Ms. Mentor's New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and Men in Academia

"The divine Ms. M. is back, with realistic and witty advice about life in academia. Required reading."--Elaine Showalter, Princeton University "At last, Ms. Mentor Unplugged, Uncensored, and Unrepentant! This is a great and clear-headed read for junior academics trying to?nd their way to success through the thicket of professional obfuscation and a good reminder to senior people about just how confusing academe is to the uninitiated."--Cathy Davidson, Duke University "Part Emily Post, part Dame Edna, Ms. Mentor continues to dispense wicked truths in her trademark style. Tucking her professional advice into very funny and frequently appalling stories (I believe every one), she sends encouraging word from the only ivory tower left standing."--William Germano, The Cooper Union Ms. Mentor, that uniquely brilliant and irascible intellectual, is your all-knowing guide through the jungle that is academia today. In the last decade Ms. Mentor's mailbox has been filled to overflowing with thousands of plaintive epistles, rants, and gossipy screeds. A mere fraction has appeared in her celebrated monthly online and print Q&A columns for the Chronicle of Higher Education; her readers' colorful and rebellious ripostes have gone unpublished--until now. Hearing the call for a follow-up to the wildly successful Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia, Ms. Mentor now broadens her counsel to include academics of the male variety. Ms. Mentor knows all about foraging for jobs, about graduate school stars and serfs, and about mentors and underminers, backbiters and whiners. She answers burning questions: Am I too old, too working class, too perfect, too blonde? When should I reproduce? When do I speak up, laugh, and spill the secrets I've gathered? Do I really have to erase my own blackboard? Does academic sex have to be reptilian? From the ivory tower that affords her an unparalleled view of the academic landscape, Ms. Mentor dispenses her perfect wisdom to the huddled masses of professorial newbies, hardbitten oldies, and anxious midcareerists. She gives etiquette lessons to academic couples and gives the tough-talking low-down on adjunct positions. She tells you what to wear, how to make yourself popular, and how to decode academic language ("dynamic!" "collegial!" "seminal!"). She introduces you to characters you must know: Professor Pelvic, Dr. Iron Fist, Mr. Upstart Whelp, Dean Titan, Professor McShameless. In this volume Ms. Mentor once again shares her wide-ranging unexpurgated wisdom, giving tips on bizarre writing rituals, tenure diaries, and time management (Exploding Head Syndrome). She decodes department meetings and teaches you the tricks for getting stellar teaching evaluations. Raw, shocking, precise, clever, absurd--Ms. Mentor has it all.

Ms. Mentor receives all her mail via Emily Toth, Professor of English and Women's Studies at Louisiana State University. Toth is the author of Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious and Unveiling Kate Chopin, and Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.