New Kid on the Hallway

How to make a job sound appealing

So, I came across a posting for a job* with my state, doing ADA compliance for the corrections department. You'd research appropriate ADA accommodations, advise on proper methods for compliance, review policy, investigate inmate grievances, etc.

It actually sounds interesting, and important, in a social-justice-y kind of way (if, like me, you think there are quite a lot of problems with the nation's prison system).

I mean, it doesn't pay well, it doesn't even technically require a J.D. (a paralegal certificate is sufficient),and I'm sure there's a high potential for unpleasantness. This is by no means a dream job - just something I came across and thought, "Hmm, interesting."

And then I read the conditions of employment, which require you (among other things) to have the ability to:

• Lift arms above head and kick as high as own waist;
• Stabilize another person to accomplish a controlled take down;
• Use arms, palms of hands, shins, and feet to deliver blows;
• Withstand impact (slow speed or with a safety bag) on own body from strikes/blows;
• Swing a baton in a striking technique;
• Rotate body 90 degrees with feet planted for striking with foot or using a defensive tactic;
• Get down on one or both knees and up again with multiple repetitions;...
• See and hear in order to observe, address and respond to potential breeches[sic] in safety and security;
• Seize, hold, control or subdue violent or assaultive persons and defend oneself or others to prevent injury;
• Work in situations involving assaultive behavior, physical control of another person and/or restraint situations;
• Work in an environment with fluctuating noise and temperature (hot and cold) which may include working outdoors in inclement weather and/or concrete floor/wall work settings.

Oh, and:

• Positions that have direct contact with offenders may be exposed to Oleoresin Capsicum;
• TB (tuberculosis) screening is required of all new employees upon hire.

Oh. Um. Yeah.

So, clearly, I would not be a very good candidate for this job. I am way too much of a privileged suburban white girl delicate flower wimp.  

(Which is commentary on ME, not on the job.)

(It also kind of reminds me of how when I told my primary care physician that I was going to law school, she instantly started reeling off all the vaccinations I would have to get if I would be going into prisons.)

*No, I'm not looking for a job - I just always look at postings, though, to see what's out there.

What is a bigot?

Okay, I have a question for you:

Is it appropriate to call someone who disagrees with your political views a bigot?

Why I'm asking: fantasy author Jane Yolen - whose books I LOVED as a kid, I should note - criticized a Tea Partier for reading a children's story to kids at a library at the same time that the Tea Party is demanding cuts in spending that will eliminate those libraries. In response, some guy on the internet [linked to in the link I just provided] called her a "hateful bigot."

Now, I thought the use of that label was telling. Myself, I have always sort of understood bigotry to be directed against something more immutable than political belief. That is, it's an attitude directed toward a group of people who share some characteristic, frequently some quality that they cannot change, and largely based on ignorance about that group. I'm not saying this is necessarily the scientific definition - it's just how I understood it. So you can be bigoted against racial or ethnic or religious groups - for instance, someone who thinks that "them damn brown Mexican wetbacks are taking all our JERBS!!!" would be a bigot. But I've tended to think that you simply disagree with a political belief. So that someone who believes there should be stricter immigration controls isn't a bigot simply for believing that. 

Where it gets complicated is that of course, someone might support stricter immigration controls purely because they are a bigot - because they want to keep out all those nasty brown immigrants who have the temerity not to speak English, say. But wanting stricter controls need not, in and of itself, be evidence of bigotry. (Unless you believe that everyone who wants to clamp down on the border does so for bigoted reasons, but let's just assume that's not the case - I was just struggling for a hypothetical here!)

Of course, as I say, this is just my understanding of the word. So I looked it up in Merriam-Webster's (not having access to the OED at the moment - anyone else have access?), which defines a "bigot" as:

a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

I think that kind of gets at how I understand the term.

The point is, I find it striking that the Tea Party (or, this one guy who seems to identify as such, at least) would call someone who disagrees with them a "hateful bigot" rather than an idiot or misguided or wrong or plain old liberal. As a rhetorical move, it analogizes being a Tea Partier to being a member of some other kind of minority group defined by an immutable characteristic - race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, national origin (I'll throw in religion, too - it's maybe not as immutable as race; people leave and join churches all the time - but in modern society it seems to me that, especially, Jews and Muslims are frequently judged as such even if they leave those churches; plus you have the sort of ethnic/racial component of Judaism; all very complicated!).

In this respect, I think it's telling that the very first comment on the Merriam-Webster definition of "bigot" (M-W asks you to tell them why you looked up the word) reads:

I looked up "bigot" because I find it very ironic that so called "tolerant" people see nothing wrong in attacking, berating and making widespread assumptions about white, conservative Christians. 

And in response to a comment about anti-GLBT sentiment as bigotry, another commenter wrote:

Cameron, you and the GLBT minority would also be considered bigots for your relentless quest to torture and illegalize(sic) the Christian majority.

(Ah, yes - it's wrong to criticize Christians because they're the majority! Just what our constitution is about: Majority rule wins!) (Sorry, couldn't resist snarking at that one.)

I guess this isn't really new; for instance, I know that for a while now, Republican student groups on various campuses have sought to gain some kind of "protected class" status, on the grounds that in academia, they are the minority and need protection from the majority. (Sorry, no specific links/cites here; just based on vague memories. In fact, I think this was happening way back when I was in college!)

So. I find it odd to call Jane Yolen a bigot for believing that the spending cuts the Tea Party wants to make will force libraries to close and limit childrens' access to books and reading. But I don't find it odd to, say, call Michele Bachmann a bigot for opposing GLBT rights. Is that inconsistent or illogical? Should I rethink my definition of bigotry?

This kind of thing makes me embarrassed to be a non-trad student

So, when I was applying to law school, I became aware that there was a perception among traditionally-aged law students that older law students can be, frankly, pains in the ass. Specifically, that older law students have a bad habit of sticking their hand up in class and saying, "Well, in MY experience as a [fill in whatever they did before law school," and going on to blather at great length about something that's not really relevant or of interest to the rest of the students in the class. 

Now, the older students I knew when I was a traditionally-aged student in grad school didn't do this, and I can only think of one older [than me] student in law school who did this, once, in a 1L Contracts class. But that is a perception floating around out there. 

Unfortunately, I think I've just found the grain of truth in that stereotype.

A 2010 U Penn grad, who started working at a law firm last September and was fired last May, has sued the firm, seeking $77 million in damages, alleging that the firm misrepresented itself and violated his employment agreement. He asserts that he accepted employment with this firm because it represented itself as eschewing artificial hierarchy, rewarding initiative and ambition, and valuing creativity and independent thinking. When he displayed initiative, ambition, independent thinking, and creativity, however, he says, the firm fired him.

Central, or at least important, to his argument is the fact that law is his second career, and that he was a successful software engineer and entrepreneur before going to law school. In other words, it's kind of a "In MY experience before law school" argument.

Here are some of the allegations in the plaintiff's complaint [sorry, this is kind of long; but it's a 50 pp. complaint, so... you can read the whole thing here]:

From 1997 to 2007 Plaintiff [name] had a distinguished career as a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Within five years he held the title of Director of Technology, managing a team of engineers.  His career culminated when he founded and was the creative force behind an internet company whose impact on online entertainment services can still be felt today.

After conquering Silicon Valley, he decided to take his talents in a new direction, and in 2007 began law school at the University of Pennsylvania Law School....

You know, it's just lovely that he conquered Silicon Valley before giong to law school. And I'm sure his previous work experience is more directly applicable to his lawyering than my previous work experience will be to mine. Nonetheless, he was still a brand-new associate. (He was fired after 8 months, so you have to think the issues the complaint raises began pretty quickly.)

Plaintiff worked at this firm during the summer after his 2L year, and then after graduation. It's probably worth noting that this is one of those tremendous New York firms; there were close to 300 attorneys in the office. 

Upon arrival at the firm, [the plaintiff] immediately began doing superlative work.  During his time at [the firm], he repeatedly found ways to improve the efficiency of the work, or even the outcome of cases....

From the beginning [of his employment] he did superlative work, and never received a complaint or negative comment about it....

So, no complaints or negative comments = superlative work? Good to know.

In virtually every assignment [plaintiff] was given, he went above and beyond the call of duty, pointing out better ways to proceed, inefficiencies, observations, and ways to get a better result for [Firm] clients.

