Ms. Mentor

Why Won't He Erase the Blackboard?

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Question (from "Lee"): I have another item of ridiculous pettiness to lay at your feet.

I teach at a small liberal-arts college where most people are collegial and friendly -- except for a psychology professor I'll call "Dr. Territorial Marking," because that's what he does.

Dr. Marking precedes me in one classroom. From the very first day of class, I have come in to the room to find the blackboard covered with his psychoanalytical squiggles. Erasing the board for him is a small thing, but it annoyed me.

I didn't think it would be a problem, so I left a note on the board asking him to erase it. He apparently erased the note and left the squiggles. So I left a note on the lectern. Again the note disappeared and the squiggles continued. Next, I mentioned politely to a mutual acquaintance that I would really appreciate it if he could erase the board. Nothing. Finally, I sent Dr. Marking an e-mail directly, apologizing for the inconvenience, but asking that he erase the board. No response.

At each point, I expected the whole thing to be over. By now, I'm starting to feel insulted, like he feels he's so far above me that he doesn't even have to obey a common rule of classroom etiquette. Would it be wrong to send him a gift-wrapped, engraved eraser and an elbow brace for Christmas?

Answer: Even Ms. Mentor, ever patient and tolerant, thinks you sound a little neurotic. But then she wonders if you (and she) are unwitting subjects in a vast and very strange psych experiment.

Many, indeed, are the provocations and small ignominies that academics mete out to their fellow sufferers ("colleagues") in this vale of tears. Young faculty members are routinely assigned to teach squirming freshmen at 8 a.m., or sleepy socialites at 4 p.m. Full professors commandeer the best classrooms and bore the young with tales of the good old days when parking was readily available. Copy machines break down; superb secretaries decamp. Someone has to serve on the Faculty Senate's Committee on Committees.

Ms. Mentor knows it does little good to urge people to be kind and selfless, unless they are untenured. But she urges all to cultivate a sense of humor, to try to laugh rather than gnash or spit at the abounding sillinesses. For Ms. Mentor is not without experience in the eraser wars.

Long long ago, Ms. Mentor was plagued by "Zizi," a hyperactive teaching assistant who would zoom into Ms. Mentor's classroom at the official moment that classes ended, and furiously erase Ms. Mentor's blackboard while our heroine was still completing her last, most brilliant peroration. Once Zizi appeared, all attention was gone, and nearly half the students -- to judge by their final exams -- ultimately failed to grasp the meaning of life as explained by Ms. Mentor.

But Lee needs practical answers now, not the maunderings of his elders.

What, for instance, might Dr. Marking's squiggles mean? During the Cold War, he might have been suspected of transmitting CIA secrets (but of course no one does that anymore). Or now he might be suffering from "dysgraphia" (formerly known as "bad handwriting"). Maybe he does have an entitlement mentality, and feels that erasing the board is for lesser beings, not high-status professors.

O, the temptations when one tries to analyze a psychology professor....

Perhaps Dr. Marking resents having to use a blackboard at all, since most institutions have gone on to PowerPoint. That is excellent for the sciences, where precise drawings and figures are essential -- but Ms. Mentor deplores the use of PowerPoint in other venues, where most presentations are canned and overscripted. She wishes the presenters would just write significant words on the board and talk about them with wit and perspicacity. PowerPoint is robotic and unromantic, and when it becomes universal, there will be no more heartrending country songs like "My Tears Have Washed 'I Love You' From the Blackboard of My Heart."

As for Dr. Marking: Perhaps he has become unhinged and separated from reality by the demands put upon him in academe. And so he behaves forgetfully and rudely, like those who forget to put the lid down or flush.

Of course, psychologists know that "there are no accidents," and that "forgetting" always has some other meaning.

Maybe Dr. Marking just hates you.

Ms. Mentor agrees that you have done all you can to stop this extravagantly selfish behavior. One might say that you have been gentle and polite -- or that you have behaved like a nagging and passive-aggressive mom ("It would make me so happy if you would just clean your room. I ask so little of you.") You've probably triggered the inner rebellious child that lies snarling within all of us.

Ms. Mentor is starting to feel unhinged about all this.

What to do?

In the "Real World" outside of academe, you could put in a grievance, try to get Dr. Marking reprimanded, recommend him for counseling, outsource his job to India, incite whispering campaigns, or take a sledgehammer to the offending blackboard ("If I can't have it, no one will!")

If you do decide to buy Dr. Marking a symbolic holiday gift, Ms. Mentor suggests you do a little research first on exactly what to get, write it down in your journal, download all the sites where it is sold -- and then give the money to something useful, such as Habitat for Humanity.

After that you should congratulate yourself for being in academe. You are in the only profession that pays you to think out loud, and to put your musings on the blackboard for a captive audience.

Most marvelous for you, though, is that whatever happens in a class, and however unruly or spectacular a course turns out to be -- it's over at the end of the term. After December, unless your school is extremely tiny, Dr. Marking won't be teaching in the classroom ahead of you, fouling your mood and your blackboard. You can simply count the days until he'll be somewhere else on campus.

And then you can start each class with what you most deeply crave.

A clean slate.

Question: New to teaching, I have to spend up to eight hours preparing for one hour of class, but my jovial colleague makes a few notes, bounces into a room, and wings it, and students adore him and think I'm a nerd. Is there anyone I can complain to besides the all-confidential Ms. Mentor?

Answer: No.

Sage Readers: In 2006 Ms. Mentor would like to write about disability, homophobia, religion, and other controversies roiling the academic waters. She invites correspondence from aggrieved and opinionated readers, and reminds all that anonymity is guaranteed. She rarely answers letters personally, but many readers have found answers in her archive and in her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia.

Ms. Mentor, who never leaves her ivory tower, channels her mail via Emily Toth in the English department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. Her Chronicle address is ms.mentor@chronicle.com

Her views do not necessarily represent those of The Chronicle.

Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia, by Emily Toth, can be ordered from the University of Pennsylvania Press by calling (800) 445-9880 or from either of the on-line booksellers below.