Ms. Mentor

Eccentric Academics

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Question: (from "Rosie"): When my Very Annoying Colleague is having a hissy fit because he needs copies quickly but the copier needs a new toner cartridge and the secretary is home sick, do I have a moral obligation to inform him that I know how to change the toner? Or may I keep that knowledge to myself and enjoy the show?

Question: (from "Mark"): I have an odd colleague who feels that by playing the prankster, he asserts his ethnic identity. (Don't ask. He has tenure.) His role as antagonist, "subverting the dominant paradigm," inspires him to cancel others' classes without their knowledge, show strange films unrelated to his subject, and berate and leer at random. He says he'll stop next month, that all this is an experiment. How should academics deal with nutty colleagues who have found a theoretical or ideological framework for acting like jerks?

Question: (from "Julia"): I'm talented and tenured, tall, pretty, and very charming, and male administrators leave me out of projects lest people "talk." I work with computer geeks. What should I do?

Answer: All right, Ms. Mentor will admit it. Many academics do behave weirdly.

People in business can, presumably, model their behavior after CEO's who trumpet their profits on TV. Doctors can emulate furrowed-brow researchers who are interviewed with great respect. Lawyers can orate about injustice and seem quite photogenic.

But who, in our world of images, shows academics how to behave properly? Ms. Mentor's cabinets bulge with movies about nutty professors, absent-minded professors, and spinster schoolteachers. Every campus has some lore about a monomaniacal prof who, when his wife was out of town, forgot his lunch and ate his tie. (Ms. Mentor knew one of those in graduate school. His colleagues implored him to take up smoking.)

People who dwell in their minds are allowed to be a little out of touch with the prevailing mores and folkways of the "real world." But how far?

Rosie's annoying colleague, call him "Dr. Hissy," is a high-maintenance type who, if female, would be accused of "princess behavior." Ms. Mentor knows there must be a proper clinical term for someone who comes unglued at the slightest mechanical glitch. Researchers in the past have named all kinds of things common to professors, including "dysgraphia" (bad handwriting) and "prosopagnosia" ("face blindness," the inability to remember familiar faces), and "Asperger's syndrome" (social awkwardness, not looking other people in the eye, being astonishingly brilliant in one intellectual area).

In the real world, those behaviors may stamp one as "an odd duck," ill-suited to the schmoozing and communication needed to keep an office afloat. But in academe, the ability to focus completely on one task -- while the rest of the universe is IMing, iPODing, and cellphoning -- is a caste marker and a cherished ability. Academics can discuss ideas for hours without fidgeting.

However, Ms. Mentor has failed to concentrate on Rosie, who's still watching, snickering slightly, as Dr. Hissy froths about the missing toner. Should Rosie rescue him?

Ms. Mentor posed that question to a gaggle of academic experts at a recent conference, and their verdict was unanimous for tough love: Rosie should keep the knowledge to herself and "enjoy the show." Some experts were motivated by simple schadenfreude, the joy in others' misfortunes that may be the ruling emotion in academe. Others claimed loftily that if Rosie did change the toner, she would be "an enabler," preventing Dr. Hissy from being an independent "self-actualizer."

Still others, chuckling evilly, suggested that Rosie wait until Dr. Hissy gave up and left in a huff -- then slip in and replace the toner. Once Dr. Hissy saw others happily traipsing by with new copies . . . well, perhaps it would be a teachable moment.

Dr. Prankster, Mark's colleague, is a stranger case, a prof run amok. Whatever his ethnic fantasies (yes, Ms. Mentor is mightily curious, too), Dr. Prankster should not be flouncing about, bedeviling his fellow creatures. Even a month with a self-appointed madman can make everyone else slightly insane.

Ms. Mentor would enlist the department head to scold Dr. Prankster, for academic freedom does not mean the right to go berserk and trample upon others' educations. Ms. Mentor hopes that would work. Grievances and interventions are messy for all, and a barrage of lunatic memorandums is rarely entertaining, except in viciously witty academic novels.

As for the beautiful Julia (named, no doubt, after the Julia Roberts character in Mona Lisa Smile): Ms. Mentor sympathizes with a "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful" situation, but sees no easy solution to the binary thinking of academics and civilians alike. Too many people, it seems, believe that a woman cannot be both beautiful and brainy -- as if there's some kind of conservation of virtues in the universe, and no one gets more than one.

Julia could uglify herself, communicate mostly by e-mail and phone rather than in person, or simply be pushy and insistent, along the lines of Dr. Hissy. If she develops some of his obnoxious traits, and possibly mixes in a few mild eccentricities from Dr. Prankster, no one will think she's beautiful anymore. She will be taken more seriously, and a whole new world of opportunity may open up. (Or maybe not.)

Self-absorbed academics may find it humbling to poke around in the blogosphere, where colorful commentary flourishes among the pseudonymous. The blogger who calls herself "imreallyparanoid," for instance, has this to say about professors as social beings:

"urgh! you guys i went to a faculty-dominant party yesterday and i must say, i was reminded again that the majority of academic men (and women) . . . is really rather unattractive. and i don't mean bone structure and style but the stuff under the skin, which is more important anyway. things like smiling and telling jokes that are actually funny and being able to talk about stuff besides yourself and your work. i guess most academics were socially retarded as children, but you'd think by the time you are in your 30s and 40s you would have gotten over those hangups, no? maybe someday i will write a self-help book on basic social etiquette for nerds."

Ms. Mentor hopes to hear from "imreallyparanoid" one of these days, since it seems they are both in the same business. In a world of weirdos, one can always use allies.

Question: I swell with pride about my 23-page curriculum vitae listing all my presentations great and small, publications, teaching, service to all and sundry -- but will potential employers think CV in my case means "completely verbose"? Must I amputate some of my dearest items to conform to the limited attention spans of those unworthy people who nevertheless have the power to hire?

Answer: Yes.

Sage Readers: As academe moves to the slower rhythm of summer, Ms. Mentor welcomes more reflective communications along with the usual rants, ripostes, and queries. She particularly invites correspondence for future columns on religion, homophobia, and feuding in academe. As always, she disguises identifying details, and anonymity is guaranteed.

Ms. Mentor rarely answers letters personally, but many readers have found help in her Chronicle archive; in her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia; and on The Chronicle's forums.

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.