happy birthday, neither necessary nor sufficient!

huh, just over one year ago i started writing this here blog. i was stuck in new orleans while chad worked all day and i was finishing the last round of revisions on my diss before defending it.


of course, when i say "stuck," that's something of an overstatement, because there are far worse places to have to be. but it was hot and there weren't a lot of pleasant places to go during the day and all our friends had to work all the time anyway.

also, last memorial day i remember thinking a bit about class, because i am one of the only people i know with immediate family who served in the military, which surprises me a wee bit because of my age. i remember when i got to graduate school and, with the self-centeredness of youth i suppose, i thought everyone would be like me: vaguely dissatisfied with their education so far, having worked a nowhere job for a while, preoccupied with colloquial versions of important philosophical questions, and liking to hang out at bars.

not the case. most (significantly, not all) of my fellow grad students were driven and directed and had gone to expensive private schools (i went to a gigantic public school on scholarship). for whatever sets of reasons, it was a pretty easy transition for them (and for their families) to think of themselves as intellectuals for a living.

fine and great, and many of those people are now very close friends, as are many of the people who did not fit in to that model in various ways. i am happy to include among my closest friends both the child of a famous poet and someone who shot squirrels for dinner occasionally, out of necessity. but over the years i have become increasingly aware of the subtle and entrenched ways that class matters in good old academe. it doesn't just reveal itself when the member of the British landed gentry you thought was your friend doesn't serve the bread you baked for some snobby gourmand reason (how bad can homemade bread be?!), but that is certainly one way.

it is also revealed in how you talk (sentence structure, vocabulary and accent), what you've read, what you do for fun now and what you did for fun during college. it is revealed in what the people you know do for a living, and in the attitudes of the people who have known you your whole life.

following the model of one of my advisors, i tend to be defiant about my class, by not hiding my (albeit subtle) accent, and by resisting conversations that drift toward the more intellectual in a self-conscious and show-offy way more interested in the performance of the conversation than the conversation itself, most especially when people don' t know what they are talking about. i.e., i hate posers. this attitude works for my advisor, but he's a decade older and a full professor and has several high-profile articles and books. when he goes bowling or listens to alterna-rock, his reputation can handle it, because he's a demonstrated academic heavyweight. it's a bit different for a young brand new woman professor, who has demonstrated no such thing, and so can (apparently) seem bubble-headed and frivolous. at the same time, i deal with typicalities for people who change class dramatically from what they are brought up to be: at worst, rumors and oblique judgments about me thinking i'm All That and at best, just regular and well-meant misunderstandings about what my job is actually like. so i guess i'm doing something right if no one is happy?

anyway, off to a memorial day picnic with colleagues, none of whom have military in their families, none of whom would be impressed by my knowing all the lyrics to the Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere," and none of whom give me the benefit of the doubt about my intellectual wherewithal--i don't think.