Tuesday, September 10, 2013

If It's Tuesday, I Must Be Baffled by The New History Prof.

I don't know anything about other departments. I'm an English boob. I know the small group of my colleagues, and I nod at those other people in Economics or History or Art.

It's not that I don't like them, but the culture at my school is we just don't meet the other folks. It's even a small town, but English hangs with English, and then, well, I don't know about the others.

Anyway, maybe I'm just a misanthrope.

But yesterday I was sitting down to a hot apple crumb cake thing smothered in ice cream at the cafeteria when someone pulled a chair out across from me and sat down.

"Hi, I'm Nick." He put his hand out and I had to let go of the spoon.

I chewed what was left in my mouth, and he started to tell me things.

"So, you know I'm new, right? It's really loud in here, isn't it? You're in English, right? I was an English major. For a minute. The grammar kicked my butt. You know that I came here from California, right? It's really flat here. Is it always this humid? I don't think I have the right clothes. My shirt is sticking to me now and I've been inside all day. Is the food good here? That apple pie or something? Man, this is really the Midwest. Are you married? Sheila said you're married. You know Sheila, right? She's my chair. She's really nice. She told me that this was sort of a cultural hub in Ohio. Did they tell you that when you came here? I mean, I'm not stuck up or anything, but I've seen more barn dances than operas around here. I mean I rode my bike past an Amish family the other day. You live in town? Or are you out in the country? Sheila tells me some people like to live in the country because of how busy town is. She's messing with me, right? Because it's like a ghost town here after 6 pm. How do the kids stand it? Have you ever seen Main Street, like at 9 pm? I went out to try and find some fun the other night and everything was closed. I guess it's an adjustment, right? Sheila said you came from Chicago? Chicago, right? That's cold, right? I mean it gets cold here, too, or at least I Googled it. But really, it's pretty freaking quiet here, even with all the students back. There are literally people at the Walmart wearing overalls. And it's 100% free of irony. I emailed some of my friends in Cali about it. Nobody can believe it. So, you're almost a native now, right? Is there anything fun to do?"

I had a lot of apple crumb cake left, but I thought I owed Nick something. I thought I could offer a helping hand, a sort of insider's view, a fellow traveler who also found himself here in Nowhere, Ohio suddenly one day. I felt bad for him. I wanted to reach out to him. I wanted to connect.

"You sure got a purty mouth," I said.




27 comments:

  1. I love that on Tuesday I can count on seeing you, Hiram!

    Nick is excited, right?

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  2. Have him take a hit of what Bubba's drinking, Hiram, that ought to calm him down. Chances are good the rest of the history department will thank you.

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    1. OTOH, I have a lot to get done this year. Maybe I could have a little of what Nick was having?

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    2. If he left a little donation in the old Folger's can, then I would share. He needs to get with the program.

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  3. I have attended conferences at campuses like yours Hiram, and I can understand why Nick is feeling isolated. I wasn't use to the quiet streets at night and a campus very close to the country.

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  4. One of the best things I ever did when I was young was to allow a national service organization to send me to a small town in the rural Midwest for just over a year. I was coming from the large urban area in which I'd been raised, and "Farmville, KS" was as exotic to me as any foreign destination. It challenged my cultural assumptions, broadened my worldview, and kept me from being a provincial asshole like Nick.

    In even the most progressive university circles, it saddens me that it is still acceptable to bash rural and/or southern culture as a way to assert one's cosmopolitan sophistication. I'm not saying that living in a small town or rural area is necessarily desirable for everyone, or even most people, just that the people who live in those areas deserve the same default respect that we tend to give to anyone whose culture or worldview is different from our own.

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  5. I had banjo music playing in my head as I read this.

    Hiram, do you think your poor historian will last?

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    1. I almost spit out my coffee reading that comment.

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    2. I'm dense. I just got Hiram's last line. In my defense, I've only seen that movie once.

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  6. Did he have a blindfold on during the drive to his on-campus interview? Was he conducted around campus and interviewed that way too?

    If a quiet, rural life is not what this guy wants, he'll be gone within two years. And if he took this job thinking that, fuck him. Because that's a job for which someone else might have been ideally suited. [I say this as someone who attended a tiny SLAC in rural Ohio, and loved every minute of it, and as someone whose dream it was to return to that campus as a proffie. Sadly, my grad school credits are not illustrious enough, plus my spouse doesn't want to live in Ohio.]

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    1. Realistically though, in a job market like this, you can't blame the guy if he spent most of the interview trying to make a good impression, more than evaluating whether he wanted to live in the town. And I don't get the impression that search committees are exactly err... 'forthcoming' about the drawbacks of accepting a job - their goal is to attract the preferred candidate.

      And I suppose I should really sit down and watch Deliverance one of these days, just so I can get the references quicker.

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  7. Yeah, he should have known what he was getting into and he certainly isn't approaching things in the right way, but as someone who just moved to a SLAC from an urban area, I can sympathize a bit. He probably needs to connect with someone, and it doesn't sound like your campus has the kind of culture that makes that easy. I'm lucky that mine does. But transitions are hard, especially for people who can't read cues.

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  8. Honestly, he seems like a nice enough fellow, but his complete ignorance about what this town is like mystifies me. I've been here long enough to see people show up and depart after a year or two. It's true, I came from a big city, and I had some reservations, but I didn't yak about them to people during my first week.

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  9. Maybe you should do both of you a favor and next time you see him tell him to get a job back in the Bay Area ASAP. Any job; Cal St Howard, Monterey Bay, whatever. It doesn't get better, and there are people who never get used to it.

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  10. He sounds uber-flaky, which doesn't necessarily mean he's also a douchebag.

    He might have been fishing for something with which to make a connection.

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  11. I can sympathize with the geographic swindling, but not the delivery.

    I just moved to a rural school somewhere in between about 5 major cities on the eastern seaboard. The major cities are basically the lifeline to my otherwise dreary social life that includes two bars, a few restaurants, and a handful of box stores.

    But I moved here from a major city, very major city, one where we do not need to own cars and there were 26 universities in the metro area.

    It feels... odd. I can see stars. I can hear insects. There are deer.

    It is confusing to me.

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    1. Not as confusing as it is to go somewhere where you need a map and a submachine gun to get around.

      I've lived in the sticks all my life, and I like it. Hiram's colleague needs to get out more.

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  12. He's really young, right? And by really young, I mean under 30.

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    1. Well, that would be me, too, but I'm pretty sure I've never sat down and emitted this level of verbal diarrhea..

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  13. It's astonishing how many academics have the social skills of rabid badgers. I'm sure Nick's a nice guy, but seriously, dude needs to get a grip. He's living the dream. He could be gracious about it. I'd go to Alaska if I could get tenure there, and I'm no fan of cold weather or moose meat, I tell ya. But you wouldn't hear me complaining. Gimme Amazon and Netflix and I got 90% of what I need right there.

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    1. Definitely something to keep in mind. I'd classify about 60% of my department's faculty as 'moderately to strongly socially awkward', and it is more heavily weighted towards the guys (but the women have their fair share of wallflowers too). Nice people, but it is clearly an effort to interact with others on a social level, that's all.

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  14. Post of the Week! Hiram, this is a gem. Or maybe you are. Or both.

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  15. At my first job in higher education I was driving through "downtown" and a tumbleweed rolled by. Then it hit me- I wasn't in the suburbs any more.

    After four years there, I moved on to other ("greener pastures" isn't necessarily the right phrase) less pasteurized (that's not right, either) settings. I've yet to make it back to metropolitan area, though. Perhaps I can enjoy an urban retirement- something that seems the opposite of what most people picture as a retirement venue.

    I felt bad for him. I wanted to reach out to him. I wanted to connect.

    "You sure got a purty mouth," I said.


    Tell me where I can send the requisition for a new, off-inventory, unassigned laptop if I can't clean all the V-8 off the one I currently use.

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