On Employment, Dead Birds, and Fine Stitching

I am the most dreaded of hangers-on: I am a recent alumnus who has become university staff.

This probably doesn’t seem like such a bad deal. After all, universities are nice places overall. Most employees at my university are happy to be there. And don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining either (much). I like my job and my lifestyle, and I’m comfortable with my choices. But it can still be an awkward situation to wear the scarlet “a” for alumnus.

Here’s the best metaphor I can give. It’s like someone I remember who was adopted, and while she was largely fine with that, she would complain about how many people instantly knew that she was adopted. She was clearly Korean, but she had a very Irish sounding last name. Most people when they met her in classes or whatever assumed (correctly) that she had been adopted, and so without her control people always knew this intimate detail about her and jumped to all these conclusions about her. (The phenomenon was even worse when she was out with her parents, who were both white). For her, it was like having this thing which should be her private knowledge on a big billboard, or, if I may (to keep the Hawthorne reference above company), it was an albatross around her neck.

Now, again, I don’t mean to suggest that being the alumnus-who-has-become-staff (and if that’s not the name of a pulp-comics monster, it should be) is all that bad, or nearly as serious as the example above. But same basic principle is in operation: I have no way to control who knows this fact about me (and a lot of people do). And this fact, of course, comes with its own associations: I am a left-over, a remnant, the collegiate appendix. I am the engine that wouldn’t turn over at the start of the race. Or so it can be perceived.

I don’t think I was any different than the current students when I was one. I knew only two recent alumni who were staff (the “recent” is key here -- if it has been more than ten years or so, I’d say, suddenly being an alumni who has come back becomes cool). One was a tall, overly-thin alum who chose to fulfill painfully trite stereotypes, such as still wearing braces and working in the IT department. The reasons he had stuck around seemed facile in their clarity. The other alum was a nominally-normal guy who chose to work in admissions, though I still felt there was some kind of desperation about him (a projection on my part, I know). For both, the unasked question seemed to be: You worked so hard to get a degree at this prestigious institution, and working in this institution is now the most prestigious thing you can find to do? (To both alums, I can only say: I’m sorry for my prejudice.) (And perhaps there was also some self-defense at work: surely if they were “stuck” at the university, it must be through some personal defect, and thus sticking around was a fate which I would not have to worry about.)

I’m not saying I actively thought about this too often. But I’m not saying these wouldn’t have been my opinions, either. And now I laugh: look at the company I’m in! I don’t work in IT, nor do I wear braces. But is there an air of desperation about me? Do people look at me askance and wonder why I’m still here, or worry that the same fate will befall them?

I don’t know. Somewhere between maybe and probably not. Of course, again, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m rather fond of my scarlet a. The stitching is quite nice.