Where is everybody? I'm not the only one whose posting has been light lately ...
At least he crickets have something to say:
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
Sign This Petition
Better Pay for Adjuncts: Stop their Exploitation
Go to that link and add your name to the list if you haven't already. It's just one more way to attempt to be heard, to raise awareness. Because ... numbers count in this game.
And then, once you've signed the petition, go check out today's post at Transition Times, where blogger Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez neatly ties the plight of adjuncts to the trend towards distance learning. Contrary to critics of distance learning, Browdy de Hernandez first praises it and emphasizes its inevitabilty and significant potential, describing how a "virtual" classroom could bring together people who would be unlikely to meet in a traditional one:
And because smaller classes, whether virtual or real, are both a better educational model and more expensive, fewer and fewer students will have access to that kind of learning environment. The adjunctification of the professoriate, along with the outsourcing of instruction, will create a caste system, further separating poorer students from more affluent ones:
Go to that link and add your name to the list if you haven't already. It's just one more way to attempt to be heard, to raise awareness. Because ... numbers count in this game.
And then, once you've signed the petition, go check out today's post at Transition Times, where blogger Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez neatly ties the plight of adjuncts to the trend towards distance learning. Contrary to critics of distance learning, Browdy de Hernandez first praises it and emphasizes its inevitabilty and significant potential, describing how a "virtual" classroom could bring together people who would be unlikely to meet in a traditional one:
But Browdy de Hernandez goes on to discuss the "catch" to such a scenario. When distance learning is viewed as a cost-cutting measure rather than a means to enhance learning, both students and faculty lose out. "Outsourcing" instruction at U.S. colleges and universities to underpaid faculty, sometimes in other countries, and tasking them with responsibility for increasingly higher student loads and no one-on-one or small group face time, real or virtual, depersonalizes education, exploiting both students and faculty in order to support inflated costs at the top of academe's pyramid at the expense of its foundation.[W]ouldn’t it be exciting to “hang out” in a seminar classroom with students from around the world? We higher ed folks like to trumpet the value of diversity and international education—well, distance learning provides the platform to make the dream of a truly diverse and globalized classroom a reality.
And because smaller classes, whether virtual or real, are both a better educational model and more expensive, fewer and fewer students will have access to that kind of learning environment. The adjunctification of the professoriate, along with the outsourcing of instruction, will create a caste system, further separating poorer students from more affluent ones:
Now, go sign that petition because I know you read the rest of the post and already forgot the beginning of it![W]e will be looking at an academic landscape where there will be a few highly paid tenured research professors and a vast majority of poorly paid adjunct professors all over the world, working mostly from their home offices via distance learning networks. While there will always be a few lucky students who will be able to again access to ivied classrooms through scholarships, those classrooms will increasingly be reserved for the children of the super-elites of the world. Ordinary kids who have the motivation and discipline to go to college will do it from home, a financial decision their parents will have no choice but to support.
Distance learning is often lauded as a way to level the playing field, since it makes higher education accessible to kids who would not otherwise be able to go to college.
This may be so. But it is also going to be yet another way to divide our society into Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons—in other words, to harden the de facto caste walls that are already making the old rags-to-riches, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps American dream a quaint memory.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Grammar Gripes: Cut "That" Out
"That" is one of the more overused words in the English language. Consider the following:
Just for kicks, let's look at another example, inspired by the only grammar book to die for:
Gah!! If "that" monstrosity didn't give you a headache, you've definitely spent too much time in academe. Try this instead:You cannot expect that you will overcome the obstacles that impede post-academic success if you constantly revert to the same limited perspective that you developed while in academe that prevents you from seeing that the nonacademic world offers many opportunities that you only need to discover in order to take advantage of.
