Читать книгу Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia - Emily Toth - Страница 9

The Job Hunt

It used to be that, ’round about the time he was finishing his course work and starting on his dissertation, a young man's fancy would turn to his future employment.

And so, he would talk to his major professor, who would call his friends at a select number of schools and find out who needed, for instance, “a man in American literature” or “a new fellow in economics.” The major professor would recommend “my brightest student, a fine young man.” By the following fall, the young man would be teaching, possibly at an Ivy League university or a fine Seven Sisters college. Most likely he would remain there, easily tenured along the way, for his entire career. Now and then he might publish an article or a review or a poem, but he would not be pushed to do so. Nor could anyone in a small college be expected to do publishable scientific research.

Rather, he would always spend some of his leisure time sipping sherry with students (some of whom might also be his bedmates). He would also pride himself on his taste, culture, and intellect.

Had she known such a young man, Ms. Mentor would have shuddered in his presence, and she would have loathed his major professor. For both were pillars of the establishment that kept out women, and Jews, and open lesbians, and people of color, and anyone else who wasn't, in the terms of the day, “our kind.”

Before the 1960s, American colleges were mostly for “our kind,” not for the masses. Although the G.I. Bill opened college to many a (male) veteran who might not otherwise have attended, there were still few graduate schools. Many colleges kept blacks out entirely; most colleges also had quotas on Jews and women (who might be restricted to 20 to 40 percent of the student body), and most women students did not finish college. According to Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963)—a book that Ms. Mentor still highly recommends—some 60 percent of women college students in the 1950s dropped out to marry. Many, presumably, were pregnant, in those days before the Pill (1960) or Roe vs. Wade (1973).

When Stephen Ambrose, later to be the biographer of Richard Nixon and the major historian of D-Day and much more, was finishing his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin in the 1960s, he received twenty-five job offers.

Today, a Stephanie Ambrose would be delighted with one.

Ms. Mentor wants women to grow and learn and thrive and share their knowledge—but academic women also need to be realists. There are very few jobs, and the job market for professors has been in an almost continuous slump for a quarter-century. Yet applications to grad schools continue to rise, especially from adults who've been out of school for some years. Often they give their all as teachers and graders and scholars-in-training—and then, there are no permanent positions for them.

The job hunt itself is now a full-time pursuit, for which graduate students need to budget hundreds of dollars for photocopies, dossiers, postage, telephone calls, and travel to the academic conventions where “job markets” are held. There, crammed into overheated hotel rooms, new Ph.D.s may have just thirty minutes with an interviewing committee—half an hour to sell themselves and their life's dream.

Later, in on-campus interviews, would-be assistant professors must be neat, smart, personable, good-humored, thoroughly knowledgeable, and fully alert and engaging, sometimes for two full twelve-hour days that may include meeting up to fifty different people. And even then, offers may be long in coming—or positions may be canceled, thanks to acts of God or state legislatures.

And so aspiring academics are also mortgaging their psyches. They must consider living apart from loved ones who also have careers; they must be willing to be academic gypsies.

In the humanities, it is not uncommon for Ph.D.s to spend five years or more as part-timers or adjuncts or temporary replacements before they finally get on the blessed tenure track. The same is true for post-Ph.D. scientists who spend years moving about as “post-docs.” In 1995, for instance, the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy revealed that among chemistry Ph.D.s only about one in five—21 percent—held an academic job.

Although she has many marvelous powers, Ms. Mentor cannot change the American economy, nor conjure up jobs where there are none. But she can help bright new academics—those wise enough to read her—to use their talents effectively. She also recommends that they read and study Mary Morris Heiberger and Julie Miller Vick's excellent book, The Academic Job Search Handbook (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, 1996).

Then Ms. Mentor will advise them, as in the following exchanges.

Wow! A Clown!

Q: I've been told that vitas and job applications need a “WOW” factor—something with a unique flair. My grad school classmate who wrote her dissertation on the Marquis de Sade plans to wear leather to interviews; another who wrote on menstruation swears she'll have the nerve to wear a white dress with red spots.

My dissertation, though, is just on Elizabethan comedy. I've been a school grind and library rat all my life, except for the crazy summer I spent as Bozo the Clown at an amusement park, where I learned to smoke marijuana and finally got fired when I was found half-dressed and dazed underneath the Thunder Coaster.

How can I wow a hiring committee?

A: Ms. Mentor would say that you do have a wow factor, right under your nose (right where you wore your Bozo honker). She suggests that you delete the part about the dope and the Thunder Coaster, but keep the rest: it's the funny little bit that will make your application letter stand out.

Hiring committees these days have to be ruthless. With five hundred to a thousand people or more applying for each spot, the first screeners—who may be temporary contract employees—have to throw out the dull, the unsigned, the misspelled, the mal-addressed, and the indecipherable, as well as the cringing, the flaky, the morbid, the fanatical, and the psychopathic.

