Toth - Ms. Mentors New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and Men in Academia

MS. MENTORS new and ever more IMPECCABLE ADVICE FOR WOMEN and men IN ACADEMIA

Emily Toth

Copyright 2009 Emily Toth

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Toth, Emily.

Ms. Mentors new and ever more impeccable advice for women and men in academia / Emily Toth.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8122-2039-1 (alk. paper)

1. Women college teachersUnited StatesMiscellanea. 2. Women graduate studentsUnited StatesMiscellanea. 3. Women college teachersUnited StatesSocial conditions. 4. Women graduate studentsUnited StatesSocial conditions. 5. Women college teachersUnited StatesConduct of life. 6. Women graduate studentsUnited StatesConduct of life. I. Title.

LB2332.3T683 2009

378.12082dc22

2008022362

To B.T.

The fledglings of academe floundered and whimpered. They panted. They trembled. They were sure there was some homework assignment theyd failed to turn in.

They knew not why they had made enemies, nor how they had been sentenced to meetings that seemed to be nothing but peacocking and frothing. They wanted to respect their elders, but often found them ponderous, mysterious, or inane. They wanted their students respect, not I wasnt in class. Had to go skiing. Did I miss anything?

Among themselves, newbies would marvel, sigh, and moan. And sometimes weep.

And then Ms. Mentor arose to rescue them from their backwardness and confusion. From her ivory tower, she would dispense her impeccable wisdom to the huddled masses. Eyes would be opened, ears would be cleaned, and careers salvaged.

Ms. Mentor began with ladylike unobtrusiveness, with a tiny 1992 advice column for Concerns, the newsletter for the Womens Caucus for the Modern Languages. From the beginning she dwelled in her ivory tower, from which she channeled her perfect wisdom through Emily Toth (rhymes with both), professor at Louisiana State University. They are not the same person, for Ms. Mentor is much taller, has a deeper voice, and is a heavy metal fanatic.

An early column with a controversial stance on fashion (frumpy sells better than chic) led to a guest appearance in Vogue and then to a 1997 tome, Ms. Mentors Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia. Then Ms. Mentor infiltrated the Internet, when her monthly Ms. Mentor column made its maiden appearance on the Chronicle of Higher Educations Career Network site in August 1998. In 2000, Content Spotlight named her one of The Nets Hottest Columnists.

There have been dissenters. During her first five years online, Ms. Mentor often got a blunt evaluation from a retired widow who would write: Ms. Mentor: You are still full of shit. Once Ms. Mentors column began appearing in print as well as online, in 2003, the irascible widows messages stopped. Ms. Mentor does not know why.

Two years later, there was a tragic loss. When the Hurricane Katrina flood swept through and destroyed Emily Toths apartment in New Orleans, hundreds of Ms. Mentors letters were washed away into the Gulf. (Maybe there are eager readers in Mexico still drying and perusing them.)

Throughout her incarnations, Ms. Mentor has insisted on confidentiality for her flock. Letter writers names are instantly removed from her files. No readers real names are ever revealed in her column, and identifying details are always scrambled. Sometimes there are sex changes; often there are geographical ones. The law school dean who once convened his faculty to harangue them (Who wrote this to Ms. Mentor? Ill have your brain!) was barking up the wrong banister. The original letter writer was a chemist in Calgary (or maybe not).

Readers, it seemed, hungered for the blunt inside knowledge, the rants, and the gossip that Ms. Mentor disseminated. The column soon had more than 15,000 hits a month. Ms. Mentor herself received some fifteen to fifty e-mails a month (ms.mentor@chronicle.com) and quickly realized that she could not answer them all. (Ann Landers had a staff of a dozen people; Ms. Mentor has two cats, one of whom is very grouchy.) Very few queries could be handled in the column, with its maximum of fifteen hundred words.

Nor could Ms. Mentor publish the best, smartest, and weirdest rejoindersuntil this volume.

She had been able to summarize some letters in her Sage Readers section, and correspondents were also directed to Career Talk and other columns on the site. Others simply had to languish, although the Chronicle Forums, expanded in 2006, unleashed thousands of academics to communicate their questions, woes, scurrilities, and joys to one another under screen names (monikers). Some of them even rudely trashed Ms. Mentor. (Youth, she sighs.)

When Ms. Mentor asked her flock to e-mail her and identify themselves as regular readers of her Sage Readers section, hundreds didperhaps spurred by the offer of extra credit, which always entices the honor society types who populate academia. Some fussed over whether I read Sage Readers is past or present tense. Put two academics in a room, Ms. Mentor knows, and you will have at least four interpretations, followed by seven pedantic quibbles that will keep everyones faces flushed and arteries pulsating with life.

The self-identified Sage Readers were not just the usual suspects, the newbies. They were from thirty-one American states, five Canadian cities, and one large city in Italy. Many were graduate students or adjuncts, but there were also artists, grants officers, bookstore managers, librarians, publishers, marketers, novelists, and one wine maker. Some of them felt they were special and wanted double extra credit for introducing their friends to Ms. Mentor, or for working really, really hard.

After a dozen years as a crusty doyenne writing in third person haughty (according to early reviewers), Ms. Mentor remains convinced that the academic world can be improved, and that she and her readers must continue to tote their loads, take up arms, bear their burdens, clear the trenches, ponder quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore, and stop when theyve rattled on for too long.

Ms. Mentor trusts that this tome, full of her impeccable wisdom, will move the world of academeindeed, the universe itselftoward greater perfection.

She is also sure it will get an A.

This volume contains some material that could not be published in the Chronicle of Higher Educations Career Network, for reasons of taste or language. One such issue came up with Ms. Mentors May 2005 column on dysfunctional departments. There was some distress over her quoting the title of a special issue of Granta, the British literary magazine: The Family: They Fuck You Up.

But Ms. Mentors column is most apt to be expurgated if her short question-and-one-word-answer bits concern bodily functions or sexuality, or are deemed to be likely fakes. And so, for the delectation of readers of this tome, and to speed their way into the rest of the book, she gives them one of the expurgated questions. Readers are free to determine their own answers and send them to her in care of her channeler at etoth@lsu.edu. There will, of course, be extra credit.