Still cumbersome but note how much smoother it reads when you cut "that" out. Of course, I came up with this example because I'm as guilty as anyone else of cluttering my prose with "that." Sometimes you do need the word, but once you start paying attention, you'll find plenty of "that" to delete.You cannot expect you will overcome the obstacles impeding post-academic success if you constantly revert to the same limited perspective you developed while in academe. It prevents you from seeing the many opportunities awaiting your discovery in the nonacademic world.
Just for kicks, let's look at another example, inspired by the only grammar book to die for:
Gah!!!! "That" just takes out all the romance. Try this instead:Ezmerelda felt keenly that the vagabond libertine that she had unwittingly kissed last night had deceived her by whispering that he was a gentleman in disguise so that he could seduce her unwilling heart and ravish the objections that she could not help, ultimately, but relinquish.
Or, for those of you needing "real world" examples:Ezmerelda felt keenly the vagabond libertine she had unwittingly kissed last night had deceived her by whispering he was a gentleman in disguise, seducing her unwilling heart and ravishing the objections she could not help, ultimately, but relinquish.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ... instead:The Court held that the defendant was entitled to a charge that instructed jurors to find him guilty of the lesser included offense only if they found that he had not stolen the victim’s purse.
The Court held the defendant was entitled to a charge instructing jurors to find him guilty of the lesser included offense only if they found he had not stolen the victim’s purse. (Via)
 |
| Via |
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Stuff Fluffy Ate
The following are the most common surgically removed items from dogs and cats:
1. Socks
2. Underwear
3. Pantyhose
4. Rocks
5. Balls
6. Chew toys
7. Corncobs
8. Bones
9. Hair ties / ribbons
10. Sticks
(And no, don't ask me how and why I know this ...)
1. Socks
2. Underwear
3. Pantyhose
4. Rocks
5. Balls
6. Chew toys
7. Corncobs
8. Bones
9. Hair ties / ribbons
10. Sticks
(And no, don't ask me how and why I know this ...)
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
A Question of Ethics
A hypothetical situation, a hypothetical question:
A leading scholar/expert does something very unprofessional. The action occurs outside their professional sphere but is of a nature that, under most circumstances, would compromise their professional integrity. The action is, technically, unrelated to their research. It is, however, driven by an activist's inclination to "make good" on the policy implications of that research. Under most circumstances, such an action would cause things like the cancellation of speaking engagements and censure within, if not outright ostracism from, professional associations and organizations. It might not automatically lead to the revocation of tenure, but it certainly could provide grounds for building a case.
However, the "victim" of the scholar/expert's unprofessional action, in this instance, itself has an unfavorable reputation in many circles. While the scholar/expert may have committed more than one crime, the "victim" has done nothing illegal but yet is perceived in a highly negative light by scholar/expert's colleagues, allies, and supporters. Because of this perception, scholar/expert's breach of professional ethics is dismissed, even laughed off. The "victim" deserved what it got. It is itself an affront to intellectual integrity and so scholar/expert's action is fair enough in kind.
Except, scholar/expert's action is the kind of thing we teach our children and our students not to do.We'd punish them if we caught them. We might even fail or expel them.
And yet, it seems, scholar/expert is exempt because, here, the "victim" is perceived as the truer villain.
Aside from any legal charges the "victim" may pursue, what should the professional consequences for scholar/expert be? If this individual were scheduled to give a lecture at your institution, would you support it to go on as planned or push to have it canceled?
A leading scholar/expert does something very unprofessional. The action occurs outside their professional sphere but is of a nature that, under most circumstances, would compromise their professional integrity. The action is, technically, unrelated to their research. It is, however, driven by an activist's inclination to "make good" on the policy implications of that research. Under most circumstances, such an action would cause things like the cancellation of speaking engagements and censure within, if not outright ostracism from, professional associations and organizations. It might not automatically lead to the revocation of tenure, but it certainly could provide grounds for building a case.
