My (not so) Brilliant Career

Well, I’m back.

I’m almost embarrassed to resume this blog/ezine. I’ve been away so long. I don’t know how many of you are still out there. Or, for that matter, among those who remain, how many of you care to continue reading my turgid little missives.

Like I say, I’m embarrassed. More, I’m ashamed. At one time, I had over 2000 subscribers, and God only knows what the pass-along readership was. I even did a couple of self-published books (Xlibris) that were collections of the columns. But I let it all go away.

Why?

A bunch of reasons. I got busy. I lost my job. I had a little bout of Depression—not deep, fortunately, but enough to make things difficult. Then, too, when I tried to switch the ezine version of Xcargo to a blog, it just wasn’t the same. In a ‘zine, you have a certain intimacy with your readers. Those of you out there would write me back. I knew your names and your email addresses. It’s not quite like that with a blog.

But, also . . . a bigger reason.

I went back to school.

It was the biggest mistake of my life.


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I’ll tell you my story in bits and pieces. Maybe, as time goes on, I’ll give you a complete accounting of my adventures in the academy. I’ll call it “My (not so) Brilliant Career.”

But, today, let me just give you the quickest overview.

It began just about eight years ago. I had lost my job as a trade press editor. I was at, in some ways, the peak of my career. I was an editor-in-chief of an online publication dealing with e-business and middleware (a kind of software that resides between applications and things like databases. It was the buzz word of the day, and a Very Big Thing).

But, I found myself utterly unable to connect with my work. That was partly because of the little bout of Depression. But mostly it was because I just didn’t believe in what I was writing and editing. I remember, once, having to quote an esteemed expert who announced that business was really all about bookkeeping, and that mere sales only got in the way.

And, then, finally, there was a bit of a power struggle going on in the company. The publisher brought in a new vice president of content. I think she may not have cared for underlings who were not of her own selection. And, so, I was gone.


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So, there I was . . . jobless . . . and strangely unmoved by the fact. I did some freelance. I sent our resumes. But nothing came of it.

Then, my parents (bless them!) suggested Why Don’t You Go Back To School and Become A Professor? My wife agreed. Everyone knew that my real skill was in writing, not editing computer texts. And, besides, I’m fascinated by history, and I’m a good teacher, strangely enough.

So, I did. I got admitted to the Master’s Program in History at Northeastern University.

And, you know, it was wonderful. For two years, I had the time of my life. My professors were encouraging. Some of them have become my friends.

I wrote a Master’s thesis—which I then turned into a book and got published. It was called “ ‘And then they loved him,’ Seward Collins and the Chimera of an American Fascism.” I’ll tell you all about it some other time.

So, there I was, with a new-minted Masters, a scholarly book, and a passion for the subject matter.

Therefore, with a bit of effort, I got myself admitted to the Ph.D. program in history at . . . a school I won’t name. Suffice to say that it was at a University located roughly between Boston and Western Massachusetts.

And then . . .

I found myself in hell.

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What follows is my perception of my time at the University I shall not name. The people there doubtless have quite another version of events.

But, here is mine.

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I once wrote a (very bad) horror novel in which the main character is murdered and then awakens in something like Hades. He is buried under dead and rotting bodies. He cannot move, he cannot see, he cannot breathe . . . though his lungs scream for air. He lies there for what seems like centuries until an earthquake—actually, a “corpse-quake”—frees him.

It was sort of like that.

I’m not quite sure what I did to offend the faculty, but offend them I certainly did. After the first year, in which I got As in every class and no one objected to my dissertation proposal, I was suddenly anathema in the second year. The same material, which, before, had been acceptable and even praised, was now “trivial” and “meaningless.”

When I actually started writing the dissertation, things got—if possible—worse. I would send my committee a chapter, and they would not respond for weeks . . . or months. Once they did not even acknowledge that I’d sent them material for two months.

And when they did respond, it was with a thousand, thousand objections. Every line of text was insufficient. Every word wasn’t right.

And the objections? They did not seem to me to be constructive. They seemed to me to be insulting. “So WHAT?” “Stop IT!” “FOCUS!”

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Finally, after two years…and after six or seven rewrites (I’ve lost count) . . . my committee members sent me a note saying simply that they would no longer work with me.

I was not, they said, a scholar.

