master identity and total institution or "i'd like to thank the academy..."

I attended the departmental graduation ceremony yesterday. I make a special point of being present at the graduation celebration because I usually find it so heart-warming and encouraging. The event reinforces my hope that one day I, too, will finish my dissertation and that my advisors will have some nice things to say about my work and/or myself. Then I will get my moment to thank everyone. I can't tell you how many times I've daydreamed about that moment, standing up there and being done or at least done enough that in the fall my tenure-track appointment will begin.

Of course, yesterday I had additional motives. I like to attend departmental events to see folks. Since I am rarely on campus and have now been absent from the department at least as many years as I was in residence, I don't get much opportunity to keep in touch. Lastly, I wanted to bring E to the graduation. I guess I do have a little interest in showing her off but, ultimately, I want her to know that I am someone besides her mother, that I am a person in the world too. I know that she is too young to understand any of that now, but I guess I'd like her to grow up thinking of her mother as a sociologist-mom instead of having it be something that she must be taught explicitly when she is old enough for such lessons.

I am not sure how different the day was or if it was just me, but I ended up leaving Madison feeling defeated, insignificant and spent.

Many of the people I think of when I think of the department were not there for various reasons. This drove home the fact that the current department is not the department I knew. That the people I did know often did not recognize me (when I say they did not recognize me I mean that they passed over my face as they scanned the room for familiar faces not they didn't remember me when I said hello. I have discussed this elsewhere) confirmed that I am not a part of the life of that place now. If my day arrives and I attend the departmental celebration, I will stand before a room of strangers and my advisors, unable to share funny anecdotes or lament my departure as the loss of a regular companion, will say something about how I am an independent sort.

Then there was the whole motherhood thing. I thought that the event would be a perfect way to allow my mother and scholar roles/identities to interact. After all, the departmental graduation ceremony is a family affair, right? I was imagining that many other students would have their partners and children with them. I was wrong. Even students completing the program, with family in attendance, left the children at home. To top it all off, I brought my partner to help with E in case of trouble. He was uncomfortable since he knew very few people and he made me feel more awkward and out of place by trying to push me to socialize. Then E began fussing and he was forced to pace the hallway with her as there was no comfortable place for a dad and a baby to sit and wait. Naturally, he was grumpy and I began to suspect that I am a selfish and insensitive person for dragging my family all the way to Madison so I could feel connected, so I could persist with the illusion that the relationships between my disparate parts are smooth and seamless.