However, the "victim" of the scholar/expert's unprofessional action, in this instance, itself has an unfavorable reputation in many circles. While the scholar/expert may have committed more than one crime, the "victim" has done nothing illegal but yet is perceived in a highly negative light by scholar/expert's colleagues, allies, and supporters. Because of this perception, scholar/expert's breach of professional ethics is dismissed, even laughed off. The "victim" deserved what it got. It is itself an affront to intellectual integrity and so scholar/expert's action is fair enough in kind.
Except, scholar/expert's action is the kind of thing we teach our children and our students not to do.We'd punish them if we caught them. We might even fail or expel them.
And yet, it seems, scholar/expert is exempt because, here, the "victim" is perceived as the truer villain.
Aside from any legal charges the "victim" may pursue, what should the professional consequences for scholar/expert be? If this individual were scheduled to give a lecture at your institution, would you support it to go on as planned or push to have it canceled?
Monday, April 9, 2012
More on Having a Back-Up Plan
In my post to prospective graduate students the other day, I wrote about having a back-up plan if you go to graduate school rather than assuming you will get a tenure-track job. I want to emphasize how this isn't about success or failure but just plain common sense.
A while ago, I wrote about how I don't think comparing careers in academe to careers in the arts is particularly useful (look it up -- I'm too lazy to link). In one way, however, the comparison is useful, and that is in the wisdom of having a back-up plan. An elder cousin of mine had a long and very fine career as a symphony musician but had also earned an engineering degree. Even though he got the symphony job right out of college, he always said he was glad he had the engineering degree because what if something happened to his hands? What if he sliced a finger while cooking? What if he got really bad arthritis? What if he had a volleyball accident? None of those things happened, but if they had, he wouldn't have been able to play at the level required by his job and he always felt reassured by having that back-up plan.
My point is that shit happens and if you are in the kind of field where there are just so many factors that have to line up just right, you need a contingency plan in case one or more of those factors falls out of place. Even if you get a tenure-track job, for example, what would you do if, down the line, your partner gets a dream job on the other side of the country? You could live apart but you might not want to do that, and it isn't as if you'd just be able to walk into another professor job if you moved. Or, what if you need to take care of aging parents 1000 miles away? What if you get a tenure-track job but don't get tenure due to no fault of your own?
Like I said, shit happens.
Sometimes, academe seems more like this: When I was growing up, another musician kid I knew seemed to have everything going for her. I remember feeling a bit envious around the age of 18 because she was already well on her way to a musical career, without ever going to a college or conservatory, while I was still in school toiling away on a double major in English and music (boy, was I dumb for thinking English could be my back-up!). But there was an accident. Her violin got caught in the doors of a train. She tried to pull it out and became entangled in the strap on the case. The train dragged her for some 50 yards before passengers noticed, pulled the emergency alarm, and got the train to stop. She survived, but her legs were completely mangled and only after years and many painful surgeries was she able to walk again -- and only in a limited capacity. The good news, for her, was that her hands were OK and she could still play. And she has gone on to have a career as a concert violinist. But what if it had been her hands that were destroyed?
How many damaged people in academe do you know? How many people do you know who cling to their studies as if scholarship were the instrument of their soul?
A while ago, I wrote about how I don't think comparing careers in academe to careers in the arts is particularly useful (look it up -- I'm too lazy to link). In one way, however, the comparison is useful, and that is in the wisdom of having a back-up plan. An elder cousin of mine had a long and very fine career as a symphony musician but had also earned an engineering degree. Even though he got the symphony job right out of college, he always said he was glad he had the engineering degree because what if something happened to his hands? What if he sliced a finger while cooking? What if he got really bad arthritis? What if he had a volleyball accident? None of those things happened, but if they had, he wouldn't have been able to play at the level required by his job and he always felt reassured by having that back-up plan.
