One of my students was recently shocked to learn that I am younger than he is. This (people thinking I am older than I actually am) has been a recurring phenomenon in my life. While attending a physics conference in high school, one of the professors running the event mistook me for one of the undergrad assistants. Then, two years ago, I worked an entire summer with a prof. who thought I was finishing my MA.
It seems no matter what level of program I’m at, I appear to be one level higher. Moreover, my Age Convincing Factor (ACF) increases in proportion with the density of academics around me in the formula:
ACF= Academic Mass (AM)* / Room Volume (RV)
If my hypothesis is right, then while I’m working on the MA, my professors will mistake me for a PhD. student. Then, when I’m enrolled in a PhD., I’ll immediately convince everyone that I’m a low-level professor. I’ll work my way onto the faculty payroll, and, if all goes according to plan, after two or three years when my colleagues finally sort out my lack of real qualifications, I’ll have tenure and it will be impossible to get rid of me.
One minor obstacle. It seems this phenomenon only occurs when I am in an academic environment. Academics, however, spend a lot of time at the pub. Unfortunately, when I am at the pub, an opposite age phenomenon often occurs and I seemingly appear much younger than I actually am. If I don’t have identification no amount of pleading or flashing of impressive vocabulary will avail.
Since the pubs I (infrequently) frequent are both fairly small and usually filled with academics, I can only conclude that ethanol (C2-H5-OH) works to counteract the ACF:
ACF=AM/RV – [Consumed Ethanol Volume (CEV)*]
In order to maintain a high Age Convincing Factor, I need to find a variable that balances the CEV. Somehow I think books are the key, but there are a number of unknown variables that need to be tested, such as the number and mass carried, abstruseness of title, and author credibility. All of these variables will contribute to what I refer to as the “Pretension Factor” (PF). The goal is to combine pretension variables that the total PF=CEV. This will be known as the “Stabilizing Factor” (SF). The final formula appears:
ACF=AM/RV – [SF]
ACF=AM/RV – [CEV + PF=0]
I suspect carrying a single copy of Sartre’s Nausea , Camus’s The Plague or Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra would have a low PF, based on their small size and popularity among eager first years. (One might carry all three together, but then the effort might look staged.) Derrida’s Of Grammatology would likely only work if the AM was already high. In the past, I have had good results with Seamus Heaney’s Finders Keepers (but that might be because he’s Irish), Don Quixote, and Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, as well as Shakespeare. I think Virginia Woolf might work out, considering she’s fairly well known, but not too obvious (also, I wanted to work her in to one more post).
Any more suggestions? I need to solve this problem so that in a few years I can start writing these theories on some lucky faculty’s budget.
7 April 2008 ~ St. Catharines
Glossary of Terms:
AM = The number of academics in the room.
Bulgakov, Mikhail. n.nom. Russian author and critic of the Soviet regime. Works include The Master and Margarita, The Heart of a Dog, Black Snow, and The Fatal Eggs.
CEV= Number of pints consumed per person.
Punnet, Reginald. n. nom. Geneticist and inventor of the “punnet square”. That’s his smashing photograph in the top left!
