When I arrived on campus for my first day of college teaching, almost four years ago, the first person to greet me with a boisterous welcome was a first-year orientation volunteer who asked if I’d like help installing cable in my dorm room. I was wearing a collared shirt and tie and carrying a briefcase.
A year later, when dropping off a grade-change form in the registrar’s office, a staff member told me, with some exasperation, that students certainly don’t have the authority to alter their own grades.
The following year, when I was serving on a panel to interview Fulbright applicants and arrived a few minutes early, the receptionist directed me to “join the other applicants in the waiting area,” gesturing to a cluster of nervous undergraduates.
Of course, it’s not all bad. That same year, when speaking at a conference, a professor thanked me profusely for all the work I had done with other graduate students to make the conference happen. You’re welcome, I guess. A few minutes later, another professor asked me to refill the water for the next speaker. I was the next speaker.
I really could go on: People blurting out at job interviews that they expected me to be older; a drunk student walking out of a bar who stopped me as I walked by to ask (responsibly) “hey bro, you driving back to campus by any chance?”; college staff members pointing out that I could be their son; people lecturing me about my own field.
These things come up in my personal life, too. I asked a Home Depot employee for cork tiles last month; he replied, “Oh, like for a dorm-room setup?” In a public municipal meeting this week I expressed interest in local real estate, and was countered by a speech from a longtime resident who said that she loves the college and all, but would rather not have late parties and loud concerts in her neighborhood.
The vast majority of these kinds of interactions are innocent and well-meaning, which is why, when I occasionally get frustrated and complain to friends or colleagues, they respond by telling me how lucky I am, how much I’ll appreciate all this in a few years, that I must have “good genes,” or that this is all just kind of funny. They may be correct about some of these things, but they’re not seeing the dark side.
If a student can mistake me for a first-year undergraduate when I’m wearing a shirt and tie, or call me “bro” outside a bar in a small college town, it means a student can also get mixed messages about my role in the classroom. If a colleague can look at me and not see a colleague, it means I have to be especially deliberate about how I present myself if I want to be taken seriously.
Let’s behave more conscientiously when it comes to the quotidian assumptions and comments we make about the age and appearance of our colleagues.
Indeed, the most common feedback I received when I was on the job market — both from mentors with whom I practiced interviewing and from search-committee members themselves — was that I “come off” as a little green and not authoritative enough.
I wonder, though, to what extent this is my problem or their problem. In short: Am I really “coming off” in a particular way, or are people in these (often high-stakes) professional scenarios — interviews, conferences, committee meetings — just seeing a student or a son instead of a colleague or a professor?
I have no way of knowing. In my own judgments about other people, I sometimes find it difficult to discern precisely when I’m operating with ageist assumptions versus other situational cues.
I’m sharing these examples not only to highlight how ageist judgments can work in more than one direction, with serious consequences. I don’t only want to point out how much thought and energy go into self-presentation for people who look too junior — or senior — for the work we do. I’m also sharing these examples to draw attention to the fact that if I can have this experience as a white, male, tenure-track professor, the situation must be compounded for women, faculty of color, and others fighting for more stable and fairly compensated employment.
As time goes on, I’ll start to look more and more like what our society thinks a professor should look like. But consider the stakes of ageism for women, already unjustly perceived in many a workplace; or for faculty of color, already radically underrepresented among tenured faculty in the United States. We know, too, about gender and racial biases in student evaluations. We should bear in mind that ageism can operate alongside and in concert with these other forms of injustice.
My suggestion is simple: Let’s behave more conscientiously when it comes to the quotidian assumptions and comments we make about the age and appearance of our colleagues. If you wouldn’t be comfortable with your colleagues thinking of you as their offspring in workplace scenarios, spare what might seem like the flattery of telling them how young they look. (If you eventually become friends and want to flatter your friend, fine.)
If a young-looking person in professional attire is sitting in a meeting room, a conference table, or a faculty lounge, assume he or she belongs there and isn’t just playing a trick on you. If you’re interviewing a job candidate who doesn’t seem “authoritative” enough, consider that you are treating authority as a performance dependent upon appearance. Understand that knowing what you’re talking about is different from — and perhaps more relevant than — looking like the kind of person you expect would know what they’re talking about.
If we can be better with these small things day to day, we can begin clearing some of the barriers to more collegial relationships and successful early careers.