Then hiring committees start their serious reading.

They're hoping desperately to be entertained, entranced, or tricked out of the misery of reading hundreds of letters that sound alike. “I am applying for…,” “I have studied…,” “My dissertation attempts a synthesis…,” “I argue that, contrary to previous theorists…,” “I would be happy to meet with you….”

And so Ms. Mentor advises you to announce early in your letter that you have a special something for the job. For instance: “My field is Elizabethan comedy, which I've studied in theory—through my academic work—and in practice, in my summer job as Bozo the Clown. I've found that being Bozo helped me understand the performativity…” (“performativity” being one of the chic buzz words for the lit crit crowd…).

You can state that playing Bozo the Clown taught you about teaching, which is, after all, a lot like standup comedy. Through your Bozo work, you learned a kind of public polish that aided you when you taught first-year composition…And helped you with acting out scenes when you taught Introduction to Literature…. (Did it help? Well, say that it did: you'll sound like an engaging teacher.)

A good application letter is a performance with one goal: seducing your audience into interviewing you. Candidates who've sent letters on perfumed or hot pink paper or with words cut out of the newspaper also do get attention—but they're often regarded as unprofessional, and their efforts get posted on mailroom bulletin boards. (Some are even turned over to the police.)

Your letter, though, has a good chance of getting you the coveted interview, whereupon Bozo will help once more. Most academic interviews can be dry: “Tell us about your dissertation”; “What would you like to teach at our university?”; “What are your research plans?”; “What do you see yourself doing five years from now?” Especially after a day of convention interviews, hiring committees will be wiggy with fatigue—at which point someone who can make them laugh may make them weep with relief.

You can be the dashing-but-dignified young woman who amuses and delights even the most jaded codgers with tales of Bozo, the commedia dell'arte, and Shakespeare. And be sure to mention A Midsummer Night's Dream. To most English Department academics, the character Bottom represents their greatest fear as they stand before a class of adolescents, trying to teach: What if they notice that I'm wearing the head of an ass?

In short, Ms. Mentor congratulates you on having a genuine wow factor, on being able to produce the humor and entertainment that are so lacking, and so wildly appreciated, in these difficult academic times.

Were Ms. Mentor on a hiring committee, you'd undoubtedly be her first choice.

That Old Soft Shoe—Will Nothing Else Do?

Q: Once I finish my Ph.D. (in the social sciences), I figure I'll have spent twenty-two years in school, working up to a first job as a university professor. Yet most hiring is done first by letters (most candidates are screened out), and then with half-hour interviews at our major organization's annual meeting.

I figure I can write a super standout letter that can nab me an interview. But then my whole academic future—including whether I even have an academic future—hinges on my “performance” for, say, twenty-eight minutes. Isn't this like being a standup comic (or a bank robber)? Is this the way to run a knowledge industry—making us flit and swoop and strut our stuff like Fred Astaire or Madonna?

I almost wonder if I shouldn't just mail off a videotape of myself dancing, singing, and spieling on my own behalf.

A: What you describe is, indeed, the commencement of a professorial career: the new Ph.D., fresh from the rigors of intellectual competition and bursting with new ideas and enthusiasm for teaching and learning, has to perform a successful dog-and-pony show for half an hour in order to get her foot in the door.

If she fails her audition—and most of those interviewed won't get the role—then it's quite possible that the career and the life she's worked for through all the years of straight As and honor rolls and scholarships and fellowships may all wither, turn to ashes, go down the tubes. (Ms. Mentor's readers may supply their own favorite metaphors.)

Is this fair? No.

But out of injustice, says Ms. Mentor feebly, can sometimes come opportunity.

Not getting an academic job is not the end of the universe as we know it—although after twenty-two straight years of schooling, you may think so. If you'd asked Ms. Mentor's advice much earlier, she would have told you not to leap from college into grad school. Ms. Mentor feels it is much wiser for everyone, even valedictorians and summas and magnas and dean's listers, to dip at least a toe into the Real World. Scholars need the experience of full-time wage earning, office politics, handling bureaucracies and paperwork, dealing with impossible or good bosses, as well as car owning, cat feeding, apartment renting, cooking and cleaning and being adults.

In short, Ms. Mentor would have preferred that you do a real-life research project—“What do I want to be when I grow up?”—rather than plowing straight on through school.

But that is all water under the widget. Now your hurdle is the interview—your audition.

When Ms. Mentor first surveyed the field some fifteen years ago, there were over one hundred fifty books on interviewing, but very few on how to be interviewed. More useful, Ms. Mentor found, were business management texts that told candidates the power spot to sit (to the right of the most powerful person in the room); the best time to schedule one's interview (between 9 and 10 A.M. on the second conference day); and odd pitfalls to avoid, such as invading an interviewer's space by placing a handbag or coat on his turf.

