coldhearted scientist وداد

My first academic job was in an area with which I was somewhat familiar, and where I knew some people. This made moving easy. My second was far away. In both, other new faculty soon began telephoning me to ask how to live there. I had not realized I was especially good at discovering this, and I was surprised to find that it showed in such a salient way. But I had traveled, and lived abroad in five countries by then – in two different cities, in the case of one of these countries, and in two different decades, in another.

So, how do you create a life? You have to take an interest in people and places, and you have to look at the listings for activities and events in all the papers. And you have to go to some of these events. You need some regular interest groups. And soon you will know people, and they will give you information, and your life will grow up around you. This is easy in a city because there are so many venues, but harder the more traditional the area is and also in some higher context cultures, it is more difficult. And it appears that the reason I fascinate is that I can understand higher context cultures although I am not officially from one.

But, how do you create a life in an alien land? Once I faced that question and decided to move – to another state, although not another country. I did not go home, but I found one. If you cannot move, do you adjust? No, although you get to know the place and the people. But you spend time away. I have thought seriously about these matters and conversed with a number of people on them and my considered opinion is that one does not wish to adjust so far as to get lost.

I say this, once again, as a well seasoned resident of six countries and four United States. And I do not mean as a diplomatic or corporate resident, but as someone who melts into crowds and finds herself at home. Who people do not realize is foreign.

*

I have come to the conclusion that one of the reasons graduate school is stressful is that people move to go there and then study single disciplines. They spend their time with other people who have moved there to study single disciplines, and they create a sort of hothouse with them. Assistant professorships then become stressful because people recreate this dynamic among themselves. You have to cross disciplinary lines and get off campus.

The hardest thing for me about new academic jobs is the combination of the rat pack atmosphere among new faculty, and then on the other side of the divide, the suburban one. Americans really do want a single family house with a yard, it seems, and they want cars. If you are not comfortable in these categories, you need a town unless you are a hermit, and that is the best information I have on that. That is not to say you will not also learn the secrets of your countryside. My point is that although one of my favorite things to do is immerse myself in foreignness, there are times when it is not good to try for assimilation.

*

That is what I can say, the best I can do right now, on the question of living outside of the boxes, or out of boxes as it were, that came up in another thread here. And one of my professional “deformations” as we say in Spanish is the ability to design interesting course themes out of just about anything. I should teach a course on outsiders and outriders. We could read Los Pazos de Ulloa and Anne Waldman, both.

I am not a tourist or a nomad, although I like to travel and I believe myself to enjoy “living abroad.” But I do not think I am American any longer, and I think that is why I feel out of place.

Axé.