Question for Readers

Is it worthwhile getting a Ph.D. if your only options are A) working as an adjunct or B) leaving academe for some other kind of work?

Especially if you've experienced significant financial hardship along the way (and if remaining an adjunct would cause you significant financial hardship), is it worth it to spend time and effort getting the Ph.D. if you cannot, in the end, no matter how talented and smart you are, achieve the career goal you started out with?

The Economist says no.  Thomas H. Benton has been saying no for a long time. This NYU guy says yes, but I think there are some serious flaws with his argument, starting with the fact that his point-of-view is that of the university --specifically, that of the professor of graduate students and someone serving on the graduate admissions committee--and that the interests he represents are those of the university and NOT of the students. Sure, it's great for universities, at least in the short term, to have an abundance of graduate students and recent Ph.D.s willing to work as serfs, believing if they stick it out long enough--if they can prove themselves good enough--that a tenure-track job will come along eventually and make it all worth it. But that argument doesn't do a very good job of representing the interests of graduate students or recent Ph.D.s....

My answer is complicated, and readers will have to wait to read it. But in the meantime, share your thoughts, whether you have a Ph.D. or not, whether you're on the tenure track or not!

If it's worth it, what makes it so? If not, why not?

Via

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

In today's Part 2 of my series on faculty salaries, I offer you a full picture of what the "average" English department looks like salary-wise at a public R1.

To recap from yesterday, the student newspaper at Grad University publishes an annual listing of all faculty and staff salaries. Since it is a public institution, the public has a right to this information, although the newspaper has received criticism for its practice in the past (coming, not surprisingly, form highly paid administrators) and has yet to publish listings for the 2010-2011 academic year. The numbers I'm sharing with you are from 2009-2010.

As I wrote yesterday, the faculty is comprised of 95 adjuncts, 10 assistant professors, 15 associate professors, and 28 full professors. This does not include graduate TAs, who do teach their own classes (as opposed to merely grading or leading discussions, both of which they also do), but they are not considered faculty by the university and, hence, their salaries (a.k.a. "stipends") are not included here. A great many of the 95 adjuncts are ABD grad students whose TAships have run out. Others are recent Ph.D.s who are holding out for something better. Still others are not-so-recent Ph.D.s who have given up on finding better positions but fear not being able to find ANY work outside of academe. As I mentioned before, at Grad University, all adjuncts teach not only "service" courses but many of the same courses taught by those on the tenure track -- which makes the salary differences you'll see below all the more appalling.

Before you look at the numbers, take note of the following:

• Salary Averages. For adjuncts and full profs, I've included both salary averages and adjusted averages. Among adjuncts, a small number, those listed as earning over $40K, are not paid on a semester-by-semester, course-by-course basis like the rest of us but have yearly renewable or multi-year renewable contracts. The department designates them "adjuncts" because they are not eligible for tenure, but they have additional, special titles, such as Director of Program X. Of course, with one exception, these are general ed writing programs (you don't get much credit for running those in comparison to running other kinds of programs that require less effort and time yet yield MUCH higher salaries, as you may remember from yesterday's post). I thought it fair to do a salary average WITHOUT them, which is the "adjusted average" for adjuncts. The "adjusted average" for full profs is the average without the highest three salaries, which surpass everyone else by $10K or more.
• Race and Gender. There are a few things about these salaries that relate both to adjuncts and more generally to academic hierarchies because they reflect the degree to which race and gender are "rewarded" unequally even in a department that prides itself on diversity. In such a department within a university that also prides itself on diversity, is it at all surprising that the three lowest paid full professors are African American? Of those, the two lowest paid are also female. The three highest paid full profs are white and male. Additionally, of the 15 profs making over $100K, only 5 are female. and of those 5, only one is nonwhite. This woman is also the only nonwhite prof of either sex earning over $100K. The most highly paid woman in the department earns $43,071.45 LESS than the most highly paid man. Lastly, given that the average adjunct earns, on average, more than $40K less than the average assistant professor, is it at all surprising that, of the 95 adjuncts, 64 of them -- an overwhelming majority -- are female?

