notice untenured folk, unless a) they are bullies looking for victims, b) they are politicians looking for allies—“a” and “b” often go together—or, c) they want to bed them. The rule of thumb is simple: be suspicious of anyone who goes out of his or her way to compliment you. Academics are busy, competitive, and neurotic. That doesn’t mean they can’t be nice. But it does mean that if they show more than common courtesy to a newbie, they probably have ulterior motives.
The only colleague who goes out of his way to notice me is Tim Blundell.
“So, how are the old nerves?” he asks when he runs into me in the great hall on the day before classes start. Tim was on my search committee, and we instantly clicked when I came down for my interview last February.
“Is it a good idea to ask me that?”
“Probably not.” He grins and propels me into a quiet corner of the cafeteria. “It’s just that I haven’t forgotten what it was like. Mind you, if you think this is stressful, wait till you have your tenure review coming up.”
“It can’t be worse than this.”
“It can—if only because you’re five years older than you are now, and you know that all your dear friends from grad school will be laughing like hyenas when they hear that you’re teaching at a community college in Wyoming.”
“How you cheer me, Professor Blundell.”
He seems delighted, and a little surprised, that I am taking his snarks in good humor. Tim has the look of an intellectual baby, with a high, very convex forehead, round blue eyes and a pug nose, and it gives him an utterly deceptive air of innocence. In fact, his caustic treatment is doing a great deal to steady the old nerves.
“A word of advice,” he goes on, his manner changing abruptly from camp to astringently professional, “but we never had this conversation, and I would swear on the Bible that we didn’t!”
“Understood.”
“You hate New York and couldn’t wait to move to the South. That includes hating NYU and looking forward to teaching at a much smaller college. Remember: We. Are. Faaa-mi-ly!”
“Got ya.”
“You are aware of the fact that a British Ph.D, lacking the coursework and the teaching requirements of an American Ph.D, is by definition inferior—”
“That depends on—”
“—which is why you completed optional graduate courses in Britain and took on teaching jobs to be able to compete with your American contemporaries.”
“Well, I did!”
“I know you did!” He rolls his eyes in ostentatious despair. “But you have to remind them of that, like, every ten minutes. And third: you didn’t just come here to kill time till you get offered a place at an Ivy.”
“I don’t even want a job at an Ivy!” I blurt out, conscious the next second of the fact that I have been manipulated into exposing myself.
“You’re not all that New Yorkerish,” Tim observes unemotionally. “That’s good. Sweet, modest, and polite; that’s what they like in a woman around here.” He checks the size of my breasts underneath the tailored jacket and blouse I am wearing. “Pretty, in a gamine sort of way. Seems conservative. Young-looking, but very professional in manner and attire. Should fit in just fine.”
I glower at him, open-mouthed, suddenly uncertain how to take him, and my evil angel overpowers me.
“You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me with that speech, mister!”
This convulses him in cackling laughter so infectious that it smoothes my ruffled feathers.
“Correction: Can be New Yorkerish if provoked!—Hey, Erin!” he calls out to a woman standing in line for coffee. “Look who I found!”
Erin Gallagher, who was very attentive toward me during my day on campus in February, comes to sit with us and tells me, without any sign of bashfulness, that she went out and got pregnant with her first and only child a week after she received the letter announcing that she had been given tenure. Her little girl is now two years old and has been in college daycare since she was able to sit up. Everything about Erin, from her serviceable chestnut-colored bob to her sensible slacks and shirt to her no-nonsense flats, suggests a woman who has no time to waste.
“You are going to waste so much time waiting for people to get things done for you,” she predicts. “Be prepared for that, and get yourself into a zen place. Do you have a PC yet? An office?”
“I have both, but no phone, and my office is full of stuff. Maintenance brought me