Academics like actors? Different stages of academic performance

So this happened back when I was an undergrad Philosophy student.

After our first ever lecture on Heidegger we wandered out into the corridor in a state of stunned amazement ai??i?? the theory seemed so deep and complex, touching on the most intimate experience of everyday being and yet it was so difficult to graspai??i?? also because the lecturer made a point of quoting the most crucial fragments and concepts in German…

Regardless, we were deeply impressed ai??i?? both with Heidegger and with our professor who appeared to have read the 800-page ai???Sein und Zeitai??? with pleasure, and even understood the oeuvre (apparently, it is all very simple if you read it in the original). When we were already on the doorsteps of the building, lighting our Gauloises cigarettes (mandatory attribute of young philosophers, in case you didn’t know) and exchanging whispers full of reverence, a fellow student approached us, with a strange look on his face.

ai??i?? You knowai??i?? this is really embarrassing ai??i?? he said ai??i?? butai??i?? I just met the professor in the bathroom

What shock! In that moment, we werenai??i??t ready to accept the fact that a giant, a supreme being who read Heidegger in the original (and with pleasure!) still needed to use the bathroom. No way!

The thing is, when youai??i??re a student, you often assume lecturers and professors belong to some kind of different species which inhabits uni corridors, libraries and offices with heavy oak furniture, only occasionally roaming into more remote territoriesai??i?? like the philharmonic. One thing is for sure: professors are not to be spotted at McDonaldai??i??s, on walks with silly-looking dogs, in the queue to the bathroom or performing other actions devoid of proper decorum.

View from the other sideai??i??

So this is back when I was an undergrad. Now, I am in the 3rd year of my Phd and I often find myself on the other side of the great student ai??i?? professor divide. For while doctoral candidates are officially called ai???PhD studentsai??i?? they often perform actions typical of full-fledged academics: giving talks at conferences, writing research articles, delivering workshops for undergraduatesai??i??

To be honest, itai??i??s a confusing stage of life. There are moments when you take a step back, look at your work to say ai???gosh, that reads like a real article! And itai??i??s me who wrote it!ai??? And then there are moments when you realise that this ai???real researcherai??i??, unbeknownst to anyone else, is actually a girl with a silly nick-name, a tendency for mid-week lie-ins, and a weak point for glossy magazines (which she claims to read ironically).

Noticing a gap between these two different personas leads to a strange psychological state in which one might ask questions like: So which one of these persons is real? And if only one of them, am I lying by letting the other one perform? Will my audience notice? Perhaps this sort of experience is more common than we think. It might actually lie at the root of the famous impostor syndrome.

Everyoneai??i??s an actor

What I discovered in conducting interviews with academics for my doctoral project, is that such an experience of ai???fragmentation of selfai??i?? is not something limited just to the PhD period. If anything, ai???academic selvesai??i?? become even more complex over time. While my current struggle is to marry my ai???privateai??i?? self with my budding ai???scientificai??i?? persona, established academics will usually have at least one more ai???layerai??i?? in their identity ai??i?? namely, their institutional role as directors of programmes, coordinators of courses, heads of departments etc., employees, managers, bosses… Interestingly, it seems that for many academics the ai???scientificai??i?? self can be at odds with the ai???institutionalai??i?? one. For instance, different values and qualities in assessing academic work will come to the fore depending if the person is speaking ai???as a scientistai??i?? or ai???as a research manager/administratorai??i??.

My interviewees usually seem to move between these different positions with ease. Perhaps this is because they have realised, over their long careers, something we PhD students need to learn ai??i?? that these different ai???selvesai??i?? within one person are not at all contradictory. In fact, they are complementary, and perhaps necessary if one wants to survive in academia.

Many academic hats

Initially, in my analysis I applied Erving Goffmanai??i??s notion of ai???front stageai??i?? and ai???back stageai??i?? to account for the differences between the academic persona (exposed in official academic contexts, like my professorai??i??s lecture on Heidegger), and the private one (like going for aai??i?? walk with oneai??i??s silly-looking dog). On reflection, I realise another theatrical metaphor describes even better what is going on with our ai???selvesai??i?? in academia : the revolving stage. Here are a few pictures of what I have in mind.

scene1

phoyo_maquette_9_

I believe a personai??i??s identity has many sides which (s)he might want to show depending on the circumstances. Each side is real and each is actually constructed for an audience. For instance, even the private self can at times be exposed in public (in some strands of inquiry, like in feminist research, it is not problematic to mergeAi?? personal experiences with scientific reflections). The English expression ai???to wear many hatsai??i?? also neatly describes the complexity of social and professional roles we perform.

Observing, on the basis of markers in discourse, how my interviewees switch between different roles they play, had consequences not only for my analysis, but also for how I see myself (or my self) in the academic context. I realised it is normal to have various ai???hatsai??i?? and to wear the one which is most suited to the scenography and the audience.

And this in turn made me feel more comfortable on stage.

by Marta Natalia WrA?blewska

@martawrob


Featured image (photo): Holly Hayes, flickr, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford

Images in textAi?? (modified) from: http://theatre.laclasse.com

References:

Goffman, E. (1956). The presentation of self in everyday life. Edinburgh,: University of Edinburgh, Social Sciences Research Centre.

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