Dr. Shellie

A colleague was talking about a humanities professor at our university, and the activist/blogging/art expression/organizing that the professor was doing. "Her work is totally integrated with her identity," she said. "She studies the construction of online communities formed around intersections of ethnic and gender activism with interpretative music, and she herself choreographs and performs symphonic pieces for Korean transgender drum groups."

Or something like that. I don’t remember the details, so I made up the transgendered Korean part.

But what I was thinking was, "gee, my work is not integrated with my identity. Not at all. In fact, the study of (my topic) has exactly nothing to do with my gender, ethnicity, upbringing, social or political interests, or taste in art."

I kind of like it this way. I think it would be completely overwhelming if my work was all about my identity. I enjoy the fact that my identity doesn’t really matter. On the other hand, I envy somewhat the personal connection to the subject matter that must entail.

I have started doing outings with my research group, every few months. We go for dinner or drinks, with significant others welcome to come along. They seem to like it, and hopefully do not find it too weird to hang out with their professor once in a while. (For whatever reason, they have taken to calling me "Professor" rather than "Shellie," and I am too amused by it to correct them. Maybe after they pass their qualifying exams?) One of my students, who is from China, particularly likes learning the names of new foods and is always full of questions. He usually asks whether the food we are eating is "typically American," and then seems slightly disappointed when I say it is not, but is actually far better than typical. Today, for example, we had a long conversation about American cheese and how it came in two types, orange and white, and how it was different from the aged Gouda, manchego, and blue cheese we were actually eating. One day I will invite them over for Domino’s Pizza, mac ‘n cheese, and Bud Light, and we will see if they enjoy typical American food.

Before I started here, I wondered whether it would be weird or even possible to "hang out" with my PhD students. I have a good mix of students in my small group (male and female, American and international), and this helps a lot. We also don’t "hang out" every day… I don’t want to be one of those professors that appears to have no friends, except for their own PhD students, who they go drinking with at the pub every night after work. But doing something together every month or two seems good, and if they all hang out together without me more than that, all the better.

Today, I am tired.

Tired of the fact that my heat doesn’t work, and the apartment manager told me it could take two days to get it fixed. Tired of the fact that I will probably have to call him back three times between now and then to make it happen. Tired of having a cold for two weeks which just won’t go away, particularly now that the house is freezing cold at night. Tired of stepping over the phone cord running all the way across my apartment, which connects the desktop to the only working phone jack/DSL line. Tired of the fact that since landlords are not required to give you more than one working phone jack, the manager refuses to fix the broken phone jack right next to the computer. Tired of the fact that he does not see my non-functioning oven (no temperature knob) as anything that needs to be repaired in the next year.

Tired of the students in my class who can’t do the work, and will probably never be able to do the work, but ask for lots of extra office hours so I can help them improve from a terrible grade to a very bad grade. Tired of the fact that they refuse to drop the class, even though it is inevitable, and so I still have to grade their papers.

Tired of figuring out how to go over, under, around, and behind people to get things done. 

Tired of the fact that my benefits card has still not arrived and I need to pay doctor’s visits out of pocket and get reimbursed.

Too tired to set aside time to think about research strategy and grant writing.

Tired of the fact that I can’t swim (have a cold) or go to the gym (because there was a recent outbreak of a highly contagious virus that left a lot of undergrads vomiting for two days straight, and it seems kind of soon to go sweat in the middle of a bunch of potentially disease-carrying undergrads).

I’m sure I will figure out solutions to all these things. But I need to regain some energy.

"Surely you can’t be a full professor?" asked the man on the airplane.

I don’t think he was referring to the formal academic rank. I think (as FSP has talked about before), he was wondering whether I was a "real" professor.

I am still wondering whether to wear suits to work. Or on the airplane.

In a way, it doesn’t matter: the students I teach know that I give them their grades. The PhD students I advise know that I run the lab. Random men on the airplane? Not really a problem.

And yet: it hits me, over and over again, that our society has a hard time believing that 30-something women can be professors. Why am I asked if I am a student every day? Some of my friends claim I look young. I don’t think so. Whenever I ask someone to guess my age, they get it just right (plus or minus two years). I think it just doesn’t occur to anyone that someone who looks like me could be a professor. And when I do wear a suit, I get mistaken for an admissions officer (yes, that too happened on an airplane). 

My brain is whirring 10x too fast.

Computers for lab are half purchased. The newly installed power strips have misplaced plugs. A student whose sibling died in the World Trade Center will miss class on Sept. 11 for a memorial. I saw a large group of clarinet players standing in a circle practicing for marching band try-outs. Multimedia-equipped rooms seem more convenient than lugging around your own projector, but why couldn’t I find any focusing knob? Was there really a campus-wide decision to take away focus control from the end user? Grilled fish tacos are really pretty good. My student, newly arrived from China, has already had his bike stolen. A large group of girls in dresses and sunglasses were standing outside the nearby sorority early on Monday morning, doing something for rush. Like the clarinetists, I was taken aback by their numbers. I lectured my class today on why they should not ask me whether taking my class will raise their GPA. BestBuy is an electronics emporium, a land of plenty in which $100+ objects beckon from their tidily arranged shelves. I tried hot yoga at the gym. Or was it simply yoga in a room with too many people for the air conditioning system?

And there you have it. The type of blog post I thought I would never write: an assortment of random stuff going through my brain.

Tomorrow I am a teaching a class for someone else, who was called away for a family emergency. There are a few spots in the notes where I could not follow his derivation. Will I figure it out before 9:30am tomorrow? Will I write the offending steps on the board with a poker face, betraying no sign of doubt? Or will I cleverly shift the burden of understanding onto the students, by indicating that the missing parts of the derivation will provide them with an interesting challenge for next class?

When I go to sleep with unresolved thoughts, I dream strange dreams. Will I dream them all year long?