Dr. Perfect Martini

I got my PhD in 2011, and, since then, I have formally used the title “Dr.” twice, both in the first few months after getting it. The first time, I was signing up for a magazine subscription, and when the website asked for a title, I decided that I had just graduated from “Mr.” so, of the other options, had to be “Dr.”

Not long after that, I was standing in line at the airport behind someone holding a boarding pass that said: “John Bigbrains, PhD.” It seems so obviously wrong to have it on a boarding pass. Unlike Dr. Bigbrains, I knew I couldn’t list that title again.

But that decision came after the second time that I’d insisted on the title, which was when I was taking an introductory chemistry class. I was a visiting assistant professor in my first job out of grad school. It was a good first job, but I got it after months of pain. (That entire job-search process was so soul-crushingly painful that, a decade later, during the 9 months I spent being treated for cancer, I genuinely wasn’t sure if the cancer experience had edged out the academic job market for my worst life experience.) So, having been beaten down by the job search, I was thinking of alternative careers, and one was med school. (See the theme? The prospect of years of sleepless training and mountains of debt also seemed better than returning to the academic job market.) To get to med school, I would have to take some classes, including a chemistry class. The one at Rice University, where I was teaching, was supposed to be very good.

Taking a college class as an adult with a PhD in philosophy was already a strange experience, because, on the one hand, I was way more experienced at college than any of the students. They hadn’t yet been inside their first classroom when I was already starting my college experience. I was an expert at college. On the other hand, they knew way more chemistry than I did and had taken their last chemistry class within the past decade, whereas I had not. They were quickly reviewing what I was learning from the ground up. I was not a threat to the course curve.

The professor in charge of the lab was closer to my age than to the students’, and, even though she treated me as a student in some ways, you can talk to a group of 18-year olds in a way that you would never talk to an adult, let alone to a fellow professor. But at one point I didn’t hear or understand what I was supposed to be doing, and she addressed me, in an ironic tonic, as “Mister Summers,” and I immediately responded “Doctor Summers.” Which came out more dickish than I meant and definitely turned a playful exchange into a pretentious and annoying one.

“Pretentious and annoying,” though, is probably the right characterization of any time someone with a PhD uses the title “Dr.” for oneself. (“Oneself” is pretentious and annoying for different, perhaps related, reasons.) Nevertheless, whenever my students now ask how they should address me, I tell them that the default for their instructors is “Doctor” or “Professor.” With that, I’m mostly avoiding their question about how to address me in particular and instead conveying that, like a vampire’s entering a house, they shouldn’t address their instructors by their first names unless explicitly invited; and, if they’re going to use a title, don’t use “Mr.” or “Ms”; and “Miss” or “Mrs.” could lower their course grade.

This is true only on campus, though—where I have managed to keep a job, despite the job market experience. I wouldn’t introduce myself as “Dr. Summers” to the babysitter, or to an 18-year old barista in the campus cafe, so why use the title for 18-year-old college students? (Although, why am I introducing myself to the barista? They don’t want to be friends.) If someone at a party were to introduce me to an army colonel, the person wouldn’t use my title. Maybe at a very formal event, of the kind I’m not invited to, they would say, “Dr. Summers, meet Col Toughguy.” More likely, though, they would use only his title: “Jesse, this is Col Toughguy.” Only after Col Toughguy smiles his grizzled smile and says, “Col Toughguy was my father; call me Kindheart” do we both call each other by first names. (Then we discuss how baristas never get our names right, always spelling his “Kinard” or “Quinine,” and that I use a Starbucks name of “Simon” to make it easy on everyone, and he uses a Starbucks name of “Bullet,” said with an over-articulated “B” while making the kind of eye contact that lets the barista know this needs to be done correctly and there will be no followup questions.)

“Dr.” as a title belongs in an academic context: I’m “Dr. Summers” to my students, but not at a party. So why is Col Toughguy “Colonel” even at a party, even when he’s not colonizing? (Is that the verb form of “colonel”? I refuse to look that up.) But I’m only “Dr.” on campus, and, having stopped my med school plans after that chemistry class, I’ve never doctored, not even on a campus.

Medical doctors use the title “Dr.” indiscriminately. I don’t know if a colonel is always prepared to colonize, but a medical doctor is always potentially doctoring. It’s so much a part of their identity that I’ve had doctors introduce themselves to me not by saying “I’m Dr. Cleanbottom, and I’ll be performing your colonoscopy today”—which sounds fine—but “My name is ‘Doctor Cleanbottom,’” which, if literally true, means that (1a) that person is so attached to being a physician that they changed their name or (1b) that person’s parents put way too much career pressure on them; and (2) maybe this particular doctor is actually being pretty cool by introducing themselves by their first name, and, in a formal context, they would instead say, “I’m Dr. Doctor Cleanbottom, and this is the tube I’ll put up your butt today.” (Is that a formal context? What counts as formalwear?)