*

Should I defend myself? Should I say that if I’m not a scholar then why was it that my book on Seward Collins was well reviewed? And that I have published articles in scholarly journals? And that my own committee members had no objections to my work until the second year of my time at their University?

Or, better still, should I ask . . . if I’m not a scholar and my work demonstrates “no scholarship” . . . then why was it that when I posted the first chapter of my dissertation to an academic news-group and asked for comments, no one said that it was “unscholarly”? They had concerns, yes, but no one said it was not a work of scholarship.

Perhaps I should do all these things. And, indeed, I will write a complaint to the University. I’ll ask these questions and point out these facts. But, come, let us confess, nothing will come of it. The administration will make a few noises, but it must support its professors if it is to function. That is the reality of college life.

I could sue them. I have explored that possibility. But, that, too, is problematic. I have discovered that historically the courts rule in the favor of schools at the expense of graduate students.

Besides . . .


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Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m not a “scholar.” At least, not as they define the word.

On some level, I admit that I’m not cut out to be an academic. I love history, yes, and I am a good teacher . . . but these characteristics do not make me a “scholar.” Not their sort, I mean.

You see, there are scholars and then there are scholars. And, the art of being their sort of scholar is very much like that of being a fashionista. It is the business of knowing who’s in and who’s out.

Their sort of scholar is an expert at knowing which professors are trendy to footnote, knowing which theories are fashionable and even know which WORDs are considered outré.

(Once I used the term “elite,” and was taken quite over the coals for it. Genuine scholars do not, I was told, use that expression. Yet, the reality is that we are divided between the rulers and the ruled . . . and only the most willfully blind would ignore that. The most willfully blind, or those who are in fact among the elite and therefore defend their position by pretending it does not exist.)

But, the point is that I’m not built for their world. Oh, I can study, research, know the secondary literature, give papers and defend them. But, I have never been and never will be fashionable. I do not revel in the conflict of theory vs. theory, the combat of dueling departments, the furies and personal animosities of the academic life.

I love only the romance of history . . . the simple narratives of men and women who lived it . . . their experiences and lives, their pains and pleasures, their joy and grief, and, in short, their stories.

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So what shall I do?

Well, I will not abandon the academy just because it has chosen to abandon me. I will continue to study and publish and print. I have, after all, three Master’s degrees now, two in history and an MFA in writing. My committee may deprive me of my Ph.D., but not of my learning.

And, I will teach. I am already employed as a member of adjunct faculty at Northeastern University and Cambridge College. I like to teach. I like my students.

Strangely, this too makes me unfit to be my committee’s kind of scholar. You see, scholars of their sort are not much interested in teaching. They regard their classes as an unfortunate distraction and their students as intruders. They would much rather conduct their research. Or, rather, have their graduate students do the research, and then they write their monographs in the cork-walled privacy of their offices.

And that is not a bad thing. Society needs such people . . . even if there is something odd about the fact that they are employed as educators, yet have little interest in education.

But, this gives me an advantage. I will seek out teaching positions. They will not. They will not compete with me.


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And I will write. I will write not only academic papers, but also popular material. I will take history, when I can, to people who are not academics . . . who, like me, love the stories of history. Perhaps, people like you.

This, by the way, most of all makes me unfit to be my committee’s sort of scholar. Simply put, that sort of scholar would never deign to write for someone like you . . . a mere layman, whose opinions are not learned, and whose intelligence is doubtful. You have no critical intelligence, no solid background, no acceptable interpretative apparatus. You are (poor soul) Undertheorized and do not maintain the Standards We Hold Dear.

You are, therefore, not worth talking to. Not like themselves. Who are so wise and informed.

That is, of course, in their own humble opinion.

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So, I will write. I will teach

And I will return to you . . . if you’ll have me . . . you who were the readers of the old explosive-cargo, and who I hope will be the readers of the new.

Forgive me for being away so long.

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Next week, I’ll start again. Next week, I promise, I’ll try to be funny. I’ve much to tell you about my life over the last few years, and much of it is pleasant and laughable. Much of it I enjoyed enormously. My son graduated from high school and went to college. We have a new puppy. We have had adventures.

Next week I will be cheery.

But, right now, I must take a moment to be grim.

For, you see, I was half in love with the academy. But, my love was unrequited. Indeed, it was rejected. And, like all those who are cast out, I must, for a time, wrestle with the passions . . .

Of the lover scorned.

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Until next time . . .

Onward and upward.














Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker