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

*     *     *     *     *

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.

*     *     *     *     *

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

Via

Friday Link Day ... and How Random Stuff Relates to Being a Postacademic

Since I haven't got any cohesive thoughts of my own today, I'm taking my cue from Spanish Prof's Link Day the other day and featuring links I find noteworthy:

For starters, Steve Jobs died. Yes, he was very smart and too young but also very sick. Sad but no surprise. Why is it that EVERYBODY under the blazing sun thinks they have something to say on this subject? I think Comradde Physioproffe puts it best. Just because you have an iPod/Pad/Phone doesn't mean you have anything of substance to say here.

However, JC does have a great Jobs quote up about how our time is limited and that we should be doing what feels right rather than what we think is right. Unfortunately for me, I don't have a freakin' clue anymore! Up is down and down is up. I'm bored shitless and dissatisfied generally with where my life is right now, but I look around and don't see any alternatives. I'm glad there are people out there like JC and Anastasia who feel good about where they are as postacademics -- and are thriving in their new roles. I just wish I could figure it out. I'd gladly close the door on academe forever if I knew that doing so really would make me happy ... but I don't. I don't know anything anymore.

I've been posting far less about disabilities (in the workplace and everywhere else) than I thought I would be when I started the blog. I guess, honestly, after the few technology hiccups the first week, my lousy eyesight hasn't been much of an issue. But Steve Kuusisto over at Planet of the Blind posted a provocative paragraph today titled Vortex of Disability in which he elegantly and succinctly captures the experience of how a disability can creep up and surprise you --  there are so many ways, and he seems to condense them all. He writes, "Here comes your grandmother, disguised as a wolf, telling you nature is unfair."

For any of you who remember my posts here and here a few months back about being in a band, this article explains some of the back story on why things went down the way they did.That band is now defunct and the album project indefinitely on hold. A splinter group I'm in is putting together some new material, but it hasn't been worth writing about here -- long story short, I need a new band!! The guy that the article is about that I've linked to was not actually involved in the band by the time I joined, but he was part of an earlier incarnation. Our singer/songwriter and he had a major dispute over who had actually written the songs ... and now the album is indefinitely on hold because that singer/songwriter and the bass player/sound engineer who is producing the album have gotten into a dispute over rights to the finished product, among other things. Which is why the album is indefinitely on hold. Did I mention I needed to find a new band? What's the point of all this postacademic freedom if I can't be in a band whose members don't hate each other too much to get stuff done?

Grumble, grumble. I think I'm going to go see what these folks are up to in person, now that the weekend is here ...

"Do You Want to Be Listed as an Independent Scholar?"

This question from Conference Panel Organizer, in conjunction with an email from one of you readers  asking me to elaborate on what I hope to get from defining myself as an independent scholar besides just extrication from adjunct serfdom, got me thinking that I should do a post on ... well, why, more broadly, I'm defining myself this way and what I seek to gain from doing so.

So, to answer CPO's question first, yes, World, I do want to be listed as an "Independent Scholar." In fact, how else would I designate myself for purposes of presenting at conferences and publishing in academic venues? I am no longer "still a student" and am not currently employed by a college or university. What else should I call myself in these contexts?

I think it's interesting, though, how CPO's question reinforces the privileging authority that comes with affiliation, even if your affiliation is merely that of a graduate student or adjunct. The idea is that you belong to a club. By accepting the rules, the indignities, the dysfunction, the exploitation, you gain the privileges of affiliation, including the authority of having institutional backing for your work. As if what you had to say couldn't stand on its own. As if your audience lacked the mental capacity to contend with your research on its own terms. As if your affiliation granted your name automatic authority and your work automatic affirmation.

Maybe it does ...

By defining myself this way, however, I am not only underscoring the simple fact that I DON'T currently (and probably won't ever again) work for a college or university but also expressing my resistance to the dues Club Academe demands in exchange for the privileges of affiliation. Those privileges aren't worth the dues if you're on the adjunct track. As if your work as a grad student or adjunct counted as much as it would if you were on the tenure track and eligible for raises and promotion! Ha!! That's why I quit.

But, so, what do I hope to gain by defining myself this way? Do I want to make a contribution to my field? Do I still care enough about my field to want to contribute?

On the one hand, I'd have to say I feel like I already have contributed. Maybe that sounds arrogant, but my adviser told me, the very last time I saw hir, that my work changed the way ze reads and teaches Major Authors X and Y. I feel the same way about hir work, but this acknowledgment is not nothing, especially since Adviser has hirself published on both authors and substantively on Author X. Adviser lectures on Authors X and Y to literally hundreds of undergraduates every year and regularly teaches grad seminars that include their works. However, yes, I'd like to be able to reach audiences beyond Grad U and hence my interest in finishing Project Dissertation-to-Book.

On the other hand, my primary goal never really was to "contribute to the field" to the extent that doing so would mean privileging research per se over writing per se.  Academics aren't exactly known for their elegant prose. But, personally, I believe literary studies can be an exception -- not that it typically is, just that it CAN be. My approach has always been a writerly one, by which I mean that, for me, writing about literature entails response on an aesthetic level to whatever I'm writing about. Which isn't to say, for example, that if I'm writing about Faulkner I write in ultra long sentences or that if I'm writing about Chaucer I write in Middle English (Duh!). But I do believe writing about literature should entail more -- in terms of craft -- than merely taking a body of "research," dumping it into prose, and calling it a book.

More importantly, writing about literature for me is always -- whatever the research involved might be -- a form of creative exploration and expression. Research and writing allow me to develop aesthetic responses more fully, to understand better why such-and-such a novel blew my mind as I was reading it, and to meet other readers and writers through the virtual worlds we create through our words.

I suppose I see my scholarly writing as a form of creative nonfiction ornamented with footnotes and works cited ...

Calling myself an "independent scholar," whatever I may or may not accomplish under this label, gives me the freedom to publicly make a statement about habits of mind important to me as a reader and writer, about work I've done in the past, and work I may or may not do in the future. Are research and academic writing always fun? No. Do I spend every waking moment I'm not toiling away at Think Tank on some academic project? Hell no!!! I'm lazy, and I also enjoy doing other, sometimes totally frivolous things with my time. Will I ever complete Project Dissertation-to-Book or any other academic project? That remains to be seen, but unless and until I lose interest in such activities completely, I think "independent scholar" is a fair designation for my relationship to reading, research, and writing.

Monday RBOC

Nothing especially provocative here today, folks. Just some random Monday thoughts and a few responses to other posts around the blogosphere:

• JC put up a thoughtful post earlier last week about The Two Types of Postacademics. To these two types (the leaver who hates academic life and just wants to get the hell out and the leaver who finds the working conditions unsustainable but still likes the work and wants to keep one foot in the door), I would add a third type: The would-be postacademic who is trapped inside academe, not for lack of trying to get out but because, despite the relative success postacademics like JC and I have experienced finding nonacademic work, it really is NOT a walk in the park for a great many would-be leavers, such as Sisyphus. Go on over to that blog and read some of the posts from back in the spring of 2010 (like this one about "operation moving into parents' basement"). Sisyphus has been on the academic job market since 2006, and when even her adjuncting gigs started to dry up, she started looking for nonacademic work, in conjunction with her ongoing academic searches. For a while it seemed as if this was all to no avail. Even now, she's in the 2nd year of a 2-year postdoc and back on both academic and nonacademic job markets yet again. Things are bleak, my friends. Bleak. Start planning your exit as soon as you possibly can because the nonacademic job scene in your region may present almost as many obstacles as the academic one.
• Over at Selloutyoursoul, James has a post up about a book he has written, soon to be released, about how humanities majors can find nonacademic jobs, as he apparently has recently done. I applaud his efforts and success, but the self-help genre in general really kinda makes me throw up a little in my mouth: Follow X Simple Steps and You, Too, Can Overcome All Your Obstacles and Have the Perfect Career and Life You Always Dreamed About. I haven't read this book (it's not out yet), so I can't comment, but, as with any promise, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
• The same person who invited me to be on a conference panel is now asking me if I want my paper to be in an edited collection ze is putting together on the same subject. I have mixed feelings about this and haven't said yes or no yet. My grad student self would have said, "Oooo, yes! Another publication!! Awesome!!!" My postacademic self says, "Edited collections are a pain in the ass. At best, they take forever. At worst, after taking forever, the project gets canceled (as has since happened with another piece I wrote). Even for purposes of applying for academic jobs this year, I don't need this extra line on my CV. Plus, a longer version of this paper would be part of Project Dissertation to Book. I've already published several articles excerpted from PDB. I fear that publishing too much more of it in other venues would lessen the interest a book press would have in it. Plus further, even should PDB never come to pass, I have other journal options where I could potentially place this paper." Academic readers, what are your thoughts on edited collections?
• Crocodiles with Coffee did a great post last week on how to properly clothe yourself outside academe. Indeed, "a suitable affirmation"! Not every nonacademic job requires you to wear a suit every day. Mine is a good example. While certain occasions (such as events we host on the Heap) do require proper attire, there is no dress code for regular workdays. The thing is, I find that if I don't at least aim for something approaching business casual, I feel less like working. Not that my job requires much focus or anything, but if I'm in baggy jeans or yoga gear, I feel like I should be on the couch lounging with the kittehs, not doing ... well just about any of the random stupid stuff I do around here in the office. Even going out to lunch dressed like a slob (or in some frumpy outfit left over from academe), I feel out of place. So, yeah, figure out the role you think you might want to play as you move into your "next" job and dress the part.
• Next stop, Crapital City, this Thursday: