I could not sleep when I went to bed last night. I was awash with memories of people I knew at the University over the 37 years I worked there. I was not remembering my work friends in this trip down memory lane. In this particular bout of insomnia I was obsessing about the many faculty members I knew over the years. They paraded by me, in chronological order by place of work. I worked one administrative job or another in 9 different departments in those years, so the parade went on for a long time. I was reminded how deeply I care about most of them, and what an impact they each had on my life.
They are an interesting bunch, those academics. Except for a few notable jerks, they were/are lovely people. The engineers and mathematicians are less sociable with staff than humanists and social scientists are. However, the theoretical and applied "science guys" are still lovely because they are gloriously logical and conflict averse. There is little drama in those departments. I especially liked working in the Department of Mathematics.
The humanists spent more time interacting and building relationships with the staff. However, they also tend to pull the staff into interpersonal conflicts. It is a toss up as to what environment was best. I will say I preferred the humanities despite the emotional wear and constant drama. I guess I am a glutton for punishment, or perhaps they were simply more interesting to me.
I worked at an Ivy League research university, so the faculty's contractual duties involved teaching, research, and public service. Some of the professors are the best in the world at what they do. All of them were probably the smartest kids in their high schools. They all made top grades in college. They studied for their PhD's with icons in their respective fields. If they had an overriding fault as a group, it is that they all needed to be perceived as "smart." It needlessly stressed them out! More on that some other time.
None of them were rah rah boosters of the University. It just doesn't seem to work that way at a research university. The faculty identified with their international field first and foremost. Where they were employed was of secondary interest, as long they derived sufficient status and salary from the appointment. The central administration never quite understood that. Those bozos are business types who don't quite understand the community they serve. Actually, they may not even understand they "serve" the faculty and students. Education was our business product, for crying out loud!
Anyway, it was interesting to be around people of such distinction and drive, because I'm not that.
Not a person of drive? I beg to differ! I saw you at your Full Tilt mode often during some of those years. You served that school and especially the students and staff with distinction. Don't knock yourself.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Chilly. As did you. Love.
DeleteMy parents were both academics -- mathematicians -- so I can identify with what you're saying! It's a very bizarre world. I think a lot of academics spend so much time thinking that they honestly get a little crazy, or so it appears to those of us on the "outside."
ReplyDeleteThey are often shielded from reality.
DeleteI really love the mathematicians. They always had to know WHY they were required to do something, and explaining the reason made me a better manager. Plus, the more complex the issue, the happier they were. In fact, if I would say, "Well, it is actually more complicated than what you might think." their eyes would light up in anticipation. A joy to me.
DeleteMy dad always said he liked math because there is generally only one correct answer. He liked the certainty of it. Social studies and liberal arts had too much gray area! And yet he was very accepting of gray area in life -- he wasn't an absolutist at all.
DeleteI love knowing that you worked at a university for so many years. Me too! It is so grand to read your absolutely right-on perceptions about the departments and the inherent characters of those who taught in them. If our paths ever cross someday, we would have a riotously hysterical conversation about faculty, staff, and administration dramas happening everywhere from coast to coast.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of work did you do, Robin? I'd love to sit around a table with coffee and pastries with you some day.
DeleteI started out as an adviser to undergrads who were experiencing academic difficulty, helping them work out their studying habits and finding a clear path to graduation. Then, I moved on to advising grad students in the Economics Department, helping them work out course work requirements for their particular directions. My most favorite job, for a decade was the Assistant Director of Student Media, advising the students who published the campus newspapers, poetry journals, and staffed the radio station. I also managed the budgets for all. It was grand.
DeleteMy formal education, which ended when I was 15, was a failure. The teachers belonged to the if-it-moves,-flog-it era and taught by rote; I, for my part, saw learning as nothing more than adult suppression. This despite the fact that the secondary school was fee-paying and had a good record of sending more promising students to Oxbridge.
ReplyDeleteWhen I joined the newspaper group as a tea-boy two things changed. Everybody on the editorial side read voraciously and talked about what they read; since I also read here was a peer-group I was tempted to join. Even so reading was leisure time, what we did at home, only an indirect influence on our working day.
Far more important was the new morality I was exposed to in the reporters' room (where people wrote) and the subs' room (where people corrected that which was written). Nothing mattered more than to write well; the instinct was built in, those who had not absorbed it were seen as pariahs. Writing faults were discussed boisterously and publicly.
Others more academically aware than us (virtually none had gone to university) might pooh-pooh this. This wasn't the sort of writing associated with literary giants, it was the mere mechanics of writing: short declarative sentences in the service of clarity. Never mind; that ability is rarer in the outside world than many think; later I was to discover it was a good deal rarer that I expected among those who had taken advanced education. These daily aims may seem modest but they are not insignificant and the necessary discipline became ingrained. I discovered they also played a part in my appreciation of the books I read during my leisure time.
There were some lovely people and there were some jerks. But no individual was more important than the editorial ethos I was subjected to; it is working in me, as I write this, sixty-five years later. For better or for worse that amorphous blob who emerged from school was re-shaped into someone who could even claim to have minor principles. Whoops! I see a ghostly sub-editorial blue pencil hovering over that last sentence. And, no doubt, others.
Thanks for sharing this, I'm happy you found your calling!
DeleteHow reassuring to read this wonderful post, reassuring to read that academia isn't that different where you worked and where I work. Not that I thought it was, many of "our" people spent/spend time in your universities and vice versa. But your experience of it, that is great to read about.
ReplyDeleteYou are spot on about the characters and the conflict averse science guys.
I still encounter the occasional odd creature, the absent-minded scholar wearing non-matching socks and a tie with breakfast (or dinner) remnants, the younger generation has a slightly different version, the one we may call geeks or nerds, but deep down, they are just purpose-driven investigative minds, piling up the empty pizza boxes in a hidden corner of the lab.
I have a hard time with the new progressives, the boss types who demand higher impact factors, more awards and excessive publications and who threaten with contract termination if results are too slow.
But I work in the Faculty of Medicine and more and more it is a Faculty of Business.
I LOVE those old guys, walking around muttering to themselves with glasses askew and hair uncombed. I agree, as well, about the young guys who value ambition over kindness. Some act like spoiled brats. Hopefully they will learn to behave better. If not,the working environment will be less pleasant for staff and their peers in the future.
DeleteTo be around such interesting people all the time had to make going to work a joy.
ReplyDeleteIt really was, for the most part. The last place I worked was a bit much, but there are still many, many people there that I have a deep fondness for, now that I've had a few years to recover...
DeleteDifferent Work environments do attract differences in Character and Personality. In my two Corporate Lives I found it lacking in the type of Character and Personality I gel with on my own time. Many years of doing Volunteer Food Ministry Work brought me into contact with much more interesting people of the Character and Personality I could more easily relate to. Though I made excellent Salary in my Corporate Lives, I do feel my True Calling was in the Work of Ministering to and Caring about those in Society that have the least of all in the way of necessities, but the very most of all in so many ways that money just can't 'buy'. It was an eclectic and often eccentric group of some of the most Interesting people I'd ever had the pleasure of working beside and Serving... I don't Miss the Corporate Success, but I sure do Miss the Ministry Work that I did for just the Pure Love and Joy of it!
ReplyDeleteYou are a wonder to me. I must say, I often feel I spent my working life helping people who didn't need help. I think the ministry work you speak of must have been quite satisfying.
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