Solitude and the Academic

Before I began my grad school adventure, I met with a friend who is a professor of history in a very prestigious university.  When I asked him what he liked about academia, he answered, “The Solitude.”

Yesterday I chatted with a friend, another grad student spending her year abroad to conduct dissertation research.  After all the howareyous, we both admitted to being a little lonely.  Luckily, I have the benefit of being surrounded by my family and living in a big and rowdy city, but there is something about the camaraderie of students in a graduate school setting that sparks the mind and lights a fire under your butt.  Part of it is that I am a classic extrovert: someone who gains energy by experiencing the energy of other people.  But it is more than that.  When you shoot the breeze in an academic setting, you can’t help but connect ideas (and listen to others connecting them) in new and novel ways.  You happen upon a lecture that makes you go hmmmm…. You dish about the politics of the department that helps prepare you for your (hopefully) future life as a faculty member. And there is the inevitable competition that can productively push you to work just a bit harder. 

Even though I left my academic city 7 months ago, I haven’t had much of that camaraderie since I went on maternity leave in late 2011.  You’d think I would be thriving in the solitary work environment because I’ve had so much time to get used to it.  But solitude is still a really hard place for me to work.  I do not agree with my historian friend quoted above.  I do not look forward to the solitude that is necessary to push out papers, the currency of academia.  Rather I love the dissent of the classroom, the outcomes that happen when minds come together to solve problems, and the knowing rolled-eye look that comes from a colleague who “gets it”.  Every job has aspects that you may not prefer.  I hope that I can make the best of the necessary solitude in order to maximize the social parts of this career choice.  Otherwise….. I’ll be in trouble.