This sort of goes with the last post about boorish behavior except it seems a little more complicated. I'm not too certain how to process it and writing this post will probably help.
In that last post, I was "you" in 2 of the scenarios. Obviously, I was the "you" in the one about the jerk on the panel ignoring "you" as she asked the question (and, seriously, the outrage will wear off shortly and I will one day be able to take the story to its true comic heights). I was also the "you" in the on about the mentor who was underwhelmed at the news of a book contract.
I confess that the panel scenario just pissed me off, but didn't surprise me. Had he behaved in any other way than that, then I would have been surprised, so I probably asked for it. I wonder, too, if I misread or misunderstood how I was supposed to act as an audience member in general, and if should have framed my suggestions as a question, thereby acknowledged his authority over the subject of his (truly pedestrian) paper while also making my contribution. Simply sitting back and taking notes would have been the wiser choice. Not attending in the first place also would have been smart since, I could not have contained myself in wanting to participate in the discussion and since, no matter what, he would have found some way to act the fool as he was always wont to do. Still, I was trying to make nice, and he behaved badly and in such a way as to attempt to make me look as if I knew nothing about the subject when he (and a number of other people in the room) know full well that I do, and that pissed me off, even as I did walk into it.
The other scenario, the one about the mentor failing to congratulate his former mentee on her book contract, well, that one hurt like hell.
I honestly thought the person in question would have been happy for me and proud of me, or -- at the very least -- able to feign something akin to those emotions. Like Susan said in the comments to the last post, "The point about manners is they are not about how you feel!" Besides, this person was my mentor -- as much as I would allow anyone to be a mentor after his predecessor abused the relationship to the point of a formal grievance -- our names are linked. If I can achieve something good, then he gets a little bit of the glory; and if I can achieve it without pestering him for anything, all the better for him.
Of course, it didn't end there.
After the whole failure to congratulate incident, we were part of a group that went to dinner. At that dinner, he was sitting near me, a graduate student, and an accomplished female professor who isn't that much older than myself. He then launched into a description of my career in which he said explicitly that I could have had a good job, that I had thrown it all away to pursue a related career path, and characterized that latest career path as frivolous and pointless.
Two nights later, he did the same thing. We were both at a party and engaged in one of those types of party conversations that organically shifts members and subjects, and everything was very lovely. As some point, he decided yet again to tell the story of my winding career path, this time to two female graduate students with whom I had been speaking and a big prize-winning historian who had joined us. This time, he described my job history as looking like it belongs to "one of those flighty women who can't decide what to do with her life."
Well, that's one way to put it (and I can't even begin to address the gender slam). Another is that I picked up publications, degrees, and a wealth of skills and knowledge that allow me to bring something interesting to the table.
Still another is that I did need to make a living and that the fantastic job that he alluded to did not exist. (Seriously, the way that he told the story, you would have thought that I was offered a job and rejected it to do something else. The reality was that there were no jobs, much less interviews or offers. Do professors of a certain age just not get that the market is not what it was in 1970?)
Yet another is that this is MY life. I thought at the time -- both when I was taking a tour of the road less traveled and in the middle of the conversation -- of John Lennon. Fuck what other people want from you and what they think you owe them, you have to occupy your own existence; and I think that I've turned out pretty well, matured, and -- to quote the Beatles yet again -- "it's getting better all the time." Like Lennon, I came back from a journey that was necessary, and am much better for it.
Anyway, I'm still trying to work out what's going on here, mostly so I can go "ahhh! I get it. Now I can move on." His tone was jovial, as usual; and the conversation could have been read as one of those instances when one of your group of friends or your brother brings home a date and you and the rest of the group or family tell the date all of the crazy shit that your friend or brother did in the old days, all with a great amount of affection.
Except, I had just given him an incredibly good piece of news that he barely acknowledged and that he never once mentioned again. Why tell three graduate students and two historians about my varied career choices, making me look like a total fuck-up, when he could have said, "she has this great coup and she used to be MY student"? Why was he cutting me down when he could have been building me up to his own benefit? I mean -- hell! -- I don't even talk about that period of time in the way that he did, and I'm the one suffering the financial consequences.
Then, I realized something: He really has a lot of resentment here. I'm still learning to trust my own judgements, so I wonder if I'm being too defensive or too sensitive. I am also afraid that I am dead right -- which, in learning to trust myself, I find that I often am, even when I don't want to be.
You see, he did essentially save my life at one point, and nearly did at another except that there were other variables involved that neither of us could have controlled. I can see where he would think that I was an overall disappointment from probably the second day that I was his student. I can see why he might expect that I owed him something in some way and that I did not make good on the debt. So, I have a vague idea of the reasons for a long standing resentment. I also suspect that he might not think that I can pull this book thing off, and that he might think it is a good idea but that I (for whatever reason) am not the person to do it. I wonder, too, if he might have wanted me to ask for his help to get the thing published, and -- well -- a whole lot of other things for which -- if I knew for certain or fully understood -- I would be very apologetic. Still, whatever the specific reasons, I am utterly clueless; but I can see that he has this level of hostility that he is usually good at concealing, but that still seeps out in not the most ideal situations.
Unless, I'm totally misreading some signal or another in my well-learned paranoia.
Even then, have you ever had a moment in which you can see how other people -- people close to you -- see you and what they want for or from you? I've had a lot of those moments in the past few years, and they are enlightening. What you find from that vantage is either not flattering, based on the person whom I was 10-15 years ago, or just plain wrong. Very often, I lose a tiny bit of respect for that person because of this way that they see me. Not that I dislike them, or even resent them for it (ok, not much), I just know what I am dealing with in them and what they think they are dealing with in me. At one time, I let their version of me shape my reality -- hell, I let it be my reality because I had so little sense of myself. Now, I don't. Now, I know that their version is not my reality, nor is it me.
But, it still hurts; and the closer or more important a role that the other person had in your life, the more it hurts. If I am reading this correctly, then the person who had been one of the few -- if not the only -- positive mentors in my life really has little respect for me. I can take it on the chin, I can disagree, but that doesn't stop me from feeling it.
Understand, I write all of this here partly to complain about it, partly to try to understand it, but also partly to recognize the hurt, even if I do deserve some of it. Because, you see, I know that I have a diverse set of skills, I know that I have good ideas that are getting better, I know that I have good fortune, and I know people who think that is wonderful. In other words, nothing he said or did has any impact upon my reality or on who I am; and what I do -- symbolized right now as this book -- will speak better for me than any stupid stories about my perceived failures. As I told someone else when asked what this book will do for me, it will make all of that back story, all of those strikes against me, not matter so much anymore.
Except, really, the book won't do it. The will to create that makes me write the book -- MY will -- makes it not matter anymore.
Eventually, the hurt does fade, doesn't it?
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NOTE: At the risk of sounding egotistical, although I have been linked to Inside Higher Ed's "Around the Web" feature before, but I have a request for the person who searches for those links. While I am normally grateful for the traffic from previous links, I'd rather that this post remain un-linked if it becomes a candidate. It has too much that I would prefer to keep limited to my regular readers and not willfully offered up to potentially mean-spirited (I mean, read the comments there!) audience. Thank you!
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Monday, July 26, 2010
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9 comments:
Hurt fades? Really? After how long? The best I can offer is from the Dalai Lama: recognize that the other person was wrong and use the occasion (and hurt) to know yourself better.
Meanwhile, we bleed all over the place.
Belle, you know, that actually squares with my experience much better than hoping it fades. Thank you.
i don't know what to say. it does suck on many levels that he didn't recognize your accomplishments and then chose to run you down in front of grad students and colleagues. that does, however, speak volumes about him.
Belle is right, the hurt doesn't fade. But really -- someone who behaves like that was a teacher, but is not a mentor. Whatever the cause of it (and it doesn't make sense to try to get too rational ) there's something about you that he doesn't get. It could be your career path, but who knows.
It's lucky that you don't see said person too often. So you'll have lots of time to come up with a light-hearted riposte - "But Harry, I'm employed and I'm writing my second book -- I thought that was the definition of a successful graduate student" It would have to be something you would actually say. I do very well at coming up with lines I'd never actually use :)
Dykewife and Susan: Yeah, it does say a lot about him. He was a teacher. He was what I needed when he became my advisor -- or, rather, the best that I was going to do at that time.
I've been trying to think of snappy responses -- delivered while smiling sweetly -- because you KNOW he will do it again and again. Someone suggested starting off with, "I find it interesting that you use such gendered terms, I wonder if a man with my resume would be described in such a way?" Perhaps, "well, I'll let my work speak for my abilities." At the time I said, "well, I've seen the error of my ways and seem to be doing well getting back on track." I think my lady voice was to high for his hearing because he kept on in the same line.
You know, I am starting to see this all in a new light. After all, if I am actually building a satisfying career and resume, the fact that two senior scholars have to go out of their way to cut me down in public in rather childish and petty ways (and that other guy -- his story got even better, but I'll save it for when I find a punch line) -- then I must really intimidate them in some way, right? If I'm such an idiot, such a failure, so flighty, so terribly ignorant about something on which I am writing, which they both seem to think, why bother to try to put me in my lowly place?
C'est la vie.
Oh, Belle, this just occurred to me. Your comment is reminiscent of something my brother told me many years ago: "There is a category for stupid people, and it's called WRONG!" Not at eloquent as the Dalai Lama, but then the Dalai Lama isn't a Bubba (using the term affectionately here) from east Texas!
Perhaps you are not kissing their asses or singing their praises enough?
Tearing you down in public is just shitty. If I was his grad student, and he just ripped apart a professor with publications and presentations and a second book in the works, I'd worry if I could ever measure up.
I need to take some time to digest the hurt not fading. The bleeding everywhere I am familiar with :)
And... you are still awesome. And very very TALL.
Clio, definitely there's resentment in there. Whether it's the particulars of what you're doing or that you're simply NOT doing what he expected (what he feels he's owed for his "investment" in you)? That doesn't matter so much as knowing how to deal with your feelings and his future acting-out of the same.
Perhaps something along the lines of "I feel that I've been very fortunate to have come to where I am as an academic and I thank you for your part in that progress" might be enough to get him off of bitching about what you've not done. But self-absorbed academics are incredibly hard to redirect when they think they're addressing some imaginary grievance. *headdesk*
Digger: I KNOW one of them thinks that I'm not kissing his ass and singing his praises enough -- nor ever did. He was too much of an ass and he engineered incidents to coerce people into praising him. The other? I have no idea.
Still, thank you! TALLness is wonderful. This is about them, not me.
Janice: I actually think I know why he is resentful, but I can't say more because that comes a little too close to reality. Let's just say that I think he had plans for the book that would mean that he would get far more credit for its creation that simply being the advisor of the author. Those plans would not necessarily be best for the book or the author, but he'd get a bit more of the glory.
Your sugestion for the come-back is actually something I've been thinking of. I will see him again, in a similar setting, in a few months. If he decides to try this again, then I need a really sharp response -- one that can be delivered with a sweet smile and a note of self-deprecation, but with a ton of humor.
((((((Clio))))))
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