Most helpful, though, are advice books for actors on how to audition. Much of what they say about body language and eye contact and firm handshakes applies. Smile; sit comfortably but neither lewdly nor nervously (wear a longish skirt); look directly at everyone; don't fiddle with jewelry, clothes, or lint spots (a good reason not to wear black). Be rested and well-fed (don't skip breakfast); be lively and enthusiastic.

Practice your spiel—the description of your dissertation. Do mock interviews with fellow students, roommates, and faculty members. Get them to ask you obvious, strange, illegal, and rude questions (you'll find samples in letters to Ms. Mentor). Have a couple of clever sound bites, work on looking poised and nonchalant, and remember what actors say about sincerity: once you can fake that, you've won it all.

Likability sells first, and then knowledge. Be ready with well-researched questions about the school (you'll have studied their homepage and their catalog). Know the names of faculty in your field. Suggest what you can do for the department and the school: where you fit in, what unique talents you can offer.

And afterward, if you don't get the job, do not blame yourself. A now-famous biographer once lost a job at Amherst solely because at her Modern Language Association convention interview, the hotel room's fireplace went berserk and began spewing black smoke into the room—whereupon our heroine had an uncontrollable coughing fit and could not complete the interview.

Sometimes real life intervenes. You won't interview well if you've just had a death in the family, or your wallet's just been stolen. (That happened to a young woman Ms. Mentor knows, and she wonders if an envious classmate was sabotaging her interview.)

But self-blame is useless, and Ms. Mentor urges you to persevere. Actors do get jobs, and so do academics, and much of it is a matter of technique. With practice, you will get better. Ms. Mentor can guarantee that.

Not Moby Dick

Q: When our annual job market convention comes up, I'm going to be seven months' pregnant, and unmarried. (Suffice it to say, the father of my child is a very generous, handsome rogue who likes to spread his seed into every available furrow.)

Given the fact that I may look like a whale and won't want to answer questions about my “husband,” should I

A. Not bother to go, since I won't get a job anyway?

B. Go, and hope for the best?

C. Lace myself up tightly, claim to be fat, and hope I don't have a conniption fit?

A: Ms. Mentor votes for B, but acknowledges that you do have a problem: many a hiring committee won't see past a big belly to appreciate a big brain.

Still, the convention will be your only chance this year. If you do get interviews, prepare a few little jokes about the forthcoming event and claim you have perfectly reliable child-care arrangements (whether you do or not). Your mission is to neutralize the obvious question: Are you a mom or a professor?

Sometimes, truly, lying works best, such as claiming that you have a husband who's a freelance writer who'll be doing child care at home.

But Ms. Mentor does not encourage you to lie. She only presents alternatives, and trusts you to make the best choices.

Just avoid having a conniption fit. It will make a permanently negative impression.

A Matter Of Morals

Q: “Tell us about your morals,” said a group interviewing me at our job market convention. I told them I was raised among Pentecostals and snake-handlers (true), but that now I go to a Presbyterian church (rarely), and don't smoke or shoplift. I didn't mention that I do drink wine and that I have sex with my boyfriend in a non-missionary position.

What kind of question is that: “Tell us about your morals?” Is it legal? How should I have answered it?

A: Ms. Mentor is reminded that a decade or two ago, one very Christian university became famous at the Modern Language Association convention for asking such questions of job candidates. It seemed that a faculty member had recently absconded with a student—and her morals—and his ex-colleagues didn't want it to happen again. Naturally, of course, the university became notorious at MLA for being the only school whose interviewers mentioned Sex.

Are such questions legal? Probably, although they do border on asking about “creed,” and maybe marital status as well.

How should you have answered them? Ms. Mentor thinks you did fine. You were honest and tactful, considering the provocation.

Whether you could actually fit into such a community, if the job is offered, is another question—but you haven't asked that. So Ms. Mentor, with her usual prudence, will remain silent.

Without Cane, Yet Able

Q: I'm worried about how best to present my disability during job interviews. I have a degenerative hip condition, and I've been advised not to walk long distances, stand for long periods, or climb stairs. However, in a pinch, I am able to do all these things, and on good days my limp is not immediately apparent.

I'm worried that at interviews people will see me sitting down at every opportunity, and taking the elevator whenever possible, and assume I am lazy. In fact, one college where I teach as an adjunct has expressed concern (behind my back, of course) over my “low energy level.” Since I actually am very energetic (otherwise I'd never be able to work full-time and complete a dissertation), I believe they are reacting to my disability.

I don't want interviewers to get the impression I'm lazy, but I don't want to be constantly explaining, “I'm using the elevator because I'm disabled.” I could try to “pass” by climbing stairs, etc., but I'm not sure dishonesty is a good idea. (Besides, I might hurt myself.)

Have you any advice for me?

A: Ms. Mentor was particularly pleased to receive this missive, for it lets her point out a fact that few people want to face: Anyone who does not have a disability now will either have one later, or be dead first.