Specifically, one document review case [plaintiff] was assigned to involved software engineering, his field of expertise.  He e-mailed the two partners on the case to inform them that he possessed this knowledge that would be helpful to them in understanding the technology and the expert witnesses.  Neither one ever responded.

Now, on the one hand, yes, this is probably inefficient on the part of the firm. And yet, on the other hand, are we really surprised?

For this same project, the software the Firm had chosen for the review of electronic documents was extremely slow and inefficient.  The software was web-based, and as a result it was extremely slow, taking up to several seconds to display each page.  (The documents were served over the internet, with all the delays that typically involves, rather than internally over the firm’s internal network.)  [Plaintiff] explained to the managing associate and the other associates on the team how to review the documents with a software package that was internal to [the Firm] system.  Using the internal software large documents could be reviewed up to 600% faster (3 minutes versus 20) than using the web-based program. 

None of the associates but [plaintiff] switched to the internal software, costing the client hundreds or thousands of dollars extra in unnecessary hourly billing.

Document review is a cash cow for [the Firm].  On this particular project, any procedure [plaintiff] suggested to improve efficiency was eschewed....

Again, yes, inefficient. But doesn't it seem a little presumptuous for an associate who's been at the firm for mere months to start suggesting ways to completely revamp entrenched systems?

Another document-review–related project [plaintiff] was assigned to involved creating a redaction log for redactions in a document production for the Firm’s client.  The senior associate managing the project had already gone through the documents and redacted the privileged passages.  [Plaintiff]’s assignment, then, was to guess why each document had been redacted and write down in a log his guess as to the reason for the redaction.  The senior associate then went through the documents a third time to make sure that [plaintiff]’s guesses as to his reasons for redaction were correct, resulting in three times the billing that was necessary.

When [plaintiff] suggested that if the senior associate would just make note of the reason for each redaction as he made it, they could save two or three times the effort, and thus save the client money, the senior associate told [plaintiff] that it was not his job to take notes.

Now, maybe it should be the senior associate's job to take notes; maybe it would be more efficient. Again, I'm not trying to defend the firm's methods. But if your suggestions are getting responses like "It's not my job to take notes," perhaps that should tell you something about how to approach the people you're working for?

This same senior associate wanted [plaintiff] to go through the 50,000 documents one at a time, manually, looking for redactions.  This task would have taken days.  Instead [plaintiff] went to the litigation support team, had them run a script, and found the 62 redacted documents in about 30 minutes....

Okay, the plaintiff's actions here seem reasonable. Then again, he doesn't allege any negative consequences from these actions, either.

The plaintiff also got into trouble for telling a senior associate that he didn't think he had time to take on the senior associate's document review project (and to be fair, from his account, it was perfectly reasonable for him to do this). It's unclear whether this happened before or after the suggestions referred to above, but the conflict with the senior associate took place in December (note that the plaintiff started work in September). Because of the conflict, the plaintiff got called into a partner's office.

In the other guest chair was a man wearing a suit that [plaintiff] had never seen before (“John Doe”).  He stayed for the entire meeting, listening as [the partner] reprimanded [plaintiff].  [The partner] never introduced him to [plaintiff] nor acknowledged his presence, and the man never introduced himself.

The man’s unexplained presence was intimidating and distressing to [plaintiff].  It is outside all bounds of civility to subject an employee to a dressing-down while a stranger watches....

Now, the plaintiff's right, that this is a bit weird and doubtless distressing. But "outside all bounds of civility"? Really? (The plaintiff also mentions that no one told him that this senior associate was on the partner track. How would that have made a difference in the situation?)

[The Firm] also encouraged attorneys to seek out work by contacting partners on their own.

Having worked for [the Firm] for six months, [plaintiff] had assessed the situation.  He saw that he would be of far more value to [the Firm] if he was given more responsibility.

[Plaintiff] composed the following e-mail to that effect (the “Partner E-mail”): 

"I am writing to see if you have any small cases I could manage for you.  It has become clear that the only limiting factor on how much value I am to a case is how much responsibility I am given:  the more responsibility I am given, the better the outcome.  I am in kind of an uncomfortable position at the firm because although I am a “first year,” I have 15 years business and real world experience, as much as many senior associates.  When I first got here I did not know what to expect, but after working here for several months now it has become clear that I have as much experience and ability as an associate many years my senior, as much skill writing, and a superior legal mind to most I have met. [Emphasis added.]

