The Department of Hanging Around

Or how I'm like an iris

The Fred Venne tour

So a couple weeks ago, in Amherst College’s daily events email blast, I saw an an ad for a faculty staff gathering at the natural history museum on campus which mentioned attendees would be able to take the Fred Venne tour. Now, I didn’t know who Fred Venne was, but as a former guide myself, I love a good tour, and I’d been meaning to visit the natural history museum. What could be better for my first trip to the Beneski than taking the Fred Venne tour?

A slight hurdle I faced: even though I eat at the campus dining hall, walk my dog on campus, and read the daily events email blast, I don’t technically work for the college. David does, but I knew he’d be busy during the scheduled tour time, so I asked him to RSVP for me: Sarah, David’s wife (if okay). We didn’t receive any notice that I wasn’t welcome, so at the appointed hour, I made my way to the faculty staff gathering.

I worried there would be name tags printed out in advance and mine would be the unwieldy name we’d submitted for the RSVP. Instead, there were blank name tags. Some attendees wrote their name and department, but others just wrote their name, which is what I opted for too. Although if I’d had to state my affiliation, I might have used what David and I jokingly refer to as my role on campus: chairing the Department of Hanging Around.

There aren’t any financial perks for this position and it doesn’t come with the prestige of actually being hired, but being able to soak in the vibes of an elite liberal arts campus with zero expectations and responsibilities is truly its own reward for someone like me who loves learning. I attend talks that interest me and don’t have to worry about how the material fits into my long term career plans. I go to free dance performances and symphony concerts. I eat delicious meals that someone else prepares (dining halls are wasted on the young). And, I take the Fred Venne tour of the natural history museum in the middle of afternoon without having to ask anyone for time off.

There was a position at Amherst College I considered applying for because of my love of tour guiding: being a docent at the Emily Dickinson Museum. In anticipation of submitting an application, I started following the museum on Instagram, and they would often post Dickinson’s poetry and ask followers to interpret the meaning. I usually had no idea, but there’d be other people in the comments offering insightful interpretations. My conclusion: I was not cut out to be a docent at the Emily Dickinson Museum.

I was explaining this Emily Dickinson career dilemma as sort of an amusing anecdote to one of David’s colleagues who was at the faculty staff gathering. Then, as we were being ushered from the informal reception to the tour, I realized the person who’d been standing alone across from us, who could definitely hear our conversation, was someone who worked for the Emily Dickinson Museum. It said so on her name tag.

Chairing the Department of Hanging Around may come with zero expectations and responsibilities, but I am still nonetheless always seeking out validation. Validation that I did not find by admitting my failure to understand Dickinson’s poetry in front of someone who I potentially could have a job interview with if I ever decide to submit an application.

This Week’s Photo-synthesis

An iris.

So how does this relate?

My aunt recently recommended Louise Glück’s poem The Wild Iris to me because she thought it tied in well to the themes of this Substack. The first time I read the poem, it felt as obscure to me as Emily Dickinson’s work. But I’ve spent some time with it and looked at online guides to the poem. I appreciate its theme of rebirth.

See, I always thought my career trajectory would be like a tree. I’d plant it as a sapling and it would grow in full view of the world. But my career is much more like an iris, I bloom in one position for awhile and then retreat back into the earth to recoup and emerge again, the same plant but in a new form.

I’ve been under the sod for awhile now, and it’s been great to start peeking my head out again with this newsletter. I really appreciate all the support from my readers and subscribers.

Is your career trajectory like a tree or an iris?

Until Next Time

Did you know that there are other types of mammoths besides woolly? The one on display at the Beneski Museum, and the inspiration for the college’s mascot, is a Columbian mammoth. In the wild, they’re estimated to have lived on average around sixty years, but the display mammoth died around age forty-six according to a study of the growth rings on its tusks.

Mammoths have six sets of teeth that come in over the course of their lives, and if they don’t die of other causes, they’ll eventually die of starvation because their last set of teeth wear down and they can no longer eat the sharp grasses that make up their diet.

Shout out to Fred Venne for these facts. The tour lived up to the hype!

---