by Mary Jo Salter, Emily
Dickinson Lecturer in the Humanities I often dream of one day
having my own personal administrative assistant. Watching the two
organizational whizzes in the English department, Yvonne Nicholson
and Beverly Lecca, at work over the years, I have wondered what it
would be like to know at all times, as they do, where everything and
everyone is, and what to do next, and how to do it. Since becoming
such a person is beyond my reach, I fantasize that I might at least
apprentice myself to one, a private guru who would teach me not only
how to file, and file instantly, but also how to maintain a Zen
detachment in the face of others' failings.
In real life, alas, I only pretend
that I have already achieved this blissful level of consciousness.
The English department headquarters is guarded politely by Mrs.
Nicholson and Mrs. Lecca in Clapp 201, but not all English
professors' offices are located in the Clapp building. Nine of us,
for instance, are housed at 8 Park Street. Most mornings I arrive
there early, unlock my door and leave it open. There are five men and
four women working at 8 Park Street, but I happen to be the only
woman on the ground floor.
At least several times a week, I look
up from my desk to discover someone I don't know standing in my
doorway. Sometimes it is a U.S. Postal Service carrier; sometimes it
is a member of the Buildings and Grounds staff; usually it is a
student. Sometimes the person begins, "Excuse me, would you happen to
know. . . ?", but generally he or she forgoes any time-consuming
hello or preamble. "Can you sign for Professor P's delivery?" the
question runs. Or, "Where do I install this printer for Professor K?"
Or, "Would Professor J like this paper under his door or at Clapp?"
Or even, "When does Professor Z get back from lunch?"
Feigning a pleasant voice, I try to
give answers to these questions when I know them, but sooner or later
I'm likely to embarrass both the questioner and myself by confessing
that I am an impostor. I am no administrative assistant, nor was
meant to be.
Why, I ask myself, do so many people
think that I am one? At the turn of the millennium, in a women's
college that prides itself on upending gender stereotypes, is it
possible that many of us still believe that if you're a
efficient-looking person in an office, you must be female, and if
you're a female in an office, you must be genuinely efficient?
Sometimes I suspect that my questioner
knows all too well that I am an inefficient and downright clueless
professor, but quizzes me for other people's whereabouts anyway. Come
to think of it, why do I, too, expect more women than men to be
efficient and omniscient? Could it be that many of us still turn to
any available grown woman as a sort of Mommy who should intuit where
all her children--especially, the grown men--have run off to? I plan
to ask Yvonne Nicholson her opinion, now that she has returned from a
well-deserved trip around the world with her husband, physics
professor Howard Nicholson. Meanwhile, I take pleasure in not being
able to inform anybody as to where she lunched at any time for the
past six weeks. I don't even know which countries.
photo by Jim Gipe
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