"There is a natural skepticism that someone without a lot of formal legal apprenticeship can do the job of a senior associate, but the truth is much of the learning and experience an associate acquires is parallel to any business experience—negotiating contracts, negotiating settlements, writing, analysis.  If you will allow me to manage some cases for you I can guarantee without reservation that you will get a better result than you get now with many of the official resources you have available to you."

He was subsequently fired.

Now, my reaction to this whole thing probably says as much about me as it does about the plaintiff or anyone else involved - namely, I'm kind of a sheep, and a respecter-of-hierarchy, and, doubtless, I would be useless as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. It's also true that there's an awful lot of "if you want something, go out and make it happen" kind of rhetoric floating around the legal profession that would suggest that initiative and ambition really are good things, that will be rewarded. 

But seriously. Really? You've worked at a firm for six months and you think it's appropriate to claim that you have as much experience and ability as associates many years your senior, and that you have a superior legal mind to most you've met? Really? This just sounds like someone pulling the "In MY experience before law school" move.

Now, it's true that that experience probably is valuable and relevant to a lot of his lawyering. (Though the firm itself is one of those giants that does a ton of everything, so it's not clear exactly how his practice was connected to his prior experience, if it was.) And it's also probably true that there were a lot of inefficencies at the firm where he was worked, that adhering to hierarchies for the sake of doing so is stupid, and that firms should be willing and eager to take advantage of an associate's relevant expertise acquired before law school.

I guess I look at it this way, though. Say someone has worked as an assistant professor at a school for six months. Even if that person has a fifteen-year career in something relevant to their job (say, they worked as a journalist for fifteen years, and are now teaching journalism), does it sound like a good idea for them to regularly offer suggestions about what needs to be changed in the way the department is currently run? 

The plaintiff's point, of course, is that the firm represented itself as different from all those other, stuffy firms that adhere to traditional hierarchies, and don't want to hear their associates' brilliant ideas. So therefore he thought this behavior would be rewarded. And on the one hand, yeah, that's a problem. On the other hand: what law firm is going to say that they adhere to traditional hierarchies just for the sake of it, and that they don't reward initiative or ambition or independent thought or creative thinking? Doesn't there seem to be some degree of puffery going on here? 

(I also just realized that the plaintiff has sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress. This tort requires that the defendant's behavior be extreme and outrageous - in some jurisdictions, that's defined as behavior which would cause a reasonable person to exclaim, "Outrageous!", which always cracks me up as a ridiculously circular definition. In any case, he claims that the following behaviors are extreme and outrageous: the senior associate complaining to the partner about him; the presence of the unnamed man during his meeting with the partner; and the partner's criticisms of his attitude and comments suggesting his employment was at risk. Aren't those pretty much par for the course when an employment relationship goes bad? Such actions could be extreme and outrageous, of course, but the unpleasantness inherent to employer/employee conflicts is not in itself extreme and outrageous.)

Anyway, while the plaintiff is clearly very intelligent (and his complaint is well-written, which is relatively uncommon for pro se complaints!), the whole thing seems pretty ridiculous to me. It doesn't even merit as much discussion as I've given here - except that as a second-career J.D., I feel compelled to distinguish myself from this guy, I guess. Certainly someone who has had a previous career should be proud of their accomplishments and make use of them where they provide an advantage in the new career. It's just seems unlikely to me that such an advantage would extend to bucking the chain of command in BigLaw, no matter how superior a legal mind you possess.

Slightly random: do you thrift?

In the last year or so I've gotten into reading some fashion blogs, and many of the authors find amazing clothes in thrift stores. I am always amazed at this, because I really really dislike thrift stores. First, I just don't like the idea of wearing stuff that someone else has already owned, worn, and discarded - which is a bit odd, because normally I'm very dirt/germ-tolerant. But I'm also not a very touchy-feely person - unless you're my husband or massage therapist or a VERY close friend in a moment of high emotion, I don't hug/touch and I don't like to be hugged/touched (for instance, I can hardly imagine a job I would like less than massage therapist). So maybe wearing someone else's clothes is too close to being touched by another person, someone I know nothing about?

