Generation Slap

It's Thanksgiving week, which means that workloads, for the moment--at least at the day job--are a bit lighter, spirits are a bit higher, and everybody seems to be anticipating four days of recharging, football-watching, nap-taking, turkey-eating, coma-inducing holiday bliss. Of course, this doesn't change the fact that I still have two 20-page research papers hanging over my head like pianos, but I can't think about those right now. I have laundry in the machine, counters to clean, papers to grade, and blog posts to write.

Mondays and Wednesdays are particularly grueling for me. I wake up at a reasonable hour and am behind my desk at work by 8:30. By 1:15, I am out the door and on my way to campus for an hour of teaching a half-capacity class of half-asleep undergraduates, after which I might stop briefly by the TA office at school (which I share with three other graduate students) before heading back to work, where I am back behind my desk by 3:30. I'm out the door again by 5:00 and on my way to class, which starts promptly at 5:30 and lasts until 8:00.

If I'm lucky, my mom will drive me home after class (she lives less than 3 blocks from campus), and if not, then it's at least another 30 minutes on the train, perhaps a stop at the drug store or the grocery, and I'm usually walking into my apartment no earlier than 8:45.

Dinner, gym, and suddenly it's after 10:00.

I'm too tired to read and way too tired to write, so I usually spend an hour on the phone, an hour on YouTube, and another 15 minutes or so considering actually being productive, before I somehow rationalize the decision to call it a night, plop into bed, and start the cycle again six or seven hours later.

Tonight's class meeting was more lively than usual, because instead of meeting in the usual round-table classroom setting--and because it's Thanksgiving week--our professor treated us to dinner, drinks, and on-topic conversation at a local bar not far from the university.

Our department is currently searching for two new faculty members--a tenure-track assistant professor and a new department head--and part of the tradition of hiring new faculty is for the graduate students to conduct a group interview with each candidate. Unfortunately, due to my work schedule, I have only participated in two of these meetings, and I feel as though I have missed out on a cornerstone of the PhD experience by having to more or less remove myself from this process (yet another reason that I'm toying with the idea of re-evaluating this work situation), but that's a topic for another time.

The big question for us in this process is, "What would we like to see in a new faculty member?" As graduate students, we are ultimately looking for somebody who--because they have been through this process in the fairly recent past--can offer us some guidance and perspective as we navigate the waters of coursework, research, prelims, dissertation writing, and the academic job search. The department, of course, has a slightly different set of priorities. If I were to guess, the Powers that Be would like to see a new faculty member who can fundraise, publish, and generally raise the cachet of the department.

Now--just to set the scene--just about everybody at the table was 30-years-old and under. The two exceptions were the professor, who appears to be in his mid-40s, and our resident nontraditional PhD-student colleague, a great woman of early middle age with a fascinating background who is now on her second career after a successful turn in the financial world (and all of this while raising three children).

I felt slightly awkward contributing to a conversation in which I had very little frame of reference, but I do feel strongly that the department has much to gain by hiring a candidate who can serve as a mentor (or at least as a guide of sorts) while still being productive, publishing, and raising funds for research. Mentorship and contact with students need not be the focus of the new hire's daily activities, but the ability for us, as students, to pop into his or her office, float an idea, and receive thoughtful feedback would be tremendous. There is something to be said for the fact that this new hire would be closer in experience to a graduate student than to a well-established professor in our field.

When I made this point, however, it came out something like this: (I am looking at the professor, who is sitting right next to our nontraditional colleague--we'll call her "Judy") "There are certain advantages to having a professor who is closer to our experience level than to yours."

The table fell silent. The professor shot an icy glare (in jest, I'm sure, but icy nonetheless) in my direction and lifted a finger.

"Be careful!" he cautioned, and Judy followed with, "Don't fall into that trap!"

I was puzzled. All eyes were on me--the person who had interacted with the fewest candidates and who was least qualified to speak on this topic--and every face screamed, "FAUX PAS!!!"

I was stumped. What did I do? Did I say something wrong? Did I betray my own ignorance on the topic? I should have just shut up! No, but then they would think I don't care about the conversation. But I should have phrased my point better. They misunderstood! But it's too late now. Everybody thinks I'm a heartless idiot, and I have no idea what I did.

I broke the silence with a profound, well-crafted response:

"What?"

Judy and the professor replied, almost in unison, "Be careful when talking about people's age!"

But I wasn't talking about age, I insisted. I was talking about experience! About the ability to identify...

But it was a lost cause. I was the goat, and this wasn't the first time that I had unleashed a Freudian slip at Judy's expense (although this one, I still contend, was completely by accident).

Now, I like to think that this was just a good laugh for everybody, and all indications point to the fact that they were simply giving me a good-natured hard time, but I felt paralyzed. Deep down somewhere, I was sure that I had offended Judy, and worse, the professor. It was one of those moments where you are exposed for your greatest--often irrational--fears.

At that moment, I was deathly afraid of being seen as a fraud, as somebody whose ideas were simply trivial at best, offensive at worst, and who simply could not eloquently articulate the points I wished to make.

This, I believe, has always been my greatest fear (at least, I believe, the greatest non-physical threat)--fear of not being taken seriously and of being discredited by the people I admire (and I admire most people in some capacity). It's not that I'm afraid of losing respect (although that may be part of it), but instead, I'm afraid of being viewed as some sort of impostor.

Maybe that's why I have always tried so hard to prove myself (and to nobody else, really, but to myself)--because I figure that if I keep moving forward, and if I keep giving people reasons to take me seriously, then I won't have to face the possibility that my credibility will diminish.

At any rate, the conversation continued on without event after that. I made a light comment, and the professor made a light comment, and before long, the moment had passed, with nobody likely thinking twice about what had occurred (and certainly not realizing how exposed I'd felt).

It took a few minutes for me to re-gain my mental agility. If a generation gap indeed existed at that table, then it certainly did not exist merely to be observed. It was more of a generation slap than a generation gap, and I was the one who took it squarely on the jaw.