tap-dance I could, but the chair wanted more! more! more. Lucky Jane is gregarious and always happy. How does she do it? Not a hair out of place! The answer, my friends, is gin.
Only kidding. I’m generally a happy person and have apparently cultivated a cheerful, outgoing affect. I’ve worked hard to cultivate relationships with people who have nothing to do with my job. And I think it is extremely important to your work to work on your life outside of work, if that’s not too much of a paradox. But to my mind the best advice anyone’s ever given me about this business was a useful cliché uttered to me at the beginning of my grad school career: grow a thick skin.
Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, though. Maybe Newbie is on to something—squeaky wheel and all that. For all I know, she could be squeaking all the way to an endowed chair, while I become less and less secretly disgruntled, though at the moment I may be so secretly disgruntled that I’m not even aware I’m disgruntled. Or maybe I’m too tired to be disgruntled. After all, I’ve been on campus today for over thirteen solid hours, none of which I’ll get back, and slightly less than one of which I particularly regret.
And wouldn’t you know that my initial expression of irritation about it is the post the Chronicle [edited to add: and Inside Higher Education] pick up. [So now I'm, like, the Leona Helmsley of junior faculty. Can't think of a living woman whose name is synonymous with "bitch." Which I suppose is a good thing.] Figures.