But I've also realized that I'm a sucker for shopping environment - store lighting, decor, styling, etc. When I face racks upon racks of totally varied stuff crammed together, usually in someplace kind of dusty and warehouse-ish with dingy linoleum floor, I cannot for the life of me see the potential of any given item in what I find to be such dreary circumstances. That's totally a failure of my own imagination, I know, and shouldn't be a reflection on thrift stores or items therein.

Thrifting always reminds me of my middle school/early high school years, when I'd just gotten old enough to care what I was wearing, but not old enough or savvy enough to know yet what looked good on me, or how to get past "needing" to wear the latest fad. My mom, being frugal, always liked to check out Marshalls and TJMaxx before buying stuff at full-price stores. And I could NEVER find ANYTHING I liked there. Everything looked horrible. And the stores themselves were depressing places, filled with fluorescent-lit glare and the dreary dregs of the fashion world.

I'm sure most of that was about teen angst and insecurity rather than anything to do with Marshalls or TJMaxx. I know that Marshalls/TJ's are not the places to go if you have a specific item you need for a specific date - they're the kind of places you need to check into regularly, to see if there are any amazing bargains (and I do pop in to those stores from time to time, though not usually for clothes). But still, they left a bad taste in my mouth. And that seems to have transferred over to thrifting.

That said, a lot of people find a lot of amazing things at thrift stores. A dear grad school friend found her conference interview outfit at a thrift store for $3 - not a suit, but a lovely camel-colored wool jumper/sheath (it buttoned up the front, but was fitted, not baggy) with a cream blouse underneath and a water-color-y kind of scarf. A law school friend found a gorgeous pair of herringbone wool pants for something like $4. So I'm sure I'm missing out - and it may be that I just haven't found the right places to go. But while I envy/admire those who do it, I still can't get into thrifting.

Do you thrift? Why or why not? 

Yes, I am an Anne McCaffrey fan; or, blog as memory

Because I have a bunch of time on my hands right now, I've been going through old blog posts (slowly - I'm still in the first year!), figuring out which ones I still like to look at and which ones are not worth saving. Main criteria for deletion: the post is a to-do list; the post a meme; the post describes events involving other specific, identifiable people a little too closely.

But it's funny, too, because this blog has been very journal-like, and so there are posts describing events in my life that, at the time they happened, seemed quite ordinary but were more significant than I realized. In a number of cases, they presage some not-very-good things that I did not foresee happening.

What does this have to do with Anne McCaffrey? She has a novel called Crystal Singer (I'm not going to claim it's necessarily a brilliant book, but it is one of her earlier books, so it is definitely one of the stronger examples in the McCaffrey oevre). In it, people who spend enough time on a particular planet become infected/invaded by a silicon-based symbiotic spore (I think. I might have that wrong. But something along those lines). If they adapt successfully, their senses become more acute, they gain the ability to heal much more quickly, and they live much longer lives, aging only very slowly. The downside is that after a certain point, they lose their long-term (and eventually, short-term) memories, and have to make a conscious effort to record events in their lives, and go back to those recordings to remind themselves on a regular basis. The main character goes to this planet after being rejected from the only profession she's ever wanted to follow (music), and when she's first recording the events of her life for later reference, she realizes she can simply delete this miserable rejection from her life, by simply not recording it.

I am not losing my memory at any greater rate than anyone else my age (though as I get older I do think my brain fills up more quickly and has to jettison past knowledge!), which is not say, not particularly at all. That said, though, I don't dwell on unpleasant moments from my past, either. I am happy to forget.

Rereading my old blog posts, I am reminded of some of the events surrounding those unhappy moments, events and moments I had largely put behind me. Although there is much to be said for having a record of one's life, like McCaffrey's heroine, I find it immensely satisfying to delete those moments from my life, by deleting them from my blog.

 

 

FN: I consider this blog an honest representation of my life, in that I speak honestly in the posts I publish here. But I don't believe this blog has to (or even can) honestly represent my entire life.

Part of me adores this

 But more of me wants to call this "Game of Thrones"-chic.

The adjunctification (or contingentization?) of America

My lovely wonderful SLAC alma mater announced its 39 "new faculty" for 2011-2012.

Seven of them are tenure-track assistant professors.

Quite a few of the remaining "visiting" professors are legitimately visiting from some other institution, or are eminences unattached to an institution of higher ed. But eighteen appear to be in VAPs [visiting assistantships] or the equivalent. 

Granted, a VAP at my alma mater is a pretty cushy job for a year. And no matter what changes are made to the academic market, schools are going to continue to need at least some VAPs, to fill sabbatical and fellowship vacancies (assuming, of course, that schools continue to grant sabbaticals. My alma mater has the money and priorities to fund sabbaticals for quite a long time to come, I think). 

But I still thought that the numbers were telling. 

Happy blogiversary to me

Okay, I'm a little behind, because I actually began this blog back on August 1, 2004. Um, that was 7 years ago? How the hell did I get so old??

I started this blog when I moved to a new job in a new town, and NLLDH had moved away (temporarily) to go back to grad school, so I was kind of lonely and at loose ends. Now? I'm in yet another town, I went back to grad school, and I start a new job in September. Though a lot of my law school friends have moved/are moving to my city, this month I'm again at a bit of a loose end (as has been evidenced by posting more here and rampaging ALL over the internet in people's comments). But overall, probably happier than I was at that time, even if not where I envisioned myself being.

Anyway, thanks, folks, for reading along, and making this so rewarding. I have no idea where this blog is going from here, but it's been a fun endeavor so far.

Oh, Chronicle, you're the gift that just keeps giving

I find myself quite torn about this column. In it, an academic job candidate talks about the importance of considering quality of life in applying for academic jobs, by detailing her own job interview in a part of the country in which she realized she could never live. That basic message - think about whether you could live in the town where the job is located - is an important one, and everybody has their own dealbreakers. I sincerely applaud people who know themselves well enough to know what kinds of compromises they are and aren't willing to make, and I believe that the lack of choice about where to live is one of the major evils of academic life. No one should have to live somewhere fundamentally abhorrent to them.

But deal god, couldn't the author have managed to sound less condescending and elitist about it?? And, frankly, provincial?

A few examples:

Can a Ph.D. who wears perfume made by an obscure order of French monks find happiness working in a town where everyone buys their clothes at the Farm King?... 

On the train, I was first struck by the differences between what I had been told about the train ride and its reality. The department chair had assured me that the train would be a great experience, with a lovely dining car, reminiscent of the old days of railroad travel when shiny-uniformed porters brought out plates of chicken cordon bleu and rice pilaf to suave and sophisticated world travelers. That, he claimed, made the four-hour train ride bearable. But I don't remember Cary Grant ever having to choose between a microwaved hot dog or hamburger, begrudgingly handed over by a miserable guy complaining behind a stainless-steel counter.

The people on the train, with the exception of the hot-dog guy, were friendly and open. But they did make me doubt all the criticisms I have had of the way rural Americans are depicted in culturally elitist Hollywood movies. Turns out those movies have often done a fairly accurate job. I overheard the sad story of how one young man's dreams of pop stardom were dashed when he failed to break the top 23 in the "American Idol" tryouts and was now on his way home to live the rest of his life in frustrated obscurity. I also listened to a chat about how much better life was in the town I was traveling to now that the new Walmart had opened....

My first meeting was an 8 a.m. breakfast with members of the department's faculty. After a few pleasantries, one of the faculty members turned to me and asked, "Tell me, why didn't the Nazis destroy the Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in Krakow?"

And we were off! The interview had begun. It was clear to me that those people were really isolated from civilization out there, because no civilized people I knew asked questions about genocide before 9 a.m.—over bacon, no less.

[Um, has this person never been on an on-campus interview? That's what they do - interview you. Over meals. Including breakfast.]

During my professional lecture about my research, the questions were, as is usually the case in job interviews, more about the work of the questioner than about my scholarship: "Why didn't you write about labor union activity in public?" Well, I didn't write about labor unions because the book is about hippies and festivity, not labor unions. It's a monograph, not an encyclopedia. "How did the theories of Bakhtin influence the hippies?" Most 17-year-old hippies had never even heard of Bakhtin, let alone read his theories. Come on, people. This is my research—not yours. Stop trying to show off to your colleagues.