So, without further ado, here are the numbers:
                 
                        Adjuncts   Asst Profs   Assoc Profs    Profs

Salaries	74,411.90	61,069.10	66,766.95	85,299.44
(in U.S. dollars)	15,976.00	60,940.81	64,958.33	104,219.07
	27,618.00	56,304.93	76,574.46	74,869.84
	42,000.00	67,148.03	68,844.51	95,491.30
	15,976.00	64,000.00	65,053.37	130,000.00
	31,953.00	58,598.52	69,730.66	104,560.53
	8,660.00	57,312.30	82,500.00	110,810.57
	36,441.63	59,707.06	81,102.61	92,018.09
	25,980.00	61,914.93	70,000.02	101,863.76
	17,320.00	57,000.00	62,805.22	79,698.16
	15,976.00		93,178.61	88,184.59
	8,660.00		92,885.73	121,142.78
	53,968.20		67,990.26	91,241.33
	3,994.00		108,513.38	150,074.32
	15,976.00		83,167.36	96,626.74
	17,320.00			116,711.83
	12,000.00			110,232.68
	18,412.00			97,374.81
	15,976.00			68,653.97
	15,976.00			96,000.55
	15,976.00			85,659.23
	23,964.00			90,250.45
	15,976.00			131,228.55
	23,964.00			66,174.04
	15,976.00			93,639.61
	17,320.00			114,958.29
	31,952.00			131,370.00
	15,976.00			175,200.00
	15,976.00			140,348.02
	15,976.00
	25,980.00
	36,824.00
	17,320.00
	7,988.00
	25,980.00
	27,618.00
	23,964.00
	15,976.00
	7,988.00
	23,964.00
	7,988.00
	23,964.00
	15,976.00
	23,964.00
	17,320.00
	27,618.00
	17,320.00
	15,976.00
	8,660.00
	18,412.00
	27,618.00
	18,069.00
	58,137.24
	3,267.80
	34,640.00
	25,980.00
	17,320.00
	15,976.00
	18,412.00
	33,296.00
	15,976.00
	17,976.00
	7,988.00
	15,976.00
	17,320.00
	31,952.00
	15,976.00
	15,976.00
	17,320.00
	17,320.00
	15,976.00
	17,320.00
	25,980.00
	15,976.00
	17,320.00
	15,976.00
	25,980.00
	18,412.00
	16,660.00
	36,824.00
	18,000.00
	17,320.00
	27,618.00
	15,976.00
	17,320.00
	36,824.00
	15,976.00
	17,320.00
	36,824.00
	36,824.00
	15,976.00
	27,618.00
	17,000.00
	23,964.00
	56,000.00
	Adjuncts	Asst Prof	Assoc Prof	Prof
Average	21,809.80	60,399.57	76,938.10	104,962.16
Adjusted Average	19,860.15			99,164.62

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

 Grad University is a public institution. As such, faculty and staff salaries are a matter of public record. In years past, the undergraduate newspaper, controversially, has published an annual listing of all faculty and staff salaries. My department, in its distribution of wealth, is pretty typical of English departments at public R1s.

Although the undergrads haven't put out their 2010-2011 listings yet (I sure hope they do!), the numbers for 2009-2010 are available, and I'd like to share those numbers with you, anonymously, of course, in 3 parts.

Part 1, today's post, is short and sweet. No one pursues a career as an English professor in order to become rich, but the gap between highest paid and lowest paid faculty is striking. Here's a snapshot:

• The 3 highest salaries in the English department at Grad University in 2009-2010 were $175,200.00, $150,074.32, and $140,348.02 and belonged, respectively, to a full professor and program director, a full professor and program director of a different program, and a Distinguished Professor of X and famous poet (Note: academe rewards you more for directing a [derogatory adjective] program than being a nationally recognized poet).
•  The lowest paid adjunct earned just $3,994.00. Ze only taught one class, but that is the average salary adjuncts were paid per class. Salary per class fluctuates a bit because what you get actually depends on what year you started adjuncting and where you were in the program when you did, but, give or take a few hundred, that's what you get. May not sound too bad compared to what some adjuncts get paid, but this is an expensive city. Adjuncts typically get 2-3 classes per semester, typically 5 a year (you'll see when you get tomorrow's numbers). Do the math -- and let me repeat, this is an expensive fucken city.
• Lastly, would you expect there to be more tenure-track faculty or adjuncts? Bingo! How did you figure it was adjuncts? The breakdown is thus: 95 adjuncts, 28 full profs, 15 associate profs, 10 assistant profs. That's 95 off the tenure track, 53 on it. It goes without saying that adjuncts teach more classes. Indeed, if you eliminate service courses (like freshman comp), which only adjuncts teach, and you eliminate grad courses, which only tenure-track faculty teach, the number of credits per semester taught by both groups is about even. Has anyone heard of equal pay for equal work? Yes, those on the tenure track are paid to do more than just teach, but if you parse out an average tenure track salary (we'll get to that tomorrow) for % of time spent on teaching vs. research and service, they're still getting more than twice as much per course than adjuncts are. Fuck that!

Next post, in Part 2, you'll get the full breakdown. In Part 3, we'll compare my humble department with university administration, and that's where things get really ugly!

