Of professors and politics

I talked to two professors today, which is an extremely rare and stressful thing for me.

It’s always awkward when you go see a professor. You never know if he or she will be the type who sits there expectantly, waiting for you to ask your question and get out of their office, or whether he or she will engage with you and demonstrate some interest beyond your immediate reason for being there.

The first prof is a visiting legal history professor for whom I did some quick and pressured research in January. We had actually never met before today; I applied and got the research job over email, and communicated strictly through that medium throughout the job. But I’d heard he was very nice, and thought I should go talk to someone about my interests in history, so I did, even though I didn’t really have a specific goal in mind.

Mistake! Because although he was pretty nice about it, he clearly thought I should have come to see him with more specific questions in mind. I suppose I should have – I simply said I was interested in history, wanted to stay away from tracing changes in doctrine, and was otherwise open to any topic. Which, now that I think about it, must have been quite frustrating to him, because he couldn’t direct me to any sources, could he, if I didn’t have a direction in mind. On the other hand, if I were in his shoes, and a student seemed interested in my field, and had done some work for me sight unseen, I probably would have chatted about the field in general and asked about the student’s interest in it, and tried to make the student feel more at ease. Because it is quite awkward, you know, to go and see a professor.

I didn’t actually mean to see the second prof, my con law professor. But I and two classmates had had drinks with her with a few weeks ago, and she had said something really interesting to me: that of the students she talked with, the students who felt most alienated and isolated at Crimson were those who came from lower-income families. We had been talking about a recent controversy about a racially insensitive portrayal in the school’s Parody, and I mentioned I had gone to the town hall about it and thought that it had missed an important point – that the non-black students (including me, of course) simply did not understand what it was like to be a black student watching that portrayal on stage. Along the same lines, how many students here, coming from middle or upper middle or upper class families, understand what it is like to step into a world of unbelievable privilege and opulence? So many students here come straight from Ivy League colleges, into this environment, and step straight into $125,000-a-year jobs (and starting this fall it’ll be $140,000 – it just went up) with no experience of anything but privilege and wealth.

So I was thinking about this, and was troubled about it, and decided, what the hell, I’ll just go into her office and tell her what I was thinking. And lo, she turned out to be one of those professors who engages with students and puts them at ease. She even asked me – twice! – “But what about you? What do you want to do?” We talked about institutional change, but she turned the topic to me, as if she were really interested.

(Fascinating! A law professor who is actually interested in students!)

At some point, she said that Crimson would be disappointed if everyone who graduated from here became a lawyer. That the goal was to turn out people who would understand the gradations of the power structure and use that knowledge to change things.

I nearly teared up at that, and told her so. It was really pretty freakin’ inspiring.

So I told her how I thought Crimson shouldn’t have accepted me, that I wasn’t meant to be a lawyer, wasn’t meant to come here, that the admissions office could have seen that from my application essay, which didn’t even talk about law. So she asked me, “What was your essay about?” and I told her briefly: the dissolution of my family and how we never talked about it, and how I slowly, through the years, began to think that I didn’t want to be silent about things that bothered me anymore.

That’s when she started laughing and pounding her fist in her other palm, and said, “That’s what I’m talking about! That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

As I got up to leave, she offered me a Tootsie roll from the bowl on her desk, randomly saying, “You know, I never knew this, but they aren’t vegan! I’ll have to look into vegan Tootsie rolls – although I shudder to think what they taste like.” And that sealed it. It was about the best professor visit I’ve ever had.

And now to the politics...

It’s about Student Org #1, the mediation program. The four of us who are second years pow-wowed a couple weeks ago and figured out positions for next year, which I thought we’d settled, but tonight one of the four expressed some discomfort with her position, saying that she actually was interested in the top role.

Now, I feel considerably rumpled in the mind about this, and so did everyone else, because the three of us who are interested in the top role are all qualified and all deserve it, and if anything, I’m the least involved in the policies and developments in the field, but I wouldn’t mind holding the top role if it fell to me either.

It’s strange. I did want the role a couple weeks ago, when we hashed it out, but now I sort of feel like, “Who cares?” I hate board meetings, I never contribute to policy discussions, I don’t want to make decisions. Why should I run for the top role?

Well, elections are next week, and as it stands now, I’m in line to make top role with someone else as a co-position, but I have to say, I’m considerably rumpled in mind and spirit about it. The woman who was dissatisfied is more interested in the field and has been more active about it than I have – isn’t she more qualified than I am? More deserving, even by just a little bit? I don’t know. I do hate the sense of tension and unhappiness that was there tonight. And yet, she didn’t want to be part of a trio of top roles.

Sigh. I hate politics.