My point is that shit happens and if you are in the kind of field where there are just so many factors that have to line up just right, you need a contingency plan in case one or more of those factors falls out of place. Even if you get a tenure-track job, for example, what would you do if, down the line, your partner gets a dream job on the other side of the country? You could live apart but you might not want to do that, and it isn't as if you'd just be able to walk into another professor job if you moved. Or, what if you need to take care of aging parents 1000 miles away? What if you get a tenure-track job but don't get tenure due to no fault of your own?
Like I said, shit happens.
Sometimes, academe seems more like this: When I was growing up, another musician kid I knew seemed to have everything going for her. I remember feeling a bit envious around the age of 18 because she was already well on her way to a musical career, without ever going to a college or conservatory, while I was still in school toiling away on a double major in English and music (boy, was I dumb for thinking English could be my back-up!). But there was an accident. Her violin got caught in the doors of a train. She tried to pull it out and became entangled in the strap on the case. The train dragged her for some 50 yards before passengers noticed, pulled the emergency alarm, and got the train to stop. She survived, but her legs were completely mangled and only after years and many painful surgeries was she able to walk again -- and only in a limited capacity. The good news, for her, was that her hands were OK and she could still play. And she has gone on to have a career as a concert violinist. But what if it had been her hands that were destroyed?
How many damaged people in academe do you know? How many people do you know who cling to their studies as if scholarship were the instrument of their soul?
Sunset of a Thousand Sunsets
Isn't that poetic? That's how Peaches put it. He has a much less foul mouth than I have -- Saturday's adventures with the Great Cactus, that is:
But pictures do it no more justice than words. And it's Monday again, anyway.
Back to work ...
Back to work ...
Saturday, April 7, 2012
HOLY JEEEEEZUS !! MOTHERFUCKEN FUCKE!!!
Hell, yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy Easter, CPP, and all the rest of you crazy bastards out there! Happy Easter, Passover, and whatever other crazy fucken spring festivals you may be celebrating this weekend!
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Dear Prospective Graduate Students
I felt a little bad the other day when a prospective graduate student who blogs here fell, like the rest of you, for my April Fool's Day post about getting an interview for a tenure-track job. The fact that the prospect of getting an interview for a tenure-track job has become the stuff of jokes tells you something about the state of the profession. The fact that you all fell for it says something about how academe has programmed us to view such opportunities.
While it amuses me that you post-academics and other presumably rational adults fell for my fake post, I very much do NOT want to mislead idealistic, optimistic prospective graduate students who may have found their way here by searching the intertubes for stories affirming what they fully believe in their naive young hearts to be true: that is, if you work hard enough, set your goals high enough, follow your passion, please your advisers, and do everything right along the way, things will work out and you will have a career as a professor. After all, it's only the losers and fuck-ups who don't make it, right? And you, for sure, won't be one of them because you've done everything right so far! Why should graduate school and the path to professorhood be any different?
One of the criticisms by prospective and new graduate students of the graduate school naysayers -- naysayers, for example, such as the blogger and commenters over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School -- is their negativity. Those whiners and complainers, the critics say, need to just suck it up and shut up. Whoever said graduate school was supposed to be easy? You should expect to work hard. You should expect it to be competitive. You should expect to make sacrifices. And if you don't have the stomach to roll with the punches all the way to tenure-track professorland, you should leave and do something else with your life rather than complaining. Your bad experience with academe is your own fault, and you have nothing and no one to blame but your own negative attitude.
Here's the thing: I'm all for encouraging optimism and positivity. It's a heathier way to live, most of the time. But, unfortunately, academe these days is far, far from Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds." (or here if you don't feel like reading Voltaire right now). Negative emotions -- to the extent they do not lead to debilitating depression, suicide, or violence against others -- can be a normal and healthy reaction to a wrong or unfair or otherwise problematic situation. Some might even argue feelings of discontent are what lead to action and ultimately positive change and progress.
