Reasons I will turn you down, even if you offer me the job: Part III
Lesson #3: Clean up your office, you filthy fucking pig.
Quaint Liberal Arts College is a unique place filled with unique people, very few of whom I would want as distant neighbors, much less as lifelong colleagues. After three-plus years in the academy, I'd like to think I've developed a body of standards -- demanding though fair — for judging the intellectual, moral, ethical and hygienic fitness of my peers. Before my interview at QLAC last month, I would not have included "hygiene" on that list. Now, though, I offer this little piece of warm advice to job-seekers near and far: when you visit a campus, take a little whiff. Is that the smell of intellectual integrity, of scholastic good cheer, of knowledge bursting through the womb and into the world? Or is that the odor of rotting cheese, stale crackers and mouldy coffee mugs, clotting the nooks of your future colleagues' offices?
Now, it should be noted that I currently draw a paycheck from a tiny institution in a state that is, shall we say, just a little unkempt compared with the rest of the nation. When I flew out to my interview a few years back, I recall sitting in the airport and realizing that everyone traveling to this state seemed just a wee bit uglier than everyone else in the airport -- there were the usual hair-related problems (mostly variations in the key of "mullet") as well as eyes that were too deeply-set, or chins that flowed effortlessly and indistinguishably into the flesh of the neck, or the general look of a life filled with one catastrophic humiliation after another. And my university has drawn its share of eccentrics and misfits, too. We have faculty -- particularly those who teach in the dank, sweaty field of "outdoor studies" -- who may forego the occasional shower, and until about three years ago we had two faculty in the humanities and social sciences who lived on 24-foot boats in the harbor near campus, where they chose to spend their nights floating in a pool of brackish water, leaked diesel fuel, and decomposing fish carcasses. Until he retired at the age of 38, one of these professors was an "urchin hippie" -- as opposed to the lawyer-hippies in this town who live in five-bedroom houses -- who smoked an impossible amount of marijuana and took his dog everywhere with him. Nice guy; nice dog; both could have used a toothbrush.
None of this, however, compares with Professor Z. In this particular department at QLAC, the professors' offices are large enough that they actually hold all their classes there in small seminars of 10-15 students. It was a bit high-schoolish for yours truly, but all things considered, these were nice fucking offices with windows and abundant natural sunlight -- a far cry from the tiny, windowless, red-carpeted bread box to which I've been confined for several years. Most of the faculty kept their shit tidy, but Professor Z -- the chair of the department and chair of the search committee -- had evidently surrendered to his inner hog and refused to clean up anything. In the town where I currently live, we have a number of "garbage houses," indoor landfills inhabited by solitary crazy people who allow their homes to become overrun with old newspapers, bags of garbage, and worthless refuse acquired from yard sales. In one of these houses, the rubbish is piled so high that a casual passer-by can view the heaps through the front window, creeping ever-upward to glory.
Professor Z's office was just such a place. Mounds of paper, years in the making, were scattered across the floor; half-eaten sleeves of Ritz crackers lay on the seminar table, stuffed between piles of books and computer equipment; I counted at least eight coffee mugs, filled with varying proportions of stale coffee and mould, lingering and forgotten around the room. I half expected to see little jars of urine and feces, stacked like a winter's supply of grandma’s pickled beets and stewed tomatoes. I wondered where he kept his pet raccoons.
To his minimal credit, Professor Z mumbled an apology at some point during my slack-jawed, 15-minute visit. "You'll have to forgive my office," he said. "I have ADHD."
This, I thought, was the least of his worries.
Quaint Liberal Arts College is a unique place filled with unique people, very few of whom I would want as distant neighbors, much less as lifelong colleagues. After three-plus years in the academy, I'd like to think I've developed a body of standards -- demanding though fair — for judging the intellectual, moral, ethical and hygienic fitness of my peers. Before my interview at QLAC last month, I would not have included "hygiene" on that list. Now, though, I offer this little piece of warm advice to job-seekers near and far: when you visit a campus, take a little whiff. Is that the smell of intellectual integrity, of scholastic good cheer, of knowledge bursting through the womb and into the world? Or is that the odor of rotting cheese, stale crackers and mouldy coffee mugs, clotting the nooks of your future colleagues' offices?
Now, it should be noted that I currently draw a paycheck from a tiny institution in a state that is, shall we say, just a little unkempt compared with the rest of the nation. When I flew out to my interview a few years back, I recall sitting in the airport and realizing that everyone traveling to this state seemed just a wee bit uglier than everyone else in the airport -- there were the usual hair-related problems (mostly variations in the key of "mullet") as well as eyes that were too deeply-set, or chins that flowed effortlessly and indistinguishably into the flesh of the neck, or the general look of a life filled with one catastrophic humiliation after another. And my university has drawn its share of eccentrics and misfits, too. We have faculty -- particularly those who teach in the dank, sweaty field of "outdoor studies" -- who may forego the occasional shower, and until about three years ago we had two faculty in the humanities and social sciences who lived on 24-foot boats in the harbor near campus, where they chose to spend their nights floating in a pool of brackish water, leaked diesel fuel, and decomposing fish carcasses. Until he retired at the age of 38, one of these professors was an "urchin hippie" -- as opposed to the lawyer-hippies in this town who live in five-bedroom houses -- who smoked an impossible amount of marijuana and took his dog everywhere with him. Nice guy; nice dog; both could have used a toothbrush.
None of this, however, compares with Professor Z. In this particular department at QLAC, the professors' offices are large enough that they actually hold all their classes there in small seminars of 10-15 students. It was a bit high-schoolish for yours truly, but all things considered, these were nice fucking offices with windows and abundant natural sunlight -- a far cry from the tiny, windowless, red-carpeted bread box to which I've been confined for several years. Most of the faculty kept their shit tidy, but Professor Z -- the chair of the department and chair of the search committee -- had evidently surrendered to his inner hog and refused to clean up anything. In the town where I currently live, we have a number of "garbage houses," indoor landfills inhabited by solitary crazy people who allow their homes to become overrun with old newspapers, bags of garbage, and worthless refuse acquired from yard sales. In one of these houses, the rubbish is piled so high that a casual passer-by can view the heaps through the front window, creeping ever-upward to glory.
Professor Z's office was just such a place. Mounds of paper, years in the making, were scattered across the floor; half-eaten sleeves of Ritz crackers lay on the seminar table, stuffed between piles of books and computer equipment; I counted at least eight coffee mugs, filled with varying proportions of stale coffee and mould, lingering and forgotten around the room. I half expected to see little jars of urine and feces, stacked like a winter's supply of grandma’s pickled beets and stewed tomatoes. I wondered where he kept his pet raccoons.
To his minimal credit, Professor Z mumbled an apology at some point during my slack-jawed, 15-minute visit. "You'll have to forgive my office," he said. "I have ADHD."
This, I thought, was the least of his worries.
posted by Bad Attitude | 8:31 AM
2 Comments:
I just want to say that as a grad student on the job market, this blog has been so fun, so true and so cathartic to read. Thanks!!!!!
Jars of urine and feces...pet raccoons. Gasp! Wheeze! You are gut-bustingly funny, as usual. Of course, I too have the occasional moldy coffee cup, though I blame laziness in not taking it immediately the sink rather than ADHD.
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