Maybe this is why medical doctors use their titles all the time. They might at any moment do things that, if done by a non-doctor, would be very inappropriate: putting things in your butt, of course, but also declaring you might have a serious illness, palpitating you, draining something, or speaking with great authority about literally anything. (That’s a joke: speaking with great authority is a skill anyone with a terminal degree1 can develop.)

If this is right, then physicians use their titles everywhere because there is no context in which they’re not a doctor. They can do an exam in the hospital or in their office or in their living room: the only differences are how much equipment they have on hand and whether your outfit opens entirely in the back. Colonels, too, don’t need to be standing in a tent with maps spread out in front of them to be colonizing: they can colonize from anywhere. But if the lack of necessary context is the explanation of why they use their titles everywhere, then why aren’t academic titles used everywhere? Someone with a PhD has the same expertise in and out of the classroom, at or away from a university, yet they’re only “Dr.” to students. So context isn’t quite the explanation.

Another possibility is that the titles reflect how much we respect that person’s titled position, and that has something to do with context, but there’s more to it. Religious titles, for example, are definitely used by people who aren’t in that church, but who are still close to it. Where I grew up, lots of people were “pastor” or “reverend” or “preacher,” but whether you used the title for someone was determined less by whether you were in their church, and more by whether you were in a similar enough church or wanted to be respectful. Many religions’ practitioners call each other “brother” or “sister,” but calling someone “brother” shows that you’re on the inside of that group, or at least that you have some respect for it. “Father” for a priest or “rabbi” are widespread, I suppose, and maybe there’s a story about why those are more widely recognized or respected in the US.

If that’s right, then the reason “Dr.” for a PhD is pretentious (and therefore also annoying) is because, while the title is legitimate, even earned, it deserves respect only in certain contexts, mostly by undergraduates. A fencing master doesn’t introduce herself as “Maître Flèche” outside of the fencing club because, while she’s definitely an expert there, using her title elsewhere would be insisting that we’re all at least a little into fencing, so we should respect her expertise.

The non-pretentious way of doing this is when you use a title to invite a person into your context, but you’re not asking for any respect in that context. The person on my doorstep introducing himself as “Brother Gospel” is inviting me into the church by getting me to think in his terms right from the beginning. “Brother Gospel” isn’t pretentious, though, because “brother” is an equalizing title: we’re all siblings here. “Dr. Bigbrains,” by contrast, is using a title that invites you into a context in which he’s an expert on something. And I don’t care about his expertise while boarding a flight. I only care about the pilot’s expertise, and I don’t even call the pilot “Pilot.”2

By offering my title, I’m suggesting someone is in a context in which the title is appropriate for them to understand. The title says not just “this is what I am,” but “this is what I am to you.” If you call yourself “Dungeon Master” when we meet, then I assume you think I’m into D&D and/or leather, so you’re a dungeon master to me.

This is not the same as saying “this is what I am for you”: you might not be my dungeon master. We might just be at a D&D convention. The US president is introduced to everyone, even French citizens, as “Mr. President.”3 A citizen of France could say “Mr. President” to the US president because that title doesn’t mean “you’re my president,” only that, to me, you’re a president. If the president is also a fencing master, though, most people aren’t going to call him “Maître,” though, at a fencing club, the French fencer might call him “Maître” and leave off the “President” entirely. (Or “Maître President”?) For a rabbi or a preacher or a colonel, they might not be mine, but I recognize that title as something that they are to me. I’m in a world with priests and rabbis and colonels in it. The person on my front porch, though, isn’t a brother to me: I’m explicitly rejecting joining him in his world.

Introducing yourself with a title is therefore telling the person what you are to them. And if what you are to them is something that would demand some respect, then it’s also asking for that respect. That’s fine when I’m in the doctor’s office, where the person is presumably a doctor to me, even if not my doctor. And it makes sense on campus, where my title means something to the students, even if not to anyone else. It’s plausible enough that physicians and colonels and priests and rabbis and presidents are roles whose contexts are more or less US wide.

Of course, if a person introduces someone with a title, it might be nothing more than sharing some personal information to get the conversation going: “This is Dr. Cleanbottom. He’s a fencing dungeon master from Indiana who dabbles in military strategy.” But introducing someone by their title suggests we’re in the context in which that title matters; for a PhD, it suggests a context in which I would have some respect. If I introduce myself that way, I’m suggesting we’re in a context in which I’m some kind of an expert to you, which does seem pretentious and annoying.