32,000 Years Ago

Our ancestors etched their impressions of the world on the walls of caves. They relay their messages to us across almost unfathomable gaps of time:

Via from the Chauvet caves in southern France as filmed by Werner Herzog in Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Today we rely on digital media. Our technology is exponentially more powerful in what it can do in the moment, but it becomes obsolete in no time at all.

Via

Their lives were as ephemeral as ours, but their art has lasted. Will ours?

Thanks, IHE, for Making My Eyeballs Hurt Today

It's the end of the day. I've been doing nonacademic, secretary crap mostly (you know, making restaurant reservations, calling the power company and leaving yet ANOTHER message about a billing dispute we thought was resolved but wasn't, researching random stuff I don't really care about). By 5:00, my eyeballs were starting to hurt already, so, thanks IHE, for making them feel even better with this little piece of career advice and the comments that followed.

The message of the article is generally one I support (the humanities job market is crap, so have a back-up plan if you're in grad school), but here are some things that irritated me about the article itself, as well as the comments it generated:

• The author starts with the premise that "In a perfect, pre‐economic‐crisis world, the path from graduate studies in the humanities to the professoriat" would be a smooth and easy one. But it's never been a path as easy as the author suggests here. And the lack of historical perspective sets off the Old Guard from the get-go, who get all huffy-puffy in their comments about how baaaaaad it was back in the 70s. Their criticism that people have been talking about "a crisis in the humanities" for a long time is a fair one. How is the current "crisis" any more of a crisis than crises past? The problem we're dealing with, in fact, isn't a crisis in any real sense of that word. It's a systemic failure that's been screwing a lot of people over for a long time -- not a crisis but an ongoing trend that has been exaggerated by the recent recession such that many more people are now feeling the urgency of no longer lying to ourselves about the problems with the profession.
• The "present" situation, as the author narrates it, isn't anything I recognize. Who the fuck finishes their Ph.D. in 4 years these days, given that most of us are teaching our asses off? I know one person in my starting cohort who finished in 4 years, and ze entered the program knowing exactly what ze would write hir dissertation about. In addition to the time-suck of teaching, few people know exactly what they're going to do from the start. Few people know EXACTLY even at the time they take exams. Research and reflection take time -- time well spent, IMHO, if you're going to get out 7-10 years later and be able to find a job as a professor. When we talk about the fucked-up state of the profession, it's important not to underestimate the amount of time the average person invests because spending a decade in pursuit of a career -- perhaps a third of your entire life -- is a more significant sacrifice than merely dabbling at being an intellectual for 3 or 4 years. Personally, I think the perseverence such an investment requires is an admirable and valuable quality that we are wasting by turning such people away from the profession when they ask for fair compensation only to be replaced by a newer crop of graduate students who don't yet know what they're worth.
• The author misrepresents the current situation, as well as the systemic problems that cause it, by saying "There are no jobs." There are jobs, adjucnt jobs, and adjuncts don't just teach "lower level service courses" anymore. We do it all, with the possible exception of graduate classes -- and even that depends on the institution. It's important not to misrepresent the job "market" this way because doing so misleads people into thinking that "only the bestest and brightest" get the very few "real" jobs available, when, in fact, we've had "real" jobs all along. The problem is that when we earn our credentials and start demanding stable positions and fair compensation we get kickecd to the curb and told we're not good enough. Saying "there are no jobs" perpetuates the myth that academia is a meritocracy.

Best line of the article, which somewhat ameliorated the pain in my eyeballs was this:

Begin to suspect that the leftist virtue of the university conceals a system of privilege and good‐ole‐boyism every bit as sordid as the Corporate America you went to graduate school to avoid. Begin to suspect that the leftist virtue of the university conceals a system of privilege and good‐ole‐boyism every bit as sordid as the Corporate America you went to graduate school to avoid.

Oh, yes. It's easy to criticize corporate America, but at least those corporate fucktards don't try to disguise their motives. Jobs go to China because labor is cheaper over there. Duh! But don't put me in the same room again with another tenured professor making $113K (don't worry, there's another post coming to clear up what I'm talking about here) who responds to my gripes with "Yes, of course we should pay adjuncts more, but where is the money going to come from?" Dude, are you kidding me? Like, I'm sure this isn't your intention, but I'm hearing, "Let them eat cake!" I'm not saying you don't deserve your salary. But I am saying that my partner and family members who have been supporting my little academic adventure these past 10 years should not be (and should never have been) responsible for also subsidizing the education of the students you don't want to teach. There is a connection, you know. And it's not as if that book you just published was really groundbreaking. You could've taught an extra service course or two. I'd sure be willing to for $113K, even if it meant my book took an extra year or two to finish.

