It's Academic!

The world of academia can be a hostile and forbidding place, with English professors telling you to use "an" before "hostile" as soon as you get the bloody words out of your mouth and American studies majors saying that's just for stuck-up Brits. Here are some of the issues that have been troubling our correspondents lately.

Student coffeehouse:  Where many a "study date" has begun.

Dear Mr. Academic:

I am a secretary at our local land-grant university where I recently stopped for coffee in a little espresso bar. This guy with a beret comes up to me and strikes up a conversation as I was pouring cream and five Sweet 'n Lows into my cup. I played along with him because he was kind of cute and he asks me "What do you do?" I figured I needed to impress him so I looked at a book that was laying (lying?) on a table and said I worked at Particle Accelerator Physics II.  I figured it was sort of like "Brothers II Bar & Grille". He got real excited and said "Wow", could he come over and smash some atoms some time and I said sure, that sounds like fun.

Particle accelerator:  Fun place for a first date.

Mr. Academic, I know what I did was wrong but now I am trapped. I have put this guy off for three weekends in a row and am running out of excuses. Should I tell him the truth or what?

Marie Ann Coburn, Normal, Illinois

Dear Marie Ann--

You know what Mr. Academic says--Honesty is the best policy, but sometimes you have to use crib notes. There just happens to be a very good particle accelerator within a few hours' drive of your home--the Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. I would suggest that you buy a lab coat, ask this fellow to meet you after work one day and when he pulls up to the curb come running out saying "What a miserable excuse for a proton-antiproton smasher! I'd give it up in a minute for a career as a secretary!" If he truly loves you, he will follow you right back to your word processor.

"Look out for the frisbee!"

Mr. Academic--

I am an assistant professor of comparative literature at a small liberal arts college in Ohio. I am up for tenure this year, but my chances don't look good because there's a women and a swarthy guy up at the same time, and I am a white male. (I think the swarthy guy uses tan-in-a-bottle but that's a different story.) Anyway, I am thinking of having a sex change operation to improve my chances and wanted to know the pros and cons of such a procedure.

Lloyd Pfeiffer, Chillicothe, Ohio

"My name eesa Georgio Hamiltonio."

Dear Lloyd--

A surgical procedure as serious as a sex change operation is not a step to be taken lightly. Are you dating anyone now, and if so, what sex? Have you factored the cost of new clothes into your budget? Do you belong to a men's bowling team that will have to replace you once you are a woman in order to comply with league rules?

Maybe he'd fit in here.

You should also check your school's employee handbook to make sure that "foxhole sex changes" or "tenure-track transexuals" are not disqualified from academic advancement.

Dear Mr. Academic--

I was recently put on probation for having an affair with a student in my D.H. Lawrence seminar, which strikes me as the equivalent of going to the ballet and complaining about tutus. Having sex with students has been my practice for many years--my current wife is a former member of my senior tutorial on Shakespeare's sonnets, and my first wife was in my Introduction to Romantic Literature survey course.

D.H. Lawrence:  Always a good topic of conversation around bedtime.

Frankly, I think I was entitled to some warning that the rules of the game had changed. Please respond to my P.O. Box because I don't want my wife to know I'm writing to advice columnists.

George W. R. Frazier, Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

Mr. Frazier--

You should be ashamed of yourself. America's advice columnists stand ready to help even despicable scumbags like yourself, dispensing their counsel without charge to those in need. The occupational hazard of becoming an English professor is that naive young women will throw themselves at any man who has read more poetry than "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck." And while we're on the subject, if you are fired will your position be publicly advertised or filled by word of mouth?

If you can't shoot over her, dribble around her.

Dear Mr. Academic--

I have been an Assistant Bursar at a Christian college in Alabama for 18 years. Every Friday the coach of the women's basketball team comes in to deposit her check in the credit union, and I try to "chat her up" a bit. She is friendly enough but I know that she looks down on me--literally and figuratively--as she is 6'1" and I am only 5'7".

I was wondering--do you think it is perverse for a short man to fall in love with a taller woman? If not, could you suggest a social setting in which the difference in our heights would not be so noticeable?

Eldon Felger, Muscle Shoals, AL 35661

Dear Mr. Felger--

Love doesn't get vertigo from looking down, nor a crick in the neck from looking up. Compatibility between the sexes doesn't depend on seeing "eye to eye". I would suggest a nice dinner out at a table for two, since most of one's height consists of the length of one's legs--no one will notice you two are not a matched set when you are sitting down. And when you get your lady friend out on the basketball court, remember to pump fake up, get her in the air, then drive for the score!

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman