Fun fact: this site is the number one resource for all web surfers afraid of krakens. According to my rough estimate, that’s approximately everyone.
Fun fact redux: if you type “single professor” into your Google search engine, I’m third in line. By including “single professor” in the prior sentence–and this sentence too, as it turns out–I can’t help but feel I’ll catapult to the top of that list. I am nothing if not pointlessly competitive.
The first post comes from the now de-funked “The Chronicles of Dr. Crazy“–not entirely defunct, as it turns out, since she now plies her trade elsewhere under a different nom de blôg. Her post seems to originate from that well of despair that most folks sip from at one time or another, although I think she ordered the half carafe on this particular occasion. I’m glad she decided to archive the post, however; too many folks deep-six those expressions of authentic angst when retrospection makes them appear unseemly. A little honesty on the net should be preserved for novelty, if nothing else, and her post also strikes me as a fitting cri de coeur for all those who found themselves somewhat underprepared for the pragmatics of academic life.
I can’t claim to be such a folk, and by now (the post cited above appeared way back in 2004, a few days after the earth cooled) I reckon Dr. Crazy’s frame of mind has probably changed a tad. Coping mechanisms evolve, and perspectives shift. Even so, I think it bears mentioning that earning the degree and landing a job does not in fact resolve the sundry quandaries of living. After earning the doctorate, I suspect many endure a phase of expectant receptivity, the likes of which Dr. Crazy describes quite well: with degree in hand and paychecks on the way, it seems perfectly reasonable to believe that a kindly life might be lived at last. Natheless, there is no crock of leprechaun gold at the end of that particular rainbow, just lots of oaten bits and, if you’re lucky, particolored marshmallows.
(I don’t know how I got there, but I’m sure glad I did. Frankly, I think the post handles its own explication pretty well, so I’ll save the parsing for the Lucky Charms. Did you know they added an hourglass to the marshmallow gallery in 2008? I don’t know about you, but I don’t like it when my cereal reminds me of my own mortality, even if my mortality is delicious.)
In second place we have a column from The Chronicle of Higher Education, a perspective piece penned by Mike Land last March. It’s a hybrid piece, half retrospective and half advice column, and it walks the line between the personal and the professional in a self-reflexive way. Neurotic reader that I am, I encounter a wiggedy tension in the fourth paragraph, when Land recognizes that he is the token single on a panel. “Tokenism” carries a little extra weight with it wherever it goes (I don’t mean to be catty, but it grazed at the hors d’oeuvres table just a bit too much over the holidays), so shifting from that oblique allegation to a how-to list strikes me as a little evasive. It’s nice to know, however, that the single life is essentially problem free.
Were one to juxtapose those two posts, one would get a fairly wiggedy vision of the single life. Dr. Crazy writes from the dining car of an existential train wreck, feeling that life as she knows it–the life she has earned over long years of study–has become and will remain discombobulated. Mr. Land, on the other hand, faces the challenges of too much leisure (which must still be protected), a curious advisory ambivalence (he plugged away at his own work doggedly in the early going, yet he would urge the young singles of the world not to do the same), and a desire to blur boundaries via outreach (which I am surprised to learn can make the prof a nexus of some kind). I’m no pollyanna, but I’d like to believe that there are points on the singleton continuum between those two positions, which I shall call “self-immolation” and “self-service,” but only because I’m kind of a bastard.
I’m being uncharitable, of course, and I’m sidestepping a rich vein of gender commentary that ought to be mined by someone far more responsible than I. If folks are hunting for “single professor,” however, they should probably know that there’s nothing especially mystical about the status. Single folk in the professoriat are a minority, but that doesn’t mean we’re unicorns (my apologies if you are, in fact, a unicorn). It only means that we are obliged to approach our personal and professional lives from a nominally different point of origin, one that comes with a batch of advantages and drawbacks like every other kind of life. You may indeed find yourself commisserating with your long-distance peeps over wine until the batteries of your phone run dry; you may indeed find yourself heading out of town with a month to kill and a memoir on your mind. In all likelihood, however, you’ll probably just find your own local outlets to plug into, the things you need to keep yourself awake, alive, and satisfied. There are plenty of places where you can take the business of being single quite seriously, if that’s what you’re into, but there’s all sorts of current out there for the taking. You won’t need a guide to find it.
