Working to Make Work in Academia Work for You, reads the subtitle to Chris’s talk. Ned tries not to frown. The ticket he’s looking for is a graduation cap, robe, and doctoral hood, Portland in his rearview mirror, and a life where he gets to see his daughter every week—not stuck in a city two hours north of her. He slumps in his chair and rolls it farther away from Abbot. One of the wheels sticks, and when it gives out a squeak, Abbot glances at him from behind those glasses.
“We want to be the best,” Chris says to the room, his hands rubbing together as he bounces on his toes. “Nationally, internationally, student recruitment, graduation placements, research initiatives, all of it.” Another bounce. “And how do we do that? How do we stand out from the crowd, lead the pack, and show them what we’re made of here at Callahan University?”
Silence. Across the table, Aliyah’s phone buzzes.
“Get back to work?” she asks, winding a long thin braid through her fingers as she taps at her phone.
Beside her, Lee snorts a laugh. Doctor Kerr, she’d introduced herself the first day of the seminar Ned took with her. Back then, her blonde hair had been shaved on one side and she’d held class on the quad in the warm sunshine. She glances at Ned and rolls her eyes. He tries to muster up a grin for her, though it feels more like a grimace.
“People, people, no,” Chris says. “That’s exactly why we’re here: we’re going to mix things up. Take a new approach. Do what no other top university is doing. We”—Chris holds up his hands, palms out, his face lit up—“we’re going to revolutionize academia.”
Aliyah’s phone buzzes again. Next to Ned, Abbot takes a sip of his tea. Chris grins around the room.
“Can we talk about research funding?” Lee asks.
Chris drops his hands.
“We’re tackling the problem from the bottom up,” he says and clicks to the next slide. “The number of academics leaving the field for other jobs, faculty’s dissatisfaction with personal lives, the shift away from viewing academia as an attractive career—there’s a fix for this. And it’s called: balance.”
Ned’s chair squeaks again. Aliyah scrolls through her phone.
“This is going to be a department-wide initiative, starting this semester. We’re talking hobbies, we’re talking time with family, we’re talking weekends away from the office, nights without computers, evenings with friends, all of it. No more feeling like you should be working all hours of the day. Go outside, live your life, and work smarter, not just harder.”
Someone clears their throat. Aliyah’s phone buzzes again and Lee purses her lips, her arms crossed. Chris grins at them. Ned spins his chair back and forth slowly, scratching at his eyebrow with his thumbnail. Yikes, he would mutter if it were anyone next to him other than Abbot.
When Chris finally clicks through his last slide, it’s late enough that the evening’s a dark, deep blue. Baxter, Ned thinks as Chris finally starts to wrap up. He glances out the window as everyone scrapes their chairs back from the table. Baxter’s there and sure enough, someone’s sitting with him, a long, dark brown braid down her back and her hands scratching over his belly. Well, good. At least between Ned and his dog, one of them is having a nice enough evening.
“My dissertation,” Ned says, leaning across the table as Chris folds his laptop closed. “Can I just get an idea of what you want to talk about?”
“More analysis,” Chris says. He’s still grinning.
Ned cocks his head. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Your work is perfect. We’re going to make it even better.” Chris points at him. “I want you to go back and add in a really thorough analysis of big-picture numbers. We’re going to knock the socks off everyone clamoring to hire you.”
“Me?” Ned asks. As far as he knows, exactly zero people are clamoring to hire him. And no, Chris isn’t pointing to him, Ned realizes too slowly. He’s pointing at Abbot.
“You’ll help him out,” Chris says, that finger leveled right at Abbot’s chest.
Ned blinks. ”What?”
“I’m sorry?” Abbot asks.
“Ned doesn’t have a quantitative researcher on his committee.” Chris waves toward the back of the room, where most of the faculty have already made their break for freedom. Of course Ned doesn’t have a quantitative researcher overseeing his work—it’s not quantitative work. He did hours—hours—of interviews, which he then transcribed on his weekends, Peggy sitting at his feet with her stuffed dinosaurs, begging him to play with her.
“Chris,” Ned says.
“That will take months,” Abbot says. No, Ned can so clearly hear.
It echoes his own thoughts. No, no, no—he’s done. He’s supposed to be done.
“Oh, no it won’t, Ned’s a smart cookie.” Chris jostles Ned’s shoulder. “Look at you, the only grad student in the room with us, top teaching evals, and you’re so close to earning your degree. You’ll sail through this.”
Ned stares at him. He’s the only grad student here because everyone else had the sense to take research positions, rather than have to work for Chris and his overbearing, unbridled enthusiasm.
Ned clears his throat. He doesn’t look at Abbot beside him. “That type of statistics really isn’t my strength.”
“Which is why Henry here will be helping you,” Chris says. “You’ll do great.”
Henry, Ned thinks. Apparently not everyone has to follow Abbot’s strict, uncompromising rules about calling him professor. Ned’s stomach turns over and he pushes his hand back into his hair. “Chris—Chris, wait, this isn’t—”
“Gotta get home.” Chris tucks his laptop under his arm. He gives Ned a smack on the shoulder and then pushes past him. “Setting an example, you know? I’m off to dinner with the wife.”
“Chris,” Ned tries again, but Chris is gone and it’s just Ned and Abbot left as the door swings closed.
Ned stands quickly and his chair squeaks again. Abbot glances down at the wheels.
“I’ll, uh—” Ned starts. He stops. Talk to Chris, is maybe what he was going to say. Be in touch, he could finish that sentence with. Get us out of this, is what he wants to blurt out. He’s not working with Abbot all semester—no. No. There’s no way.
He grabs his backpack and pushes his way out of the room. Outside, whoever was petting Baxter is gone, and he jumps up when he sees Ned, two leaves stuck to his bushy tail and his tongue hanging from his mouth.
“Chris is fucking absurd,” Ned says to him, dumping out his water.
What a waste of an evening that was. Baxter stretches his back legs one at a time, and then bows down to stretch his front legs too, long tail held high in the air. Whatever. Chris’s initiative will fade like every new idea introduced at the beginning of a semester: rampantly discussed for a week, and then lost to the mire of approaching midterms.
Last year, Chris had wanted them to mentor high school students, and the year before was a fitness challenge. That had at least lasted until the beginning of October, but only because Chris had ponied up for Celtics tickets for the winner, and Lee had wanted to take Minori to a game. This round of “work hard, play hard,” as Chris’s final slide had read, would wither away soon enough.