Best line from the comments was this:

Even in the humanities, the problem is not that there is no demand for college instructors. The problem is that most TT lines have been replaced by adjunct gigs. Bend, flexible labor, bend!

People do get better at teaching over time. It is a profession in which experience counts. Which is exactly why having a majority of faculty positions remain disposable -- knowledge workers replaced as soon as they pass their underpaid prime -- is bad news for the profession and bad news for the future of higher education. It is a long term trend aggressively exaggerated by the recession, and we should all be working to change it -- that is, if we care at all about the future of the profession.

The World Is Coming to an End AGAIN!

As members of a storytelling species, we create narratives to make sense of our lives. Our individual lives have arbitrary beginnings and inevitable endings, and we have very little control over either. Narratives -- the powerful ones that shape entire cultures and civilizations -- permit the illusion of control by giving structure and meaning to time, which nonetheless persists in unfolding relentlessly, as individual lives come and go.

There's nothing particularly new about the most recent set of predictions -- that the Rapture will occur on May 21st and that the world, along with those of us unbelievers "left behind," will be engulfed in flames on October 21st. Even some Christian fundamentalists are disputing this latest prediction by, in their words, "false prophet" Harold Camping. Just click on their website here and scroll down to see a list of over 200 such predictions in their "Library of Date Setters for the End of the World" going all the way back to 44 A.D.

If you are disinclined towards fundamentalism altogether, it's easy to ridicule the believers, but their fanatic attachment to a "real" end that aligns with the literalism of their faith says something more generally about a human need for such narratives. Frank Kermode (one of my favorite "old school" literary critics), writes in The Sense of an Ending,

it makes little difference -- though it makes some -- whether you believe the age of the world to be six thousand years or five thousand million years, whether you think time will have a stop or that the world is eternal; there is still a need to speak humanly of  life's importance in relation to it -- a need in the moment of existence to belong, to be related to a beginning and to an end.

In a frequently quoted passage, Kermode likens the narrative shape of an individual life to the literary shapes that poets create:

Men, like poets, rush into the middest, in medias res,* when they are born; they also die in mediis rebus,* and to make sense of their span they need fictive concords with origins and ends, such as give meaning to lives and to poems.

As a result, narratives of the Apocalypse become a recursively self-generating cultural phenomenon, re-imagined time and again as each new prediction is disconfirmed. And thus what we see with this most recent prediction is but further evidence that

eschatology is stretched over the whole of history, the End is present at every moment.

How is this possible? Even as the End is always falsified, always disconfirmed, confidence that "this time" the "real" End has come persists with each new prediction:

It is a disconfirmation followed by a consonance; the interest of having our expectations falsified is obviously related to our wish to reach the discovery or recognition by an unexpected and instructive route.

It's a strange -- and I think, on the part of believers, involuntary --psychological investment in what Kermode calls peripeteia, a reversal of circumstances, which here become a way of "re-enacting the familiar dialogue between credulity and skepticism."

These persistently recurrent predictions of Apocalypse, in other words, give people a way to impose structure, purpose, and meaning on their lives as they pass through each new test of their faith.

It's what Kermode calls a "naive apocalypticism," really, and might only become dangerous if its followers had access to some weapon of mass destruction that would give them the power to make their predictions come true.

*    *    *    *    *  

Personally, as a Buddhist-sympathizing atheist, I'd put more stock in the rapturous experiences nature provides in the ordinary course of our earthly existence -- there are plenty of narratives of those experiences, too:

Alice Sitting on a Shroom Via

*"in mediis rebus - in the midst of things; in medias res - into the heart of the matter."

Should We Care About Spelling and Grammar Mistakes in the Blogosphere?

Just wondering what others think. I usually try to be careful and proofread before I post, but I wrote the third post yesterday hastily, just as I was about to leave work. I just wanted to skedaddle and go home, but the mistakes I discovered when reading over it today (now corrected) grated on my brain like nails on a chalkboard. Does anyone else notice and/or care about such things? Do you go back and correct mistakes in your posts? Should blogs be held to a different standard than other kinds of writing?

Quotes of the Day from Inside Higher Ed Article

The article came out yesterday and is called "In for Nasty Weather" by Dan Berrett. First:

To newly minted Ph.D.s, the structural reasons for the lousy job market may well matter less than the inescapable fact that the job market is, well, lousy. Finkelstein said that the research he and Schuster have been doing "quite clearly suggests there isn’t an academic career anymore."