Thus disability rights are everyone's cause. Ms. Mentor recommends the excellent book Feminism and Disability, by Barbara Hillyer, and advises all pre-disabled individuals to get to know the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), the civil rights bill for the disabled. (A Q & A later in this book discusses the ADA in greater detail.)

Besides inspiring Ms. Mentor to remodel her ivory tower to make it more accessible, the ADA has pushed colleges and hotels to come up with ramps, elevators, parking spaces, and many an ingenious modification to let folks with disabilities gad about just like the pre-disabled.

You, however, have a mostly hidden disability, which your colleagues interpret as laziness rather than as a handicap. That's not altogether bad: to an employer worried about health costs, you are not a “problem.” Moreover, your ability to do many things at once—finish a dissertation, teach full time, and correspond with Ms. Mentor—shows you to be well organized and energetic.

But what about job interviews? Most academic conventions, held in hotels, won't present problems—for rare is the candidate with so many interviews that she does not have time in between for caffeine, rest, snacks, or scheming.

On-campus interviews, though, can blow your cover.

In an ideal world, of course, you'd simply announce that you have a disability, perhaps adding that since Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli also have hip problems, it's obviously a special scourge besetting glamorous women. (If you can say this in laughing self-deprecation, you'll be regarded as quite witty.) In an ideal world, potential colleagues would see your need for rest as another charming quality in a brilliant woman.

But in the real world, Ms. Mentor knows, you might be stereotyped not as lazy, but as “crippled,” with all the unspoken bigotries that evokes. You might be patronized, or your disability might be used (covertly) as an excuse not to hire you: “Can we afford…?” The Americans with Disabilities Act, like Affirmative Action, encourages well-intentioned people and smites the most egregious, but it cannot tell Ableist U. that they must hire you.

And so what you have is an educational challenge: How do you teach possible bosses to see past your disability to your many unique talents? How can you make your disability unimportant—or even turn it into an advantage?

You've already mentioned the simplest way out: to pretend you don't have a disability at all. But that entails risks (“I might hurt myself”). And over a two-day visit, you know you'll need to sit down often, while your hosts might be expecting you to hoof long distances in snow and ice.

You could be “found out.”

Here Ms. Mentor reminds her learned readers that academia today is a tough world. Your choices aren't really whether to be hired “as disabled” or as “not disabled.” The real question for any job candidate is: How can I get hired at all?

And so Ms. Mentor proposes a different strategy for your consideration: hiding in plain sight. Rather than concealing your disability, you might decide to flaunt it, by getting a crutch or a cane—a wooden one, so that your disability seems temporary. You can casually tell hirers ahead of time that you've been injured and will be using a “sympathy stick.” The point is to make the disability visible—but transcendable.

Before your talk, you can prepare small talk and little jokes about your new implement. You can freely say that since you've had the crutch or cane for only a couple of weeks, you're not completely comfortable with it. You hope that everyone will sympathize; you don't know how long you'll have to use it.

In a presentation, you can tell your audience, “I wish I had two legs to stand on.” If it's germane, you can comment on famous characters with disabilities—on Lord Byron's clubfoot, or Alexander Pope's crooked spine, or the Hunchback of Notre Dame. You can note that Charles Dickens's Tiny Tim and his crutch are still trotted out to do good every Christmas. (If you feel, as Ms. Mentor does, that Tim is a mawkish little twit, surpassed only by the truly insufferable Barney—you should keep that critical insight to yourself.)

You can even complain with gentle humor, “I wanted to get ribbons for my crutch in your university's colors, but they didn't have them where I live.” Ms. Mentor predicts that your hosts will find this enormously flattering—and before you leave campus, someone will almost certainly come up with the ribbons, and maybe even a pennant.

Is this deceptive?

Has anyone lied?

No. And you will also have shown possible future colleagues that people with disabilities aren't freaks, self-pitiers, cripples, or fragile pieces of glass. Your good humor about your disability cannot help but be winning, like the cagey wit of Lily Tomlin's paraplegic character Crystal. (When a kid asks, “Are you a ride?” the wheelchaired Crystal says she's the best ride there ever was. And unlike walkies, she never has to worry about getting hurt.)

Ms. Mentor recommends that you listen to Lily Tomlin's routines, memorize them, and filch lines shamelessly: telling a story well is one sign of a good teacher. Unless your hosts have hearts of stone and souls of steel, those who meet you will root for you. They'll feel good watching you succeed; they'll be kind to you; they'll laugh with you.

You'll also have won in the main challenge for all job candidates, disabled or pre-disabled: How do I stand out from the crowd and make them want me?

When the hiring faculty makes its decision, you'll be memorable: “the woman with the crutch and the terrific sense of humor.” They'll like your style; they'll congratulate themselves on having the good sense to hire you despite the “handicap” they witnessed. (And if they don't offer you the job, some of them will feel very guilty. That's good.)

