Ms. Mentor

They Will Not Comfort You

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Question (from "Cecilia"): My classmate "Lucifer" and I are both on the job market this year. He's always been self-centered and treacherous. How can I keep him from backstabbing me if we both wind up at the same interviews?

Question (from "Sean"): Because of panic attacks, I haven't worked on my dissertation since June. My friends say not to tell my adviser about the attacks, because he might use them against me. But "Dr. Worldly" is so sophisticated. I'm sure he'll understand.

Answer: Sometimes Ms. Mentor has to burst hopes, shred bubbles, and be the Grinch. While it is true that scholarly types can be generous, open-minded souls who'll share software, footnotes, and recipes for cat treats -- they can also backstab, withhold, and compete to leave you penniless, naked, and shivering in the cold (metaphorically speaking).

In short, they cannot always be trusted to make nice.

Ms. Mentor's ruminations here are also inspired by a question from another correspondent ("Grace"), a job seeker whose best friend is also on the market this year, in the same field. "How can we keep from badmouthing each other?" Grace and her friend wonder. That inspired Ms. Mentor to start a tip sheet on "How Not to Backstab" . . . until she noted that the same list of tips, slightly reworked, could so easily become a demonic manual: "How to Backstab."

Ms. Mentor does not advocate any of the following tips on backstabbing but wishes her flock to be forewarned:

Seize credit for everyone's work. Insinuate yourself with your major professor and brag about your stellar contributions to your group's research. Get your boss to include your name as co-author of everything ("Damon wouldn't have gotten those results without my help"). Describe all group findings as if they're yours ("my data"). If you must mention any classmate competitors, always sigh and look wounded. If you're an unscrupulous principal investigator, steal your students' work.

Hint that your classmates and underlings are slothful. "I was here at 7 sharp, but Jody didn't waltz in until 9:30. By then we were already on our second rat gavotte."

Be incessantly charming to those above you. "I'm so glad to work for you, Dr. Vibration. The others don't know just how eminent you are and how your research on insipidity has changed the entire field of psychology."

Drop names. "My mentor, Dr. Almost Nobel Prizewinner, highly recommended this project. I know you're able to appreciate just how innovative my work is." (Oozy smile.)

Self promote. "I discovered the main text," or "Mine is the biggest," or "I'm the first Centervillian ever invited to give the keynote address at Marigold. Of course, most of the field work is puerile, hopelessly jejune. But mine is totally cutting edge."

If less-discerning members of the professoriate are making the decisions, a pushy, flashy Lucifer who's followed those rules may get the coveted interviews instead of honest, plodding Cecilia. If he's truly dastardly, he might also steer the search committee to his unwitting competitors' MySpace or Facebook entries. Those pages often have colorful social information and revealing pictures that a hiring committee ought not to know about.

What can Cecilia do?

She should have her own Web page. She should keep up a constant dialogue with her adviser, documenting which work is hers. She may need to find the smallest publishable unit and get it out -- fast. If she's in science -- where grant money goes to the first discoverers -- she has to plant her research pickax first, just as the big boys do, and not be dissuaded by murmurings about teamwork. ("Why such a hurry? We're all just comrades here.") She needs to make herself known to peer reviewers and grant panelists. Wherever there are academicians, she needs to schmooze, and she needs to present herself as smart, confident, and independent.

As does poor Sean, currently crippled by panic attacks. If he's in the humanities, he has added worries: Only 40 percent of Ph.D.'s in English have gotten tenure-track jobs in recent years, and only 30 percent in history. Getting hired takes luck but also pluck -- which brings Ms. Mentor to the art of self-preservation.

The young often find it comforting, even seductive, to think of their advisers as all-knowing: not only world-class experts in literature or history, but also infinitely wise in matters of the heart and soul. Surely, you think, Dr. Worldly is genial and forgiving, and he wants nothing but the personal happiness and professional successes of his charges.

But you could be wrong.

Dr. Worldly may be sympathetic, at first, if you tell him about your panic attacks, but he will also start watching and wondering if you'll produce. A single crisis, such as a family death, can be handled -- but a chronic illness will make him wary. He may stop delegating responsibilities or funneling courses to you ("Sean may not be able to handle teaching alone"). He may hesitate to nominate you for grants and awards. He may hedge in recommendation letters, as in "Sean has had to overcome some challenges, but . . ." -- words that will kill your chances in overcrowded fields.

Too much candor can mean too much vulnerability, and Dr. Worldly is not your mother, your counselor, or your life partner. Men often find it especially difficult to hear about other men's feelings -- and ultimately, Dr. Worldly is your boss. His job is to make sure you finish an original piece of research or writing.

If you're in the sciences, he may have a grant that will be renewed only if all the pieces (including your part) are done by a certain date. If a grant isn't renewed, half a dozen people may lose their jobs.

"Ms. Mentor, you have no milk of human kindness," she hears her readers say -- but Ms. Mentor does know that a grad student's life is often lonely, stressed, and sad. She prescribes writing and support groups, online discussions under pseudonyms, role playing before job interviews, and places to vent outside the school.

But do not cry in your office.

Ms. Mentor wants Sean and Cecilia to be dry-eyed and self-protective. Lucifer already is.

In academe, as in the real world, you need a public face of competence and cheer, no matter how much you're churning inside. Think of yourself as the center of a great drama -- This Is Your Life -- for which you're the screenwriter. Against all odds, you persevere, pushing back the frontiers of science, digging out the hidden truths in obscure texts, fighting off plagiarists, naysayers, and your own internal demons -- to reach the summit of Mount Olympus, the holy grail of tenure.

Ms. Mentor likes that script.

Question: Our hateful secretaries won't make my phone calls or straighten my office, and sometimes they don't even answer me (I can't be bothered to learn their names, since they all look alike). I've complained and complained, but their attitude never improves. I don't want to photocopy my own materials, but will I have to?

Answer: Yes.

Sage Readers: As Americans lurch toward the holidays, Ms. Mentor wonders if academics do things differently -- or do they have the same Thanksgiving fights and Christmas snits that ordinary mortals do?

Ms. Mentor welcomes rants, gossip, and queries about those and other weighty matters. She rarely answers letters personally, but disguises all details for publication and guarantees confidentiality. No one will knew it's you who broke the fork when your team lost the big game. We all thought you were in the lab, admiring your elements.

Ms. Mentor directs eager readers to her archive, to her tome, Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia, and to The Chronicle's forums and other columns on this site.

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.