Stop Comparing Careers in Academe to Careers in the Arts

In frequent blogosphere conversations about the difficulties a recent Ph.D. may face on the job market, someone (usually someone already tenured and otherwise well-situated) almost always compares the competitiveness of finding tenure-track employment to building a successful career as an artist, musician, writer, or actor.

I find this comparison not only inaccurate and misleading but unhelpful to the larger project of – maybe one day in the far distant future – remedying some of the systemic problems that have caused the shortage of tenure-track positions in the first place.

We should agree to stop making this comparison because:

Unlike aspiring artists, aspiring academics are needed by the institutions they serve.

Aspiring academics who start graduate school as teaching assistants and work their way through and beyond as adjuncts, postdocs, and VAPs are serving a vital institutional and societal function for a pittance without a clear path towards job security and a living wage, no matter how good they are as teachers and scholars. Colleges and universities could not function without them. While aspiring artists also do not have a clear path towards job security, may also be working for a pittance, and do make valuable cultural contributions, they are not serving the needs of this country’s major educational institutions. We cannot continue to promote the idea that “every child should have access to a college education” without publicly acknowledging the unfair labor practices that make fulfilling this mandate a realistic possibility.

Artists can be working artists while working “day jobs”; academics cannot.

Aspiring artists, actors, writers, and musicians may earn little as they build their careers drawing caricatures at carnivals, teaching stage fighting at community centers, writing poetry in the evenings, or playing wedding gigs on the weekends, but they have the liberty of working “day jobs.” Aspiring academics do not. Even after we have acquired as much teaching, publishing, and conferencing experience as we will ever need to be “good” candidates for assistant professor positions, we must remain affiliated with an institution in order to retain our long-term credibility as academic job candidates, which means sacrificing the financial autonomy and “real world” work experience a “day job” can offer a graduate student or recent Ph.D. for the exploitive absurdity of adjuncthood.

The personal and financial investments are not equivalent.

Aspiring academics in the humanities spend 6-10 years of their adult lives acquiring professional credentials in graduate school. A Ph.D. is necessary to becoming a “successful” academic, but no such credential is necessary to achieve success in the arts. While “successful” artists, musicians, writers, and actors are highly skilled, they may or may not have acquired that skill through formal education and may not have even completed a four-year degree. The personal and financial investments are not equivalent – that is, nobody still “aspires” to be a symphony musician at 38 years of age with fifty thousand dollars in unpaid student loan debt, yet this situation is not uncommon among aspiring academics.

It is a myth that there is a clear and well-defined line of merit – in both academe and the arts – between those who “make it” and those who do not.

Yes, people who become symphony musicians and tenure-track professors are very good at what they do and deserve to be where they are. And, yes, in both professional domains there exists a spectrum of talent, but most people who are good enough to get paid (or underpaid, as the case may be) to play an instrument or teach English at a university fall somewhere in the middle, neither completely  incompetent nor extraordinarily gifted. In both examples, the symphony musician and the professor, there are many, many others who could be doing their jobs – indeed, even excelling at those jobs.

My point here is not to say that “successful” people are undeserving or that competition is bad but rather that what we are talking about when we talk about the “competitiveness” of achieving success in academe and in the arts is only partially about merit. Yes, talent gets you in the door and up the first few steps. Talent and hard work make you “competitive” as a candidate for that symphony or tenure-track position, but it isn’t – with very few exceptions -- what ultimately gets you the job. You get the job because you were not only “competitive” but because you were in the right place at the right time, because you were willing to take anything and go anywhere, and, above all, because you “fit” – because, among the two or three or ten or a hundred or a thousand “competitive” candidates, your personality and scholarship “fit” within a department, your instrumental tone “fit” a conductor’s orchestral conception.

By arguing this last point, I am, in fact, claiming that there is a valid comparison to be made between careers in the arts and in academe, but it is not the comparison usually made by those who have “made it” – at least not in academe. Those academics who usually make this comparison do so to validate privilege and to justify complicity with an unjust and exploitative system of labor.

We should demand equal pay for equal work.

Valid comparisons aside, the violinist who plays wedding gigs and teaches fourth graders is not performing the same work as the symphony violinist, even if they are equally talented. The symphony musician works under a different and more rigorous set of demands, and those demands are reflected in hir pay and benefits. On the contrary, adjuncts and professors often teach exactly the same courses. In an English department, while adjuncts may teach the majority of the composition sections and tenure-track faculty the majority of graduate courses, there are a great many courses in institutions that rely heavily on adjuncts, including courses for majors, taught regularly by both adjuncts and professors.Yet, the inequality in compensation is startling. Numbers vary from institution to institution, but they never come out fairly. For example, an assistant professor at a regional state university may earn $48K for teaching 3/3. Since a 4/4 teaching load is considered full-time, that means ze should be devoting three quarters of hir time to teaching responsibilities and one quarter to research and service. In other words, ze is paid $36K to teach six courses a year. That’s $6K per course. Adjuncts in the humanities at flagship R1 state universities don’t earn anywhere near $6K per course, let alone adjuncts at regional state schools.

* * * * *

For all the reasons listed above, we should stop comparing careers in academe to careers in the arts. It is an inaccurate and misleading comparison that distracts us from the real problems with a two-tiered faculty system – a system that has led to a serious class divide which ultimately threatens the quality of postsecondary education in this country. Academics tend to lean left politically, often arguing through their scholarship and teaching for more equality in our society, yet the unfairness and class division within our own community is shameful. Comparing ourselves to artists – adjuncts to starving artists, professors to stars – romanticizes a problem we ought to be working harder to fix. We need to look honestly and critically at who WE are, not at who we might fancy ourselves to be.

View from Office Window

Sun casting shadows,

Trees upon snow; traffic flows,

Streams past rising stone.

In Which Recent Ph.D. Asks for your Good Wishes on Behalf of a Cat

Toulouse is the cat on the right. She is fourteen years old and lived outdoors her whole life until just a few months ago, when she figured out that life as a housecat wasn't such a bad deal after all -- plenty to eat, warm, comfy places to sleep, and good company (no, as much as they look alike, they're not related).

Now, she has a tumor on her underside the size of a large avocado pit. She saw the vet last week and was scheduled for surgery to remove it. The surgery may or may not happen tomorrow morning. The prognosis is not good, but she is a good cat, loving and people-friendly. And she trusts me.

No matter how many times you go through this with a pet (and I've been through it a number of times), it's always so hard to know what to do that will cause the least pain and suffering. The vets don't always know, and it's not as if your cat can speak for herself. She trusts you to read the signs.

The hardest thing is knowing when to let go. Because, you do want to, if it's the right time, but sometimes you just don't know if there might be more time, more good time. Is it worth the trauma of surgery to find out? Most people would say yes if you were talking about another person: you know, of course, "Do not go gentle into that good night."

But what about a cat? Would she not prefer to stay snuggled in the couch, gradually letting go of food and drink, and then, finally, gently and quietly, just letting go?

10 Reasons I Wouldn’t Accept a Tenure-Track Position If Offered One Today

Disclaimers: I still have not yet made up my mind about whether to go on the market again this coming fall. These reasons are today’s reasons and may change tomorrow. Also, they are MY reasons – and my reasons only – and are not intended as criticism of anyone already on the tenure track or headed that way.

Credit: This post was inspired by the fine bloggery over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School.

In no particular order:

1) I like where I live.
I live in my own house in an urban, diverse, historic neighborhood in a large yet walkable metropolis. From where I live, I can walk to work (my current job, at least), walk to multiple grocery stores, restaurants, bars, theaters, museums, yoga studios, and parks. There’s also great public transportation, which is important for someone like me who doesn’t drive, even in a walkable city. The climate is temperate (spring is especially beautiful, and I’m looking forward to it!), the air reasonably breathable (for a city), and the people tolerable. Why would I give all of this up and move to Nowheresville USA to teach – most likely – unmotivated and underprepared students for hardly more than I was earning as an adjunct here? The title of “professor” and its affiliated prestige just aren’t worth the sacrifice.

2) There Aren’t Many Places I’d Be Willing to Move
Of the twenty or so jobs I applied to for AY 2011-2012, only 2 were in places I’d be willing to move (a third was here in Current City). The general wisdom is to apply first and decide whether you’d actually go there after you get an offer. Doesn’t apply in my case. Those other seventeen applications were a waste of time – the jobs were just in places I really never will be willing to move (at least not for those jobs). General wisdom should always be tempered by one's own idiosyncrasies.

3) There’s Nothing Wrong with Being an Independent Scholar
Besides all the other advantages to my current location, both my grad and undergrad universities are located here, and I have access to both – excellent – libraries. World Famous Library is also located here. Should I choose to pursue my research interests, I have no shortage of resources, and I have a job that – at least for now – provides more “down time” for reading and writing during the day than teaching 3/3 or 4/4 as an adjunct did (I’m typing this at work right now – whether I’ll use the time just for blogging or doing “serious” writing remains to be seen). And let’s not forget that I have evenings and weekends free, too. No grading to distract. No pressure to publish. No tenure and promotion committees to please. And yet I still have standing invitations to submit my work to more than one peer-reviewed journal and at least one scholarly press. What's to lose?

4) If I Had to Teach Graduate Students, I Wouldn’t Be Able to Sleep at Night
Not with the ways graduate students are exploited. Not with the job market as it currently is. Not with all the lies and bullshit that keep them believing that if they “do everything right,” they’ll have a chance.

5) If I Taught in a Department that Employed More Adjuncts than Tenure-Track Professors, I Wouldn’t e Able to Sleep at Night
Adjuncts are invisible. I had no idea what the ratio of adjuncts to professors was in my department at Grad University until I looked it up a few months ago. Made me sick. Maybe a few were happy being adjuncts. Maybe a few had outside careers and only taught a course or two a year. But most – at least the ones I knew – were barely scraping by and yet teaching the SAME courses for a fraction of the pay that tenure-track faculty were. I don’t want to be part of that system even passively.

6) Teaching Can Be Boring
I’m not talking about the excitement that comes with designing and teaching a new course – or even the fun of tweaking one you’ve taught a few times on a subject you love. That part of teaching keeps us coming back. I’m talking about the surveys and comp courses you do again and again and again, semester after semester. Maybe you have some flexibility with your syllabus, maybe you don’t, but a lot of people, for a lot of reasons, teach more or less the same syllabus when assigned the same course. It’s understandable, indeed, given all one’s other responsibilities, even necessary sometimes, but I’d get bored. Heck, I was really bored with teaching comp by the time I quit my adjunct gig. And while I loved teaching lit when I had the chance, I don’t know how my adviser taught the same survey again and again – hardly changed it at all in the seven years I worked with hir. It was a great class, and I don’t think the students were bored…but I would get bored with it myself.

7) Academia is a Small World
If you haven’t already, go read David Lodge’s Small World, although my “reason” here isn’t so much that you run into the same people over and over (that happens everywhere) or that you have the same conversations again and again (is it just me, or is there a theme of repetition emerging here?) but that academia is just one very small corner of a very grand buffet – or, not to mix up our food metaphors, as Katie DePalma, a guest poster over at Worst Professor Ever, says, “The world is your very own big, delicious oyster.”

8) Academic Days, Weeks, and Semesters End, but the Work Never Does
If you’re both a perfectionist and an academic, your work NEVER ENDS. You never escape the feeling that there’s always something more to do, something you “should” be doing, be it writing the article, revising the chapter, grading the papers, or prepping for class. You are always encumbered by that modal pressure of obligation. Right now, I’m really enjoying some relief from it. I do what I’m paid to do when at work and what I choose to do otherwise. I’m not sure I’d be willing to sacrifice the autonomy I have right now for the uncertain promise of tenure.

9) You Never Get to Leave School
Once upon a time, I thought that an academic setting was the only place I could grow creatively and intellectually. I was wrong. Not only can that growth happen elsewhere but creative growth in academia is circumscribed by the pressures to publish, to "fit" within a field or department, and to balance the often competing responsibilities of research, writing, teaching, and service. School becomes a prison when it stifles and stunts rather than sustains your growth.

10) Much as I Enjoy Him as a Fictional Character, I Don’t Want to Turn into Professor Farnsworth When I Get Old:

 

My Cat Is Really Smart

I've always suspected he was pretty smart and was pleasantly surprised when I found that, with just a small catnip bribe, I could get him to do research for me!

Saga of the Letter -- Or, a Lesson in Rhetoric

Early this morning, Recent's boss emails: "Recent Ph.D., please review the attached Important Letter for typos. Make corrections and then make a million copies. Deliver copies to Address X for Importnat Meeting tomorrow."

Recent dutifully follows instructions, expensing $80 in copies and cabs, and arrives in the office, when the phone rings. It's Recent's boss calling from out of town:

"Recent, don't make those copies yet. Important People won't sign it. We have to revise."

OK. Recent is not too dismayed, since expenses will still be covered, the mistake wasn't hir fault, and someone else will be doing the revising. Important Letter circulates via email, cc'd to Recent:

Conservative #1: "Get rid of all instances of the word 'fair' and its derivatives. Makes the policy we're advocating sound too liberal."

Conservative #2: "Get rid of all instances of the word 'equal' and its derivatives. Makes the policy we're advocating seem too much like we actually want to level the playing field."

Conservative #3: "Get rid of this whole paragraph. Makes it sound too much like we agree with what the liberals in Congress are doing."

At 6:00 p.m., everybody finally agrees to sign off. Recent's boss says, "Well, we didn't actually change what we're asking for, but we changed how we asked for it. Tomorrow morning, make a million copies and deliver them to Address X in time for Important Meeting."

Sigh. Does anyone even care about the policy itself? Or, is the only thing that matters what we call it?

Random Observations from inside the Belly of the Beast

In keeping with the theme of my last post, another irony is that while this has been the first year since 2005 that I missed the MLA's annual convention, I had to attend -- for my new job -- the annual "conservatard" circus that Wonkette has been mocking relentlessly.

Now, all I had to do as far as participation went in this orgy of wingnuttery was attend a bag stuffing the day prior to make sure my organization's propaganda made it into the tote bags everyone got at registration and spend a few hours the next two days staffing the booth in the exhibit hall where we gave out more of it. Fortunately, I didn't have to do a whole lot of talking. When people came up to the booth, I'd just smile and hand them a deck of "freedom" playing cards (picturing libertarian icons -- e.g. Ayn Rand as the Queen of Hearts). I performed my role well, not just as liberal playing libertarian but as Ph.D. playing secretary. When people wanted to talk about politically charged subjects, much as I would have enjoyed arguing with them (it was neither the time nor place), I made the excuse that I was "just a secretary" and really didn't know a whole lot about "the myth of global warming" or whatever.

So, I was in a good position to observe, and here are some random observations:

Divide and conquer could be an effective strategy progressives might use for undermining conservative campaigns. Indeed, I learned that libertarians dislike social conservatives almost as much as liberals do and, given the opportunity, will ridicule them almost as relentlessly.

Social conservatards scare easily. The wingnuts in the booth next to ours were wearing confederacy-inspired regalia and distributing anti gay marriage pamphlets. One of my coworkers encouraged her friend, a member of the Log Cabin Republicans, to go over and chat with them, which he did. We couldn't hear the conversation, but, oh my, was it fun to watch those guys turn red and back away! Once they realized they were talking to a real live gay person, their fear was palpable. He kept them talking for about fifteen minutes.

Conservative women like wearing super-high heels -- otherwise known as fuck-me heels. Why on earth else would anyone wear shoes like these

to a conference, when you know you're going to be walking around a lot amidst chaotic crowds?

Reserve the Evil Stare of Death only for those occasions when it's truly warranted. You know what I'm talking about -- that heavy, hateful stare that is meant to suffocate with loathing the person at whom it is aimed. Well, here's another irony: Granted my role playing, no one at the conference targeted me with the Evil Stare of Death. The day before, though, when I had to attend the bag stuffing, a progressive environmentalist conference was just wrapping up in the same hotel. When I asked some people working at that conference for directions to the room in which the bag stuffing was being held, much as I would rather have attended their conference, I instantly felt myself frozen by their Evil Stare of Death. They assumed I was Something I Am Not -- I became a caricature, an unwilling captive of passive performativity! It sounds like a banal thing to say, but if I learned anything this week, it's not to judge would-be opponents prematurely. Save your Evil Stare of Death until you know for sure that you're talking to wingnuts like these.

Oh, the Irony!

As a secretary, I am not paid to think, yet I spent the past decade developing my thinking, reading, and writing skills.

As a secretary at a think tank, however, where a fair amount of writing is done by other people, my skills do have value. I am asked to edit things.

As a secretary with progressive political views working at a libertarian think tank, I am asked to edit things that make arguments with which I do not necessarily agree for publications that stand for things with which I do not necessarily agree.

Yesterday, I edited an article that will be published in the National Review.

Yoga Makes Me Happy

What does it say about me that the only time I'm really happy these days is when I'm doing yoga? It's not just true of my post academic life; it was true of a good portion of my dissertation writing days, too.

I've been a little out of practice lately, starting the new job and having had the flu for a bit before that.

I went to classes on Saturday and, with one of my favorite teachers, on Sunday. Today, I stood on my head for the first time in several months, and it felt amazing.

A funny thing: My vision impairment affects my Drishti, because it affects my ability to fix my gaze on a single point, which is especially important in balancing postures, like Tree Pose.

It's easier for me to stand on my head than to stand on one foot!

Indeed, "Not damaged. Not dysfunctional. Just different."