Monster in the mirror

Mirrors are not nearly as simple as we pretend they are.

Or, at least, not for me.

I had the opportunity to spend some time with work folks recently, and in academics that is always an interesting experience. This was no different. A lot of talk about "what we are working on" which boils down to what we are writing about, what we have published lately, what classes we are desperately trying to finish. The group was a mix of students (in various stages of their graduate careers) and professors. And the "what are you working on" question served to keep us in our stratified places nicely: we are tenured (working on books), non-tenured (working on tenure), ABD (working on dissertations), or not finished with exams (working on classes).

Not only were we forced to go around the room and tell the quiet room our status, but then we began the ritual of who knows or met who, who is the better teacher, and who will, in the end, be the best scholar in the room. This is accomplished by story telling in a false-intellectual tone, interruption of another's story to insert one's own story, and a lot of feather strutting.As I left this "lunch," I found myself nauseous by what I had experienced, and found myself saying to a friend that "those people" make me sick.

Then dawn broke. I am an academic. Those people are me.

A Medusa stands in my mirror.

Lucky for me you can look at her in a mirror and not turn to stone.