What I Really Think When You Talk About Your Dissertation Idea
Florence in the spring. Cafes by the Arno. Why was I turned down for that travel fellowship?
The strange sticker on your laptop. What does it mean? So hard to follow politics among the young these days.
Another thing I don’t understand: your dissertation idea. Very complicated. Didn’t hear the first sentence, and now it’s too late to ask you to repeat it.
So unfair that my nemesis got the travel grant. He doesn’t need travel money! His wife is an international heiress. While I can’t pay my cell phone bill. Argh.
The more I actually listen to your dissertation idea (which is not very much), the worse it sounds. Too vague. Doomed to play out over a decade of writer’s block and end in an underpaid secretarial job when you finally give up.
You haven’t mentioned my work at all. Do you really want me as your advisor, or was I your second (or third?!) choice? My nemesis implied he turned you down when you asked him to be your advisor, but I thought he was just bragging.
I was really looking forward to eating gelato while strolling the streets of Florence listening to show tunes on my earbuds.
Do I look professorial enough? I should work on my Zoom background and make sure there are impressive books on the shelves visible behind me. Too many travel books about Italy but not enough of my own publications. I need a stack of printouts of my most recent articles on the front of my desk for students to collect when they come to office hours. If only I had more publications.
It’s so much nicer in Florence in the spring than here. The old stone buildings and north-facing campus make Fred’s University dark and cold pretty much all year long.
What I really need is graduate students writing about me, citing my publications, and doing my research for me. Publications lead to travel grants.
I don’t have enough frequent flier miles to travel anywhere. The only way I could have used them was for travel within Europe. Another loss.
It is highly likely that you will start crying if I crush your dissertation dreams. Then I will have to comfort you, which could run over into my lunchtime.
I’m really hungry. Nothing to eat since a stale bagel at 6 AM. I wonder if there are any crackers left over from the lecture last night in the lounge.
I’ve never heard of any of the authors you are now discussing. Don’t want to make myself look stupid or out of the loop, so I’m just going to let you keep talking.
My stomach is actively growling now, must wrap this up.
This dissertation is not going to bring me any fame or fortune. You are not the type of advisee who makes me look like a hot ticket.
Attractive tank top under your jacket, though. I wonder how I can get a better view. Are you single? It’s not sexual harassment when there’s a mutual intellectual connection. Professors used to marry graduate students all the time! The Chair of our department is married to a former student, for God’s sake, though the old codger never brings that up at his workplace standards workshops.
I need to find allies on the travel grant committee for next year. I’m starting to look irrelevant. All the good fellowships are going to younger professors.
There is no way you could write even a small part of what you are setting out to write. But that will become obvious to you after a couple of years. No need to intervene now.
Thank God we aren’t evaluated on graduate advising. But I wonder what rating you gave me on my seminar.
I was looking forward to celebrating my travel grant with a trip to that new Italian restaurant in town. I was hoping some rich undergraduate would invite me there on Parents’ Weekend. I dropped some heavy hints in the lecture last week. But it would be demoralizing to go there now that the trip is off.
How can I bring the conversation back around to my work?
I just missed what you said about how your dissertation topic connects to your background. Shoot! That’s the kind of thing you are supposed to mention in letters of recommendation. The idea of having to write a letter of recommendation for you fills me with a sick dread. Let alone an Academic Condolence Card. Or is that just my stomach rumbling with hunger?
I know only American tourists order a cappuccino after breakfast time, but who cares. It would have been so nice to sip a cappuccino while basking in the afternoon light by the Bardini Gardens. Better views and less crowded than the Boboli Gardens.
Have I ever read a dissertation that I was genuinely interested in? That I remember years later with any fondness or excitement. No. The answer is no. It is the most deadly genre in literature. How can I participate in this farce decade after decade?
You seem to be getting up to go. I obviously missed a cue somewhere, and it’s clear you expect me to say something.
Pizza. Pizza. Pizza.
Also Read: How Not To Harass your Students