Yes, read that over again: "there isn't an academic career anymore." Game over. The jobs are disappearing, being converted into contingent positions. A contingent position indefinitely, a permatemp job, isn't a "career." And it's true that for many recent Ph.D.s, the structural reasons may seem remote, but we HAVE TO keep the structural reasons in mind. We have to think about them when making decisions about whether to stay adjuncts and hold out for the "career" position or leave academe. Even current or prospective graduate students should bear them in mind rather than just thinking about the "market" in personal terms. Yeah, the job market is lousy, and one of the reasons it's lousy is that people keep holding out for something better. Don't do it! Resist the temptation. The profession is fucked whether you get a job or not, and if you A) do not have a tenure-track job already and/or B) would be unwilling to work towards reform of the system if you got one, just cut your losses and get out. It's better for you and better for the system.

Here's why:

While [some currently tenured and tenure-track professors] fault academe for producing too many doctorates when there is clearly not a big enough market within universities to absorb them, they still worry about the larger ripple effects of bright students turning away from careers in higher education in search of greater stability and a better shot at a middle-class life.

"The deterioration of talent will completely alter the academic profession,” said Hermanowicz of Georgia, “and its impact will be likely felt not only on the intellectual fabric of society, but on the nation's scientific and economic infrastructure."

Yes, that's right. As adjuncts, we are easily exploited by the neoliberal corporate university and the society that acquiesces (not knowing what its own best interests are, not recognizing that the long term effects of investing in higher education are more important than short term tax and budget cuts). But when we all leave? Well, that "impact" is worth pondering by all sides. I'm not a huge Ayn Rand fan (her admirers are the ones promoting cutting the taxes that fund public higher ed -- a policy, in part, to blame for the need for a cheap academic workforce), but her philosophy of "rational self-interest" has something to teach us. You're talented? Smart? Good at teaching? Recognized for original research? They know it, but they want you to forget -- and they pay you accordingly. They pay you nothing so that you will continue to believe you are worth nothing -- and continue to work for the pay. Don't put up with it. Get out. If you're getting a barista's wages, or a secretary's, go work as a barista or a secretary. Don't teach college students. That work requires more of you. More knowledge. More skills. More training. More experience. All of which you have. Don't sell yourself short as an adjunct.

And, lastly, from a comment to the article:

The point often missed in these rifts is that since the late 1980s, there have not been enough tenure-track jobs and far too many qualified people willing to teach for any wage and lacking benefits.

Exactly my point. It's time to get out, do something else, and make the powers-that-be -- the administrators, the tenured faculty who are out-of-touch, the voters whose kids you've been teaching, the budget-slashing politicians whose kids you've been teaching -- that you're worth more than $20K a year. When you leave, they'll start to get the message.

(Whew. Three posts in one day! What have I been neglecting?)

You Don't Actually Need to Know Anything About Sandbag Recycling

in order to get a job as the editor of a sandbag recycling news and policy publication. You don't need to know how to make a sandbag. You don't need to have ever worked stacking sandbags to prevent a flood. You don't need to know anything about the manufacture of the bags or the sources of the sand. You don't need to know anything -- firsthand, that is -- about who needs sandbags and why, about why some sandbags are good and others fail, about the ethos of making sure sandbags get to the people who need them most, no matter the cost. Indeed, your sandbag recycling policy need not be informed by your ever having worked on the ground in a sandbag or sandbag recycling facility. All you need to become the editor of The Latest News in Sandbag Recycling is a B.A., a few good internships, a year or two of work experience, and some good connections.

(Hey, I did say in my earlier post today that it was not possible for me to be any more cynical than I already am. If you don't like my self-righteously piss-poor attitude, go read someone else's blog.)

RBOC: Academic Awards, Old Acquaintances, Raver Fashion Then and Now

I've got nothing organized to say today, so here are some random bullets of crap that sum up the last few days:

• On Friday, I came home to a letter informing me I had won an award for "Best Dissertation of 2010." The award is a modest and localized one, nothing too fancy. Nice to be recognized, of course. And it does mean something to me that my adviser -- once described by a colleague as someone "incapable of writing badly" -- nominated me. Good writing does matter. At least, it's something I still care about. But, really, where does either good writing or an award for "best dissertation" get you these days in academe? Original research and good writing perhaps used to take you places (er, places you'd want to go), but the 2009 winner of this award (ze defended in spring '09) has been on the market since the fall of '08. Ze worked at an on-campus administrative position for two years (after adjuncting for who knows how many while ABD) and finally got a tenure-track job that starts this coming fall. It's in a place I wouldn't move to. Ze has two children and a nonacademic spouse already gainfully employed here in Grad School CIty. Sounds like whether ze moves with or without hir family, things will be difficult. So, congratulations to me for winning the next "best dissertation" award? Yay for academic awards? Hooray for landing a job in a crappy location after 3 years on the market? (Gah, could I possibly be more cynical?)