But even Ms. Mentor cannot guarantee that you'll be hired—whether you hide your disability or flaunt it. Some faculties are hopelessly dour and sour, dedicated to shooting themselves in the foot. Two decades ago, for instance, the University of Wisconsin rejected a stellar junior candidate because they felt she was “too lively”—and she now edits the major journal in American literature.

But for now, Ms. Mentor emphasizes, all you need is a foot in the door. After that, your hip and the rest of you will follow.

Any university will be lucky to have you, and for your best asset: your brain.

Telephone Tremors

Q: As a job seeker, I've experienced a new form of hiring torture: the telephone interview. I have come close to only two tenure-track jobs in two years. Both have used telephone interviews to narrow their field of candidates from ten to the three they would invite to campus.

The first phone interview came at 8 P.M., with a male interviewer who introduced himself and asked if this was a good time to talk. He mentioned the name of his school, and quickly reaching for pen and paper, I wrote a note to my companion to retrieve my application file. I had applied to 104 colleges that year and had absolutely no recollection of this particular school. The conversation went poorly; the interviewer was not in my discipline (he held a fine arts degree in photography); and I didn't know the needs of his institution. I vowed never to let myself be taken by surprise like that again.

So, the following year, I developed a strategy. If a phone-interview call came out of the blue, I would politely express great interest in the caller and the institution, but say that this was not a good time to talk and suggest that we arrange a convenient time for the next day. Then I'd have twenty-four hours to get to the library, read the catalog, and prepare my answers.

Another call did come, and I used my line. The caller assured me that this was not a phone interview—just a check to see if I was still interested and available. Of course I was, and wanted to sound enthusiastic. But then the conversation became very uncomfortable, though I tried to remain open and friendly and buy myself time to do my homework.

The caller (a woman) wanted to know if I had questions: in particular, did I need information about elementary schools in the area? Did I plan to buy a house? She was obviously fishing for information about my marital and family status.

As I later learned, the college is in a tiny, insular community with fewer than thirty faculty. I wonder if an unmarried young woman would have been a threat to this interviewer or the college community, for it was clearly a screening call. The interviewer asked no questions about my qualifications or experience, and though I politely asked twice to talk at a better time, she kept insisting that this was not an interview.

She finished the half-hour phone call by assuring me that the committee did not yet have a process for narrowing the field of candidates and that they would be contacting me within the next week. She arranged for the school to send a large packet of information, which I read carefully; I also studied the catalog on microfiche. But after hearing nothing in ten days, I called the school and was told that three candidates had been invited to the campus and I was not one of them.

Was there anything I could have done? What can I take from this to be better prepared for the next round of hiring?

A: Ms. Mentor was deeply saddened by your letter. Torture by telephone—now you hear it, now you don't—is very cruel.

Yes, of course, Ms. Mentor knows why departments do such things. They are screening candidates; they cannot afford to invite all the good ones to campus; and it's as good a method as any in their eyes.

But it's not.

No one would expect to be given a syllabus and told to teach a Shakespeare class five minutes later; no one should be expected to summon up, after 104 job letters, the perfect recollection and exactly matching enthusiasm that an interviewer wants. Nor should “cold” calls be made, without previous appointments. And illegal questions—seeking information about marital status—should be barred. The only job seekers who do well under such circumstances are the glib, the mendacious, and the idiosyncratic who do somehow memorize everything. (Such unusual beings used to be called “idiot savants.”)

But as there's no way to stop diabolical departments, the best you can do is to be always prepared.

Ms. Meritor advises you to get a big accordion-style, alphabetized folder, into which you file all 104 job applications, each with its original job description. Then get on the Internet and download each university's homepage—and each department's, if there is one.

Print out the homepages, highlight in different colors the essentials, and file them with your applications. For each school, you can also attach two or more positively phrased questions to ask, such as, “Yours seems like an excellent collection of environmental studies courses. Do you encourage faculty to continue developing new and interesting courses?” or “You have a very large popular arts program. What do your students find especially attractive?” or “I'm impressed with the internship opportunities for students. How are those arranged?”

(Ms. Mentor hopes that sage readers will see the value of positive questions: they flatter the interviewer. Conversely, “What are you racist fart-knockers doing about your piss-ant legislature?” won't get you hired at a state university.)

Now you're prepared for all calls—if you keep the accordion folder within reach at all times. Should you sleep with it? Should you get call-waiting? Probably yes, sighs Ms. Mentor, for if you're not available, conscienceless callers will go on to the next person.

Ms. Mentor also grieves: this is no way to treat future colleagues. When you do land a tenure-track job, Ms. Mentor hopes that you will not forget what you have endured. For only those who are hired can, in the future, make hiring humane.