Then I was taken to dinner, where everyone was tired, and the conversation felt very insidery—jokes between friends, etc. I felt isolated and awkward, and couldn't wait to get back to my room. Actually, I couldn't wait to get back home. The next morning, my alarm failed to go off, and I was left with six minutes to get dressed and out the door for the train. I made it, got through the airport and to the plane, and as soon as I touched ground I raced toward civilization for some sushi—the cultural version of electroshock therapy.

These latter three examples, actually - they annoy me because they have nothing to do with the cultural sophistication of the town. They're about the nature of the interview itself, and sound exactly like the kinds of experiences I've had at job interviews across the country. Just because you didn't like the way the department conducted the interview, doesn't mean that the department is full of hicks.

I don't know. On the one hand, I do not want to replicate those people telling grad students/junior faculty that if they want a job in academia they have to SACRIFICE, and be willing to live ANYWHERE, dammit, because I hate that attitude. But on the other hand, yeah, if you want a job in academia you often have to move somewhere it wasn't your first choice to live. There's nothing wrong with deciding NOT to do that, but there's also nothing wrong with deciding TO do that, either. I have a dear pair of friends who live in a state extremely uncongenial to them in terms of politics and weather, because it was the only place they could both find jobs, and he (especially) really really really really REALLY wanted an academic job. They have adjusted and created a pretty happy life for themselves.

I'm not saying that the author of the Chronicle column would have ultimately been happy working at the university she describes - clearly she wouldn't. I just think there has to be a way to get across the message that considering quality of life is important, without putting down the people who do live (and happily!) in the places you don't want to be.

(For the shorter version of this post, see this tweet! I don't know the tweeter, just appreciated the sentiment.)

Upward mobility? No.

Over at Quod She, Dr. Virago asks: "Hey, Ph.D.s, are you better off than your parent(s)?" This is in response to a really interesting conversation, particularly with thefrogprincess, about whether people enter Ph.D. programs in search of upward mobility. (See comments to this post.)

I started to answer there, and then realized I was writing a frigging book, so thought I would take it over here. But anyway, here's an answer from this no-longer-faculty Ph.D.: No, I would not say that I am not better off than my parents in terms of finances or career stability or qualitative factors.

Finances: I never knew how much my dad made (my mom was a SAHM), but I think that tells you something - that I didn't need to know. I am quite sure, though, that it is significantly more than I have ever made (throughout my life, he was the VP of manufacturing for Gillette, though he had done other things earlier in his life to get to that point - he was 48 when I was born). For one thing, he could support a family of four in a big gorgeous house in an expensive part of the country, without my mom working for pay, and we had everything we needed and a lot that we wanted (lessons, activities, that kind of thing) (of course, my mom's labor made a lot of this possible!). When I was 11 my parents had a pool put in our back yard. My sister and I both went to elite SLACs in the northeast that my parents paid for in cash. We had three cars, so I took one to college my senior year, then my sister took it to college her senior year. At 42, I could not afford any of these things, and if we had a kid now, I am quite sure we would not be able to pay cash to send him/her to an expensive private college.

Now, that does not mean that I'm currently badly off, because I grew up a very privileged kid. I'm not in the gutter or the poorhouse or anything like that (though I do currently have a crapload of credit card debt for various good/not so good reasons), and I'm not bemoaning my life. But no, I am not better off than my parents financially.

Career stability: Well, it's kind of hard to compare this, because first, my dad was one of the last people who fit the "work for the same company for 30 years and retire with a gold watch" model. You just don't have that any more. But my career stability feels like much less than my dad's, because I feel like I've never really managed to be established in a career (I taught as a full-time prof for 9 years, which is actually pretty established, but it never felt like it at the time, because I never made it to tenure). In some ways you could say my career stability is better than my mom's, since she was a SAHM, but she was a nurse in London before getting married (and, I think, a very good one), so if she hadn't married at time when you gave up your job and followed your husband, she would have had a very stable career.

Dr. Virago's point about looking at one's parents' lives through a feminist lens is interesting, because as noted, my mom's career was derailed because she got married--and that was what you did, you followed your husband and stayed home and raised the kids and took care of the house. And I'm glad I'm not in that position. But my mom sees me and my husband try to negotiate where to live and what jobs to take and what careers to pursue, and her take on it is that "Life is so much more COMPLICATED these days." And she's right. I prefer this path (but then, I've been brought up to prefer it), but it's not necessarily easier. And honestly, right now (coming off of three years of school/no income) I'm as financially dependent on my husband as my mom ever was on my dad. So, in some ways I'm better off, but in some ways I'm not.

My mom did find the transition from independent professional life to SAHM difficult. But she adjusted, too, and loved her house and her garden, played tennis and made lots of friends through that, and quilted and did a lot of other creative things. There were occasional tensions over some of the distribution of labor/money, but she was quite happy. (I use the past tense because she's been quite lonely and unhappy since my dad died, though I think it's got better. But I think that's inevitable if you had a good marriage.) I think I'm quite happy, generally, but I would not say that my life is somehow clearly better than my mom's was. I would say my mom lived a life more shaped by patriarchy. But she also reaped the benefits of patriarchy (not saying everyone does, or that patriarchy's a good thing; just that it persists as a system only because it offers benefits to those it oppresses as well as those it empowers, and she managed to stay on the good side of it).

Other qualitative factors: I have had the luxury of pursuing work I enjoy. But you know, my dad also loved his job. LOVED it. It brought him immense satisfaction and he was quite depressed for a while when he retired because (as I think is common for men, especially of his generation) his identity was tied up in his work. But he adjusted, and ended up very much also enjoying his golf/tennis/newspaper-reading/driving around looking at stuff retirement lifestyle. (Partly this was due to my dad's temperament. He was a serious optimist about everything.) But in itself this is something different from my parents: I have no idea if, or when, or how, I will retire, and I doubt it will be to seaside condos in two lovely vacation spots.

I mean, I don't think I'm badly off at all. I'm generally happy and have enough money to survive (even if I'm living off my husband right now). And times are different enough that I really don't think I can compare their lives to mine. But the biggest difference, I think, is that I have never really felt "settled" anywhere, and I have a hard time thinking that's going to change in the near future. I'm 42; when my mom was this age, she had 2 kids, a dog, a house, a social life, and a very established life. She had a stable life. I don't want the kids, but I don't feel like I've ever had that stability (you spend grad school planning for the job you'll get when you finish; you get that job, you plan for tenure, or for how to get a new job; then I left that job, and went back to school, and am now starting over again, in a field that is much less of a guarantee of a good stable job/life than it used to be. My Ph.D. husband has gone through this process, too, just a few years before I did). Compared to my parents, I feel like a nomad.

(It might also be worth pointing out here that my very comfortable life was NOT a life of inherited privilege. Both of my parents came from very working class backgrounds - my dad was a coal miner's son, and his dad was killed in a mining accident when my dad was in his teens. My mom's parents were a vet assistant - which did not mean he had any education; it meant he held down the horses and cows - and a housemaid/nanny. The position I enjoyed growing up was one that my parents had earned and built in their own lives. This doesn't make me better or worse than anyone else - I just think it's relevant if we're talking about social mobility.)

Now, if I'm honest, I'll admit that if that kind of stable, established life was truly important to me, there are probably a lot of different choices I could have made to get that kind of life. At some level, I believe that the fact that I don't have some of this stuff simply means I decided I valued other things more, things that have been incompatible with that kind of settled, established life. 

But no, getting a Ph.D. did not make me better off than my parents were. I can't say I would have been better off than them anyway, because they were pretty well off, and I'm not sure that anything would have guaranteed that kind of life (although it does feel like a lot of my classmates from college have those kinds of lives). But getting a Ph.D. certainly didn't do it.

(And a last note on the upward mobility narrative of the Ph.D.: I didn't go into my Ph.D. program looking for upward mobility, because I was pretty up to begin with. But I did go into the Ph.D. because it seemed to offer stability. My other area of interest was creative writing, but I went for the Ph.D. because it seemed a much more reliable and clear-cut career path. After all, in the next ten years one-third of the nation's faculty were going to die or retire, so it was a GREAT time to go to grad school! Okay, I realize no one gets told that any more - but I did. I don't resent that, and I don't regret getting my Ph.D., but it did influence me.)