The empty chair

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While I was finishing a paper at home, a colleague from the administrative staff posted a photo on the internal network: an empty corridor, with the caption, “The summer silence on campus… where is everyone?” The reactions were predictable:  😊   🏖️   😎 Light-hearted, no doubt. And yet beneath the jokes ran something more persistent: a quiet undercurrent of suspicion. “You must be at the pool every day, right?” Or, to my students: “You must be left to fend for yourself, your supervisor is never around.” It made me wonder: when did being present become the ultimate proof of working? If I really had spent all that time by the pool, I would probably have an Olympic medal by now – not a pile of unfinished articles, reviewer comments, and looming deadlines. In academia, two worlds quietly coexist. For support staff, the campus is the workplace. Work has fixed hours, fixed locations, and above all: visibility. If you are there, you are working. If you are not, apparently you ...
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About

I am Ineke Mennen — professor of applied linguistics, with a specialisation in second language pronunciation. After more than thirty years in academia, I write here about what the handbooks leave out: the unwritten rules, the informal power structures, and the quiet mechanisms that shape academic life.

For the full story of why this blog exists — and why I wrote it anonymously for so long — read I was anonymous.

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