Ms.
Mentor's
Impeccable
Emily Toth
PENN
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 1997 Emily Toth
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6097
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Toth, Emily.
Ms. Mentor's impeccable advice for women in academia / Emily Toth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8122-1566-4 (alk. paper)
1. Women college teachers—United States—Miscellanea. 2. Women graduate students—United States—Miscellanea. 3. Women college teachers—United States—Social conditions. 4. Women graduate students—United States—Social conditions. 5. Women college teachers—United States—Conduct of life. 6. Women graduate students—United States—Conduct of life. I. Title.
LB2332.3.T68 1997
378.1'2'082—dc21
97-6259
CIP
To. B.T.
Contents
Graduate School: The Rite of Passage
The Perils and Pleasures of Teaching
Bibliography: Women in Academia and Other Readings Sampled by Ms. Mentor
Preface
Ms. Mentor was born in late 1991, when Emily Toth stewed and bubbled with a thwarted desire to change the world of academics for women—or at least tell the younger generation Some Sordid Truths.
Having spent nearly a quarter-century in academia, and having survived all those years as an out-front feminist, often being a feminist when feminism wasn't cool…Professor Toth felt she had much to say to younger women. She wanted to share information about opportunities and ostracisms, truths and trickeries, pitfalls and platitudes (such as “this university values teaching ever so much” and “we're a meritocracy, of course” and “we treat everyone equally, even women”).
But Emily Toth found that many a new academic woman said, in effect, and with an admirable independent spirit: “Please, Mother, I'd rather do it myself”—find my own way, make my own mistakes. Having eschewed biological motherhood herself, Emily Toth found it ironic that her advice could be brushed aside by those who weren't even—wretched truth—her own daughters.
She is not, of course, disparaging the entire younger generation. Many a woman newer to academia used Emily Toth's counsel wisely; some were also grateful, publicly. One or two sent expensive posies. Yet Emily Toth longed to reach a wider audience—and so was hatched Ms. Mentor, a crotchety spirit who never leaves her ivory tower, from which she dispenses her perfect wisdom on all things academic. Like her counterpart Miss Manners, Ms. Mentor is impeccably knowledgeable and self-confident, and knows much more than anyone will ever ask.
Where E. Toth failed, Ms. Mentor would succeed.
And so “Ms. Mentor,” a column of advice to women professors, graduate students, recovering academics, and those who love them, made her first appearance in the spring of 1992 in Concerns, the journal of the Women's Caucus for the Modern Languages. Ms. Mentor dealt with, among other things, what to wear to academic conventions—a subject that got her denounced in certain circles for “triviality.” (But she still believes that the personal is political: poufy sleeves are not powerful.)
Soon letters started pouring in to Ms. Mentor, and not just from women in the modern languages. Readers were sharing her column and passing around dog-eared photocopies. A graduate student in forestry wrote; medical students chimed in; at least one affirmative action officer fulminated (Ms. Mentor adores fulminations). And so Ms. Mentor decided she would best reach her sage readers by writing an entire book of advice containing her ruminations and fulminations, gossip, anecdotes, and (of course—for this is academia) subjects for further study.
How many of your questions are “real?” is a question often addressed to Emily Toth when she goes abroad and it becomes known that she is in close direct communication with Ms. Mentor.
To which the answer is: All Ms. Mentor's queries are “real,” for all are about real-life problems. Many are letters sent directly to Ms. Mentor (c/o Emily Toth, English Department, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803). Others are questions posed to Emily Toth or to her vast network of friends, acquaintances, meddlers, scouts, critics, and needlers—all of whom are continually looking for new problems to solve, new diseases to cure, new worlds to conquer.
How many of your stories are “true?” is the other most-posed question—to which the answer is: All. Ms. Mentor leaves out a few identifying details, but the rest is all accurately reported. She reminds her sage readers that, given a system in which so many people have lifetime job security, many bizarre things can happen. Yet among the untenured, Ms. Mentor's major audience, there are indeed punishments for unconventional acts.
Ms. Mentor recalls, for instance, the crusty liberal arts dean who drove home unexpectedly one snowy afternoon and was greeted at the door by his very nervous, hand-wringing wife of twenty years. Brushing her aside, the dean strode to his clothes closet—which proved to be inhabited by a very untenured, very naked assistant professor of political science, who was making good use of his time by reading an old issue of the New York Times.
The