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On Being Married to an Academic: Toward an Understanding of Being the Second in a Two-Body Problem (A Guest Post)
Karen

A month or so ago I requested a guest post that might speak to the misery and angst of the partner/spouse of someone on the academic job market. I had received several requests f or such a post, generally f rom non-academic partners/spouses trying to f igure out how to cope with the stress and uncertainty. I published one guest post about two weeks ago. Here is another. I think it captures splendidly the Alice in Wonderland nature of the Ph.D. process and job search f rom the perspective of anybody who is not actually in it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ by JJ Koczan So wheres my piece of paper? Maybe even a title: S.Ph.D. Spouse of a doctor of philosophy. Af ter a decade of charting my wif es pursuit of degree upon degree, it seems the least the academy can do. Notwithstanding the crippling debt in which being married to so many student loans lef t me entangled, they owe me. If need be, Ill book an auditorium or a conf erence room and give a Prezi slideshow to tell them why. When it comes to being married to an academic, maybe Im the wrong person to comment. She wasnt an academic when I married her. We met at the tender age of 16, long bef ore the innocent girl whod later become my wif e decided to make a career out of being smart. She was a high school student, good at taking standardized tests. How was I supposed to know shed go pro? At f irst, she didnt. By the time I meandered my way out of an undergraduate degree at a pace that could best be called creative prof essional, she was employed f ull-time as a juvenile probation of f icera hard job that she still draws on f or street cred in a, See? I used to not spend every waking hour in f ront of a laptop screen! kind of way. She made a good salary. State benef its. Opportunity f or advancement. I had a dumpy editors job in the music industry. When I was asked at our engagement party by a distant cousin how we planned on surviving, I actually had an answer. T he luxury! Can you imagine? If so, youre probably not married to an untenured academic. She lef t that job, of course, in pursuit of her doctorate. Its a peculiar and special kind of joy to wonder f or months on end whether your spouse will have f unding f or the next year, or will work in what I as an outsider see as the unjustif iable indentured servitude of teaching assistantship and be expected to be gratef ul f or the opportunity, putting in all the ef f ort of a prof essor while reaping none of the prestige, years not ticking past so much as punching you in the f ace on their way by while you wait f orwhat, exactly?I dont even know at this point, its been so long since an entire league of people I knew didnt def ine my existence by my wif es ambitions. Oh yeah, him. Hes the one whose wif e just got f unding. Cue sigh of relief . I can still recall the day my wif e said to me in our small one-bedroom apartment that she was going to take an online class through the local state school; an idea thrown out so casually that I only paid any attention whatsoever in hindsight. In my mind, I see her f licking her hair back, caref ree, her tone no more signif icant than if she were to have said she was going to make a sandwich. Like any trade that consumes the entirety of your beingsee also your proctologists, plumbers, single-cell bacteria, etc. the academy changes who you are, shif ts your perspective, and in my experience, makes you more than a little bit of a weirdo.

a little bit of a weirdo. To wit, us at a party. Oh, she was glorious. Uncomf ortable and misanthropic as I am in every way imaginable and a f ew that arent, my wif e could work a room like no one youve ever seen. Helps that shes smokin hoteven now she can wear a prof essors scarf like its (ever) going out of stylebut more than that, she had this charismatic ability to have a heart-to-heart with someone, a genuinely meaningf ul conversation to both people involved, in a crowded room surrounded by empty smalltalk. It was amazing to watch, and I cant begin to recount the meaningless drivel it saved me both f rom hearing and f rom saying. Now? Well, its hard to keep up conversational momentum when youre pointing out the problematic statuette in the hallway, isnt it? Or if youre taking the f ull 45 minutes to answer a question as nave as, So what do you study? I laugh every time I hear, So what is your dissertation about? T he inquiry of an amateur! Whod have thought to singular devotion to one idea f or a span of years would result in a declining ability to relate to everything else in the world that isnt that one idea? Crazy, right? She of course wears this awkwardness as a badge of honor. Its something shes earned through years of ef f ort. It takes a lot of thinking to become so strange. When she earned her second Masters degree, it was a non-event. T he watering station a quarter of the way through the marathon. I dont even think we went out to dinner to celebrate. T here was reading to do. Each semester brings horror stories of her peers whove graduated into the academic job market only to wind up with non-tenure track positions at the South Pole. So-and-so got an adjunct gig at Someplace Youd Never Want to Live. Isnt that great? Well, I guess if you look at it on the level of thats one job I dont have to worry about you getting, sure. And the thing is, its supposed to be a good thing! Shes serious! My understanding of the academic job market is that its like the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. When they designed the inf rastructure seven thousand years ago, nobody imagined thered ever be so many people, so you f unnel f if ty lanes to two and hope that most of those whod be f oolish enough to attempt to cross the Hudson give up bef ore they actually get there. I paint a dark picture and stand by it, but I might be more in a position to criticize had my own prof essional choices not been SO terrible. Ill go work at magazines, because theyre bound to last f orever! We lef t that apartment because we couldnt af f ord to keep it and moved back in with her mother, who f ortunately f or us had the space, where weve lived now f or the majority of our marriage. I tell my f riends I rent, or I mumble anything that isnt, Im in my 30s and I live at my mother-in-laws house because I chose my career based on the number of f ree CDs Id get and Ive f ailed at lif e really, really hard, though I know thats what I should be saying. Most of them get the idea anyway. Of course, none of this would be worthwhile if I didnt also love her more than I ever thought one as emotionally crippled as I am could ever love a human being. Perhaps too its something unique to the experience of someone smitten with an academic to be constantly f loored by their partners brilliance, or to crouch and be astounded as I am to witness her dedication on a daily basis in a pursuit of something that well, if you didnt really believe in what you were doing, youd be a f ool f or chasing. Af ter all these years, my understanding of what she does is cursory at best, and Ive watched as our pillow talk has gone f rom, So how was your day? to a recitation of whatever abstract concept she wants to remember f or the morning but is too tired to actually write down, but my admiration f or who she is, this single-minded weirdo shes become, has been more than enough to carry me through the wait f or that dissertation to be f inished, f or the def ense date to be set, f or time measured in f our-month groupings into perpetuity. I love my wif e. I loved her bef ore and I love her now. Like any interpersonal connection worth half a damn, it can be f rustrating as all hell, but my relationship with my hyper-educated academic spouse is the best part of my lif e. She makes me a better, stronger person, or at very least challenges me to become one despite the stubborn resistance shes met with every step of the way, and I consider myself lucky she even talks to me, never mind occasionally lets me pick what takeout we get f or dinner. Its not always easy f or me to remember how important her work is to her, but I make an ef f ort, because thats the part of it that means something to me: Its who she is.

If thats what I have to go on, so be it. JJ Koczan is Managing Editor of New Jerseys T he Aquarian Weekly and genre-blogs music nobody cares about at http://theobelisk.net.