Bored by Department Meetings

After the chair greeted us and said we were going to have a marvelous year because the students were greater than ever and so were we, Professor Ill Temper got up and roared his disapproval for our usual minuscule salary increases. His protégé, Ill Temperette, then nagged us about committee service -- and their sycophant, Ill Temperino, kvetched about library cutbacks. By the time we got to the welcome-back reception, I had a sour stomach and couldn’t help thinking about other jobs, law school, or fleeing to Tahiti.

Is it all my fault?

Answer: Of course it is. As a Kafka character once said, or should have, “I don’t know what it is, but I’m guilty.”

You’re guilty, of course, of sophomore slump.

That manifests itself as ennui and cynicism, eye-rolling and inward grumblings of “How long, Lord, how long?” Mostly you’re bored because it’s no longer fresh to you.

Boredom is not uncommon among academics, even though your world is supposed to be the crème de la crème of American intellectual life. Literary critic Leslie Fiedler once claimed that being a professor requires a tremendous fear of risk and a huge tolerance for boredom. (He nevertheless had a teaching career that lasted more than 40 years, punctuated by a notorious marijuana arrest, “On Being Busted at Fifty,” that set a new standard for midlife crises.)

Ms. Mentor suggests that you not consider boredom a crisis, though she’d rather not be bored, herself, by such clichés as “the human condition.” In fact, entry upon the tenure track is becoming a rather rare rite of passage — and last year, especially if you’re in the humanities, you probably felt great pride as well as survivor guilt. You knew you were the best and the brightest — though you were also sure you were an imposter, a monstrously clever moron who would soon be busted. This year, you know that you got by again.

Last year, at your first department meeting, you could finally see from the inside, how the grown-ups — the tenured people — behaved among their own kind. If you dared, you might even have sidled up and introduced yourself to Dr. Famous, whose densely theoretical writings you’d parsed, reparsed, memorized, and fought with in graduate school. You could sit next to Zeus, sort of.

Now, a year later, Zeus is only one of many older colleagues — some kind and generous, others bizarre and aberrant. You’ve also solved the problems that made last year’s opening edgy and hectic: Why isn’t my lab set up? How do I get things copied? And when, if ever, will I get my parking sticker?

Now you’d like to move on to some intellectual challenges, but your department seems mired in managerial trivia. How, you wonder, can thinking beings get excited by such terms as “planning assessment outcomes” and “strategic initiatives in hiring”?

What to do?

Many experienced board and panel members have perfected the art of “meeting sleeping,” a quiet five minutes or so of inconspicuous dozing, from which they emerge perky and bright-eyed. But if you can’t do that, Ms. Mentor prescribes large doses of caffeine. “Chuck” once fell asleep during a faculty meeting, snored, and awoke to find his colleagues staring and pointing at him. That gaffe set him on the road to tenure denial.

Once you resolve to be alert, few faculty meetings are actually dull, because almost all have hidden agendas. Someone wants something — guaranteed enrollment for his arcane courses, or the hiring of a secret lover from another department -- but Someone can’t say so openly. Academics cannot or will not speak what Kathryn Hume has called “the language of self-interest.”

Instead, there is a great deal said in “departmentese,” a tongue that few new faculty members have mastered. Some never do, and are left forever wondering why they hear themselves give excellent suggestions in meetings, after which there is a short hiccupping pause, and then everyone acts as if no one has spoken.

Suppose, for instance, that a department has three unproductive professors in the field of swamp maintenance. They’ve published nothing for 15 years, their teaching is terrible and drives students away, and they won’t speak to each other. A bully boss in the “real world,” where there’s no tenure, might lambaste them, knock their heads together, or fire them. But a suave academic will instead lobby to hire a new professor in swamp maintenance who will “bring us national recognition in an already strong area.”

A newbie will be appalled, but an experienced speaker of departmentese will envision a new swamp-maintenance colleague who will get the recognition and whose popularity might well nudge the surly do-nothings into early retirement. Liberation is nigh.

The study of self-interest among academics is a fascinating one, and makes up the best and most vicious of academic novels. Which is where Betsy may come in.

Except for mathematicians, who rather pride themselves on being socially dense, most academics think of themselves as exceptionally intuitive and analytical. What better laboratory than a department for studying rodents cooped up with each other for years, unable to shriek about what they really want, and yet still seeking food, space, self-aggrandizement?

In short, Ms. Mentor urges you to think of department meetings not as attempts to engineer small changes, or puff up tiny egos by allowing them to strut and fret. Rather, try to figure out who really wants what, and why they can’t just say so. Is it that someone (everyone) will be alienated by such bold statements? Is it cowardice? Or is it simply an acknowledgment that department members will have to, somehow, get along with each other for decades? They know without saying what President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed boldly: “Don’t spit in the soup. We all have to eat.”

Boredom is sometimes called rage spread thin, but Ms. Mentor believes it comes from a shrunken imagination. Yes, she knows the standard advice that’s always given if you’re afraid of someone (“Imagine them naked,” etc.), but she doesn’t find such visions exciting. Rather, she sees department meetings as exercises in the will to power. Notice who stands up, who filibusters, who fiddles while someone else burns with indignation. Meetings are carnivals, episodes in ongoing soap operas, and skits peopled with -- yes -- some atrociously bad actors.

You are permitted to giggle now and then, especially since a smiling, bright-eyed young person is always beloved by senior colleagues.

And there is beauty in order, the orderly structure that you begin to see as you study the architecture of academic life. There are serfs; there are dragons; there are definitely bats in belfries. Ideally, you find teaching exciting and mind-stretching (if you don’t, you should leave the profession). But sometimes the longitudinal study of your colleagues -- Oliver Awkward, Sara Surreptitious, Barnaby Bluster -- is the most entertaining, and the longest-lasting show of your life.

Ms. Mentor urges you not to miss a minute of it.

Question: I notice that most of the people inveighing against cheating nowadays fail to spell “plagiarism” correctly. How does this bode?

Answer: Ill.

SAGE READERS: As always, Ms. Mentor welcomes queries, rants, recriminations, and obloquies. Feel free to vent, and anonymity is guaranteed. Ms. Mentor rarely answers letters personally, but many burning questions have been handled in her tome, Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.