• On the way home from work yesterday, I ran into an old acquantaince I hadn't seen in a while. Ze was in my dissertation writing group a few years ago. Was further along on hir project than I was at the time, a good project I thought. Turned out ze had been observing how things were going on the market, got fed up with adjuncting and the prospect of doing it indefinitely, and "just walked away" three and a half chapters into a four-chapter dissertation. Ze is now working in an administrative position similar to mine.

• My legs are almost no longer sore from going out dancing on Saturday night. I love dancing and used to go out a whole lot more (you'd think, given all the walking I do, that my legs wouldn't be sore at all, but I danced a lot -- and I think there are some different muscles you use). Peaches and I actually met at a rave lo (!) these many long years ago -- when most of the "kids" out dancing this past Saturday were still in diapers. Back in the day, people wore "phat pants," big, baggy things that lended a flowy motion to your "moves." Usually, guys and girls alike would wear their phat pants with a t-shirt or tank top. Sometimes the guys would take off their shirts. Sometimes the girls would wear half shirts or halters, but nothing too "sexxy." Wasn't really what the scene was about. Although people did sometimes wear outrageous costumes, they didn't involve involuntary flashing of various body parts on the dance floor. I'm not saying that phat pants were all that great. They were a trend, like any other (in hindsight, some people even observe that phat pants were, in fact, quite awful), but the whole "look" amounted to something like this:

(Via. I'm not gonna comment on the bat wings...)

Today, phat pants have been replaced by ultra-short tutus:

(Via, and this one's pretty tasteful, actually, as far as these things go.)

I was trying to find a picture of one that A) Didn't show anyone's face and B) wasn't so short and see-through that I would find it indecent to post on my blog. And what do you wear on top with a tutu? Well, a glow-in-the-dark strapless bra, or even pasties, of course! Yuck. And no, I'm not posting pictures of either, but people were wearing both Saturday night. I guess what I don't like is the turn towards "sexxy," particularly since it is only with female costume that this change has occurred (the guys still wear phat pants or just ordinary street clothes). I'm all for free expression, but trends aren't really about free expression. They're about conformity. Cultural expectations and norms, not individuals, largely determine what it means to "fit in." And I think it's kind of sad that "fitting in" for a lot of 18 or 19 year-old women today means going to a club wearing nothing on top but your bra and nothing on the bottom but a "skirt" that doesn't even cover your bottom (and, yes, let me reiterate, that tutu picture is conservative -- the more revealing ones show your bare nekkid a$$ -- that is, if your panties don't happen to cover it all the way). Phat pants may be grungy and unflattering, but they don't turn you into a sex object. Whatever happened to the "girl power" ethos of the 90s?

Well, I've never really been either a creator or serious follower of trends (though I do still have a pair of phat pants in the attic). I had fun dancing, and I'm too old to care what anyone thinks of what I wear.

How to Embed Links in Your Blog Comments....Or, Isn't Learning New Stuff Cool?

I realize I may have sounded a little bitchy in a few recent posts, but better on one's blog than in Real Life, right?

Also, even though I'm a total technophobe, it really is cool to learn new techy stuff when you motivate yourself to get around to it. I just (perhaps stupidly) assume it's the same for everyone else, too. Hence my ranting about certain people not knowing what Google documents are.

To illustrate that I'm not just blowing smoke, here's something I just learned (see comments to this recent post) that I thought some of my fellow humanities-type, possibly technophoic blogger/readers might appreciate (because, of course, you like learning new stuff, too!):

I never knew how to embed links in blog comments. I thought it was magic. Simple code, yes, I knew that, but that still seems like magic to me. I'm one of those annoying commenters formerly guilty of copying and pasting long URLs into comments that aren't even links. Readers would have to copy and past them into a browser (if they cared enough to bother, that is). How annoyingly asinine of me!

Especially when the magic code really is so simple. And so, if you ever wondered, too, here's how you do it.

In our comment, just type this:

<a href="the URL you want to link to">the text you want people to click on in your comment to get to that URL</a>

The code is in yellow. The URL is blue. The text is purple. And, obviously, you don't color code it!

So, if you've never done it before, leave a comment with a link to your blog (or somewhere else, if you prefer). It's magic!

Can I Just Say...

*Updated below.

There is something wrong with you if you work in an administrative position that requires you to "coordinate" with people 700 miles away doing MS Office-type functions YET YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT A GOOGLE DOCUMENT IS!

Holy stupid cow!!