And graduate students have A LOT of very good reasons to feel discontent and anger, frustration and betrayal. But many of these reasons are evident to new or prospective graduate students only in the abstract since they have not yet had to confront them personally. It's easy to believe you would respond differently or make different choices when you have nothing to base your perspective on but undergraduate experiences of academic success and advisers who challenged you, showered you with praise when you met the challenges, and encouraged you in your aspirations to follow in their footsteps. Be especially wary of the influence these people have over you. They mean well and sincerely want you to become professors like them, but your success -- and getting into graduate school is the first milestone -- also validates their sense of professional (and, in some cases, personal) self-worth. Don't expect them to tell you the truth, either about what graduate school may have in store for you or about what awaits you after you finish -- if you finish, that is. They'll tell you their truth, but their truth will not very likely be yours.
If you feel that graduate school, right now, is your calling, I'm not going to be the one to tell you not to go. Maybe you have Deep Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Maybe you need to spend some time exploring them before you can move on with your life, before you can perhaps expand your horizons to include other pursuits. Maybe graduate school is the only place for you right now ...
If you are a new or prospective graduate student, let me put this to you bluntly: From the get-go, assume you will NOT end up with a job as a professor. Even though there still are a few tenure-track jobs out there and recent Ph.D.s do get them, you should operate under the assumption you will NOT get one. EVER. There are several reasons you should do this, and they have nothing to do with whether you're good enough, smart enough, or assiduous and hard working enough to BE a professor. Rather, they have to do with the structural realities of higher ed and the unfortunate consequence that your future, beyond simply finishing your program, is NOT in your own hands:
1) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more motivation to prepare a back-up plan. Despite what your current advisers, blinded by your brilliance, may tell you, you NEED one, even if you never end up having to fall back on it. If you're not a trust fund brat or the spouse of someone who can support you indefinitely and you want to be assured you will be able to eat and pay your rent after the age of 30, you CANNOT afford to rely on optimism alone. The academic job market is fickle at best. Beyond writing a great dissertation, publishing a few articles, having strong recommendations, and teaching a class or two, even getting called for an interview is COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR CONTROL. When you're an undergrad, a clear correlation exists between how hard you work and how successful you are, including your ability to get into graduate school. That correlation does not exist between your success as a graduate student and your ability to get a job as a professor. You do not want to put in all the time and effort it takes to earn a Ph.D. -- no matter how much you enjoy the process -- only to find yourself 30+ years old and facing only two choices: another semester of adjuncting on three different campuses for barely enough money to keep your ass warm in winter or just plain unemployment.
2) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more freedom while you are "still in school" to make life and career choices that are the best choices for YOU rather than the choices you think you have to make in order to have a shot at a tenure-track job down the line. Simply completing the requirements to earn a Ph.D. -- coursework, exams, and dissertation -- is challenging and a real accomplishment if you can get through it. However, many graduate students put themselves under unnecessary additional pressures to publish multiple articles, present at conferences, and build up a teaching portfolio because they've internalized the message that doing these things will make them better job candidates. The reality is that beyond one peer-reviewed article and two or three semesters of teaching, what matters to a committee is how well they think you'll "fit" in their department. For the initial screening of candidates, they base "fit" on how you represent your research and teaching in your letter rather than what you've actually done. Since you don't know what "fit" means to any particular search committee, you have no idea of what they're looking for or what to say to make yourself "fit" it. I know this is hard to fathom at this point, but there are so many candidates these days so far exceeding the required qualifications that committees really have no choice. My point is that if you operate under the assumption that you WON'T get a tenure-track job, you will do "extra" things like publishing articles and presenting at conferences only if you want to and can afford to in terms of both time and money rather than because you think you have to. You'll save yourself, at the very least, one or two minor breakdowns.
3) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because it will allow you to create some very important distance between who you are as an academic and who you are as a person. Even as you are finishing up your undergrad program, to what degree is your sense of self-worth caught up in the quality of your academic work and the recognition you get for it? Be honest. It's not an easy question. If your answer is that a grade on a paper or a professor's praise or criticism can make or break your entire day, you should know that those feelings only get more intense in graduate school and beyond. A full professor at my Grad U confessed to me once that ze couldn't look at peer-reviewers' comments on articles ze had submitted to journals without having a drink first. Ze said even a "revise and resubmit" response, nevermind a rejection, would make hir depressed for weeks before ze could face the process of revising and resubmitting. Do you really want to subject yourself to this kind of emotional drama when you're 50? No, you don't. But if you go to graduate school to explore Deep Questions recognizing from the outset you might have to do something else to earn a living, you will focus on those Deep Questions rather than on what other people say about you. Your "career," whatever it may turn out to be, will be separate from your personhood. And your well-being will not be held hostage to how people react to your work, academic or otherwise.
If you follow this advice, make it through graduate school, and end up with a tenure-track job, great! Remember, all is grist for the mill. However, if -- as is much more likely despite your passion and brilliance -- you end up having to build up some other career for yourself, following this advice will prepare you much better to do so than conforming to academe's expectation that you put all your eggs in one basket.
While it amuses me that you post-academics and other presumably rational adults fell for my fake post, I very much do NOT want to mislead idealistic, optimistic prospective graduate students who may have found their way here by searching the intertubes for stories affirming what they fully believe in their naive young hearts to be true: that is, if you work hard enough, set your goals high enough, follow your passion, please your advisers, and do everything right along the way, things will work out and you will have a career as a professor. After all, it's only the losers and fuck-ups who don't make it, right? And you, for sure, won't be one of them because you've done everything right so far! Why should graduate school and the path to professorhood be any different?
One of the criticisms by prospective and new graduate students of the graduate school naysayers -- naysayers, for example, such as the blogger and commenters over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School -- is their negativity. Those whiners and complainers, the critics say, need to just suck it up and shut up. Whoever said graduate school was supposed to be easy? You should expect to work hard. You should expect it to be competitive. You should expect to make sacrifices. And if you don't have the stomach to roll with the punches all the way to tenure-track professorland, you should leave and do something else with your life rather than complaining. Your bad experience with academe is your own fault, and you have nothing and no one to blame but your own negative attitude.
Here's the thing: I'm all for encouraging optimism and positivity. It's a heathier way to live, most of the time. But, unfortunately, academe these days is far, far from Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds." (or here if you don't feel like reading Voltaire right now). Negative emotions -- to the extent they do not lead to debilitating depression, suicide, or violence against others -- can be a normal and healthy reaction to a wrong or unfair or otherwise problematic situation. Some might even argue feelings of discontent are what lead to action and ultimately positive change and progress.
And graduate students have A LOT of very good reasons to feel discontent and anger, frustration and betrayal. But many of these reasons are evident to new or prospective graduate students only in the abstract since they have not yet had to confront them personally. It's easy to believe you would respond differently or make different choices when you have nothing to base your perspective on but undergraduate experiences of academic success and advisers who challenged you, showered you with praise when you met the challenges, and encouraged you in your aspirations to follow in their footsteps. Be especially wary of the influence these people have over you. They mean well and sincerely want you to become professors like them, but your success -- and getting into graduate school is the first milestone -- also validates their sense of professional (and, in some cases, personal) self-worth. Don't expect them to tell you the truth, either about what graduate school may have in store for you or about what awaits you after you finish -- if you finish, that is. They'll tell you their truth, but their truth will not very likely be yours.
If you feel that graduate school, right now, is your calling, I'm not going to be the one to tell you not to go. Maybe you have Deep Questions about Life, the Universe, and Everything. Maybe you need to spend some time exploring them before you can move on with your life, before you can perhaps expand your horizons to include other pursuits. Maybe graduate school is the only place for you right now ...
