Confession

About a year ago, at the end of fall semester 2010, I saw my adviser for the last time. I gave hir a nicely bound copy of my dissertation. Ze gave me a copy of hir recently published new book.

I have not read the book yet. No, not even skimmed the first chapter.

Now, to be clear, I had and still have a lot of respect for this professor. I like the way ze writes. Professor colleagues have described hir as someone "incapable of writing badly." I agree. Also, I chose to work with hir because I thought hir scholarship had more substance and less shit than ... the norm in my field.

So why have I not yet read the book? Two possible reasons come to mind:

1. I have subconsciously decided that academe, even at its best, is full of shit and not worth my time.

2. I have worked hard at distancing myself from something I once cared about a great deal over the last year and resist the danger of genuinely engaging as a mode of postacademic self-preservation.

Probably, it's some combination of the two.

My Take on Academic Conferences

UPDATE: Apparently, according to this IHE article, my experience is not at all uncommon. But if you're reading this blog, you probably knew that already -- probably from your own "beer and circuses" conference experiences. And then there's this, too. How timely!

A few recent posts around the blogosphere, such as here and here, have exposed academic conferences for the expensive charades they often are. While my experiences differ somewhat from what others have written, I don't really disagree with their assessment. Here are some reasons why the conference I've been invited to and will present at this spring will most likely be my last:

Conferences really are too damned expensive to be paying for out-of-pocket, most especially if you are an underpaid graduate student or adjunct, since they are, for all practical purposes, "required" for furthering your academic career.
Didn't you just throw up a little in your mouth when I said "furthering your academic career"? Of course you did! In all seriousness, the only reason I participated in as many conferences as I did as a graduate student was I had funding. My department had a policy about allotting X dollars to each graduate student for X number of years to attend conferences IF AND ONLY IF you were presenting a paper. So, I presented a bunch of papers and got funding. When this source ran dry, I applied for outside travel grants and got them.

When I think about it in retrospect, what a waste! Providing travel funds to graduate students allowed the department to pat itself on the back for "supporting" us with what must have essentially been a mere drop in their budgetary bucket, certainly MUCH less than paying us a fair wage for teaching, while at the same time, in practical terms doing absolutely NOTHING to further our "careers." But I never would have gone without that "support," so I suppose I should be grateful, right? Right.

I will be paying for this upcoming conference out-of-pocket. Not a big deal, really. I can afford my own plane ticket and room, eat decent meals, and even buy myself a few drinks without draining my bank account. But ... if I had to absorb this expense every year, more than once a year ... on an adjunct's salary? Even an assistant prof's salary?? You've got to be kidding. What would be the point, if not "furthering your career"? Intellectual development? Yeah. I just threw up in my mouth a little more ...

Conference papers can be quite good but mostly are quite bad ... and what's the point anyway?
I've heard some astonishingly good papers over the years, papers that entertained, papers that made me think in ways I'd never thought before, papers that set my brain on fire through the sheer power and play of language. Papers that just plain blew my mind. But ... a lot of papers put me to sleep, too. More often than not, conference papers are less than brilliant.

Personally, I've been on both sides of the good/bad paper divide. I know well the time and effort it takes to write a paper that puts people on the edges of their chairs, a paper praised by a leading scholar in your field, a paper that leads to a publication. All of those things have happened to me. But I've also pulled papers out of my ass the night before I left town for the conference. Those papers were terrible. No doubt I put a few people to sleep. No doubt a few sensitive souls were embarrassed on my behalf.

My point, though, is this: What's the difference? Nobody cares if you read a boring paper. They'd just as soon sleep or surreptitiously pull out their laptops and work on their own papers anyway, pretending they're taking notes. On the other hand, if you read a brilliant paper, you'll certainly feel better about yourself ... you'll receive praise and possibly publication invitations. But none of this will lead to a job in academe. Simply going to "share ideas" may leave you intellectually enriched (wait, I think I just threw up a little in my mouth again!!), but you won't be able to appreciate your intellectual enrichment properly because you'll also be just plain broke.

Social events at conferences bring out the worst in the type of socially challenged people one often finds among academics.
I usually hide out in my hotel room and avoid these things like the plague. At the last conference I attended, I made the mistake of going to one. There was an open bar. Actually several. On my third drink, I found myself in a conversation with the chair of one panel I had presented on and a fellow presenter from my other panel (yes, I presented on two panels at the same conference and was loopy with the excitement of it all ... which is why I went to the reception ...). So, I'm talking to these people, and, as the alcoholic fog begins to clear, I realize that BOTH of them are A) drunker than I am and B) hitting on me. WTF?!? And, as if that weren't awkward enough, one is a man and the other a woman, and they ARE TRYING TO GET RID OF EACH OTHER so as to have my undivided attention. And (!!?) just as this is occurring to me, to my horror, I also realize a member of my committee (this is pre-defense, mind you), possibly drunker than all of us, has been watching the entire spectacle for god only knows how long. You better believe I excused myself and got the f#$k away from there as fast as I possibly could.

Hopefully, at the upcoming conference, I will have the sense to remind myself of this travesty and avoid similar situations. But, then again, who cares? Since I am no longer under the delusion that such "networking" will further my career, why not enjoy the free booze? Lecherous colleagues and leering committee members be damned.

*     *     *     *     *

In all seriousness, I will do my best to write a "good" paper rather than one that puts people to sleep, and paying my own way for once will help me better appreciate why this will likely be my last conference.

If you're still having conference envy, want a good laugh, and haven't read this book yet, I highly recommend it.

Your Monday Funny (Er, Gallows Humor)

I can confirm this firsthand. When I was in graduate school, Peaches went through a stint of unemployment. I was teaching 3 classes, working on my dissertation, going to conferences, getting my first peer-reviewed article published ... the whole academic 9 yards. My entire monthly adjunct salary was ... not enough to cover our mortgage payments. You know how much Peaches got for sitting around all day playing computer games and waiting for recruiters to call? Enough to pay the mortgage. And the recruiters? They did call, and he got another job soon enough. Me? Well, you know the rest of my story ...

Another Postacademic Blog

While the author of Songwriters on Process does not expressly identify himself as a postacademic, he is, in fact, just that. Here's someone with a Ph.D. in English, someone who actually had a tenure-track job which he left several years ago, someone who currently has a nonacademic job he likes that lets him use skills he developed as an academic, and a blog where he writes about the art of writing. What more could a former English prof, who gave up academe to live in a vibrant city and make a decent income, ask for?

So, go on over there and check out the blog. The substance of the blog posts may not be of special interest to postacademics who aren't into music or songwriting, but, given the memes of encouragement and looking ahead that have been going around lately, it might be valuable to take a peek into the life of someone who's a few years ahead of us in this postacademic adventure. Here's someone who left academe gladly and willingly. Even though he was "one of the lucky ones" like Amanda Kraus with a tenure-track job, he saw through the bullshit and got the hell out. Here's someone who is now a happy and successful postacademic. In a few years -- hopefully sooner! (and some of us already!!) -- we will be, too.

Nonacademic Jobs That Require Academic Credentials

Every now and then I poke around the interwebs to see what's out there for postacademcis. I'm not talking about the many, many more jobs out there, like my current one, that any postacademic could do but which do not require academic credentials. I'm talking about the ones that actually want you to have that alphabet soup after your name, even if what you'd be doing isn't exactly what you taught to undergrads or wrote your dissertation about.