Wifey

Q: I followed my husband to his faculty job, in the humanities, at a research university. I wasn't finished with my dissertation, and so I took an instructor position in the same department. Now I've finished my Ph.D., but no one sees me as anything but His Wife. How can I improve my status and get a tenure-track job?

A: You are a “trailing spouse,” a “deflected woman”—terms used by Nadya Aisenberg and Mona Harrington in their excellent book, Women of Academe: Outsiders in the Sacred Grove. They point out that following hubby's job is the single biggest way to derail your own career. But you didn't ask Ms. Mentor's advice in time, and now all she can do is offer two suggestions:

1. Find out if instructors ever do ascend to tenure-track assistant professorships in your university. At most schools, it's impossible, but if you know someone who did it, find out how. (Often there's a rich but unsavory story associated with people who make such a leap: rumors of sexual favors, bribes, and blackmail abound. At one Middle Atlantic university, the wife of an assistant professor in English reportedly went down on her knees, slobbering and crying over the department chair's hands, begging for a tenure-track job—which she got.)

2. Write and publish a book, to make yourself eligible for tenure-track and tenured jobs elsewhere, and resign yourself to a commuter marriage. Do not be “place-bound” as a “captive spouse.”

If you were in science, there would be ways you could work under (the terminology is unfortunate) your husband: you could be a research associate on his grant, for instance. You might even seek your own grant money. But such niches are not available in the humanities.

Ms. Mentor wishes you well in what is really a very small universe of choices.

One Trick Lady

Q: What happens if I hedge about my marital status or sexuality in a job interview?

A: Ms. Mentor recalls the old saw from Archilochus, the wild and wily seventh-century (B.C.) poet: “The fox has many tricks; the hedgehog only one. A good one.”

Sting ‘em before they sting you is indeed one approach to illegal questions, and many a job candidate has fantasized doing just that:

“You've got your nerve asking if I'm married, you slimy pigface! Just because no one would ever marry your ilk!”

“Of course I'm a lesbian! Especially if you're one of the alternatives!”

“How dare you ask me that! I'll sue your butt off!”

But in real life, one has to be foxy, not prickly.

Interviewers legally are not supposed to inquire about a candidate's race or sex (although those are usually obvious)—nor about marital status, national origin, religion, or handicap. In some states, sexual orientation is also a no-no (it should be an illegal question everywhere, opines Ms. Mentor).

But when they hold all the cards, interviewers who want to can ignore the rules. And if a candidate even says, meekly, “Do you know that such questions are illegal?” that's an obvious criticism of the questioner, and there goes the job.

And so Ms. Mentor concludes, with regret and distaste, that unless you can afford to turn down a job, the only way to handle illegal questions is to answer them. Indeed, any female candidate must be prepared for unlawful, strange, or intrusive queries.

Ms. Mentor recommends these responses:

“Yes, I'm married, and my spouse is a freelancer.” That answers the university's worry about whether the spouse will be expecting the department to procure him a job. Once a position is offered, the candidate may indeed want to negotiate a job for her partner. But at the first interview, the best strategy is to make the spouse not part of the equation at all.

—or—

“No, I'm not married. I'll be going to a new job alone (or with my children).” Or (with an engaging smile): “I'll be coming with my cats (or with my golden retriever).” Pets are often a better selling point than children.

—or—

“I've always considered my sexuality a private thing.” But (1) “I do have a partner, a freelancer who'll be coming with me.” Or (2) “I live alone, don't date students, and like to think I get along well with everyone in my university community.”

All these answers are best said with a calm smile. For a woman in academe, there is no perfect marital/sexual status: everyone knows that even nuns sometimes forsake their vows.

The best you can do is to be dignified, precise, and good-humored—exactly the kind of person everyone wants to hire. Then your marital/sexual arrangements, disabilities, or other problems will fade away in the eyes of the interviewers. The department, in its collective wisdom, will have to have you.

Mrs. Higginbotham-Vanderlingen-Schnickelpuzenski

Q: I'm finishing my dissertation soon, getting married, and going on the job market. What name should I put on the dissertation?

A: Ms. Mentor believes all women should keep their original last names (“maiden names”) throughout their lives. When your name stays the same, your high school classmates will always know that It's You doing those wonderful or notorious things. Then they can swell with pride, writhe with envy, or spread vicious but delectable rumors when you win your Oscar or Nobel prize.

Changing your name with marriage sends the wrong message (that you're your husband's property). It's also impractical, since the average American marriage lasts less than seven years. Elizabeth Taylor, after all, has never changed her name.

Worst of all is a hyphenated name. No one will ever quite catch what your name is; they won't know where to alphabetize you; and your paychecks will always be mislaid. You will be unmasked as someone who flaunts her heterosexuality. Hiring committees will know you're married, which to them smells like “a problem”: what to do with hubby. Often they'll solve the problem by just not interviewing or hiring you.

A rose by any other name…no, says Ms. Mentor. Keep your own name. It smells the sweetest.

Black's Not Me

Q: I am an African American woman who's getting a doctorate in Victorian literature. At our last academic convention, I had the most interviews of anyone in our department—eleven, in fact—and I even had half a dozen job offers before I left the conference. And every one of those offers was for a job teaching African American literature.

Now I'm certainly proud of my race, and I believe Black Is Beautiful, but it's not my intellectual field. I like African American literature to read for pleasure, but my dissertation is on Charlotte Brontë. What can I do about this blatant and absurd tokenism? Should I just figure that any job is a foot in the door, and that I can always publish my way back to Charlotte Brontë?

A: Ms. Mentor says Yes.

You are lucky enough to be in the only sought-after cohort in literary hirings: African American scholars, especially those working in African American literature. This is your chance to turn the tables and get a genuine employment advantage.

Ms. Mentor advises you not to turn down any university right away. Find out what they're offering. Will they agree, in writing, that you'll teach at least one Victorian course a year? Will you get released time to read up on African American literature, and to mentor black students? Will you have a research assistant and a grader if you're expected to teach large classes?

Can they guarantee you a Tuesday–Thursday teaching schedule so you'll have the other days free for research and writing? Will they agree in writing that your publications in Victorian literature will count toward tenure, along with anything you might publish in African American literature? Does everyone understand that you're developing a research agenda in two fields, not one?

And whatever salary they offer, ask for more. Raises are a percentage of what you're already earning, so start as high as you can.

And by now there are undoubtedly some readers who are thinking, “How crass! How materialistic!” But Ms. Mentor thinks all women should earn good salaries and should be rewarded for what they bring to their jobs. You bring a great deal, and you should get paid handsomely.

Charlotte Brontë, who wrote so eloquently about the poverty of governesses, would definitely approve.

Space Of My Own

Q: After three years as a post-doc (I'm in chemistry), I've finally been offered a tenure-track job at “Z” State University. But the research I do requires a great deal of equipment, which has to be housed in lab space. I'm not sure that Z State has the money or room for it all. As a woman in my small subfield, I have no female colleagues—nor, for that matter, do I have any male mentors. And so I turn to Ms. Mentor: How do I make sure that my research—which, I know, will be the major way I'm evaluated—isn't skunked from the start by equipment screwups?

A: Were it not considered pointless in our practical modern era, Ms. Mentor would wish for everyone to study such subjects as philology and literary criticism. Books are so easy, so cheap, so sturdy, and so portable. You can even mark them up with pencils and never lose your data.

But enough ancient musings.

Ms. Mentor, who often exhorts women to go into science, is full of admiration for the pioneers who are so often The Only Woman in the Lab, The Only Woman at the Table. Besides coping with sexism, sexual harassment, and all the other discriminations bright women are always heir to, women in science are often isolated from any peers at all. (They are, of course, infinitely superior to their male colleagues. They've had to be.)

And so women scientists must create their own networks, which many are doing admirably. The Association for Women in Science (AWIS) has some six thousand members; the Society of Women Engineers is thriving on many a campus; and rare is the science journal that does not have a “Special Issue on Women” at least every year or two. For pleasure and enlightenment, Ms. Mentor also recommends the writings of Sue V. Rosser, virtually the only scientist who is also a director of Women's Studies. Her works (listed in Ms. Mentor's bibliography) are exceptionally good gifts for the “sensitive men” on your list.

But now, having done what a proper researcher should do—reviewed the literature, declared her theoretical perspectives—Ms. Mentor will answer your question about equipment and lab space.

It all comes down to money, of course—and right now you're in the best position you'll ever be to get what you want. Once a university has offered you the job, it's a courtship, and you get to negotiate the terms of the marriage. When the salary's mentioned, pause and say, “I'd like a bit more.” (They're not going to flee: they've decided they want you, and a new job search is much too expensive.)

Also say, “I'll need some commitments to do my research effectively”—whereupon Z State will ask, “What do you need?”

At that point you brainstorm. Although you have no official mentor, Ms. Mentor points out that you can find a whole network of informal ones. Get on the Net and ask other scientists what you should ask for (but be tactful: Z State faculty can be on-line, too). Consult your dissertation director, your post-doc bosses, and anyone else who's ever supervised your research. They've presumably written you good recommendations, and you flatter them by asking their advice.

Make a list of everything you might need, including software, personnel, and office supplies. Ask for more than you need. Ms. Mentor knows one new Ph.D. in veterinary medicine who, to her own amazement, was allocated a research associate paid for with “hard money” (university funds). Everyone else had to make do with whatever grant-funding (“soft money”) they could raise on their own, but our heroine got the associate line: she was new, and she asked.

Send your wish list (but don't call it that) to the department chair or dean negotiating with you, and ask politely for a written commitment. Unless you cannot afford the delay, do not sign your contract until you have a written commitment for the lab space and equipment you need.