If you are a new or prospective graduate student, let me put this to you bluntly: From the get-go, assume you will NOT end up with a job as a professor. Even though there still are a few tenure-track jobs out there and recent Ph.D.s do get them, you should operate under the assumption you will NOT get one. EVER. There are several reasons you should do this, and they have nothing to do with whether you're good enough, smart enough, or assiduous and hard working enough to BE a professor. Rather, they have to do with the structural realities of higher ed and the unfortunate consequence that your future, beyond simply finishing your program, is NOT in your own hands:
1) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more motivation to prepare a back-up plan. Despite what your current advisers, blinded by your brilliance, may tell you, you NEED one, even if you never end up having to fall back on it. If you're not a trust fund brat or the spouse of someone who can support you indefinitely and you want to be assured you will be able to eat and pay your rent after the age of 30, you CANNOT afford to rely on optimism alone. The academic job market is fickle at best. Beyond writing a great dissertation, publishing a few articles, having strong recommendations, and teaching a class or two, even getting called for an interview is COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR CONTROL. When you're an undergrad, a clear correlation exists between how hard you work and how successful you are, including your ability to get into graduate school. That correlation does not exist between your success as a graduate student and your ability to get a job as a professor. You do not want to put in all the time and effort it takes to earn a Ph.D. -- no matter how much you enjoy the process -- only to find yourself 30+ years old and facing only two choices: another semester of adjuncting on three different campuses for barely enough money to keep your ass warm in winter or just plain unemployment.
2) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because you will have more freedom while you are "still in school" to make life and career choices that are the best choices for YOU rather than the choices you think you have to make in order to have a shot at a tenure-track job down the line. Simply completing the requirements to earn a Ph.D. -- coursework, exams, and dissertation -- is challenging and a real accomplishment if you can get through it. However, many graduate students put themselves under unnecessary additional pressures to publish multiple articles, present at conferences, and build up a teaching portfolio because they've internalized the message that doing these things will make them better job candidates. The reality is that beyond one peer-reviewed article and two or three semesters of teaching, what matters to a committee is how well they think you'll "fit" in their department. For the initial screening of candidates, they base "fit" on how you represent your research and teaching in your letter rather than what you've actually done. Since you don't know what "fit" means to any particular search committee, you have no idea of what they're looking for or what to say to make yourself "fit" it. I know this is hard to fathom at this point, but there are so many candidates these days so far exceeding the required qualifications that committees really have no choice. My point is that if you operate under the assumption that you WON'T get a tenure-track job, you will do "extra" things like publishing articles and presenting at conferences only if you want to and can afford to in terms of both time and money rather than because you think you have to. You'll save yourself, at the very least, one or two minor breakdowns.
3) Operate under the assumption you will NOT become a professor because it will allow you to create some very important distance between who you are as an academic and who you are as a person. Even as you are finishing up your undergrad program, to what degree is your sense of self-worth caught up in the quality of your academic work and the recognition you get for it? Be honest. It's not an easy question. If your answer is that a grade on a paper or a professor's praise or criticism can make or break your entire day, you should know that those feelings only get more intense in graduate school and beyond. A full professor at my Grad U confessed to me once that ze couldn't look at peer-reviewers' comments on articles ze had submitted to journals without having a drink first. Ze said even a "revise and resubmit" response, nevermind a rejection, would make hir depressed for weeks before ze could face the process of revising and resubmitting. Do you really want to subject yourself to this kind of emotional drama when you're 50? No, you don't. But if you go to graduate school to explore Deep Questions recognizing from the outset you might have to do something else to earn a living, you will focus on those Deep Questions rather than on what other people say about you. Your "career," whatever it may turn out to be, will be separate from your personhood. And your well-being will not be held hostage to how people react to your work, academic or otherwise.
If you follow this advice, make it through graduate school, and end up with a tenure-track job, great! Remember, all is grist for the mill. However, if -- as is much more likely despite your passion and brilliance -- you end up having to build up some other career for yourself, following this advice will prepare you much better to do so than conforming to academe's expectation that you put all your eggs in one basket.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Holy Shit! I Could Have a Tenure-Track Job Yet!!
