It’s November, the time of NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo, and in years past I blogged daily during the month, but this November the idea of blogging even close to every day is so laughable, I might have peed myself a little just thinking about it.
In other words, there’s no way I can pull off every day, or even every other day. I will strive for twice a week, and we’ll see how it goes.
This semester is the worst of all the semesters, ever. I don’t know what the hell is going on (only I know; teaching overload and service overload). It’s just non-fucking-stop.
The workload is so bad I realized there would also be no way I could finalize Academadness by the late November deadline. I need the semester to simply be over. So I have pushed the release of Academadness to March. That’s the only way I will have a fighting chance to do a good job at putting the finishing touches on this collection.
In regular blogging news, plenty of academic stuff comes up and I want to write about it, but the time isn’t there, and then I forget.
Still, here’s one vignette from several weeks ago. We had an important external visitor in the department, a technical person. I didn’t have even half an hour to spare during the day to meet him, so another colleague in a similar predicament and I offered to take the visitor to dinner. I certainly planned to talk shop, and the colleague did, too.
Only last minute we found out that the visitor had brought his wife along and she would be joining us for dinner, and would we mind?
When I heard the news, I felt a surge of anger. It was so sudden and so powerful, that it got me thinking—why such a strong reaction for what is essentially a minor change in plans?
This is what I came up with.
First, I was only meeting with the visitor so we could talk shop. I wanted to talk shop. Shop talk was raison d’etre for the dinner. I had no interest in socializing. I am out-of-my-mind busy, and I am giving up my evening during which I might get a chance to unwind, for this meeting, which is now not what it was supposed to be, and which would instead become an exercise in small-talk inanity. Even at conferences, I honestly hate socializing with spouses; I am there to work, and whatever socializing is for work networking purposes. I am not there to make personal friends.
But there’s another dimension of this all. Most people in my field are men, and all the senior men have homemaker wives. Junior men aren’t quite like that and there are many more professional wives, but the older guard is very traditional. Every time a stay-at-home wife is brought along (and this one turned out to be one such wife), I am reminded of how unnatural I must appear to her husband. I am some sort of ungodly amalgamation of him and her, a woman like her but not really a woman, because he clearly thinks a real woman stays at home; I do a job just like him, but I bet he does not consider me an equal, because I am a woman like his wife, and he is definitely the boss of her. The dinner was a reminder of how out of place most people in my field must find me to be.
Anyway, the dinner was fine, albeit boring, but probably not warranting a flareup of fury. The wife was indeed as traditional and demure as they come; her husband, the visitor, was the lead of the household around whose career everyone else’s life had to fit. My department colleague tried really hard to talk a little bit of shop while keeping the wife engaged in the conversation, a feat of great bravery at which he ultimately failed. The conversation then veered into that most annoying of genres—where we have traveled for work and what sights we have we seen, something old-timers fucking love but I will never understand the fascination with—followed by talk of kids and even grandkids. Innocuous and pointless; I’d rather have been talking about work or else at home, relaxing.
How’s your November, blogosphere? As grouchy as mine?
xykademiqz 
Looking forward to March AcadeMadness!
I’ve had a slightly more infuriating version of what you describe, where it’s not the Visistor, but the department colleague who says “Surprise, I brought my spouse to dinner”. Not only is shop talk killed (because the spouse checks the same boxes you mentioned), but you have to discretely pull the colleague aside and say “You know the department’s not paying for your spouse’s dinner, right?”
I can’t imagine wanting to join my spouse’s visiting-speaker dinners! It would just feel so awkward. But maybe it’s because I am ex-academia and know that the point of such dinners is to talk shop.
It has been a long time since I’ve had dinner with a spouse. Most of the men I know have working spouses, and some of them are even econ-adjacent– doing real jobs that we only theorize about with their MBAs or masters in finance. The ones who don’t stay home with the children during dinners I think. Add to that that I’ve pretty much stopped going to dinners since the pandemic if there’s another option…
I think we have enough women in our department that someone’s SAHW doesn’t have any implications for me, other than them having a live-in housekeeper and childminder and me having to share that responsibility. I’m not sure that would be true if I were the only woman. Or if none of the other women had had kids. That’s one of the reasons diversity is so important.
Good luck with getting through this semester! I want to go back on leave…
Relatable soooo relatable thanks for sharing and hey, the semester is almost over!!!
When I was a new faculty member, I got invited to dinner by one of the old guard. My husband couldn’t come, so it was just me, two senior men and their stay at home wives. Wow it was terrible. They definitely made sure I knew I was out of place, plus one of the wives seemed to be concerned I was going to make a move on her husband. As if. Thirty years older than me and a pig to boot. I never put myself in that position again. In part because I didn’t get any invites, lol.
Disappointed about nablopomo. Also having a terrible semester.
This just happened to me at a work retreat this past weekend! An opportunity for important professional conversations with leadership was derailed by the presence of spouses. The spouses were lovely people but it was a big opportunity lost.
This sounds infuriating! I love to hear shop talk from other disciplines/professions, and the “where have you traveled?” talk must have been tedious.
I know what you mean about the wives, though. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I went to a local conference (my first!) where I wasn’t even presenting. One of the not-nice variety of a SAHW cornered me and asked me what I did. I told her, and she said (green eyes glinting), “Oh, an ADJUNCT” and turned on her heel and walked away. Well, excuse me for making a living.
A trifle on the nose that your book, whose title celebrates the madness of academia, is being delayed by the madness of academia.
On the other side, I’m always disappointed when academic dinners turn into shop talk. I love my work but I’m also interested in other things and would like to get to know other people slightly more than just the science. I’m an introvert, so I’m not looking for friends, just some interesting conversation. I would probably drive you crazy at dinner. 🙂
@cfroning Oh, no, I am sure you wouldn’t! I am just a little jaded after all these years because, in my experience, non-shop talk is virtually never informative or meaningful. It’s a kind of “manly” small talk, very outwardly facing, if that makes sense: people talk about where they’ve traveled, what they’ve eaten/drunk, how/where they have been wined and dined by people whose stature we all admire and to whom they repeatedly refer by the first name because that’s how awesome they are, being on a first-name basis with the greats; that kind of stuff. When the spouses are present, the conversation changes, but is similarly uninspiring. No one ever reveals anything truly deep or interesting and I don’t either; such is the nature of small talk. I know this, yet I still always leave feeling drained and jittery. I generally end up getting the most nontrivial info from shop talk, and I find it the most relaxing, honestly, because I am genuinely interested so don’t have to fake it. Navigating small talk for protracted periods of time in a professional setting, where I must work hard to control my composure and not roll my eyes or show boredom or vocalize any of the weird/snarky comments that pop into my mind, and I can’t change topics because I am trying to be polite and deferential, and I can’t leave… It tends to be a lot for me.
Yeah, I’m biased because my academic advisor is a great conversationalist and his wife is an artist and always a pleasure to talk to. I agree that those who see it as a name-dropping exercise are a bore. I remember interviewing for one faculty position where the guy I was meeting with kept talking about his own research. I interjected some item where my work overlapped and he looked at me like he was confused as to why I was talking!