Wondering if my education and experience as a professor
prepared me, Professor Dorris, to become president of the United States.
Here’s what I learned and experienced in the land of the
professoriate.
First, there is the education and training aspect of professorial
qualifications.
I earned a Ph.D. degree, and in the process learned how to
critically think, but more importantly, how to think critically. I learned to
criticize others’ ideas, harshly when to my advantage, coyly when it suited me, and on any side of an argument that caught my fancy.
As my favorite university president used to say, with some pride, “A professor
is one who thinks otherwise.”
I learned that the degree was not designed to prepare me to be a team
player. For example, professors are rewarded less for publications in which
there are multiple authors than those single-authored papers. There can be no "team" in I.
The
most accurate advice I received prior to entering a Ph.D. degree experience
was, “If you want to be happy in as a professor, choose a very small focused
area of research in which you are passionate, focus on that, and stay away from
committees, administration, and students.” I did not follow the advice, but it was sound advice nonetheless.
Successful professors as scholars also greet communication
from others with an attitude that automatically questions the legitimacy of the
message and its sender. In other words, “I can think of 12 reasons to treat you and
your message as unworthy of my attention” whether or not I know you or the
content of your message.
Professors as scholars are rewarded for focusing on narrowly-focused research rather than broadly- focused research. For example, a great friend of mine earned his Ph.D. in bird lice;
the degree was in biology; the degree was in entomology; but the degree was
really in bird lice--that's where he became THE specialist. People with Ph.D.s in history are generally not “big
picture” historians; rather, they have spent their professorial lives focused
on one small aspect of one particular segment of history related to one
particular part of the world. This reality results in university students
studying “U.S. History to 1865” followed by “U.S. History From 1865”, etc. It
is frequently the case that a professor who is deemed qualified to teach the
former is not so deemed to teach the latter.
Scholarly journals are weighted
as to their importance; the more important a journal is the narrower its focus,
generally. In most universities, the importance of the journals in which one publishes are synonymous with the importance of the professor as scholar.
Secondly, there is the professor in the classroom.
Traditional university classrooms are generally laid out
physically like those classrooms we remember fondly from high school. Students
are put in rows facing the professor. Behaviors are similar as well. Students
raise their hands to speak, give the professors their best attempts to look
interested, if not raptly attentive, and take notes. I used to train my Intro
to Business students (300 in an auditorium) how to look me in the eyes, look
down at their papers, and make me believe they were interested. Told them this
was an important business skill. They believed me, because Professor Dorris was always correct.
Professors profess and students listen, write papers, and
take exams which professors grade. Professors thereby have captive audiences
over whom they very considerable power, viz. a viz. their grades. The presence of captive audiences is
addictive to most professors. Professors become accustomed to the complete attention (feigned or not)
of a captive audience dependent them for their success or failure.
Professors are trained to be disagreeable, trained
to disagree, are used to having captive audiences, and are not experienced with
dealing with people who disagree with us.
Wondering why professorial credentials make any candidate
viable to become president.
