Money and education: Is this the beginning of the end of public schools? Add your voice to the discussion in Table Talk's Education area

How-to, why-not and what-for -- find it all at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author

R E C E N T L Y

Who killed Meriwether Lewis?
By Leighton Woodhouse
A forensic scientist has stirred controversy by proposing to dig up the famous explorer's bones to find out
(03/22/99)

Raging against "the Machine"
By Julekha Dash
A Congolese student says death threats accompanied his campaign for U. of Alabama's student presidency
(03/19/99)

Battling stag/nation
By Jill Priluck
Radical hag Mary Daly stands up to Boston College for forcing coed classes
(03/17/99)

Pimps and Ho's
By Isaac Zaur
One college's theme party is another man's ethical dilemma
(03/17/99)

The fabulous kingdom of gay animals
By Susan McCarthy
A biologist offers the first vision of a tantalizingly diverse natural world: Not all animals are straight arrows
(03/15/99)

BROWSE THE
IVORY TOWER
ARCHIVE

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS | PAGE 1, 2, 3
- - - - - - - - - -

In retrospect, there were signs, not only in my married life, but in a book I'd been given half in jest by a fellow graduate student, "How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral Dissertation" by David Sternberg. Although Sternberg's book is hopelessly out of date (computers are yet a novelty) and its sexist language grates, it was and still is -- if you believe the Amazon.com reviews -- a useful work for ABDs (graduate students who have finished "all-but-dissertation"). While Sternberg is good at pinpointing the particular anomie and depression that can befall the dissertation writer, he is nothing if not systematic in how to deal with it. He recommends drawing "differential dissertation association" maps of personal relationships, the better to evaluate which relationships are helpful to the completion of the book and which ones are not. "Do I seriously expect you to give up your husband, your lover, your family, your job?" Sternberg asks. "Believe me, none of these would be bad ideas, at least in certain cases."

The qualifier is hardly necessary, for in the Sternbergian worldview there is only one "grand passion" -- the writing of the dissertation. While such absolutes may seem a bit overwrought, Sternberg asserts a "truth" that lives on in academia today. To be a serious scholar one must subjugate one's personal life to the professional, and, at the very least, never mention that one does have a personal life that might interfere with one's ability to do research or relocate for a job. To do otherwise is to raise the specter of dilettantishness, and, for women especially, to risk marginalization.

Sternberg's other "truths" about the academic life include the fact that one's partner should expect a certain degree of "role absenteeism," something that does not end with the completion of the dissertation but rather becomes "an integral part of [one's] intellectual, professional and emotional life." Partners are advised to either join in with the project -- Sternberg's own spouse took responsibility for his clerical work, though that didn't save his marriage -- or find a support group. And, as one advances up the academic ladder, Sternberg warns that academics must expect to outgrow their partners as they cease to be intellectual equals.

Considering academe's monastic roots, Sternberg's assumption that one must be married to one's profession in order to succeed makes sense. In some ways, the intellectual demands of academia haven't evolved very far from the medieval model of the scholarly monk toiling away, far removed from worldly concerns. But the political climate of academia has changed: The administrative demands are greater, the competition for scarce jobs stiffer and the tiered nature of positions -- divided ever more increasingly along caste lines between teaching and research -- all create even greater imbalances between personal and professional lives.

Part of this is due to the "star system," in which superstar academics -- those who are slavishly courted by institutions and whose names invoke iconic power -- have become role models for all academics. "The bar of success has been raised much higher," one of my colleagues at Stanford explains. "No work you do now is ever enough."

But if one commits to an academic career can one truly commit to a partner?

"No" is the emphatic answer from a former lecturer at Harvard who, like almost all of the people I interviewed, requested anonymity. "Academia is not a particularly healthy environment, and it doesn't place a premium on anything outside of its own world." Her story is emblematic of the way competition between two spouses in the same field can erode the relationship. She and her husband were both graduate students in the same English Ph.D. program. He was ahead of her, until he hit a roadblock when it came to writing the proposal for his dissertation. The day she informed her husband that she had finished the first chapter of her dissertation and was handing it in, he confessed that he had been sleeping with her best friend. "The early stages of the writing (e.g. the proposal) are dangerous times," Sternberg warns. "Many candidates, frightened by the extent of the commitment, are seeking a way out."

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Shedding a wife easier than finding a topic