If the Tweed Fits

I often struggle to explain to people what I do for a living. This is partly because I don't actually do much of anything, really, but partly also because my income is not tied to any specific service I perform. When most people say "job," what they really mean is "activity performed on behalf of another for which one is compensated monetarily." At least, this is what they would mean if they had the vocabulary of a lawyer or a government bureaucrat. But that, most emphatically, is not what I'm doing right now. In the past I have been able to explain that I make my living by teaching, and, while this is actually only a portion of what I understand my "job" to be, it's usually enough to satisfy my interrogator - a new barber, say, or a distant relative I happen to bump into at a funeral or wedding. Even now, if I'm cornered, I'll still tell people that I teach, even though this is a complete falsehood. It's just so much easier than explaining to people that the college that employs me expects nothing more of me than that I show up for a free lunch on Thursdays (though not all Thursdays) and give a brief talk twice a year about my research. When I have taken this approach, I'm usually met with a slight pause, a blank stare, and then a question along the lines of, "So, like, what do they get out of it?" And then I have to explain that, well, they don't get much out of it at all, apart from a slight enhancement of the intellectual atmosphere on campus and the opportunity to support promising young scholars in the early stages of their careers. "So," my hypothetical questioner might ask, "they're paying you for the privilege of supporting you in the early stage of your career?" "Yes," I will say, and then quickly change the topic to sports or farting.

You can see why I usually just lie about it.

I'm similarly coy about admitting to people that I have a PhD. Twice in the past month I have been reduced to blushing embarrassment by well-meaning relatives who have introduced me to acquaintances as "My son/grandson, the doctor/professor" or something along those lines. I know that they're doing this because they're proud of me, and they're probably accustomed to bragging about me when I'm not around, and, yes, I probably ought to be proud myself. And I am. But still I'm loath to bring up the topic on my own, and then only slowly and reluctantly. Why? Several reasons (and sub-reasons) come to mind:

1) Modesty. I don't want people to think I think I'm better than them.

1a) I actually do think I'm better than most people, and I don't want it to show.

2) Where I'm from, being smart wasn't something to be proud of, but rather something you hid away, like an embarrassing birthmark or a gay uncle. If you wanted friends, if you wanted to be cool, if you wanted the girls to like you, for heaven's sake you couldn't let them know you were smart.

2a) When people learn you're smart, they're liable to say something like, "Oh yeah, you're smart, huh? Well, then, say something smart, fag." And then you're stuck.

3) When I tell people I have a PhD, I invariably have to tell them what I have a PhD in, and this often leads to one of the following scenarios:
a) They tell me all about how their own family came over from Ireland and how they just went over there last summer and tracked down some of the old relatives and oh but that beer over there is dark and the grass is so green and the music is so great and have you studied much about Celtic mythology and my isn't that Riverdance fascinating....
b) They ask me what my dissertation's about, and then I have to try to boil down what, to me (because I've been so close to it for so long) is an intricately constructed argument about the emergence of a tradition of violence in mid-Victorian Belfast, into terms that my barber can understand. And doing that causes me much mental pain.
c) They ask me why I decided to study Irish history, and I then have to launch into a very long story about how, no, I'm not actually Irish, but I lived there for a year and took this amazing class with this great professor who made us do research in the National Archives and I came upon this batch of letters written by peasants to other peasants threatening them with violence if they didn't stop paying rent that was too high and on and on and on... I don't mind telling this story, actually, but it's not nearly as pithy as I'd like it to be, and that bothers me somehow.

The funny thing is, you don't actually have to be all that smart to get a PhD in history. What you need to be is persistent and determined. If you were really that smart, you'd have figured out a way to use that great big brain of yours to go into a profession in which there were actual job opportunities or in which you might have some control over what part of the country you'd live in. This is why you'll find very few genius historians: geniuses are innovative, they take risks, they shift the goal-posts. Historians (and other sorts of academics as well, I should add) get where they get by playing by the rules, by treading well-trodden paths. Don't get me wrong, writing a dissertation is a bitch, and it takes lots of very highly developed mental resources to get it done - but more than anything it takes self-discipline, hard work, and a willingness, at times, to place interpersonal relationships somewhat lower on your list of priorities than most doctors would recommend (not that doctors have any room to talk).

For most historians, I believe, the allure of the profession is to be found in the persona that comes along with it. Many are the young, freshly-minted PhDs who can't wait to rush out and buy that first tweed jacket and naugahyde valise the day after their dissertation defense - and many are the pedantic blowhards who simply thrive in front of a classroom but who, in any other profession, would be swiftly dispatched to some back-office, pencil-pushing job away from clients and customers. Indeed, it's impossible for me to imagine most historians that I know as anything other than historians: they're born with a predisposition toward becoming one, and that predisposition is reinforced and solidified once they start upon the path.

It makes me happy when things find their natural level like that. If the tweed fits, wear it - that's what I always say.

But if the tweed doesn't fit? Well, it probably will before long. Even if you don't want anyone to see you in it.