I know I don't have to explain this to readers, but, in case there's someone out there even more technophobic than I am, a Google document is an online document that you can "share" with others. All you need is a Google/gmail login, and you can create, edit, upload, download, and share documents that you create in Word, Excel, and other programs. I forgive anyone in academe who doesn't know this, because we don't often "share" our work this way, but in an office environment? When you work with people halfway across the country?

Here's how Google documents can be useful in this setting: There's an event coming up that your organization is hosting. Would-be participants can RSVP and register by sending their info to any one of several people. All of this registration information needs to go into a very simple chart, but it can be a challenge to manage the chart if multiple people are constantly adding to it. Every time you add something, you have to forward the file to somebody else, who then has to do the same thing when they add something.

Pain in the a$$, right? More to the point, it's an organizational nightmare because (some) people constantly forget to send their updated files -- or forget to check that they received an updated file (remember this post from the other day?).

So, Google documents provide a really simple solution. Everybody shares the file. Everybody updates the same online file. It's there online in real time. There's no sending back and forth of emails necessary. You don't have to remember to send everyone else your updates. And you can always download it at any time and save a copy to your computer (you know, in case you think Google is going to crash or something).

Duh. All you need to do is know what a Google document is and login. Don't have Gmail yet? It'll take you less than five minutes to create an account, which you don't have to use for anything else. And I'm the biggest technophobe ever. If I can figure out how to use this thing, anyone can.

Instead, here's what my coworker 700 miles away wrote in an email today: "In our last email you sent me a link or something to download the_______ from google and it wanted me to create an account, I don’t want to do that. Please just send me the list as an attachment."

Yeah, and you don't know what a comma splice is, either, but, hey, you don't need to have perfect grammar to do your job. BUT IF YOU'D TAKE FIVE MINUTES TO GET YOURSELF INTO GOOGLE DOCUMENTS, YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO DO YOUR JOB A WHOLE LOT MORE EFFICIENTLY. And so would I. And I wouldn't have to waste time venting my anger at you by blogging about your stupidity. Again.

So, one more time, Coworker in a Different City (in case you missed the link to that post earlier), here's to you:

*You don't even need Gmail to access Google docs. You can just sign up using your current email and creating a Google password. How freakin' hard is that?

What's on Tap for You This Afternoon?

There's a bar downstairs from the office. They have a decent selection of beer on tap, vegetarian sandwiches (er, a few anyway), and free wifi. Apparently my predecessor used to hang out here a lot, but this is the first time I've migrated down from the office. Probably won't be the last.

The biggest reason I mostly stay in the office ist that I prefer to work plugged into a monitor. The laptop screen is hard to see (too small, too much glare), and to see it well enough to do anything of a serious nature, I have to hunch myself over in less-than-comfortable ways, especially when typing or doing anything that requires quickness.

But reading? Or, blogging leisurely? Not at all impossible. And on a beautiful afternoon like this, with the bar open to the outside and not much to do workwise except pay attention to the inbox? Well, who cares if it is taking me twice as long as it otherwise would to write this post?

So, what's on tap this afternoon? I'm going to finish my veggie wrap (served with sweet potato fries -- yum!), catch up on blog reading, maybe have a beer while going through the bibliography of a book that's pertinent to my own book project (and get a reading list started for this next step towards book), check my inbox and do whatever comes along (going upstairs if necessary), and generally enjoy the afternoon.

What about y'all out there? I know some of you are heading into summer break and/or sabbatical? What's on tap for you this lovely day?

Procrastinating the Insanity of Doing Stupid Stuff Twice

Scene 1 (two weeks ago via email)
Coworker in Different City: "Recent Ph.D., will you please alphabetize this attached chart of people sponsoring Global Warming Is a Myth event? Then send it back to me and Other Coworker ASAP. Other Coworker needs it so ze can put organizations and names up on the website." (Subtext: You have a PhD, and I get to tell you to do something a 2nd grader could do -- and that I'm too lazy to do myself. Hahahahahahaha!)

Recent Ph.D.: "Why, certainly, Coworker in Different City. I'd be happy to do that for you. I'll do it this afternoon and send it right back to you and Other Coworker."(Subtext: Really? Wouldn't it take you just as much time to do this yourself as to exchange messages with me?)

Coworker in Different City: "Great. The sooner the better because I'm on vacation next week, and we need to get this done before I go."

Interlude
But I was wrong about the time it would take. It took me about an hour, way longer than it should have because the formatting on the chart was f***ed up and information missing. So, as I was alphabetizing, I put in the missing information and fixed the formatting. And then I sent it back to Coworker in Different CIty AND Other Coworker.

Other Coworker replies promptly via email: "Got it! Thanks, Recent. I appreciate it."

