I
Now I have had a fascinating telephone conversation with a friend from college with whom I had lost touch. He is in a different field, so I had not run across him in the “Profession,” but he is also a professor. He has always been very intelligent. What he says about his school: “I like it because there are so many people here smarter than I, so I learn something every day.”
II
This is one of several conversations with my dissertation director I remember very well. I remember drawing myself up and answering gravely in my voice, while another voice spoke inwardly. The inner voice said, “This is illogical.” (Illogical was what I called abusive then).
Dissertation Director: What kind of a job do you want?
Graduate Student Zero: A job in a large institution.
DD: Why?
GSZ: The strength and variety of programs. The variety of people. The fresh air. The atmosphere of a place of business, not of a family home. And in small environments I always end up being the brightest person in the room, which is far too stifling.
DD: You are terribly arrogant to believe you could ever be the brightest person in any room.
GSZ: I have lived in two very small towns, and you in none. I have direct knowledge of the stifling situation of being the brightest, or the most aware, or the most experienced, or just the most flexible person in the room. I prefer situations where there are at least some people brighter and more experienced than I.
DD: That statement only further demonstrates your extreme arrogance.
GSZ: No. Were I arrogant, I would want to be the brightest person in the room. I am telling you that I do not. I am telling you that at a large university I will never be the brightest person in any room, just as I am not at this one.
III
Last weekend at a conference I met another person, somewhat younger than me, who had studied with this dissertation director. She was so mean, said this person.
IV
And I thought about the place which is still the most civilized I have ever worked – with its army of people functioning as research oriented assistant professors who were really graduate students, its army of people functioning as teaching oriented assistant professors who were really lecturers, and its ladder faculty above that. And of this dissertation director who was terribly rude and gratuitously cruel but was far more competent than the terribly rude and gratuitously cruel individuals I have met since.
Axé.
Note: this post was written before Professor Zero was taken into custody. Signed: THE DIRECTOR.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
GSZ: No. Were I arrogant, I would want to be the brightest person in the room. I am telling you that I do not. I am telling you that at a large university I will never be the brightest person in any room, just as I am not at this one.
This is also a confusion brought about by philosophical idealism — the mistaken implication “if I can think it, then I must have willed it”.
This is also a confusion brought about by philosophical idealism — the mistaken implication “if I can think it, then I must have willed it”.
…..and since I am aware of this kind of conceptual confusion, as well as being aware of how ubiquitous it is, I often feel worried about how many of the things I need to say in my thesis might be taken. For instance, if I read Marechera in a particular way, then perhaps it will be assumed that because I can think of him in that light, it must be solely because I have a perverse will to see him in that light — rather than because I’m hitting upon something that is factually true.
AHA: So you mean, the dissertation director thought that GSZ must want to be the brightest person in the room if she can imagine being that?
Like one of my department chairs, who thinks that if people agree with my recommendations, it cannot be because they share similar attitudes or find my arguments logical … it must be because I have manipulated them or forced them … ?
It is only arrogance because you are a woman. If you were a man it would be confidence.
There is a line in a country song that reminds me of another saying I heard once, somewhere, (I really am too lazy to actually record my sources mentally or on paper for later use) and those two thoughts mixed together go something like this: The country song: I need to find myself a better class/set of losers (as his friends, lol). And the quotes go something like this: When you become smarter than your friends, you need to find a new set of friends.
It’s called growth, wanting always to grow, instead of remaining static. Which reminds me of another quote/saying, something like, when you stop growing it is time to die.
…which is why Reeducation made me suicidal: it wanted *backward* growth, ideally, and stasis at the very least.
Good point on the woman issue. It was made to me last night IRL and I need to remember it. It is the source of *so* many conflicts I have had in life … and which have confused me, made me wonder what did I do? But I guess that is the point: disable someone or “guilt” them into limiting themselves.
(Although there is also a man in one of my departments who has a broader view of things than those in charge; he is called “arrogant” as well, although I find him quite mild and my view is that the arrogant ones are those in charge, who are more limited. Still: the point stands, and I wonder if he’d be seen as “arrogant” if he were not also Latin and expressive.)
I like country songs – there is some smart stuff in them, despite the joke my students tell: “What happens if you play a country song backwards?” “The singer gets the girl and the truck back.”
My brain is near meltdown, but I wanted to say I appreciate how you juxtapose the pieces of conversation, experience, and contemplation in these last two posts.
Gracias, Servetus. Isn’t it amazing, my letter to Anglais?! I posted it in January 2006 as a private post: it was too embarrassing, even anonymously, to admit I was in a relationship like that, was being treated in that way and yet guilted into staying … and too embarrassing to admit that although I could be as articulate as I was about the situation, I was still too scared to leave.
(Several months later I did leave and got stalked. Police said I had to insist on protection at work, and just as Anglais had intimated, the Dean wouldn’t give it. This is only a short version of the story, Mr. Dean, in case you’re reading and feeling I’m not telling it right [yes, not only my family, but also my chair and my dean know this blog].)
I’ve found in relationships that I have developed a sort of tunnel vision that was exacerbated in bad relationships–that you completely lose any perspective except the one from inside, and this in turn disempowers you, as does any realization of embarrassment or discomfort with your own inability to leave.
AHA: So you mean, the dissertation director thought that GSZ must want to be the brightest person in the room if she can imagine being that?
She would have thought you were angling to be acknowledged as the brightest person in the room, and that you would get away with it if others didn’t take responsibility and drag you down a notch or two.
J – what a wild world: why would one want or need it to be acknowledged, even if it were true? Is that normal? It seems so outlandish!
S – I wonder if I can apply this to one of my departments …. hmm. Or university, or academia in general? 😉
J – what a wild world: why would one want or need it to be acknowledged, even if it were true? Is that normal? It seems so outlandish!
I don’t know. But I know that in many, many situations, when I have tried to explain to some people an experience I have had that was painful, they have misinterpreted me as being boastful, instead.
So, for instance, if I said, “I came from a country where I felt normal and alive, and ended up in a place that didn’t make any sense to me at all!” then I would often get the reaction of, “You think you’re so much better than us! Watch us bring you down a peg or two!”
So, people can’t seem to understand sometimes that we do not simply create reality out of our minds — out of our will to believe something to be a particular way. We are trying to tell them about a reality that goes way outside of our particular will. But they don’t get it — to them reality is a matter of will.