FIRST PERSON

Polished Applications

Nothing stunts civility like graduate-student insecurities and competition

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By ZEYNEP DEVRIM GÜRSEL

It had started off as one of those regular procrastination-related cleaning jobs: dusting, emptying the fridge, scrubbing the tub. But several hours later, probably between awkwardly vacuuming the crumbs under the oven and repapering the cupboards, I took notice of the heightened intensity of my household devotion.

I was sick of waiting.

I had applied for a university fellowship to support me while I wrote my dissertation but, months later, had still heard nothing. There are only so many times you can call friends in your doctoral cohort and ask if they've heard anything yet. In fact, it's not terribly tactful to ask them even once if they happen to have received that fellowship you are coveting. Then again, nothing stunts civility like graduate-student insecurities and competition.

I was especially anxious because I had made a bold decision not to apply for every grant and fellowship I could find. Several years into my doctoral studies, I had realized that certain applications are generative and help you think through your project, while countless others are just time-consuming exercises in paperwork.

In the end, fortunate enough to have a teaching gig as a backup, I had applied for only one dissertation grant. Somehow not getting caught up in the frenzy of applicationitis had felt like a step toward sanity, a move toward the adult I wanted to be after shedding the neurosis of graduate school.

Yet here I was, metal brush in hand, returning my bathroom faucet to its factory condition because I had already checked for mail twice that day. Someone had to stop the madness.

The smell of household-cleaning products seeping into my pores, I peeled off my rubber gloves and decided right then that I needed to get my nails done. It was the most un-graduate-school-like thing I could think of at the moment, and so within 15 minutes I walked into a local nail shop.

I let myself be talked into a manicure and a pedicure and sank into one of the large pleather chairs. Within minutes I was calmer, my fingers and toes soaking in warm bubbles as the electric massager moved up and down my spine. Much better than cleaning house.

That's when I recognized the woman immediately to my left who had seemed perfectly innocuous just moments earlier. She was director of the research center on the campus offering the dissertation grant for which I had applied. I sat up stiffly.

"Relax," I told myself. "You know who she is, but she has no idea who you are. Look, she's just a regular customer getting her toes done."

And then she took out a stack of papers and began to read. I couldn't help noticing the sheet on top of the pile: It was a list of names with a number, ranging from 1 to 3, written next to each one. I looked away, telling myself that she couldn't possibly be reading grant applications in such a public place. But I was wrong.

Not only was she reading a stack of applications, but she was reading the stack of applications for the grant I wanted. She stopped in the middle of a cover letter when the woman trimming her toenails touched a hangnail. A few minutes later she stopped in the middle of a project description to choose between two shades of red, nodding approvingly as she watched it applied. Then she went back to reading.

With one hand and three toes pink, I was trapped. Caught between desperately trying to avert my eyes and trying to decipher the name on the top of the page she was reading while gauging her interest level, I silently panicked.

Not only did every application look like mine, but as she marked a number next to every name — names I couldn't make out anyway — I didn't know if I wanted to be a 1 or a 3. Which was the better end of the scale? Should I tell her who I was? Was I violating some sort of ethical code by spying? But I couldn't even make out the specifics.

Plus, if I confessed my identity as an applicant, it might be counted against me. Perhaps she would decline my project, fearing that if the center gave me the fellowship it would be squandered on pedicures.

Finally I focused my attention on the magazine in my lap. Once I had convinced myself that the right thing to do was not to bother this unsuspecting woman with my hysteria, I realized that what was even more disconcerting than knowing that she could — at that very moment — be deciding whether to give me a year of grant support to focus on my dissertation, was how much this picture did not fit with the mental image I had of how applications got evaluated.

After all, even before I started preparing an application, I would do research on who had received the grant/fellowship/job in the past. I would look at examples of successful applicants and spend weeks, sometimes months, formulating my ideas, sharpening my explanation of why my project was precisely what the selection committee was looking for. I would ask several people for feedback (probably much to their dismay).

By the time I mailed an application, it felt as if I was handing over an infant to the uninterested postal worker who understandably rolled her eyes each time I stammered, despite myself, "It needs to be postmarked today — you won't forget to postmark it, will you?"

Wriggling my toes at the salon, I took note of what I had imagined happened when the postmarked envelope arrived at its destination: The selection committee gathered around a large table wearing white gloves, read the candidates' offerings in absolute silence, and decided with deathly gravity who should received the grant/fellowship/job. Or some equally starched and weighty deliberation process.

Never had I imagined my crisp white sheets detailing my project in all its splendor, perched on a lap, being evaluated during a pedicure.

Yet as I sat back and allowed myself a few more furtive glances, I realized that the woman was actually reading each sheet. She didn't just thumb through the pages or give them a 30-second once-over, as my advisers had warned might happen. You could see her carefully thinking through each verdict before placing a 1, 2, or 3 on her list. She was probably in a much better mood than she would have been sitting stiffly around a table with other committee members.

It finally dawned on me that I might someday serve on a selection committee, in which case I would much rather read applications during a pedicure than chained to a conference table in a stuffy room.

And in that moment I admitted that, perhaps, I was taking this whole application, my project, and academe in general just a tad too seriously.

Zeynep Devrim Gürsel was fortunate enough to receive the grant in question and completed her dissertation in May 2007 in the anthropology department at the University of California at Berkeley. This fall, she begins a postdoc fellowship at the University of Michigan.