Four Things in My Academic Career I Will Never Apologize For

We need to stop making people feel less than for not conforming to expectations

If you have read my recent article, you know that I have not had an easy time in academia. My thirteen-year career has been fraught with delays, discord, and disappointments.

Along the way, I have wondered what I could have done differently to change the outcome. I have come to accept that whatever errors I have made, the choices that reflect who I am at my core should not be grounds for my exclusion.

Russian literature is not a field most people think of when choosing their specialization. Whenever I reveal my discipline, I am met with surprise and the inevitable question: What made you want to study Russian?

The question is fair enough; Russian literature is an unusual choice. But as a woman of color, I have noticed that those comments are tinged not only with curiosity but incredulity.

In my postdoctoral position as a Mellon fellow and in my first appointment as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature, I was asked by students and colleagues if, in fact, I spoke Russian. Considering I have a doctorate in the field and have been hired as faculty, wouldn’t they assume that I have the fluency a foreign language field requires? Yet something about my face, my skin color, my hair, must have given them pause. I have asked White colleagues in Russian over the years if anyone has asked them these same questions, and all of them have answered no.

I am intelligent. I have interests, insights, and opinions, especially about the subjects I study and teach. I am intellectually curious and love to engage in scholarly debate. Yet as a graduate student, my professors always seemed surprised when I spoke up. At an annual conference, after a panel, I followed up with the speaker to talk more about the subject. One of my professors came over, and after we had finished, he introduced me as his graduate student. “This is Sarah,” he said. “She always speaks her mind.”

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