the velveteen rabbit

Last week was a goofy sort week. It was a short week, too, since Monday was part of the independence holiday weekend. Despite losing Monday (or, rather, spending Monday driving down to Lobatse to see what I could see), I had lunch and a post-lunch chat with a potential informant who did a lot of work trying to help me understand how the U.S. Global AIDS Program works. He's a nice guy, though rather suspicious of me, I think, but he took an awful lot of time to help me understand how the whole CDC/Global AIDS etc. structure is laid out. I still don't understand it, but I know more than I did.

Contrast this, then, with my meeting with another potential informant. This one was a scientist-type (while the other guy had been a public health administration type). I'd heard good things about this scientist from a lot of people, and he certainly is very friendly, has got a good handle on Setswana, and has offered a lot of help to a recently-arrived fresh-out-of-undergrad Fulbrighter with whom I've become acquainted. That said, he was more in "how can I help you understand the Botswana IRB" mode than in "informant" mode. In other words, I was having a hard time getting him to: a) understand what I was doing; b) tell me anything useful about how his organization operates. I just found him ... a little patronizing. Helpful, but patronizing nonetheless... about my research, about my Setswana skills, about my research permit process, you name it.

Maybe if I were 22, I wouldn't mind. And the 22-year-olds are nice, but I'm feeling sort of caught in between. I'm not 22, and I don't want to be treated like I'm fresh out of college. That said, I don't have the sort of 'real' job or 'real' institutional affiliations or -- to be frank -- the 'real' cash flow that the other professional or semi-professional adults (expat and Batswana) who are closer to my age seem to have. Nor do people really understand, I think, why a 30 year old would still be in the middle of a program, rather than already finished with it.

This sort of falls in line with what people say about grad school being infantilizing: you wind up professionalizing like hell while still living like a 22 year old. So you expect a certain amount of respect when you're, say, a candidate, because you've worked your butt off, but people outside the academy still treat you like you're some kind of bumbling ingénue. That's annoying. I feel like the velveteen rabbit. People who already have their degrees seem like they've got more claim to being 'real'.

That said, I am adjusting to the fact that field work -- at least, early field work -- involves a lot of people treating you like you're a Grade A idiot, and a lot of suspicion. The longer I'm here, happier I am that I'm not trying to do this project in a year.