My sense is that people in the social sciences and in history (and, of course, the hard sciences) have a better shot at finding such a position (because there are more positions out there demanding their particular background) than those of us in literature and languages or other humanities fields. But, my point in this post is to suggest, especially to those of you still inside academe and trying to figure out an exit strategy, that you should do some research. Besides learning what employers want regardless of whether you have a PhD or not, spend some time figuring out what employers want from job seekers WITH PhDs and see if you can position yourself from the beginning of your nonacademic job search to give it to them.

To get you thinking positively, below is an ad for a position I stumbled on today. It's for someone with a social sciences background, so I won't be applying for it. However, it is still an open position. Go for it if the qualifications sound like you and you are ready to make the leap!

Job Title: Item Development Associate/Analyst

Overview:
The [Organization's Name] is a not-for-profit behavioral and social science research organization founded in 1946. {Organization's] Federal Statistics Program (FSP) assists its government client by providing technical support and content expertise in the management, implementation, and reporting of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know in various subject areas. We are currently seeking an Item Development Associate/Analyst for an upcoming project in the development of the NAEP background questionnaires.

Responsibilities:
In conjunction with assessments of 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-graders’ knowledge in different subject areas, background questionnaires are completed by students, teachers, and school administrators. The questionnaires cover topics such as demographics, course taking, teacher education and training, class-room organization, instruction, and school characteristics and policies. The data are collected using self-administered paper-and-pencil and computer-based modes. The Item Development Associate/Analyst will work closely with FSP’s item development team, the client, and contractors to ensure that data collected by the NAEP background questionnaires are accurate, valid, and will provide relevant information for national and state policy makers, researchers, educators, and the general public.

Responsibilities:
• Assist in the development of student, teacher, and school background questionnaires by reviewing and providing comments on background questionnaire items for different subjects and grade levels
• Keep up with the latest research on item writing, both computer-based and paper-and-pencil, as well as issues related to multi-mode data collections
• Review and evaluate item performance using data from past assessments
• Participate in meetings with clients and other contractors
• Review and provide comments on cognitive laboratory samples and protocols
• Observe cognitive laboratory sessions and operational data collections if requested
• Conduct studies related to data quality

Qualifications:

• A Master’s degree or Ph.D. in survey methodology, education, sociology, or other social sciences • Prior experience writing items for surveys (either paper or online) is required • Familiarity with large-scale assessment and basic statistics • Excellent oral and written communication skills • Ability to work independently and as a member of a team • Detail-oriented and able to produce high-quality work within tight deadlines • Proficiency with MS Office • Familiarity with SAS, Stata, or SPSS Writing samples and transcripts may be required of candidates selected to interview.

Well, as I said, being a lit. rather than a soc. person (and not really looking right now anyway), this particular job isn't for me, but there are other jobs out there if you do your research. I just wanted to give you a positive nudge today and a glimmer of REASONABLE hope (as opposed to the totally unreasonable bs kind you get inside academe about tt jobs).

You DO have options out there besides eternal adjuncthood and Starbucks, sometimes seemingly your only options yet a false, terrifying, and utterly misguided and reductive dichotomy if ever there was one!

Via, an article about job prospects aimed mostly at undergrads, but the takeaway for grad students planning to stick it out for another semester or year is that you might seriously want to consider getting an internship rather than teaching an extra class.

"Real World" Lessons from Academe: Back It Up, Bub

A series of frantic phone calls and emails exchanged today:

Think Tank Boss: "recent Ph.D., we need you to do some research. Think Tank Project Director put out a press release on Subject X and is now being harassed by Politifact to back up what ze said. TTPD needs sources ASAP that argue in favor of Subject X."

Me: "Sure, no problem."

Think Tank Boss: "And get sources that are NOT from the industry association that supports Subject X. Those could be considered biased."

Me: "Sure, no problem."

So, I go poking around Google and then Google Scholar (since I no longer have remote access to the databases at Grad U) and a few other places. Subject X is not really all THAT controversial, and Think Tank Project Director hasn't said anything particularly novel about it. And I have no trouble finding some peer-reviewed sources that back hir up. All I can access, though, without either paying money for one-time use or going up to Grad U, are abstracts. Possibly this is good enough, and so I forward the abstracts, appropriately highlighted, along to Think Tank Project Director.

TTPD to me on the phone minutes later: "Oh, this is great! Thanks for sending this along, but is there any way we can get the full documents? This Politifact reporter is seriously on my case. Ze is just LOOKING for something to catch me on. I already sent hir my original sources, but ze rejected them, because they were all either industry publications or just abstracts, like the ones you sent. Ze wants to know I have actually USED good sources to back up what I said."

Me: "Well, I can go up to Grad U and get the full text for you. Or, the quickest way to get it, if you want to pay the $30 per article the web database services are charging, you can download them yourself right now."

TTPD sending off sparks across the phone wires, bristling at the Politifact reporter for having the audacity to ... check facts: "Oh, no, I don't want to send you all the way up to Grad U for this. I'm sure you have other things to do in the office."

Me: "I wouldn't mind at all. I'm always eager for an excuse to go to the library."

TTPD: "No, no. You said I could pay to get these? How do I do that?"

I explain how to do that and we hang up. Fifteen minutes later, TTPD calls again.

TTPD: "You know, I'm here today at Southern State's statehouse, and they have a library, and it seems the library subscribes to the journals. And I found the articles right here in bound volumes on the shelves! So, I'm just going to, I think, make copies and scan them and send them to the reporter!"

Me: "Great. Glad you found what you needed. Hope it does the job."

*     *     *     *     *

Libraries. Wow! Who knew that's where you were supposed to go do your research? Ideally, you should do it, you know, BEFORE you turn in a paper or ... put out a press release, but, hey, better late than never.

Via

Mad World

You might imagine the world of work outside academe is a "mad world," where

All around [you] are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

And you wouldn't be entirely wrong. But academe has its own share of "sorrow" and "no tomorrow," and, if you've found your way to this blog, you, too, probably "find it hard to take/When people run in circles."

Tears for Fears wrote the original song. Alex Parks covered it more recently. I like the Gary Jules version:

No one ever said any of this living business was easy ... If you're starting to think you're crazy because things no longer seem to be what everybody else says they should be, possibly it's because you're starting to perceive things closer to how they really are ...

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

One thing us postacademics get really tired of hearing really quickly is some version of the following:

If I were in your shoes, I NEVER would have made the mistake of going to graduate school. Everybody knows there are no jobs in academe, and nobody in their right mind should spend that much time, effort, and money on education and professional training that will NEVER pay off with a job. I just can't understand why so many otherwise smart people make such a stupid choice.

To be fair, I don't hear this, personally, all that often. But just the other day, an acquaintance was telling me about a friend, somebody still in her 20s but gainfully employed as a journalist, who is seriously considering going for a Ph.D. in the humanities. "I just don't get it," my acquaintance (who does not have a higher ed background and never considered graduate school) says to me,

I keep pointing out to Crazy Friend there aren't any jobs and, like, why would she quit the job she already has and borrow money to go for a useless degree? That's just mind-warpingly unfathomable. Is Crazy Friend being willfully ignorant? As far as I can tell, you'd have to be. I really just don't get why people just shut themselves off from what they don't want to hear and believe. The facts are pretty stark.And there's no shortage of articles, news stories, and blogs telling everyone that cares to listen that going to graduate school in the humanities is a bad idea. Why don't people listen to reason? I told my friend not to go, but she won't listen. She wants to be a professor.

