When I was a graduate student at Fancy Pants University, I was a devout groupie of the Young Cutting Edge Famous Profs in the department. Like most of my fellow grad students, I saw the YCEFPs as something to aspire to and a reasonable expectation for my own career path (how wrong I was!). I was also so star-struck by the YCEFPs that I joined my cohort in scorning all the other members of the department — the ancient geezers who seemed completely out of touch, the older Feminists, Marxists, or New Historicists who just didn’t get it, the mommy profs who were never around, the profs who just refused to play the fame game … I didn’t see the value or relevance of any of these other forms of professordom.

There was a prof in my field who was one of those that I disrespected. I took a course with her and her approach just seemed so tame and old-fashioned to me — that is to say, it wasn’t laden with theory. She was a very ordinary person, personality-wise, unlike the sexy, dramatic, intimidating identities of the YCEFPs. I was a lazy student in her class, blew off her advice, and didn’t ask her to serve on my dissertation committee, despite her expertise.

Needless to say, she’s now become a Very Important Person in my field. She’s taken on a high-profile position at a major institution and has become both well-known and well-respected. Luckily for me, she’s also incredibly forgiving and generous. She’s sought me out at conferences, asked me to take on a key role at the institution, and generally treated me like a valued colleague. Meanwhile, I haven’t spoken to any members of my dissertation committee in years, none of the YCEFPs have ever made any effort to include me in their projects or schemes, or really given a damn about the progress of my career.

Moral of the story: you just never know who’s going to turn out to play a role in your academic life, so you best not misbehave.

I’ve blogged before about a disastrous graduate class I had a few years ago, in which a cabal of disgruntled graduate students terrorized their classmates and treated me with open contempt. It was an incredibly upsetting experience for me and made me doubt myself at a grad teacher. It also made me really, really angry at these students for being so disrespectful and arrogant.

I’ve been invited to give a talk next month at another institution and, guess what? One of the cabal members is now in the PhD program there and will be attending my presentation. He sent me an email about how excited he was that I was coming, how interested he was in my talk, and other ass-kissing platitudes. I’m sure he did a double-take when he discovered that I am considered to be a legitimate scholar by his new profs.

After indulging in a brief but delightful sense of retribution, I have vowed to follow the model of my own prof/colleague and be magnanimous towards the little bastard. Because, you never know …