I was an Assistant Professor at Ohio State. A faculty member, about the age I am now, was in an elevator with me in our building. He asked me what language I taught. Spanish. Oh, an "easy language." And then, whether I did literature or linguistics. Literature? Oh, "so all you do is emote." He was a Slavic linguist, and thus proud of his ability to learn difficult languages and to be a hard-nosed scientist, not an emotive humanist.
I had no snappy comeback for that. I wasn't upset, because I was brimming with confidence in those days. I probably thought of it as an amusing story to tell in the future. I faced much worse condescension from my own colleagues.
I never thought about the degree of difficulty for entering the field, but about the degree of difficulty of being excellent in it. Probably if you have to assert your superiority over a junior colleague from another department in the elevator, you have a chip on your shoulder.
I've figured out it was Kenneth Naylor. It probably is difficult to write the Serbo-Croatian grammar, and I respect anyone's genuine accomplishments.
2 comments:
I had an interview there February 14, 1986. I know the date because the marquee kept saying happy Valentine's Day, 21 Fahrenheit, go OSU. What shocked me about it, coming from California, was how dirty the snow was, and that there seemed to be about 100 - 100! Spanish TAs. I called home: "This place is a factory!"
I gave this very theoretical Berkeley French Library style talk on Vallejo. It was in a large auditorium with many people. It was too theoretical. I could tell because there were no questions initially and when there were, they were on the lines of, can you teach junior level civ?
I had not interviewed with them at the MLA. They had called saying that had been a mistake. Now they had nobody, could I come? I went, and ate spare ribs, a specialty. Abril Trigo went, and they hired him. I later heard that I had been the second candidate because I had serious experience living abroad and would not be intimidated by Latin American graduate students. That was true.
I always felt I had dodged a bullet by not getting that job, because if I had gotten the offer logic would have dictated I take it. More recently, I have thought that would have been a good idea.
P.S. 1987, duh.
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