However, Coworker in Different City, perhaps already on vacation, does not reply. Perhaps ze does not check hir email before going on vacation?

Scene 2 (today, via email)
Coworker in Different City: "I just added some new names to the chart of sponsors for Global Warming Is a Myth event. Could you please alphabetize?"

Recent Ph.D.: "I alphabetized the original chart and sent it to you two weeks ago, as you requested. Wouldn't it have made more sense to simply add the new names and organizations to the chart that is already in alpha order?"

Coworker in Different City: "I added some new names. Alphabetize please." (Subtext: I missed your email because I was on vacation and now feel stupid. But my mistake is your redundant chore to fix. Because I can tell you to fix my stupid mistake -- because you're supposed to be "helping" me -- and I'm too lazy to do it myself).

Recent Ph.D.: "Well, could you just tell me which names you added? Or, whether you added them to the bottom or top or in some other way? That way, I can take them from the list you're working from and add them to the already alphabetized list, instead of throwing out what I already did and re-alphabetizing the entire thing. Because, you know, that's kind of a waste of time."

Coworker in Different City: "I don't remember which ones I added or where I put them in the chart. Can you look and see? And then alphabetize?"

Right. OK. I'll get right on that. Clearly this is very important to you. Clearly, you need someone with a PhD working 700 miles away from you alphabetizing the same chart for the second time because you didn't check your email and updated the wrong chart.

And global warming is a myth. And recent PhDs are paid more to alphabetize than to teach. This is the world we live in.

In all fairness, I don't mind helping, even if I think the event is stupid. What irritates me is dealing with an inefficient work process -- and these scenes are just part of a larger set of things to do for this event and this faraway coworker -- that I have no power to change.

See, if you tell me to do something, you can count on me to get it done. Even if I am annoyed by you and the task, I will do it in a timely fashion. And I will do it right, even if that means fixing your original mistakes. But if you then ignore what I did, not even bothering to thank me, proceed with the project as if I did not do what you told me to do "ASAP," and then ask me to do essentially the same thing again? Well, friend, I will then freely blog about your stupidity, whilst avoiding your redundant task.

So, you know, here's to you Coworker in DIfferent City:

Because I Don't Have Anything Else to Say Today, and I'm Tired of Looking at My Last Post

Here's a picture of a relatively young Edward Albee and his cat "Boy":

 Image: NYC 1963, photographer unknown

Thanks to Peaches for sending me to this site yesterday, where there are all sorts of famous writers and their cats, but Albee is absent. Yet his plays about animals, human and otherwise (The Zoo Story, Seascape, The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia?), do certainly suggest nonhuman creatures inspired him. "We are all animals, are we not?" he inquires provokingly in an interview. Here's another picture:

Image: 1961 photo by Philippe Halsman

I don't know where this particular species is in Albee's work (there are dogs, giant lizards, and a goat but no cats I can think of, at least not prominently featured), yet so many writers seem to have found cats as their muses, one wonders what great works would be lost if it weren't for these manipulative bastards charming and adorable creatures?

Will All Be Well Again in the Land of Oz?

I don't know about you, but I'm a little creeped out by the celebrating. Not that I don't understand and appreciate that people would be happy at the news of bin Laden's killing, but it's not the sort of news that would make me want to go party in the streets. I'm reminded of these lyrics:

Ding-dong the witch is dead.
Which old witch? The wicked witch.
Ding-dong the wicked witch is dead.
Wake up you sleepyhead.
Rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up! The wicked witch is dead!
She's gone where the goblins go,
Below - below - below.
Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong' The merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know the Wicked Witch is dead!

Yeah, the munchkins had cause to celebrate, but even they wanted to know:

But we've got to verify it legally
To see...
To see...
If she...
If she...
Is morally, ethically
Spiritually, physically
Positively, absolutely
Undeniably and reliably dead.

In Oz, the munchkins get their proof:

As Coroner, I thoroughly examined her
And she's not only merely dead,
She's really most sincerely dead.

Now, I'm not questioning that he's dead (though dumping the body in the ocean so quickly is a little strange). I'm just saying the whole "morally, ethically, spiritually" part is the problem, rather than the "physically" part. It's not as if the guy didn't have a whole lot of overzealous followers. So, people are celebrating what was essentially revenge more than anything else, and that revenge is likely to beget more revenge, in the form of more terrorist attacks.

But, why should we worry about that? That would require thought and sincere consideration of foreign policy that isn't exactly causally innocent.

Don't you agree it's more fun to sing? Sing it with me again, friends, one more time:

Ding dong, the witch is dead.
Shot in the head,
He's good and dead...

Even though, as I listen as I type, NPR reports, "The threat could be higher now that he's dead."