Sketchy Academic Functions: A story about Karl Rove, my big rack, and a fellowship I didn't get

This is something I've needed to write about for a long time.

I just read an article on Jezebel about this blog post about sketchy job interview parties at the American Philosophical Association meeting, and it is hitting so close to home that I am taking a break from doggedly trying to finish my novel to write this post.

Even though I've never been on the academic job market, I am all too familiar with this scene. I worked behind the scenes for years at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association, which is the academic organization for professors of Latin and Greek. I have to say before I weave this tale of outrage that the people who run the APA are genuinely some of my favorite people on Earth. Integrity for miles. It's just too bad you can't say the same for all of the attendees.

Through the years, I saw it all at the APA. I went to every VIP cocktail party, met all the muckity-mucks. I worked the whole Saturday night circuit. I know the cheap yellow Chardonnay, the cheese cubes, and the endless uncomfortable chatting. As an undergrad with a plum internship, I got to see the fanciest side of being a professor of the classics.



I also got to learn early in my academic career about the seamier side of the profession. I learned at the conference about the absolutely prodigious amount of drinking that goes on. The hotel bar on any night of the conference is positively crawling with academics and overstressed bartenders. We'd hear at the post conference briefs about the shortage of limes, of clean high-ball glasses. I heard from hotel staff again and again that academic conferences often meant good business for the prostitutes who hung out at the hotel bars.

And as I went, I learned about the antiquated gender and class politics of Classics. That the profession is an Old Boy's Club. If you're not familiar with that term, here's roughly what it means: if you're not a rich white male, you are in trouble.

I experienced what you might call the perfect storm of these components when I interviewed for the Lionel Pearson Fellowship at the 2005 annual meeting. I was a freshman in college when learned about the fellowship, which funds one year of graduate study in Classics at an English or Scottish university, and I instantly set my sights on it. My amazing advisor Davina did an incredible job grooming me for grad school and for fellowships, and I in turn worked my ass off in school and at umpteen jobs and extracurriculars and leadership positions. I ended up applying to something like six schools and eight national fellowships for grad school. But I had my sights set on going to Cambridge on the Lionel Pearson. I nearly wet my pants with glee when I was named one of four finalists and was invited to come interview at the annual meeting.

The meeting was in Boston that year. It was my first trip to the city I now call home. I arrived with just a few hours to go before I was supposed to meet up with my fellow potential fellows and the fellowship committee for dinner.

When I arrived at the appointed meeting spot, it was a cluster of men. Young men, old men. The committee, the candidates. All men.

And do you know where we went for dinner?

Do you?

You do not.

Here's where we went for dinner.

DICK'S LAST RESORT

If you've never had the misfortune of visiting this particular chain, the schtick at Dick's Last Resort is that all of the waitstaff are incredibly rude to you. The restaurant features dishes like Crab Balls and Pork Bonerz. Each guest is outfitted with a rolled up white paper dunce cap that reads somewhere between Dime-Store Pope and Ku Klux Klan, upon which your rude server will write a rude nickname for you. I think they should rebrand and change their name to Patriarchy's Paradigm. Go big or go home, you know?



If this sounds unbearable as a matter of course, I invite you to imagine being subjected to this in the company of the people who will make or break your greatest dream for your undergraduate career. Imagine, if you can, being the only woman at the table.

Imagine, if you can bear it, your hat says DOLLY PARTON.

If you pull it off immediately, will you ruin everyone's fun? If you storm out of the restaurant, will you be disqualified from the fellowship? If you concentrate really hard, will you melt into the floor and disappear? These were the questions that filled my head.

I pulled the hat off. But I did not storm out of the restaurant. I ate my fried basket of whatever and sipped a beer and tried to make the best of it. But I have never felt so negatively aware of my body and myself as a woman. My breasts felt huge under my smart Oxford shirt. When I got back to my hotel room, I was left with a slimy, uncomfortable feeling. When I called my dad to tell him about it, he told me he thought I was probably toast.

Are you wondering what happened the next day? I bet you are. Luckily, it's also a good story.

I don't remember much of the interview, to be honest. I don't think we really got through many questions before one of the professors--whom I long to call out by name but whom I will describe only as a professor from a small liberal arts school in the South--hit me with the most balls-out crazy interview question I've ever gotten.

Ms. Jones, imagine you get a phone call from Karl Rove. Here's what he says. We'd like your expert opinion on how to protect our country from Islamic extremists, based on your study of the suppression of the Bacchanalia in Rome. What would you tell him?

I was gobsmacked. That man smacked my gobs. But as soon as I regained my ability to speak, I knew the answer. "Well," I said. "I'd tell him that the suppression of a rogue religious element, like the Bacchanalia, in a nation with state-sponsored religion, like Rome, doesn't really have anything to do with the suppression of a faith in a nation with a specifically outlined separation of church and state, like we have here in the US." For a moment, I felt smug. It had to be the answer he was looking for.

However, this was not an acceptable answer. The professor who had asked the question pushed me further and further, trying to force me to offer some advice to Mr. Rove. But I stood by my response. He lost his temper. Here are the last words I remember of that horrible interview: "Ms. Jones, you are being very evasive!" That's when I knew my dad was right.



And I totally was. I didn't get the fellowship.

So, that's how Dick's Last Resort, Karl Rove, and unbelievable academic bullshit lost me the fellowship I'd spent four years working toward. I still stand by that answer, though. What a dumb question.

Luckily, my interview for the Mellon Fellowship a few weeks later went a lot better, so I wound up with a bigger, better fellowship in the end. I wound up going to the University of Texas. And, well, you know how that went.

...the Aristocrats!

DISCUSSION QUESTION:
What's the worst interview you've ever had?

My Own Private Lilith Fair

It's only life after all

It was the late 90s and I was a child of Lilith Fair.

It was a great time for female singer-songwriters. My CD tower toppled with titles like Little Plastic Castle, Under the Pink, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and This Fire that spun on constant rotation on my 3-CD changer. If it had sandals, an acoustic guitar, and a vagina, I was listening to it in 1998.

So you can imagine my reaction when I learned that the next assembly at my Tennessee high school would be an Indigo Girls concert.

In an unprecedented move, the Indigo Girls decided to kick off their summer 1998 tour with a tour of Southern high schools. I've never understood why. But I didn't care why. I just knew it was going to be the best day of school ever.

When the fateful day came, I was ready. I picked out the perfect outfit: my offwhite Lilith Fair t-shirt from summer 1997, a floor-length maroon hippie skirt, Birkenstocks, and the pièce de résistance: a crown of maroon flowers for my head that I made myself out of an embroidery hoop and fake flowers from Michaels. I submit the following photographic evidence, taken that very morning:


Lanier and I pose like this in most pictures

I sized myself up in the mirror that day. The tiny bells on my crown were tinkling optimistically. The naked Venus figure on my t-shirt offset my long tiered skirt perfectly. I just knew that the Indigo Girls would know I was a true fan.

When we filed into the auditorium, I was nearly breathless. I snapped this photo of my friends Chris and Jessica waiting for the show to start.



Imagine the scene. Franklin High School auditorium, 1:00pm. I am perched in the 2nd row on the edge of my red plastic seat, tearfully wailing How long til my soul gets it right in exuberant harmony with the Indigo Girls. Rocking. The Fuck. Out.

The rest of the student body...is not.

They are restless, bored--watching the show with approximately the same enthusiasm as had been displayed at a recent assembly featuring actor Chris Burke, best known as Corky from Life Goes On.

This is my life, y'all.

When Emily and Amy said they'd have time for a few questions at the end, a hot wave of excitement rushed through me. What would I ask them?? The resounding silence from the other 800 people in the auditorium meant that I was going to have to think of something, fast.

It was a total accident. Someone, I don't remember who, had recently returned a little stuffed sheep to me that they had had for some reason. It was in my backpack.


Chris with sheep

I called out to them that I wanted to give them a present. I handed the little sheep to Amy. She thanked me and put it on one of the amps along with a few other little doodads. A little black sheep.



It turned out to be a fitting gift. A number of high schools ended up canceling the scheduled Indigo Girls concerts, ostensibly because of profanity in their music, but actually because the Bible Belt often has problems with The Gays and especially The Gays exposing themselves and their lifestyle to Our Children.

Huge, HUGE props to Doug Crosier, our principal, for being such a cool guy. Check out this Rolling Stone clipping about the cancelations, where Doug nails it with a pitch-perfect soundbite:



And as for my sheep, well...That summer, when I saw them play at Lilith Fair, I was sure that I spotted him on top of their amp. Wishful teenage thinking or a symbol of solidarity between the Indigo Girls and their shameless superfan? I may never know.

Discussion Question:
What's the best school assembly you ever had?

one of many reasons I will have difficulty getting past St. Peter

Forgive me, y'all, for I have sinned.

I got into all kinds of mischief when I was a kid, but none quite so infamous as what we got into at the church that was adjacent to my neighborhood.

(If you're going to get all church-lady on me and faint over the idea of, say, kids stealing donuts from a Bible study meeting, you should probably stop reading now.)

Growing up in the sprawling suburborural reaches of outer Nashville meant that my little subdivision was surrounded by country roads and cow pastures and other subdivisions and not much else. I liked to read Baby-Sitter's Club books, and I was always baffled when Kristy and the gang would walk "around the corner" to grab a candy bar or walk to the library. Around what corner? All that's around the corner from my house is more houses that look like my house. And a church.

My best friend Bradley and I used to ride our bikes in the church parking lot pretty much every day. On weekends, kid's soccer teams used to play matches in the churchyard. Sometimes they'd leave the refreshment truck parked at the church through the week. Brad and I were fixated on breaking into that truck, perpetually mocked by the enticing Pepsi logo on the side.



Once, we got caught trying to break into it. I tearfully pleaded for forgiveness. Brad rode his bike into a ditch and pretended he was dead. I'm think Brad eventually got into that truck, but I ran away before I could partake in the endless fountain of Mountain Dew.

A whole new world of mischief opened up to us when the congregation broke ground on a beautiful new chapel.

I can't go into a lot of what happened. I do not recall anyone ever rollerblading in the sanctuary while it was under construction. If anyone ever walked in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the sanctuary during Sunday Mass while wearing an elaborate Godzilla mask, I don't know anything about it. And I swear up and down that, to this day, no one can explain how the Virgin Mary statue's missing thumb ended up in Bradley's mom's junk drawer. Our mothers are still horrified over that one.

There is one crime I am prepared to own up to.

Let me set the scene for you.

It is 1989 or 1990. The Simpsons is a cultural phenomenon. And Bradley has somehow managed to secure a can of red spray paint.



We are drunk with power.

We creep over to the church construction site under the guise of riding bikes. I spot the perfect canvas immediately.



Brad hands the can to me. I feel the weight of it in my hand. I squint up at the white construction trailer in front of me, almost blinded by its gleaming blankness. I push my glasses back up on my sweaty nose and take a deep breath.

I write, in three-foot-tall letters, the worst swear word I can think of.



I never got caught.

Discussion Question: What kind of unbelievable mischief did you get into as a child?

why I decided to leave grad school in Classics

I'm really excited to be guest blogging over at Worst Professor Ever this week. I'll be offering some advice for folks who have made the scary decision to leave university life for the big Other--life outside academia.

What can I say about academia that hasn't already been said by the Simpsons?



After a truly wonderful undergraduate career at Loyola University New Orleans, wild horses could not have stopped me from pursuing graduate school. I loved my close-knit Classics department with its inquisitive, enthusiastic students and supportive, sparkling faculty. With Davina as my incredible mentor, I was on top of the world. I studied hungrily, taking exactly twice the number of Classics classes I needed for my major. I was sure beyond doubt that I was born to be an academic.

Grad school was an ice-cold glass of reality in my face. The University of Texas Classics Department proved to be nothing like the supportive nest I'd left behind in New Orleans. I could (and who knows, maybe will one day) write a book about what a truly terrible experience I had in graduate school. Cultivating special relationships with wonderful people like Mary Jane and Douglass Parker (and other folks--you know who you are) was all that got me through, but it wasn't enough to balance the scales. Parker was retiring and couldn't take me on as an advisee. Suffice it to say that I decided by the end of my first semester that I would stick it out until I finished my master's degree and then be finished.



How could I have so quickly turned my back on a career I had been cultivating so carefully for so long? Was it the total lack of joy many of my colleagues seemed to take in their work? Was it the appalling insufficiency of faculty interest in and attention towards graduate students? Surely a smart, willful young woman like me wouldn't let a bunch of haters keep her from her dreams. Ultimately I found that my decision to leave wasn't about the toxic environment I'd found myself in for graduate school. I realized the whole thing just wasn't for me.

At my father's advice, I wrote myself a letter at the beginning of my last semester reminding myself why I decided to leave graduate school. He told me it would be nice to have one day to remind myself why I had done what I did.

Now, more than four years later, I am sharing it with all of you.


January 16, 2007

I'm leaving for a lot of different reasons.

I'm leaving because graduate school in Classics does not suit my personality. The fact that I am an effervescent, enthusiastic, extroverted, excitable, bossy, innovative person is a major liability to my career as an academic. The ideal academic personality is truly ascetic, valuing hard hours of studying hard Greek in a hard chair with too little sleep and too little to eat in a too little apartment. I am not an ascetic. In fact, I'm a little bit of a hedonist. My desire to spend long lazy weekends doing whatever I please, my desire to spend quality time writing and reading, and my desire to hold my family and personal life ahead of my professional life all make me an undesirable candidate for a PhD. Also, my skills with organization, with people, and with leadership are all squandered in this environment. When do I get to let that huge part of my personality shine in graduate school? Hardly ever. Instead, these truly useful and desirable skills are frowned upon, or tolerated at best. I need a job where my interpersonal skills, my creativity, and my leadership ability are utilized, not ignored.

Getting a PhD in classics is a career cul-de-sac for me. After obtaining my PhD, I would be lucky to be offered even a temporary position at any university. This university would likely be in an undesirable city for me, and almost certainly a city where Nick would be unable to find satisfying work. This job would pay me an insultingly small amount to at once teach multiple classes (many of which I would not be qualified to or inclined to teach) and continue my own research in the Classics in the hopes that one day I might become tenured somewhere by publishing multiple works of nonfiction about minutiae in ancient texts. The best I could possibly do as a Classics professor would be gaining tenure and earning $75,000 as a full professor at a nice private university.

I don't want to be a Classics professor anymore. In fact, I am pretty sick of studying the Classics, period. Latin and Greek appeal to me because they are languages, rather exquisite languages, but not because I have any special connection to the ancient world. There. I said it. I do not feel any particular connection with the ancient world, aside from the one that has developed from studying it for years and years. That's the heart of the matter.

I don't want it, I don't want them, they don't want me, and it wouldn't be good anyway.

You are better off in a real job. It might seem empty and meaningless sometimes. Remember that it is not actually any more meaningful to be studying puns in the Hippolytus. Accounting for minutiae in ancient texts is not inherently valuable in any special way. In fact, it is a waste of your talents.

Don't ever be discouraged or worry that you made the wrong decision. You did the right thing.


I've never had to reread this letter to reassure myself. I've never regretted my decision to leave graduate school for a moment. I so was afraid that life outside of my own research would feel empty and meaningless, but I adore my work. With apologies to the great Nadine Eckhardt--ever since I left academia, my life's been duck soup.



So be sure to tune into Worst Professor Ever this week to see what kind of advice I come up with for people who want to explore life on the other side of the fence. WoPro is a fellow disgruntled former classicist from UT's grad program who is turning her defection from academe into an awesome blog. She's a gutsy woman whom I admire and with whom I enjoy drinking beer and talking noise periodically. Go check her out.

Discussion Question: Have you ever written yourself a letter?

feels like old times

There's nothing like some good news to brighten up a rainy, chilly February day. Nick told me last night that our dearest Alex Vernon is coming down to ATL to visit this weekend--just in time to be the guest of honor at our WHO DAT Superbowl party!



WHO DAT

If you don't know, now you know: Alex and Nick and I have been tight since we were kids. Like super-tight. Nick used to live about a mile away from me, and Alex would come to Nick's to sleep over all the time. After our parents were safely asleep, Nick and Alex would creep through the rural Tennessee night to my window. They found a way to climb up to my second story window, and they'd sneak in and watch horror movies with me until dawn. Often I didn't know they were coming until I saw one of them tumbling in my window.

We had strange ideas about having fun, the three of us. We had a few memorable drinking competitions (none of which involved alcohol); unsweetened cranberry juice and Diet Vernor's ginger ale from shot glasses, chased with water like it was tequila. Gluttons for punishment.

Speaking of masochism, my family's most treasured memory of Alex and Nick is of this night:



Franklin High School Homecoming
Fall 1997
L to R: Alex, me, Heather, Nick (my husband)

click here to view full size

Heather came over to my house after school that day to get ready for our first high school dance. My dress was green and satiny and seemed very grown-up to me. I coveted Heather's long stretchy purple velvet dress from Express and her long fingernails and her long long hair. Going to a high school dance seemed like a Big Deal. I thought it would probably be a lot like the movies. Y'know, synchronized dances and Usher DJing?



So we were in a 13-year-old-girl flurry of mascara and ripped pantyhouse and Bath and Body Works Sun-Ripened Raspberry Body Splash when the doorbell rang. Who was waiting on my doorstep but Alex and Nick?

To say I was horrified was an understatement. Heather was going to the dance with her long-time boyfriend Blaine, and I was going with my good friend Ben Osborn. Having Alex and Nick appear at my house did not compute. I gaped at them, and Heather stared down the stairs from the second floor.

Alex and Nick, it turned out, were not there to try to take us to the dance. Alex and Nick came by to help us get ready and take pictures with us, including the gem above. They told us we looked pretty and we laughed and blushed and loved every minute of it.

My dad drove us to the dance and Nick and Alex stayed at home with my mom and baked an apple cake. They baked an apple cake. Is that the sweetest, most wholesome thing you've ever heard?

Maybe the sweetest part is the follow up.

My mother and father threw an engagement party for me and Nick over the Thanksgiving holiday in 2008.



Nick asked Alex to be a groomsman in the wedding, and he came to the engagement party, as is evidenced in this photograph (including a highly unflattering shot of me):



L to R: Nick, Alex, me, TC

My mom had an incredible spread of desserts catered for the evening, and she baked an amazing torte:



...and conveniently obscured in this photograph? The apple cake she baked for Nick and Alex. Awwwwwwwwwwwwww The End!

We can't wait to see you, Alex!