Via

I just shake my head at both sides. Sure, the "I don't get it" crowd has a point, but, rationally speaking, if so many otherwise intelligent people are continuing to ignore obvious signs that graduate school is a trap, there must be more to it.

There IS more to it. Consider:

Prospective (and, indeed, current) graduate students get a lot of conflicting information and mixed messages they aren't really equipped to sort through. For example, the student might have read some articles in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle (or any number of mainstream publications) that talk about the dearth of academic jobs and what a big waste it is getting a Ph.D. To a nonacademic with no graduate school inclinations like my acquaintance, this is both the only information they have and the only information they think they need to be able to pass judgment on someone like Crazy Friend.

But the aspiring student has a host of other information -- some of it quite personal -- to grapple with. There is the praise from undergraduate professors, some of it no doubt truly misleading the student to believe they are the "special" exception -- a standout even among those talented enough, passionate and committed enough, to be distinguished from the masses. Of course, this praise does nothing but perpetuate the myth of meritocracy. Even if your undergrad profs are right about your talent (and ... well-meaning as they might be, they're probably wrong), how good you are only matters when How Good You Are Matters matters more than How Well You Fit Based on the Frantic Review of 600 Candidates Right Before Finals (all of whom were similarly praised and encouraged by their undergrad profs years ago).

So, if students can depersonalize praise and be objective, they would less likely fall into the trap, but most people would have a hard time doing that -- and the naysayers would, too, if they were on the receiving end of this encouragement and had an interest in further academic pursuits.

Also, the strong interest in further academic pursuits itself leads even those not drunk on their undergrad advisers' praise to believe "facts" and "statistics" about job placement rates used by departments to promote their graduate programs. Speaking personally, this was one of the largest factors clouding my judgment. Since a few years had passed between the time I finished undergrad and started grad school, I had some distance (like acquaintance's Crazy Friend). Rather than overzealous praise, my own desire to succeed in a profession I cared about, coupled with more disciplined work habits and more general maturity than the typical 22-year-old entering a grad program, led me to choose a program that, while not the most prestigious, for one thing, had what appeared to be a very robust number of job placements.

In other words, I DID look at career prospects. The larger picture represented in the media told one story, but the program I'd been accepted to and looked forward to attending told another. And this was 10 years ago, when the kind of information readily available today to anyone with Internet access wasn't out there -- was either not collected (and, in many cases, still isn't) or was misrepresented (i.e. placements are meaningless unless you know how many others who started the program the same year have since either dropped out or are working as adjuncts). At the beginning and throughout my time as a graduate student, I repeatedly heard announcements of tenure-track job placements, along with yearly totals that seemed impressive .......... impressive, that is, until several years in I started observing how many others the department was simply retaining as adjuncts, with and without the Ph.D., and how many just walked away, just disappeared without a trace to become postacademics. My understanding of who adjuncts were -- and how many of them my own department employed -- was limited by my experience. During the first few years, I saw them as failures, if I saw them at all. Duh, why weren't they following all the CV-building advice I was and publishing and presenting at conferences? But later ... well, who knew there were so many? And who knew so many of them were there due to no lack of competence on their part? They were doing the same things junior faculty on the tenure track were doing (they had to in order to stay competitive for tenure track jobs elsewhere); the university simply wasn't acknowledging it.

A very large department like the one at Grad U depends on a significant degree of invisibility, whether deliberately reinforced or not, to make the kinds of claims it makes about job placement that allow them to recruit and retain people like me -- and probably like you, too.

*     *     *     *     *

There's a lot more to say on this subject, but this post is long enough for today. The bottom line is that there's a bigger picture the Shoulda Coulda Woulda naysayers outside academe aren't privy to. Take responsibility for your choices, but don't let anyone get away with telling you you're stupid for not doing your research before you got into this mess. It's more complicated than what some pundit writes for a general audience, however much truth she or he may tell.

Next time: Two very different ways of thinking about why academe NEEDS people who put their love for the pursuit of knowledge first and their best interests career-wise last ...

fucken facebook

Every now and then, I get a cluster of hits from somewhere on fucken facebook because one of you crazy readers linked to some post or other.

I have expressed my loathing for facebook before and the lemming-like behavior it seems to generate among otherwise intelligent and/or decent people.

While I am mildly curious who is linking to me, I am not curious enough to join to find out. Grow a pair and leave a comment already!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Woohoo!! I'm still a thirty-something (um, for a little longer, and that's the story I'm sticking to for as looooooooooooooooooong as I can get away with it).

So, yeah, birthdays. Bleah. I still get called the occasional "young lady," but ... it's all going to catch up with me sooner or later. Hopefully later? Or ... never??

Anyway, Peaches and I have dinner reservations here:

Where you can get food that looks like this:

(not all veg pictured here but you get the idea)

 

 

One of their best vegetarian appetizers is this:

(Palak Chaat: "Fried crispy baby spinach leaves with yogurt and sweet tamarind and date chutney.")

I am sooooooooooooo already hungry!

Have any of you done anything fun or interesting for a birthday recently?

Vegan Thanksgiving

Every year, Peaches and I go to our local vegetarian society's vegan Thanksgiving feast. Here's what I ate this year:

Starting with the salad at the top left:

• organic mixed greens with avocado, toasted pine nuts, and some sort of vinagrette
• tofu fritters (tofu, celery, onions, herbs, some sort of crusty coating)
• cranberry relish
• wild mushroom ravioli (yes, there's no dairy in them) with a light sauce of tomato and spinach
• stuffing
• baked sweet potatoes
• collard greens

We also had vegan pumpkin pie for dessert, but I was too busy eating it to take a picture. Here's a recipe instead.

Every year, there's a speaker who talks about mindful eating for a healthy, peaceful planet. This year's speaker ended his talk by reading this poem by Shel Silverstein:

Point of View

Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless
Christmas dinner's dark and blue
When you stop and try to see it
From the turkey's point of view.
Sunday dinner isn't sunny
Easter feasts are just bad luck
When you see it from the viewpoint
Of a chicken or a duck.
Oh how I once loved tuna salad
Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too
'Til I stopped and looked at dinner
From the dinner's point of view.

If you look behind the scenes of your dinner and you're OK with what you see there, if it doesn't make you lose your appetite or feel even just a little sorry for the animals that you see there who will find their way to your plate -- if you can look here and find no trace of guilt -- then, go ahead and eat as you've always eaten.

But ... we have so many other choices today! Instead of featuring dead cows, chickens, turkeys, and pigs at your next big meal, why not try some of these delicious, healthy, and cruelty-free dishes instead? If you need a cookbook, there are even more recipes here (vegan) and here (vegetarian) and here (vegan).

 *     *     *     *     *

Food should be a celebration of life, don't you think? 

*     *     *     *     *

Cheers to you an yours for a holiday season full of good food, good drink, and much merry making!

Via where you will find yet another yummy recipe for vegan pumpkin pie

I Suppose I Should Post Something

I don't have much to say today, but since I try to post at least once a week, I figured I owed you something today, since it's been a week since my last post.

It's actually been pretty busy around Think Tank Land lately. We had an event on Crapitol Heap on Monday, which always involves planning and coordinating, but it seems like there's been a lot of other stuff to do, too -- booking travel, finding a new office space to lease, and just ... general officey nonsense that takes up time but doesn't lend itself to snarky blog posts.

My mom is also arriving in town today for a visit, so, outside of work, I've been cleaning my house (which involved also treating teh kittehs for fleas -- we gave them both baths twice!!) and trying to figure out stuff to do with her. My mom and I generally get along better with weekly phone conversations rather than with regular in-person visits, but I haven't seen her in a year and a half and feel kind of guilty -- like, I should concentrate on making sure she has a good time rather than on being the curmudgeonly smarty pants I usually am when I see her.

Maybe I'll have some touristy pics to post ('cuz it's an open secret where I'm located, and there's ... almost too much touristy stuff to do here, which I normally avoid like the plague ...)

Here are a few quotes and links for you to ponder in the meantime:

One of the crucial issues for some of us postacademics, as well for many college students trying to decide on a major, is whether higher education should be primarily training and preparation for a career or an indulgence of The Great Intangible Life of the Mind.  John Adams put it this way: "There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living. And the other how to live." Sadly, a Ph.D. in the humanities or social sciences these days moves us very little towards either of those goals.

While we're quoting John Adams (somebody posted a quote over in the comments at 100 Reasons, which is what got me started), here's another one that seems especially profound given our current political climate: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Scary, huh? Especially when you read an article like this about how money is infecting the democratic process. If you don't follow politics that closely, you may be surprised to know that the current Republican anti-tax fanaticism is relatively new. From the Rolling Stone article:

Today, Reagan may be lionized as a tax abolitionist, says Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator and friend of the president, but that's not true to his record. "Reagan raised taxes 11 times in eight years!"

But Reagan wound up sowing the seed of our current gridlock when he gave his blessing to what Simpson calls a "nefarious organization" – Americans for Tax Reform. Headed by Grover Norquist, a man Stockman blasts as a "fiscal terrorist," the group originally set out to prevent Congress from backsliding on the 1986 tax reforms. But Norquist's instrument for enforcement – an anti-tax pledge signed by GOP lawmakers – quickly evolved into a powerful weapon designed to shift the tax burden away from the rich. George H.W. Bush won the GOP presidential nomination in 1988 in large part because he signed Norquist's "no taxes" pledge. Once in office, however, Bush moved to bring down the soaring federal deficit by hiking the top tax rate to 31 percent and adding surtaxes for yachts, jets and luxury sedans. "He had courage to take action when we needed it," says Paul O'Neill, who served as Treasury secretary under George W. Bush.

The tax hike helped the economy – and many credit it with setting up the great economic expansion of the 1990s. But it cost Bush his job in the 1992 election – a defeat that only served to strengthen Norquist's standing among GOP insurgents. "The story of Bush losing," Norquist says now, "is a reminder to politicians that this is a pledge you don't break." What was once just another campaign promise, rejected by a fiscal conservative like Bob Dole, was transformed into a political blood oath – a litmus test of true Republicanism that few candidates dare refuse.

True? Not true?

I don't know ... You tell me ...

John Adams had this to say: “All the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arise, not from want of honor or virtue, but from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.” It's nothing new that there's always been a marriage between money and power, here as elsewhere in the world, now as at other times throughout history. But for those of us who covet neither of these things in any great extreme and ultimately value honor and virtue more than money or power, I think it's hard to imagine -- to even fathom -- how deep and abiding that marriage remains.

"adjuncting i give up"

At least one of you found this blog by searching that phrase today. As JC has said many times over at From Grad School to Happiness:

You are not alone.

Whoever you are, the way you phrased that says a lot. As "adjuncting" displaces and diminishes the subject of the sentence "i," so does the hopelessness and frustration of the job itself overwhelm so many of the people who find themselves doing it semester after semester after semester -- without ever the promise that you will be rehired the next semester, without enough pay to cover your expenses, without any possibility of progress in your chosen profession no matter how good your work nor how long and outstanding your commitment.

To say "adjuncting i give up" is not the same as "I give up adjuncting." The latter suggests certainty and affirmation, the act of "giving up" by cutting your ties, walking away,  and moving on, leaving "adjuncting" behind. The former, the phrase you searched, instead suggests that "I give up" not just adjuncting but hope. The object dominates the subject, removing its agency. The thing you want to give up won't let you let it go. After all, you've given so much to it already -- so much of your time, your effort, your passion, your life. The only thing to give up, it seems, is more of yourself.

OK. Enough close reading. You're not alone is what I wanted to say. Adjuncting does this to people, you see. Lots of people. But you'd never know because no one talks about it inside academe. You have to do a Google search to find out that your colleagues down the hall are feeling the same way. And when they do leave, as a great many of them do one way or another, with or without the Ph.D., you never see or hear from them again. You don't know what they end up doing with their lives or what finally pushed them over the edge and out of academe. You just know they're gone. And now you feel like it's your turn, but you don't know exactly how to make your break or when or who to talk to ... and that's how you found yourself here.

So, no, you are not alone. And, yes, it is OK to give up and walk away. Because once you do, you aren't giving up anymore. You're going somewhere again. You may not know where, but at least you will have freed yourself from the trap that is academe.

Isn't that a pretty path? I took the picture walking to work this morning. Here's another, just a few yards further down the same street:

Once you start considering where you might go, once you take the first few steps, the path itself changes. How do you even know what awaits you until you do give up on expecting adjuncting to ever offer you anything more than what it currently does?

And if these pictures aren't enough to inspire you to walk away, if you're new here and/or maybe missed these a few months back, here are a few older posts on the subject that haven't been getting much traffic lately:

We Are All Waldo

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Just Walk Away?

Academic Hierarchies: Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves (Part 1)

Academic Hierarchies: Let the Numbers Speak for Themselves (Part 2)

And lastly, here's a song:

You Are Expecting Something OTHER Than Aristotle?

In this morning's mail, we got a message from Think Tank Boss's Boss about how "to convince conservatives and libertarians to communicate in a way that connects with [...] the 85% of the population with IQs below about 115." The wording seems to imply this 85% needs to be connected with because they're NOT conservatives and libertarians (i.e. they're liberals or independents), which would also imply that ONLY 15% of the population ARE conservatives and libertarians.

Interesting prospect. (I'm not even going to touch the issue of IQ and political inclinations.)

BUT, what I thought was more interesting about this email, in conjunction with the above, was this quote by Important Person (the gist of the email was that were were supposed to mount and frame it):

People are not reasoned into action, but rather are inspired by tangible, concrete, emotional rhetoric.

Well, yes ... Okay ...

But not very original.

In fact, Aristotle said something similar in the 4th century B.C. What he says, in Book I of the Rhetoric, before devoting almost the entirety of Book II to pathos -- the skillful manipulation of emotion for the purpose of persuasion -- is

Before some audiences not even possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.

We taught watered-down Aristotle in the freshman comp courses at Grad U., but students at least came out, if they were instructable enough to have passed the course, with a minimal conceptual understanding of the rhetorical appeals ethos, pathos, and logos, along with the basic skills to apply them in their writing and recognize them in the speech and writing of others.

And that's not a bad take-away from a course. A successful democracy needs rhetoric to function. It needs leaders who can speak effectively. But, perhaps more importantly, it needs citizens who can know how rhetoric shapes the messages. how it influences what they read, see, hear, think, and feel.

While Aristotle devotes such a large portion of his text to persuasion through emotion, he also affirms what Important Person quoted by Think Tank Boss's Boss implies -- that is, that getting through to people by reasoning is better than moving them by emotion, BUT, because the former is so rarely truly possible, virtuous leaders will have to rely on emotion to persuade the people of what is Right and Just.

However, Aristotle also asserts,

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

And that's where the difference lies. Yes, Aristotle acknowledges, "there are people whom one cannot instruct," but these are only "some audiences," not 85% of the population. The rest of us, according Aristotle, should learn how rhetoric works, not only so that we may manipulate (for their own good!) those who are incapable of listening to reason but so that we can "defend" ourselves against those who would use it against us to achieve ends that may be neither good nor just. Indeed,

If it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against all good things [...] and above all against the things that are most useful, as strength, health, wealth, generalship. A man can confer the greatest of benefits by a right use of these, and inflict the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly.

Ah, but who decides what is the "right" use of these? Maybe that's where we're stuck today with the conservative/liberal divide. We can't agree on fundamental issues of right and wrong: Are education and health care rights or privileges?  How do you define a "person" for purposes of the right to life or the right to give money to politicians? Economic growth is good, but are there some corporations, financial institutions, that are "too big to fail"? What should the relationship between business and government be and who should decide?

Important questions deserve sustained and serious and open public debate, not soundbites. In my comp classes, I always used advertisements to introduce the appeals. It was always so easy and yet such a revelation when students saw how ads worked to persuade them to want things.

Politics has become, overwhelmingly it seems, about the advertising.

I do not think Aristotle would approve.

Re-Reading an Academic Job Ad

Regular readers remember me posting a month or so ago about how I would do a very limited, very selective academic job search this year.

The gist of that post was that there were 5-6 jobs that might be worth applying for, given my idiosyncratic concerns. One of these -- the one that was of the MOST interest to me -- has a deadline coming up soon, but re-reading the ad, I found myself noticing a few red flags, as well as reconsidering some of the basics:

• Despite being advertised as a "tenure track appointment," the job is only for "an initial three-year period." I find this opaque and troubling. Nobody gets tenure in three years. Is there some kind of initial review process going on here? Or, is this simply a more clever and deceptive way of designing a contingent position? Sure, we'll hire you onto the "tenure track (hehe)" for a few years. We'll pay you a bit better than a full-time adjunct. But ... we'll expect more, too, in terms of service and other obligations, and when your first three years are up, we'll give you the choice of continuing on for another three years at the same rate of pay -- or leaving, so that we can hire some other desperado willing to do even more for even less than you, as long as it comes with the title "assistant professor."
• "This position is contingent on the availability of funds at the time of hire." So, what, you're going to interview people, bring a few to campus, and then put them on hold for a month or two or three while you work out your budget before making a decision? Or better yet, lead your favorite candidate to believe he or she would be getting an offer ... only to get a letter reading, "We are sorry. Due to lack of funds, this position has been canceled." Hey, it's not like any of these candidates will have other offers waiting! Why not offer them a glimmer of hope?
• Not listed in the job ad, but after visiting the institution's website, it appears that A LOT of this department's courses are taught by adjuncts, even though they do not have a Ph.D. program. That would make me seriously uncomfortable. Because, you know, I would know that my privileges -- such as they would be -- would be had at the expense of my adjunct colleagues. 
• Yes, it's true that I wouldn't have to move, but the commute, by public transit, would be two to two and a half hours each way (about an hour each way by car). Even if I could get a TTH schedule, I'd probably still end up renting a small apartment or room to stay in 1-2 nights a week to minimize trips. And given the cost of living around here, over the course of a year, that, along with the cost of transportation itself, would eat up what would be the difference between my current crappy secretary salary and what would likely be the starting salary of this "tenure track" position.

Am I being overly paranoid? Am I looking for reasons to lose interest in the few academic jobs that seem like potentially, possibly a good "fit"? Maybe. Will I change my mind and not apply? Maybe. Because, after all, there still is that nagging old problem: Right here in my own backyard, there are A TON of jobs, conveniently located, but THEY ARE ALL BEING DONE BY ADJUNCTS.

It just seems more and more like a Catch-22 scenario, no matter how you look at it, unless you get a job at a college that A) does not have a PhD program and B) does not rely on adjuncts.

Whatever else you might say about nonacademic jobs, at least there are ... more possibilities ... more options and fewer limitations ...

Stay tuned for further updates.

This Morning's Bagel Brought to You by the Koch Brothers

This morning. I am here, my table sandwiched in between CPAC and Concerned Women for America (if you're not already familiar, beware before Googling -- you might lose your breakfast). I'm handing out Think Tank propaganda to Tea Party zealots and collecting email addresses.

They tell me things, these people:

"I like your pamphlets. They're nice and short. I'm too lazy to read books." (Seriosly, fer realz, somebody said that.)

"What great, nicely organized little booklets. There's just 10 points to remember on every issue. Now that's something I can handle! Nice and simple."

"Those Occupy Wall Street wackos. Somebody should just send in a bunch of red necks to beat the snot out of them." (This morning, after some traffic disrupting protests last night that ended rather badly.)

"Higher education reform. Huh. I should read that one. It's like, education is all liberal and all and then the cost has gone up three times the rate of inflation. Damned liberals. Such hypocrites. They talk about equality, but they just want to take our money and spend it to indoctrinate our children." (No, not kidding, and I do hope that individual actually reads that particular pamphlet. Because, while. I disagree with a lot of Think Tank's ideas on education reform -- actually, not what my office even works on, anyway -- they're not as completely idiotic as this person. I mean, you could have an argument about policy differences. You wouldn't just be trying to refute uninformed nonsense. And there's even a bit of common ground, like the idea that there should be greater transparency concerning tuition and costs so that students would know that a great deal of their increasingly borrowed tuition is, increasingly, NOT funding instruction. Or that we should increase emphasis on instruction and reduce barriers to entry ... but I digress.)

"Oh, right, we've heard of Think Tank. The black person in our church gave us some of your materials." (Note use of the article "the," along with the fact that it was significant, apparently, to point this out to a perfect stranger. Did this person remember Think Tank because she read the materials or because they were handed to her by a black person? This event, like others I've blogged about, is overwhelmingly white. Despite the presence of Herman Cain, I can count on one hand the number of people of color who have passed by my table. Why? That is a rhetorical question. Perhaps Herman Cain would like to explain why his party has such low appeal among minorities. Does anyone know if he already has?)

"Global warming, what a hoax! Those scientists are ripping us off, taking all that grant money to study something that's so obviously false. And destroying business and jobs while they're at it! We need to shut that racket down now." (This after recent research further CONFIRMING climate change despite its Koch brothers funding.)

I could go on and on ...

So, yeah, there are days when I find myself questioning the integrity of working where I do, attending events such as these, even as the proverbial fly on the wall, when my complimentary morning bagel and coffee are provided courtesy of the Koch brothers' funding of an event that does much more to further their agenda than that, for them, ill-fated climate study.

*     *     *     *     *

But then, I go read a blog post over at Roxie's World, perhaps the best yet in their ongoing series Excellence Without Money, that describes the plight of adjuncts at their institution.

And I am reassured. At least here in Think Tank Land you know what people stand for. You may not agree with them. But at least you know what's what. At least when you're dealing with the Koch brothers and their ilk, you don't falsely believe you are dealing with Greenpeace.

And that's sort of how I feel about academe these days, that a culture (and people with power in it) valued me, I thought, for one set of things -- originality, passion, insight, creativity, contributions to the field -- and instead, as it turns out, my true value was as another -- as a warm body willing to show up and teach for cheap. See comment by Anonymous 1:27 here. (That was me, FYI. I've stopped commenting under my Blogger name there because a troll tracked me here and was harassing me by email.)

At least if you're going to be negotiating your position in the world against market forces, you ought to know how they operate. And I didn't. And a lot of graduate students still don't. And that the truth is willfully hidden from them through job market and professionalization rhetoric, even by well-meaning professors, is an egregious wrong.

I remain bitter, and the irony is not lost on me that I am now working for the very groups that, if they have their way, will further push universities down the path of adjunctification and for-profit-ization.

At least I know who I'm dealing with and where I stand.

Halloween 1994

Halloween is sometimes fun, sometimes crazy, and sometimes boring. Rarely is it truly scary.

*     *     *     *     *

Halloween was on a Monday that year, like this year. All the parties had been over the weekend. Lots of people I knew had gone to a rave called Glow on Saturday night. It was out on a farm in the middle of nowhere. We danced until the sun came up and our phat pants were caked with mud up to the knees. I remember riding back to Undergrad Town in the back of someone's pick-up truck -- packed in with two other people lying flat under a tarp ...

Monday night, mostly fully recovered, I was pacing around the courtyard outside the dorm smoking a cigarette and thinking about the paper due the next day that I didn't want to write and had yet to start.

"Hey," said Mike. "Do you want to go to Arbutus?"

"What's Arbutus?" I asked. Mike was more an associate than a friend. He was a shady character, a music major who sat last chair second violin and showed up to rehearsals, like regular classes, ... rarely. He shared a last name with a famous beatnik poet and claimed to be related. Total bullshit. Pretty much everything about Mike was total bullshit, except that he seemed to know a lot of people, and if there was something going on in the local underworld of 1990s rave culture, he knew what it was and where it was. And that was pretty much the only reason I associated with him. My mistake.

"Arbutus," Mike said, "is a special place. You'll just have to go there to find out."

"I have a paper to write," I said, "Where exactly is this place?"

"Just write it when you get back. Come on!" And he was already heading off campus ... towards the bus stop. Why was I following? It was already 7 PM. My paper was due before lunch the next day. But I kept following. It was Halloween, after all. Who wants to write a paper on Halloween?

My mistake.

*     *     *     *     *

We got on a city bus, all bright lights with the darkness blanketing the outside around us. I recognized where we were going at first, but then we headed off down an unfamiliar road and drove on and on and on for almost an hour. I had no idea where we were. In the suburbs somewhere, but I wouldn't have known how to get back.

The bus was relatively empty. A few people got on and off here and there. Mike was chattering nonsense for a while. He picked up some papers on the floor that looked like some poor kid's handwritten homework and was reading it aloud, making fun. Then he took out his lighter and acted like he was going to set the papers on fire until the bus driver yelled at him. I was already regretting coming along ...

Eventually, we got off at an intersection that Mike seemed to know. We walked about a half mile in the dark along a road without sidewalks and up to a house.

"We're picking up Mike," Mike said. "And then we're going to Arbutus."

"Who's Mike?" I asked. "And will you please tell me what Arbutus is?"

"We're almost in Arbutus," Mike said. It turned out the other Mike was somebody I'd met before, a harmless enough kid, tall and lanky with sad eyes sunken in their sockets. I think he was still in high school. The two of them smoked some pot, and then all three of us left the house and walked for another mile or so. It had started to rain. At some point, we crossed a street, and Mike announced we had reached Arbutus. It was just the name of a suburb.

A few blocks later, we walked up to a house. The light on the front porch was on and some people, raver types, were standing around smoking cigarettes. They waved us in, seeming to know both Mikes. They looked vaguely familiar.

Inside the house, someone was spinning records, something with a house-y beat. Incense burned. People, maybe 12-15, sat around on couches talking. Mike sat down on the floor by the coffee table and took out a sketch pad. The other Mike went over to talk to the people spinning records.

I parked myself on the couch near the door. I had my backpack with me, which contained the books I was supposed to be writing my paper about and a notebook. It was after nine already, and I figured I'd be stuck here for a while. Some party! I toyed with the idea of starting the paper. Whatever I wrote here I could always revise and type up when I got back.

I lit a cigarette and thought about what I wanted to say ...

*     *     *     *     *

All of a sudden, the front door, just to my right, burst open. Three men stormed in. Their boots shook the floor. Their voices drowned the music. All I saw were the guns pointed, it seemed, at our heads.

"FREEZE!!!!" commanded an authoritative voice. "Put your hands over your heads AND DO NOT MOVE!!"

I felt a surge of adrenaline and, shaking, put my hands over my head. The notebook was still in my lap.

They had entered through the front door. Several more had come in through the back. They all had their guns out, pointed at us. All I could see were those guns. We sat motionless. Several of them, stationed strategically around the room, kept us at gunpoint. The rest tore apart the house, searching drawers, closets, cushions, the panels in the drop ceiling -- every conceivable place.

*     *     *     *     *

The police had a search warrant, it turned out, for the three tenants renting the place. I didn't know any of them, but, allegedly, they had been selling ... stuff. The cops had been watching the house for some period of time, figured they had enough evidence, and must have assumed Halloween would be an ideal time to catch these Evil Drug Dealers in the act.

All they found, after all that searching, after scaring the living SHIT out of most of us (out of me, anyway), was some paraphernalia. It was a Monday night, after all.

But ... they weren't finished yet. Having searched the house, it was now time to search each of us individually. First they went through our belongings, backpacks, purses, and whatnot, while they questioned us.

"What's this?" the cop searching my bag asked, eyeing me suspiciously as he examined, one by one, each cylindrical wooden piece that had been nestled in a padded case.

"It's a flute, a baroque flute. I'm in the early music ensemble," my nerdly self said. I also had sheet music in my backpack to prove it, too. "Do you want me to play?"

He put it back, looked through my books and folders and notes, and found nothing. In my wallet, he found my ID for Undergrad U.

"You go to Undergrad U?" he asked. I nodded. "Do you have a scholarship?" I nodded. "You do know that your scholarship will be revoked if we find anything on you? What's a nice kid like you from Undergrad U doing here with these dummies?"

I looked at him blankly. He didn't find anything.

*     *     *     *     *

You'd think it would be over after that, after they searched the premises and each individual person and found nothing of consequence. But no. Things got even better. You'd think having several guns pointed at you would be the worst of it. But no. It was Halloween, after all.

Sometime around 11 o'clock, they decided they needed to strip search us. All of us. I'll spare you the details, but, one by one, we each went into a room with an officer. All of the original cops were men, but they called in a female to search the women. We had to take off each article of clothing, underwear included, and hand it to the cop, who, wearing latex gloves, examined it thoroughly. The process took about three minutes. If they found nothing, you put your clothes back on and went back to the room where everyone else was to wait until whenever it was they decided this horrowshow would be over.

They found nothing.

*     *     *     *     *

Sometime after midnight, I was allowed to leave. They kept Mike, the last chair second violin (I had lost track of the other one), for further questioning (he had been mouthing off a bit once he figured out they weren't actually going to shoot him), but the buses had stopped running anyway. I got a ride back to campus with a crazy kid who talked to aliens and thought I wanted to know all about what they told him. He was 20, he said, but wasn't in school.

He worked full-time in a lab.

*     *     *     *     *

I don't remember how late it was when I finally got back to my room, but I was too upset to sleep. So ... I wrote my paper. Sometime around seven in the morning, I crashed, waking up just in time to run to my 11 AM class, paper in hand.



*     *     *     *     *

Being strip searched at gun point ... that does take the cake for frightful nights. I'd rather write a paper any day, Halloween or not!!

In retrospect, I can't say the experience haunts me in any particular way. After all, it turned out OK. But there is something deeply disturbing, grotesque even, about the threat of violence -- deadly violence -- in contrast to the actuality of the circumstances.

Because ... whatever the suspicions were, whether founded or not, no one at that party was armed. No weapons were ever found. In the end, they even let Mike off, despite his big mouth. No one was arrested.

And yet, they were POINTING GUNS AT ALL OF US. Presumed guilty until proven innocent?

It's not a feeling you ever quite forget ...

Hobart sez, "Are you finish wid teh scary stories? I can stop teh hiding? I can haz kandy now??! Happy Halloweeeeeeeenz, my peeplz!!"

Bar Blogging

It is a Tuezday night, and here I find myself sipping a glass of wine in a hotel bar in Another City.

There isn't really a point to this post other than I don't have anyone to talk to and can't sleep.

Dear post-academic blogger friends! Wish you were here ... Oh well.

So what am I doing here? Well, I could spin you a tale about running away. About cashing out my bank account and catching a plane to someplace far away and fun. About hitchhiking 500 miles from home out of sheer boredom. About some bizarre and wild party that took a strange turn down a wrong road ... About smuggling drugs. About political scandals.

Of course, none of this is true. I'm traveling for work. Think Tank is hosting an event to "educate" interested parties about An Issue. I'm here to make copies and set up PowerPoints and conference phone lines and make sure lunch gets served on time, but I have nothing to complain about really. Dinner was good. And I learned that a former president of this organization, also a guest at dinner, thinks that Rick Perry is too stupid to be president, despite all the money he's still bringing in. At least we can agree on something.

What is it that Dr. Seuss says about "all the places you will go and the people you will meet"? What would Bill Cronon say about the company I keep?

Hey, I'm just a fly on the wall."I'm nobody! Who are you?"

So here I still am at the bar. I've effectively killed a half hour, but I'm still not tired. I have a history of getting into trouble (of a good kind) when bored. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime. And the night is still young ... but I'm not so young anymore. Probably I will just sit here and have another drink and catch up on what all of you out there have been saying these last few days.

Misconceptions

In case you've missed it, over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School, there's a superfantastic shitfest going on in the comments to this post. I wasn't going to get involved, but the Honey Badger summoned me (just go read the comments) to rebut something and I couldn't resist. What occurred to me -- as I went blathering on in comments of my own -- was that, while the academic job market may have a fair lot of myths surrounding it, there are also a lot of myths and misconceptions that academics have about nonacademic work and vice versa.

The hostility and acrimony expressed in those comments say more about what academe does to people than anything else. On the one hand, you have the people who have gotten out (either before or after grad school) who try to convince themselves they made the right choice but still harbor some regret and a lot of insecurity. On the other hand, you have people committed to getting the Ph.D. and/or who now find themselves stuck on the adjunct track (with or without degree) and need to convince themselves they're happy and have settled for the lesser of two evils -- even though they may have tried and tried to get out! The nonacademics piss on the academics for being stupid losers who can't get their lives together, and the academics piss on the nonacademics for being superficial, money-motivated jerks who never belonged in academe to begin with.

It's sad, really, that the conversations degenerate like this. Because the issue we should be focusing on is Academe itself. Because ... really? We need educated citizens if democracy is going to function properly. The current system is destroying the next generation of faculty while charging students more and more every year. If we can't have a rational conversation about what's wrong with academe without flinging poo at each other, we're never going to get to the point of talking about solutions.

So. I've digressed a bit already. What I wanted to say is that there are some common misconceptions about nonacademic work among academics (and would-be academics) that prevent them from both accurately assessing their current situation and figuring out how to get out -- if getting out is what they want to do.

Misconception #1: There's a secret "inside track" for all the good jobs. If you're not on it, you'll forever be stuck in retail or restaurant work.
While it's absolutely true that networking helps and that your connections may give you access to jobs unavailable to others, it's also true that many people do gt interviews and jobs just from answering job ads. Personally, I'm terrible at networking. It's something I really need to work on, but, while I've seen people over the last few months come and go because of their connections, I got all of my interviews and this job by answering an ad. At the same time, this so-called "inside track" is one people work hard at creating for themselves. There's nothing magical about it. It's accessible, but you have to take the initiative.

Misconception #2: All nonacademic jobs are boring. Adjuncting isn't great, but it beats spending the rest of your life in a cubicle as a corporate slave.
I don't even really have a response for this other than maybe ... grow up? If you're happy enough adjuncting, then keep on adjuncting. I'll be the first to point out your complicity with the system, but I'll also be the last to tell you to quit -- if you're really satisfied, that is. But don't cheat yourself by using the "boring" excuse to avoid exploring other kinds of work. Sure, there are plenty of corporate, cubicle jobs out there, but there are also plenty of non-corporate, non-cubicle jobs. Even the corporate, cubicle ones are probably not in practice what you imagine them to be in theory. Broaden your horizons.

Misconception #3: The economy is bad everywhere. Other industries treat their workers poorly. Adjuncts should be glad to have any job at all, especially if they like what they're doing at least a little.
It's true that the economy is bad and that other industries treat their workers poorly and that -- to a certain extent, with almost 10% of the population unemployed - a job is a job is a job. But looking at the issue in these terms sidesteps some of the problems unique to academe. The trend towards casualization began several decades ago (as the "I told you so" tenure-track types are fond of saying ... except not to their bright-eyed, bushy-tailed undergrads). It's been exacerbated by the recession and certainly mirrors problems we're seeing elsewhere in the economy, but the "market" for jobs in academe is grossly distorted in ways it is not in other industries. Academe has figured out that it needs workers and that a great many people will work for far less than they are worth -- a great many people who could be doing other things but believe they are destined for Living the Life of the Mind. Class is a factor, too, for many. You may be on food stamps, but, as faculty, you're middle-class in a way that your uncle Joe the Plumber never will be, even if he earns 10 times your salary. I'm sympathetic to this position, but, on the other hand, if your work as a teacher and researcher has so much more "class" value than being a plumber does, why aren't you getting paid accordingly? In my book, that's Catch-22: You like what you do but that's how you're getting screwed. And your exploiters know it, and that's why they're continuing to exploit you. Do you really like adjuncting THAT much? Are you SURE you wouldn't like being a plumber even a little bit ... or maybe a secretary?

Misconception #4: I don't really like adjuncting that much, but all my efforts to find another kind of job have failed. Nobody wants to hire someone with an M.A. or Ph.D. in the humanities.
As I understand it from reading around the blogosphere and talking to people, there is a lot of geographic variability here. If you're someplace that's been particularly hard hit by the recession, the odds of you finding even a secretary job like mine are probably much lower. You might want to consider relocating, if that's an option. If geography isn't your problem, take a good, hard look at the kinds of materials you're sending out and the kinds of jobs you're applying for. I've said before but I'll say again, I didn't start getting responses until I started marketing myself as a career changer. It puts you in a different category in the minds of those doing the hiring and makes you eligible for positions above the entry level, even if you have not worked in those particular occupations before.

Misconception #5: The nonacademic world doesn't have anything to offer me. I'm smart and talented, and my gifts would be wasted outside academe. I'm not really happy with what academe has to offer me, but I'd be even more unhappy outside academe.
This is a narcissistic variation of #2. No wonder you're unhappy. Really, the nonacademic world doesn't have anything to offer YOU? No wonder nobody is calling you back about those applications. It's not about what they have to offer you but the opposite -- what you have to offer them. They don't want your narcissism and arrogance. They don't want someone who thinks they're too good for the job they're applying for ... or the company or the industry. They want someone who not only has smarts and talents but is willing to creatively use those smarts and talents to DO something productive within the organization. If you're willing to use your smarts and talents creatively and positively, they won't be wasted, and you won't feel like you're wasting your time.

If you fall prey to these misconceptions, you will be more like the Slowass Sloth than the Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger:

You Room 19 Motherfuckers, Where Are You?

So, I get to work today, and no one's in the office so I can listen to music (I hate listening through headphones, though probably sooner or later I'm just going to give in and get a really good pair).

I turn on Pandora, and "Sweet Jane" is the first thing that comes on. A a most excellent version, too, though not this one (couldn't find video for the version I heard):

And it reminded me of Room 19. And if there are any readers out there who know what the fuck I'm talking about -- and better yet, were there playing this shit and drinking 'til 3 in the morning all those shitty yet awesome nights -- drop me a line, OK? I don't miss grad school, but I do miss playing with you all.

"A" os for ... Academe, Adjunct, Adviser, Absurdity

In case you haven't heard, a new movement among adjuncts has arisen to raise awareness, assuming a bright, vermilion letter "A" as its new symbol. You can read about it at the Chronicle here:

A red “A” signifies that you are an adjunct, some other contingent faculty member, or that you sympathize with contingent faculty members. The idea is to signify some level of unification and to spread awareness. Imagine if a student sees more and more red letters on faculty doors. The student may even see a room full of letters, or letters mysteriously attached to hallway desks (because there is no office or door). Eventually, a student is going to ask someone what it means.

If I were still adjuncting, I'd have that "A" on my door (of the office I shared with 5 other adjuncts). I'd put it on a t-shirt. I'd have it on a bag I carried student papers around in. Heck, I might even put it on my syllabi, next to the rest of the alphabet soup after my name.

Needless to say, I think this is a great idea for raising awareness. Most students really have no clue about the differences in status among their "professors." They know a TA is not a professor, and that's about it. They certainly have no idea what an adjunct is nor why they should care.

I do wonder how far it will go or whether those who speak up and take this symbolic action and have the courage to answer students' questions will not be censored by those who see a threat to their own status. As one commenter puts it over at the Chronicle:

To engage in free speech you have to have tenure. Adjuncts don't have tenure or any of its protections or privileges. They should be very careful, lest the University or College send its thugs, viz., the tenured faculty, to break up their symbolic action.

But, then again, what are they going to do? Fire all the adjuncts? Not hardly. Maybe if just one or two brave souls showed their resistance. But not if the whole adjunct/TA/permatemp workforce did. It'd be a catch-22. Permit them their symbolic action, which embarrasses you, your department, and your institution, or fire them and teach the comp, gen ed, and other classes you think you're too good for.

Via

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The sheer absurdity of self-delusion that permeates academe at all levels has really started to get to me. It's fair to say it's even beginning to poison how I feel about my own "independent scholar" projects. After all, those projects, should they reach publication, would be intended as contributions to to an academic culture that -- while preserving its intellectual integrity for the most part -- is exploiting its workforce, selling its graduate students a false bill of goods, saddling its undergraduates with an increasing burden of debt yet increasingly weakening prospects for employment, and generally telling itself a bunch of lies about the importance of the work it does produce.

This post and the comments following it say volumes. Now, I don't know a whole lot firsthand about how advisers and others writing letters of recommendation for academic job candidates go about their business, but I do recall a post on this same blog about a year ago (I'm too lazy to find it and link) about how search committees looked at letters, especially from advisers, as neither here nor there. As a matter of course, they expected glowing letters. Non-glowing letters might raise a red flag, but, beyond that, a candidate's own materials (and interview, if it got to that stage) mattered a lot more.

Such is slightly absurd, but at least there's some sense to it. Yes, a candidate's own materials SHOULD matter more (even though we are talking about that always ambiguous matter of "fit"), but references of one sort or another are obligatory. Now, however, I am told, that what letters say DOES matter, especially after your first time or two on the market. And not only that, but who writes them at this stage matters more, too. It isn't enough that your adviser, whom you have worked with for 8 years or so, writes you a glowing letter. No, you need other people from outside your grad institution, too. In other words, search committees "like to see that job applicants are networking, conferencing, and reaching beyond their intellectual cradles (so to speak).  It’s a sign of intellectual and professional maturity."

Two things are wrong with this:

1. This profession takes it as a matter of course that people WILL be trying for MORE THAN TWO YEARS (!) to get a job AFTER they have earned the credentials qualifying them for those jobs.
2. In order to be out "networking, conferencing, and reaching beyond their intellectual cradles," they need to retain a foothold inside academe. As adjuncts. As postdocs. As VAPs. In other words, the unspoken subtext here reinforces the "privileges" of affiliation. Just stay in the game, and you'll have a better chance next year. Remain complicit and the system may reward you in time (yeah, like, when Hell freezes over for the majority of us). 

So, I guess I'm already at a disadvantage on this year's market. Not only am I on my third try, but I've not been out networking and blah blah blah like I'm supposed to. Sure, I'm going to a conference in March, but I haven't been to one in over a year. Who has the time or the money? Moreover, I know that at least two of my four committee members can speak outstandingly well about "the importance and value of [my] work." There are two non-committee members I could potentially ask, but why bother these people for the 5-6 jobs I'm applying for, which don't even ask for letters with the initial materials?

Oh, the charades are unending .... because, you know, seriously? Most of this "important and valuable" work will end up gathering dust on the library shelves or off in some obscure, institutionally affiliated, password-protected corner of cyberspace devoted to boring-to-anyone-who-doesn't-have-alphabet-soup-after-their-name academic journals. Really? Lives are at stake? Wars will be won and lost? The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer if this person doesn't get the institutional support of a tenure-track position?

Come on. I'll be the first to say that I find these same dusty tomes worthwhile. They contribute to an ongoing conversation that is itself valuable and important in a "this is humanity trying to figure itself out" sort of way. But really, most of what we do on its own ISN'T important or valuable to anyone outside a very small group of academics -- to the extent that, once we're no longer "still in school," we're supposed to search far and wide for these few people for whom our work IS important and valuable so that they can explain it to search committees who otherwise couldn't figure it out for themselves!!?

This says more about how too many folks on the tenure track see their own work than about the actual work of job candidates.

Absurd.

We. Have. Already. Been. Doing. This. Job. For. Years.

You search committees are fooling yourselves if you think you're doing a service to the profession, the field, or even your own department by believing this process is getting you the very best "fit." For every person you hire, there are a hundred others who could do just as well if not better. Stop wasting your time. Given the number of applications you're getting (that you cannot POSSIBLY sort through with true integrity), you'd do just as well putting all the names in a hat and picking one -- or, hell, pick three or four to interview.

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"A" is also for acquiescence, anger, answers, and action.

Via