One of those few tenure-track positions I applied for back in the fall apparently has not closed their search yet. I learned this on Friday. I've been too overwhelmed to post until now.
They requested additional materials from me in November, and I dutifully sent along a writing sample, recommendations, and my teaching philosophy. But then I didn't hear anything. I assumed they had moved on and had just not gotten around to sending out the rejection letters. By January, I had totally given up on the academic search -- my third and last, as you know.
Friday I came home from work, poured myself a drink, and checked voicemail ... and ... Holy shit! There's this message. It's from Regional State U only an hour away from Crapital City. They were impressed with my application when they received the additional materials back in November, but they'd had to put their search on hold because funding was uncertain. They didn't do MLA interviews and hadn't contacted anyone since the request for additional materials. But ... their funding came through and they would like to know if I am still available. They need to move their search along quickly, and I am on a short list of candidates. They would like to do a phone interview, which will possibly lead to a campus interview ... and then, possibly, a return to academe on terms I can accept!!!
Aarrrgggghhhh, I'm getting ahead of myself. Nothing is certain except the phone interview, which is this coming Thursday.
There's a lot to think about here. Given that I am a type 2 leaver, as JC puts it ("people who still love academia, but who know that their ability to get a job that pays them a fair wage in an area they'd like to live is severely hampered by the academic job market or some other factor"), I've never really been happy about leaving. I left because it was unsustainable to stay. But, the prospect to return in a position that pays a reasonable wage and allows me to live where I want? ... and, most importantly, do what I love and am good at?? I don't think I could refuse (are you kidding?!?), even given my ambivalence -- which has only grown in the time I've been away -- over academe's many, many flaws.
I spent all day yesterday ruminating over my old syllabi, pondering "ideal" courses I'd like to teach, book lists, my research plans (sort of on hold since the conference I blew off but still in my head), and other things they're likely to ask about. It felt, in a way, like I was returning home after a long, wearying absence. I really do miss all this shit, you know?
Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck.
They requested additional materials from me in November, and I dutifully sent along a writing sample, recommendations, and my teaching philosophy. But then I didn't hear anything. I assumed they had moved on and had just not gotten around to sending out the rejection letters. By January, I had totally given up on the academic search -- my third and last, as you know.
Friday I came home from work, poured myself a drink, and checked voicemail ... and ... Holy shit! There's this message. It's from Regional State U only an hour away from Crapital City. They were impressed with my application when they received the additional materials back in November, but they'd had to put their search on hold because funding was uncertain. They didn't do MLA interviews and hadn't contacted anyone since the request for additional materials. But ... their funding came through and they would like to know if I am still available. They need to move their search along quickly, and I am on a short list of candidates. They would like to do a phone interview, which will possibly lead to a campus interview ... and then, possibly, a return to academe on terms I can accept!!!
Aarrrgggghhhh, I'm getting ahead of myself. Nothing is certain except the phone interview, which is this coming Thursday.
There's a lot to think about here. Given that I am a type 2 leaver, as JC puts it ("people who still love academia, but who know that their ability to get a job that pays them a fair wage in an area they'd like to live is severely hampered by the academic job market or some other factor"), I've never really been happy about leaving. I left because it was unsustainable to stay. But, the prospect to return in a position that pays a reasonable wage and allows me to live where I want? ... and, most importantly, do what I love and am good at?? I don't think I could refuse (are you kidding?!?), even given my ambivalence -- which has only grown in the time I've been away -- over academe's many, many flaws.
I spent all day yesterday ruminating over my old syllabi, pondering "ideal" courses I'd like to teach, book lists, my research plans (sort of on hold since the conference I blew off but still in my head), and other things they're likely to ask about. It felt, in a way, like I was returning home after a long, wearying absence. I really do miss all this shit, you know?
* * * * *
Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck.
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