doctor/professor/etc

[MICHAEL SALOVESH]

I tell my students that I follow the customs under which I was trained
at the U of Chicago. There were only four reasons to call anyone
"Doctor":

1. Curers, medicine men, dentists, psychiatrists, and practitioners of
similar medical arts insist on it. Comply on the general theory that
it's a bad idea to argue with a barber when he has a razor at your
throat.

2. It is reasonable to say "congratulations, doctor!" to someone who
successfully defended her dissertation this morning.  Of course, this is
a one-time usage.

3. Once in a while, we ordinary mortals have the great good fortune to
meet, or interact with, or talk about one of the giants: a Nobel Prize
winner, say, who happens to be a great and lovable human being who also
wears a white hat to conceal a well-deserved halo. In such a case,
there's nothing left to indicate our respect  save to say "Doctor".
Enrico Fermi would have universally been addressed as "Doctor Fermi" if
he hadn't been such an all-round good guy.

Everyone else is "Mr.", "Mrs.", "Miss", or "Ms." in formal address,
"First- name Last-name" as a term of reference if there's a problem of
ambiguity, or simply "Last-name" when the reference is clear. "Professor
Last-name" emphasizes an academic connection if that's what you want to
do.

Terms of address indicate an individual's expressed personal choice,
with possible implications of degree of intimacy or status equality or
inequality. (In anthro at Chicago, where I did my graduate work, there
were some profs who students called by their first names more or less
from the day of their first registration for a course in the department.
A student's progress through grad school was marked by a tendency to
first-name profs of ever-increasing levels of professional and personal
prestige. You were pretty well advanced in your studies before you
started to call Professor Eggan "Fred". I don't remember hearing ANY
student talk of, let alone address, Robert Redfield as "Bob" -- but
then, the other senior faculty seldom did, either.)

Yes, I know I said there were FOUR reasons for addressing someone as
"Doctor". The fourth was a subtle snub:

4. "All right, you pompous ass: Who the hell do you think YOU are,
*Doctor*?"

I tell my students not to call me "Doctor" because I know I don't belong
in the first three categories and I don't need the insult of the fourth.
I freely accept "Mike"or "Mr. Salovesh" or "Professor Salovesh". I am
delighted when students reinvent the idea of calling me "Dr. Mike", a
term which reappears in about three-year cycles.

--  mike salovesh     <m-salovesh-9 at alumni.uchicago.edu>    PEACE !!!


On Sat, 14 May 2005, Patti J. Kurtz wrote:

>I do this with my undergrads, too-- esp. upper level students.
Freshmen
>I give the choice of first name or "Dr. Kurtz."  Funny, though, how
even
>though I never give 'em this choice, I often get "Mrs. Kurtz."  Maybe
>it's because they're fresh out of high school and used to that as a
>honorific title for their teachers.   But I wonder if the male profs
get
>"Mr." or "Dr." more often.

Oh, almost all my undergraduate students call me "Mrs. Dumas" - esp. in
email.

Bethany