I was fascinated with the book Working It Out not because it discussed womens’ right to work but to have a work. This is what was missing from my academic training. I learned very well how to do the work and how to work, and how to produce work, but I did not learn that I could have a work.
When I was a child, so to speak, the perceived priorities were to pass, to have employment, to survive. That, it was explained, meant producing work which would please others. One was to produce research, of course, and it was to be new and original, but the point was to produce something acceptable, not something of one’s own. There is an important difference.
I was quite good at producing acceptable things which were also of interest to me, for quite a long time. In return for this activity, I received very desirable living situations. In a way this was something like working for the Opus Dei (!) — you compromise, you do good and interesting work, but you do it on someone else’s agenda; you live well. The trouble I got into later involved Reeducation, which we have already discussed extensively, but also these elements:
♦I found myself desirous of a work of my own, and tried to suppress it because I thought that was what one must do;
♦I tried to force work that was not really my own, and found I no longer could;
♦I perceived that in exchange for this work, I might not receive a more desirable living situation (to me), but in fact a less desirable one; and
♦due to the impression that I had no right to a work of my own, I was able to see myself as an aspirant to the field but not as a person working in it, working at the center of my work —
♦because, as we know, I did not think of myself as having legitimate work of my own but as producing work which might be acceptable to others, on the strength of which I might live.
We were not raised to have nearly enough confidence. Part of the reason I have wanted to change fields for so long is that I can visualize myself as having “a work” in the new field much more easily than I can in this one where, for historical reasons, I have so many blocks. I do not know whether I can make the change but I am using the idea of it at the very least to re-conceptualize myself, not only as a competent and legitimate worker but as someone who has a work and deserves to have one.
For reasons I do not fully understand I have spent a large part of my life being disbelieved and mistrusted — an odd thing since in fact I am honest and “sincere to a fault,” as someone once said. I have internalized this mistrust, and it is what I would like to shed. I think this is a really important post that does not apply only to adjuncts.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that we are all suffering from the same thing: tremendous ego deflation. I just read a piece about the ego bashing that plain looking nerdy Asian men endure in their social lives, for instance. No one really cares that they are living in Hell.
Funny, I have a friend who is the most honest person I know. Everyone thinks he is dishonest. I thought that until I got to know him extremely well. But it is really that he is naive and imagines that people will take him at face value for what he is and so they always think he is trying to hide things and is using a show of honesty as a cover-up for his underhandedness.
Does that make sense?
Yes, but it seems our culture thinks ego deflation is good (except when it does an about face believes in “self esteem” instead, of course). But you’re right, that’s what we’re suffering from. We have to cure this somehow.
Honesty, maybe it’s that in my case, too. I also think people don’t want to hear the truth or see a comparison to their own lack of sincerity.
I note too that if I give a recommendation people often think it makes sense and follow it like it, and then others think I manipulated them into doing what I said!