Ms. Mentor’s best advice
Be collegial or perish
by Sylvia Fuller
Sometimes academic life sucks. Pick your poison – crushing workloads and backstabbing colleagues, or perhaps it’s high maintenance grad students and undergrads who Facebook instead of listening to your lecture. How about arrogant and duplicitous dissertation advisers who steal your ideas or journal editors who hang on to your paper for years before bothering to collect reviews – and then reject the paper?
Sometimes there is rage. Sometimes there are tears. Often there is gnashing of teeth. Oh, there’s good stuff too, but the good stuff is not, for the most part, the terrain of Ms. Mentor. The author of a popular advice column for academics in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ms. Mentor (the creation of Emily Toth, an English professor at Louisiana State University) has just published her second book “Ms. Mentor’s new and ever more impeccable advice for women and men in academia.”
Not all the advice is actually new (some letters previously appeared in her online column), and it may not be entirely impeccable, but it’s pretty close. Best of all, the book is a lot of fun. You may or may not need Ms. Mentor’s counsel (those new to academe are likely to benefit most), but you will enjoy reading it.
The best advice columnists have a definite personality. Ann Landers would never treat her letter writers with Dan Savage snarkiness, and Cary Tennis will never write a short practical answer when the opportunity to ramble philosophically presents itself.
Ms. Mentor, as a fictional character, is particularly consistent. Above it all, she resides in an ivory tower, from whence she casts a humorous but compassionate eye on the scurrying masses. Judging from the cover illustration, she favours purple berets and likes espresso (although her fashion advice to new professors and graduate students is considerably more conservative). More importantly, she is fair-minded but strategic, plain-spoken but diplomatic, and very funny.
Ostensibly, the letter writers are real people who write to Ms. Mentor via Emily Toth (indeed, Ms. Mentor occasionally updates us on the outcomes of their dilemmas). However, the letters themselves are clearly not just edited but rewritten for effect. Could someone really write, unselfconsciously, “Our hateful department secretaries won’t make my phone calls or straighten my office, and sometimes they don’t even answer me (I can’t be bothered to learn their names, since they all look alike)”? Yikes. Ms. Mentor does not berate letter writers for their sins, but she does appear to shape their letters to highlight them. At least I hope so. If not, we’re in worse shape than we think.
Of course outsize ambition, crushing anxiety, raging jealousy, furious anger, and soul-sucking depression (and the poor behavior they cause) are Ms. Mentor’s stock in trade. She is a guide through the underbelly of academic life.
Through the letters and Ms. Mentor’s responses we learn the unspoken norms and the nasty all too human subtext that is the counterpart to formal rules and routines. If there is one take-away message for the not yet established it is be collegial or perish.
To the plaintive “shouldn’t it be better/fairer/nicer in the sacred academic grove” Ms. Mentor replies, well, yes, but for goodness sake don’t go braying about it loudly and publicly and piss off the people who are going to shape your destiny. After all, “those who grab their swords prematurely can make themselves into gory and unpleasant spectacles.”
This isn’t to say that Ms. Mentor tells her readers to roll over in the face of ill-treatment. Ms. Mentor is clearly on the side of justice, truth, and excellent scholarship. She deplores bad behavior, and exhorts her readers to play nice and be solicitous of the needs of the weaker. For those with less power (grad students, adjuncts, untenured professors) she does advise standing up for oneself when possible, establishing a paper-trail, filing confidential complaints, and getting out if necessary.
However, she also recommends some judicious toadying, a little strategic buttering up, and a good deal of tongue-biting (at least until you snag that great job or earn tenure). Cultivate a positive public face, even when seething inside, know when to retreat to fight another day (e.g. after tenure), and reconsider your career choice if you “just have to be me.” Oh yes, and deal with interpersonal problems face-to-face. Emails will be forwarded and passed along, particularly if they are injudicious. Good advice for us all.
Ms. Mentor’s favourite problems are the “uniquely dreadful” (although she also entertains the trivial, such as the professor who fails to erase the blackboard before the next class, or the boredom of awards ceremonies for those incessantly honoured).
Dreadful stories serve as important cautionary tales highlighting where the serious, career-killing danger zones lie. In some of the appalling stories the letter writers are innocents, caught in quagmires not of their making. “Karen” is simply unlucky to have a thesis adviser who likes to lie on the floor and do pelvic thrusts (“back exercises”) while attempting to look up her skirt. In others, they have clearly brought trouble upon themselves. More than a few have botched it badly enough that they are going to need not just a new job, but a new line of work. We read and shudder. Hopefully, we do not recognize ourselves. If we do we look to Ms. Mentor for a pathway out, and we vow to change our ways (mutter quietly to self before department meetings, “keep mouth shut, keep mouth shut”).
But what if you are one of the lucky few, the brilliant and talented tenured professor with the plum job in a harmonious and supportive department – the golden grad student with wonderful mentors and social savvy to spare? Is there anything in Ms. Mentor’s advice for you? Well sure, what better way to humbly remind oneself (or gloat) of one’s good fortune than to read the problems of others?
Ms. Mentor’s new and ever more impeccable advice for women and men in academia
by Emily Toth, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, 272 pages.
Sylvia Fuller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia where she is surrounded by wonderful colleagues, brilliant students, and wise and benevolent administrators. You can watch her dispense her own sage advice in
this video presentation
from CFHSS Congress 2008’s Career Corner.
