I Profess.

This is my love letter to Academia.

It won't be like the love letters of great poets to their muses, grand and epic and reaching for a sense of the infinite. It's more like the notes passed between ordinary teenagers in history class. Because academia, the industry I work in and love, is not epic.

There is no Ivory Tower. That is a myth perpetuated by media and art, invested in the idea of a legendary place where intellectuals float around on clouds of ideas to escape the annoying and difficult parts of The Real World. It is as real as unicorns. I grew up in academia and I've worked in academia for over a dozen years and I can tell you wholeheartedly that there is no such thing as a place without the annoying and difficult parts of the real world. (I have also worked outside of academia. The frustrations are the same. Same shit, different co-workers). If I could encapsulate my life as an intellectual, it would be desperately trying to concentrate on either the paper I am grading or the paper I am writing while ants we can't seem to get rid of crawl around in the kitchen sink and the roof leak over my head grows from the rain that won't stop while my husband is on the phone trying to get the cable company to stop screwing us out of the few channels we can afford and the dog can't decide if he wants us to let him out onto the deck or down to the basement or if he wants to vomit on the carpet again.

Perhaps people believe in the Ivory Tower because they think the happy bubble of protection they had in college is the same for everyone who works at the school where they enjoyed the innocent existence we work very hard to provide them with for the 4+ years they spend studying the ideas that will help them join the world as educated people. We had those years too, and we think everyone should get to have them. Those years are awesome. They are amazing. They end at graduation, for everyone. (For some students, let's remember, they never existed, because too many of our students work 3 jobs and raise 3 kids while reading 500 pages a week and writing multiple 15-page papers, all while hoping to Holy Jesus that the car doesn't break down again. I call that Real).

Perhaps I should say that The Ivory Tower is as real as Camelot. Because Camelot never existed but we'd all prefer it did (sorry if I'm bursting any bubbles for you - one of the very real aspects of academia is being constantly faced with the sad realities that many of our dreams are not real. There is a definite downside to deconstructing everything. Kind of like finding out there is no Santa Claus every single day). Another very real aspect of academia is the constant judgement we face from our neighbors, our family (not in my case, but in many), from the media, from Congress. Listen to television long enough and you'll think we're all tweed-shrouded, fancy-pants, elitist assholes who work 3 hours a week for 8 months a year and have no bills, massive bank accounts, and armies of grad students to do all our work for us. I don't know if anyone like that actually exists. I've never met one.

Like most academics, I work roughly 75 hours a week. I work from the time I wake up until dinner, and then after dinner I usually work until about 10. I routinely work on Friday nights. I work Saturdays and Sundays. "Breaks" are spent catching up. I long for weekends, too, because that's my chance to do a load of laundry and I can usually spend all day in pyjamas. Summers are spent trying to do the research I didn't have time to do all year while trying to work in a little extra teaching so I can have enough money to pay down some debt. If I seem to have my head in the clouds it's because I'm still trying to figure out a solution to a problem in my teaching or my research, even while walking down the cereal aisle of the grocery store. Or maybe I'm just trying to figure out how to get our food bill down a bit more. Whatever the idealized professor is in culture, it is nothing like the real lives of all the academics I know. It's not like the R1 (major research university) professors, nothing like people researching their asses off at "teaching" colleges like small private schools or regional state schools, nothing like those teaching full- or part-time at community colleges, nothing like adjuncts teaching 6 classes a semester at 4 different campuses just to make ends meet (not counting the online work they pick up so they can afford the books they need for their other jobs). I didn't get tenure by hanging around. I got tenure by working myself into total burnout for years on end. Did I do it for the tenure? I'm still doing it, so I guess not. I guess I love it.

This is not unusual. I am a garden-variety academic. These are our lives. It's pretty real.

And I want to talk about that. I want to look at it from multiple perspectives and hear from multiple voices. I am incredibly fortunate in that I have tenure at a terrific school that I love, in a town that I love, with colleagues I respect, doing what lights me up every single day. I also have an amazing husband who occasionally pulls me away from the computer or takes away the stack of papers and reminds me to breathe and maybe even get outside for a little while.

I cannot pretend our industry is just like any other - it's more like a calling, like the ministry or the military. But it is an industry, with huge challenges and with lovely positives. It can be a difficult and frustrating life, but it is the only life for me. I love what I do, and I will defend it down to the ground. But I will also tell it to its face what it needs to do better. True love is honest. So here is my blazon to academia, in which I will do what we do best: deconstruct to the finest detail, pick apart and put back together, examine and illuminate. With understanding and a desire for more understanding.

(This blog is for everyone, including academics - topic requests are welcome and should be posted as comments to this entry).