What I’m really thinking: the professor’s wife
I want him to be respected for his achievements, just not at my expense
“Oh, so your husband’s a professor? Well, he must be really clever then.” Well, actually, no – I’m the clever one. He’s very, very, knowledgable in a moderately obscure area of human knowledge. I know loads about everything. I’ve been at academic functions where someone has asked what I do, and when I’ve replied, “Bringing up the next generation” or “Looking after small children”, they have looked blank and turned away. I’m a non-person; not an academic, valueless and probably stupid.
It’s not that I don’t value my partner’s achievements; I’ve been there every step of the way from the first temporary research assistant contract. I know what has gone into it: the all-nighters, the up-at-3am writing papers and lecture notes; the holidays when he never left the computer, producing the books that led to the promotions that led to the holy grail of the title.
I want him to be respected for it, just not at my expense. I’ve got a degree, but I’ve been a bit busy to write any books myself. I’m the one always on her own with the kids at parties, or on family days out, museum trips and cinema visits, because he was always “working”. Don’t get me started on people who think academics have “lovely long holidays”.
And I really am much cleverer. I’ve read more, and retained more general knowledge. I know facts, but I also know how people work, too. He can’t even follow the plot on EastEnders or work out whether the shopping goes in the fridge or the freezer. The absent-minded professor tag really is apt. As Jim Carrey says, “Behind every great man, there is a woman rolling her eyes.”
”https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/14/the-academics-wife-what-really-thinking
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/14/the-academics-wife-what-really-thinking
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