Academic Angst

SIT down. Breathe. Relax.

The Kleenex box is to your left. The windows are curtained. The chair is comfortable. You can't see the clock, but as usual it's set five minutes ahead, on the hour.

So you begin.

"Omigod, Omigod, it's midterms, I'm late with a 10-page paper, my section leader called me at midnight on Friday to tell me I'm failing--at midnight on Friday--I failed the GRE's, my thesis advisor wants an outline, I have a job interview tomorrow, and my boss wants me to go to work extra hours this week."

Relax.

You think you've got problems? Just thank God you're not a professor.

IN days when stress, strain, trauma and fatigue are tracked down as the roots of everything from bulimia to heart disease to addictive-compulsive behavior, one Connecticut professor argues that an even quicker route to the clinic lies through the ivory tower.

"Professorial melancholia is a disease of intense perfectionism," The Chronicle of Higher Education reported last week. "The criticism, the anger, the nothing-is-ever-good-enough aspect is really at the center of this disease."

Faculty members who are "hypercritical," "eager to use their intellects as weapons," competitive and academically secretive, in today's academies risk burn-out, depression, paranoia and--in worst cases--resentment at students, the Chronicle reported.

The source of the siren call is David F. Machell, associate professor at Western Connecticut State University. For years this justice and law administration scholar has boned up on his stress prognostication skills, first working with low-intensity occupations such as police work, physicians, priests before moving up to the big-league, another-faculty-meeting-another-swig-of-Maalox world of academia.

AS many as 20 percent of all professors show symptoms related to each one of three "stages" of melancholia, Machell says. The first--the so-called "tarnished star" syndrome--affects new professors accustomed to being the doted-upon, high-GPA graduate students with the brightest ideas, now thrown into cold competition with politically-seasoned scholars in large, uncaring institutions. Sound familiar yet, anyone?

The results, Machell says, are professors who feel misunderstood, resentful, discouraged and isolated, and then fearful of failure. In group situations, such feelings lead quickly to anger, he tells us.

Professors who slip into a second stage begin to see their scholarship as meaningless, repetitive drudgery and start resenting students. In the final, deepest stage, Machell says, "professors view students as enemies. They become angry and paranoid, constantly worrying that students or administrators are talking about them."

Professors caught in this vicious trap cannot simply quit. Feelings of inadequacy undermine plans to switch careers; faculty in this position are especially prone to alcohol and drug abuse, verbal abuse, sexual promiscuity, even suicide.

The problem, Machell explains, lies in how much energy and emotion scholars invest in their work. It becomes no longer simply a job, but an identity, a product they own. Further, professors, like high school teachers, are on their own in the workplace, defining and grading their own success.

ASK not for whom the bell tolls, Harvard students and faculty. Machell is writing a book titled Professorial Melancholia: The Poison of Ivy.

So, contrary to the saying, the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence. Or so one man says. Anyway, your hour's up and it's time to go back to work on your thesis.