“Well I’ve seen some old friends sort of die/or just turn into whatever must have been inside them/whatever all of us had then in common/we grew up/we left home/we don’t think that way no more.”
-Ben Folds, Ben Folds Five “Video”
The other day, by happenstance, I ended up in a conversation with a fellow scholar roughly my age (a little younger in years but slightly ahead in career thanks to my time VAPing) and someone who was near the end of his career. The elder scholar heard us talking about pressures and he shared a few accounts.
The first was about his own time early on the tenure track. He said that the stress was such that one night his son tapped him on the shoulder and he slapped him to get him to move away. He almost ruined his relationship with his son over his work.
The second story he told was about a fellow scholar who wrote a book about something that took three long years. The person, in the process of writing, alienated themselves from their department, ruined their reputation with their university, ruined their marriage, and ended up clinically depressed and on suicide watch. The book never saw publication, either.
I know that not all academics suffer this sort of plight, but as I’m still just getting started, and the stress level has been really high (higher than the reward ratio in many situations) it alarms me. I also find myself frequently inadvertently trapped by administrative politics (happening to be the person who does the sort of work that the bulk of a program doesn’t respect, trying to get tenure in a program the university can’t pin to a department, having been mentored by someone that other mentors don’t like and then moving on to being mentored by yet different people who didn’t like the second mentor, etc.).
I also feel an unrealistic amount of pressure because of who and what I am. I’m not like most academics: I’m mixed-blood, I’m a first generation student, I’m fat, I do work at the edges of traditional disciplines. I feel like my success matters because I’m, in whatever small degree, a symbol of how people like me can be treated by the academy. It’s difficult. I won’t pretend it isn’t. And I know that often people think I’m simply being selfish when I insist that I can’t allow myself to be treated in certain ways because of the precedent it would create for others like me.
I guess what I’m saying is that I love my job, but I don’t make enough money to accept that my career might ruin my life. It needs to be worth it. And I want to tell other first generation students, other Native students, other people who do interesting but ‘weird’ work, that it’ll be worth it. I want to encourage people like me, because the truth is– like it or not– the academy NEEDS people like me. There’s enough people who fit the traditional mold already. But apparently the academy doesn’t care if it destroys people. A structure that exists to educate might just tear down the people who are most passionate about its mission.
That’s scary.