Academic and Human

On Saturday night, six female history grad students gathered at someone's house to share lasagne, scalloped potatoes and conversation. The evening was arranged by one of the new MA students, who had been disturbed by the low number of females in our department (we all assured her that this really is a fluke, caused by the low number of females who applied for this year, and the disproportionately high number of females who graduated last year) and decided that we all needed to band together and socialise.

We had a good mix of women. I was the only PhD student there, partially because I'm one of the youngest PhD students in general (and therefore have fewer obligations), and partially because the other PhD who was planning on coming had a death in the family the previous night. We had three second-year MAs, all of whom are at various stages of researching their theses. Then we had the two new MAs, both of whom have come from far away to study here. The one way in which this group was fairly homogeneous was the fact that we were all pretty young: I think the oldest of us was 30. (We have older grad students, but as I said, they tend to have other obligations. I think sometimes they also expect that they won't fit in with the "young ones.")

I was struck by several things that evening. First, I was amazed to discover that we second-years (regardless of our programs) have become really laid-back compared to last year. Were we ever that high-strung and insecure, trying to prove ourselves? Actually, yes we were. I seem to remember having a panic attack during a class and being convinced that everyone everywhere was smarter than me. One of the second-year MAs admitted that she faked a migraine during that same class. (Confession: it was Derrida day, immediately after Spring Break.)

The main thing that struck me was how important it actually was for us to gather together like that, and to discuss our plans and our fears, as well as everything unrelated to our research, with others in our same situation. We're in the process of encouraging each other to maintain a life outside of school, and not to be ashamed of that. This was especially broached by one of the MA students, who is a mother and is now pregnant and due this February. She has been forced into a place where she has to make accomodations for herself, and to express her humanity publicly (we were entertained by the variety of reactions she got from the faculty to the fact that she's pregnant). We all recognised how frequently we feel compelled to hide our non-academic selves, to pretend like we spend our lives devouring serious texts. I talked about how hard it was for me to tell my MA supervisor that I was babysitting full-time while writing my thesis, for fear that he would think I was wasting my time. (He had no problem with it, it turned out.)

So many of us spend our days publicly overcompensating for our "imposter syndrome" fears, pretending to know everything so that others won't doubt our worthiness to be in this program. I think it helped the MA students to have me, the PhD student, admit that I often struggle with how little I know, and even am now struggling having to identify "important" texts for my comps lists. And I think it really helped that we all got confessing the silly and non-academic reading/TV- and movie-watching that we did over the summer (or continue to do). (I will not confess which three in that group are addicted to trashy romance novels, or which two are perpetually up on entertainment gossip. But you know that I was leading the charge on discussion of Arrested Development and Battlestar Galactica.)

I really realised that I have some good examples in the academic blogosphere: I've had the examples of male and female academics who research and teach, and at the same time who maintain committed relationships, raise families, watch entire seasons of TV shows on DVD, take part in local theatre companies, collect miniature horses and then turn that hobby into scholarly publications... and are willing to talk openly about both their scholarly pursuits and their personal feelings. That helps me so much, and I was able to use that to help these women.

Of course, the biggest sign that this was a gathering of historian women? The most passionate discussions involved bookstores, funding, archives, and the research ethics board. Okay, and over-analysing the members of our faculty.

(We're going to get together again, on a semi-regular basis. It's nice to set up an atmosphere where we're supportive and non-competitive. I think next time is going to involve dessert and TV.)