This article from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from:
altany@email.wcu.edu
_________________________________________________________________
This article is available online at this address:
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2002/10/2002103101c.htm
- The text of the article is below -
_________________________________________________________________
Finding it hard to keep up with all that's happening in academe?
The Chronicle's e-mailed Daily Report keeps you up-to-date in a
matter of minutes by quickly summarizing current events in higher
education while providing links to complete coverage on our
subscriber-only Web site. The Daily Report and Web access come
with your Chronicle subscription at no extra cost. Order your
subscription now at http://chronicle.com/4free?es
_________________________________________________________________
Thursday, October 31, 2002
Settling in as a New Faculty Spouse
By WILL STALLINGS
I still recall the giddy sense of elation I had when my wife,
Susan, was offered an assistant professorship at a campus I'll
call Crestridge College. At long last, an anxious year of
applications and interviews was over. Susan had certain
criteria for her first tenure-track job, and Crestridge seemed
almost ideal. Its emphasis on teaching provided plenty of
opportunities for faculty-student interaction, which was very
important to my wife. The college was in a part of the South
that we both found attractive, and to make it even better, it
was only about a day's drive from both our families.
My elation was mixed with a great deal of personal relief. Now
that Susan was employed, I could finally quit the
industrial-management position I had held for the duration of
her doctoral work. When she first applied to grad school she
was told it should take only about three years to complete her
Ph.D. When I took the manager's job, three years didn't seem
like a long time to work in conditions I frequently thought of
in Dantean metaphors. However, university promises aren't
always etched in stone, and three years stretched to six.
I spent those years descending into the depths of the
employment Inferno (I mean this somewhat literally -- there
was no air conditioning in my sweltering factory). The work
grew more loathsome, but I was reluctant to seek another job
while my wife was in school. I dreamed of the time when Susan
would land a tenure-track position. I could leave the factory
and work on my writing, possibly taking a part-time job on the
side. I was ready to relish life as a Faculty Spouse.
When Crestridge called, it appeared that our dreams had come
true.
During my wife's interview at Crestridge, she was drawn by a
number of appealing things about the college. There was a
large pool of faculty-development money available for
research. Her departmental colleagues seemed warm and
supportive. Located in a relatively rural area, Crestridge had
a calming, bucolic charm to it and seemed somewhat immune from
the bitter and nasty political squabbling that had marked my
wife's graduate program. I gleefully quit my job, we sold our
house, bid farewell to friends and family, loaded up the
rental truck, and moved to paradise.
Soon after arriving, the promises made and the perceptions
presented at the interview began to unravel. The first to
disappear was the possibility of research money -- something
my wife had been looking forward to. The slight bitterness
that only unkept promises can bring began to flavor our lives,
and this was immediately exacerbated by our choice of peers.
The "warm and supportive" colleagues we initially socialized
with turned out to be angry and divisive whiners. They seemed
to relish the hours they spent dissecting every minor mistake
made by the Crestridge administration. We became increasingly
unhappy with the place, but kept telling ourselves that it
would get better.
As we tried to put a good light on our crumbling image of
academic nirvana, the pressures of tenure-track life began to
soak up more of my wife's time. We had spent very little time
together while she was writing her dissertation, often seeing
each other for about 20 minutes in the morning. I'd be going
out the door to work as she came down the stairs from her
study after working all night, exhausted and ready to grab a
few hours' sleep. We had no illusions about the pressures of
faculty life, but the reality of it at Crestridge was
something that had to be experienced firsthand.
Susan was soon engulfed by committee work and other pressures.
"Your courses must be academically challenging," she had been
told, but the reality turned out to be something different.
Sure, she was supposed to be tough, but students evaluated
professors and tended to destroy those who graded harshly, and
those evaluations counted in the tenure process. Senior
faculty members had closed ranks and would not discuss this
disparity between the "myth of rigor" and the need for good
teaching evaluations. Understandably, Susan became very
anxious about her teaching, spending long hours on class prep.
Most nights during the week we would see each other about 10
p.m., and spend an hour or two together before we went to bed.
Crestridge is a small college, with fewer than 80 faculty
members, so it wasn't uncommon for most of the faculty to come
to campus social events. It wasn't long before we were both
invited to a faculty party. I envisioned something like the
grad-student parties my wife and I had attended, where
students and significant others mingled as peers.
Conversations at those parties shifted from topic to topic,
often focusing on the grad program, but just as frequently
covering other territory. Grad students and partners all had
equal input.
What a difference it was at a Crestridge faculty party, where
it quickly became obvious that, at least in the eyes of many
of the senior professors, my wife's junior status didn't give
her permission to say much. My status was even lower, and I
was accorded the right to sit around quietly and nod at the
wisdom that poured from the mouths of the senior faculty
members. Since we were under the oppressive yoke that ensnares
the untenured professor, I found myself biting my tongue and
not adding to the conversation, lest my wife be punished later
when these self-anointed elders rendered judgment on her in
the tenure committee.
Given this elitist snobbery by the senior faculty members, I
hoped that our relations with the junior scholars would be
better. We did make a few friends among Susan's peers. Still,
I was sometimes told, in no uncertain terms, what my place in
the pecking order was. At one party a junior faculty member
initiated a conversation with me. A few minutes into our talk
(which was relatively interesting), a senior professor came
into the room. Seeing an opportunity to chat with someone
powerful, the junior faculty member curtly told me that our
conversation was "boring," and walked over to talk with the
senior professor. Clearly, chatting with a mere faculty spouse
wasn't as important as working on his career.
At least these experiences gave me a thicker skin. And I
learned to take the elitism with a peck of salt. My next
challenges would be to negotiate the job market in a small
town, find some friends of my own, and learn how to survive as
a male house-husband in a largely conservative community. Ah,
the life of the Faculty Spouse.
Will Stallings is a pseudonym. He is married to a tenure-track
professor at a liberal-arts college in the South. His reports
from the perspective of a faculty spouse will appear
periodically on this site.
_________________________________________________________________
You may visit The Chronicle as follows:
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright by The Chronicle of Higher Education
------------------------------------------------------------newfaculty-+
You have received this message because you are subscribed to this mailing list. If you wish to be removed from this list, please send an email (in PLAIN TEXT) to:
listproc@lists.wcu.edu
Leave your subject line blank and in the body of the message, type:
unsub NEWFACULTY
Or, you may choose to send an email to (a real human being): listmgr@lists.wcu.edu.
------------------------------------------------------------newfaculty--
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10/31/02 EST