When you arrive at Z University, Ms. Mentor warns you, you may not have everything you were promised (such is the world of shrinking science today: it's more often incompetence or lack of funds, rather than sexism). Still, you will almost certainly have less lab space than you wanted, and possibly less equipment. But the letter of commitment is your contract to ask for what you're entitled to—nicely, but repeatedly.

If Z really is not coming through, start quietly researching alternatives. (You can, of course, file a grievance or sue—but only if you want to make quick and deadly enemies.) Try creative solutions instead. A Southern engineering researcher, desperate for extra space, got a new lab at a local half-empty research park, where the staff said they were “honored” to have her with them. (They even gave her a free parking space.) An East Coast researcher with mounds of equipment arranged for extra, unused space at a closing-down U.S. Navy facility. In both cases, the researchers gained new friends, appreciators, and recommenders for grants, tenure, or other jobs.

Although you may spend your whole career at Z University, always keep alert to other opportunities: sabbaticals, retrainings, institutes, conferences. Get to know powerful senior professors. Especially in science, where peer review is the norm, one must Be Known.

Too, the world of science is in a ferment today, as government funding folds. You're among the most talented and lucky ones to have a tenure-track job—plus you're wise enough to write Ms. Mentor for advice.

Surely you're on your way to being a star.

Sneering and Sniding

Q: I've just been subjected to the world's snidest job interview. How can I get revenge?

A: Ms. Mentor presumes that you are seeking an assistant professorship, for the truly snide job interviews rarely take place on the senior level. (There, people turn smarmy instead.)

Ms. Mentor can also imagine the nature of the snideness. Condescending and sexist remarks; maybe racist or homophobic ones, too. Your age or appearance may have been a matter of comment; your marital status may have been discussed; and you may have been asked inappropriate, embarrassing, or crude questions about nonprofessional matters.

(A job candidate at a former teachers' college in New Jersey was once asked her opinion of pantyhose. And then the interviewer told her, in graphic detail, what he thought about undergarments that kept him from getting at…, whereupon the candidate stood up abruptly and said she needed to go to the bathroom. When she returned, that particular interviewer was no longer in the room.)

Since many of the snidest questions are illegal, and all are unethical if not rude, Ms. Mentor suspects that you would like her to roar: “Sue the scumbags!” But Ms. Mentor cannot do so. She would never utter the word “scumbag” (she prefers “malefactor,” “miscreant,” or “ill-bred ding-a-ling”). She also knows that a lawsuit would be a waste of time and money.

There are, of course, other forms of revenge, some civilized and some not. A harmless treat is to rent 9 to 5 (Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin) and chortle at the superb revenge fantasy sequence. Less benign is to send strange or unexpected gifts in the mail. A literary character—perhaps in an Erica Jong novel?—once got satisfactory revenge by sending used tampons to a swain who mistreated her. More recently, a singer in the band L7 threw a used tampon at a disrespectful audience member. Ms. Mentor shudders at the indelicacy.

There are also grandiose ways to kill with kindness. An acquaintance of Ms. Mentor's once sent a disliked relative a life-sized Mexican statue of a donkey, which threw the recipient into a tizzy: Was the donkey a tacky piece of kitsch or a rare find in folk art? Was it an insult or a tribute? The stymied recipient gnashed teeth for days.

But your response should be simpler, and unfailingly gracious. Do write notes to all the miscreants, thanking them for their interest in you. If acquaintances inquire, you can suggest the truth through subtle aspersions: “They were interested in me, but—well, you know the _______ Department at _____ University. Personalities do always get in the way.” Be enigmatic; smile ruefully.

Ms. Mentor implores you not to tell the story publicly until you have tenure at a place where you intend to stay. Academia is small, and word does get around, and there will always be someone who wants to blame the victim (you) for whatever happened.

Nevertheless, you can manage to make the story known. Tell your closest friends (and your mentor, if you have one) exactly what happened, in minutest detail. Then they—not you—can spread the word, and the ill-bred ding-a-lings will quickly become the subject of sly innuendo and wicked satire. You can also write up the entire event, a few details changed, and send it to Lingua Franca, Concerns, or another suitable journal, to be published anonymously or pseudonymously.

But what if you get the job offer? It can happen, even after an interview from hell. And what if it is your only offer?

Ms. Mentor says to take the job and love it: consider it a stepping stone. You can learn about teaching and have time to publish; and it's much easier to get a job once you've had one. (At the university where Ms. Mentor currently parks her ivory tower, almost every new assistant professor started out with a temporary job somewhere else.) From the malefactors, you can learn how to conduct yourself gracefully in an adversarial culture. On your own, you can continue to apply for jobs elsewhere—but in the meantime, collecting a paycheck may be the best revenge.

And once you're safely tenured and happy somewhere else, you can always think about sending them a donkey.