I'm supposed to "chat up" someone at lunch tomorrow

The lunch is for someone running for Congress (and likely to win). It's at a nice restaurant and being hosted by Other Think Tank Economist (and another actual Ph.D.! in economics ... ). A lobbyist/executive from Big Company will also be there. That's who I'm supposed to "chat up." Big Company, apparently, "would still like to play" in an area of interest to New Think Tank, "wanted to give" to Other Think Tank in the past, and is a potential donor for New Think Tank.

Think Tank Boss and Think Tank Boss's #2 have prior engagements. They're both pros at this sort of thing, but I'm not. Oh, there's plenty of "chatting up" that goes on in academe, especially at conferences, but it's different ...

... or, maybe not so different, as I'm sitting here thinking about it. In academe, you "chat up" people whom you want something from: attention, recognition, information, insight, a reference, a collaboration, a commitment. I guess the difference is that in academe, I more or less knew what I was talking about, but now I only have what I would consider a fairly superficial understanding of the issues.

So, strategy: Get the OTHER person to talk, establish a few points of common ground surrounding New Think Tank's areas of interest, suggest the possibility of working together, exchange business cards (we just got our new business cards for New Think Tank the other day!), and see if lobbyist/executive might want to set up a meeting. And then go "chat up" somebody else.

Huh. It's a actually a skill I'd like to get more practice at. It's valuable here in Crapitol City in ways that it isn't/wasn't in academe. In academe, what you know counts more. Here, it's who you know.

TGIF

You know, as JC has said many times, one of the best things about leaving academe, whatever your reasons, whether you're a type 1 or type 2 leaver, is that when you leave your office in the evening and go home for the weekend, no matter how bad things have been (!!!), you are FREE, at least for a little while, to take a break and clear your head.

Y'all know CRAAAAZY doesn't even begin to describe how this week has been on many levels. But it's Friday evening. I'm going home. And I'm going to forget about all the madness for two days. Granted, last weekend, there were a few phone calls and I did say I'd be "reachable" by email but I still got to do more or less what I wanted to with most of my time. And, if you've figured out what I've been blogging about, you know that last weekend was TRULY an exception to anything resembling normal life.

Anyway, as I said, after all the drama this week, I'm heading out of the office to go enjoy my weekend. I'm going to do some yoga. Tidy up my house. Play with my cats. Go out to dinner with Peaches. Read a book. Watch a move.

And. Not. Think. About. Work.

Why? Because I don't have to. It will be waiting for me here on Monday, sure. But I don't need to think about it for now. The world is not going to end if I take a break and go live my own life for a few days.

And how many of you still running on academe's hamster wheel can say that?

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?

What Counts as an Academic "Success" Story?

Spanish prof's post about how her department measures success among their recent BAs got me thinking about what counts as success at the graduate and early career levels for academics. Really, it's a matter of perspective, but whose perspective dominates and why? Perspective is relative to position, and it's worth observing how someone with a particular set of accomplishments looks very different to those comfortably ensconced within than it does to those on the margins of academia. And yet, not surprisingly, it's the dominant perspective that informs starry-eyed, prospective graduate students and other outsiders who romanticize what academic life must be like and prevents tenure-track faculty and administrators from having to confront the real life consequences for their students of the system they prop up.

Here are the facts of our "Success Story":

Success Story finished undergrad at the top of hir class and was accepted to a PhD program at Fancy Pants U. While a graduate student, Success Story continued to earn many accolades. Because ze produced poetry in addition to the required research and analytical writing, professors praised hir "originality," fellow graduate students admired hir "devil may care" attitude, and the undergraduates ze taught for nearly 8 years enjoyed the edginess of hir classes. As a graduate student, ze published a handful of poems in very respectable venues and handful of reviews in obscure academic ones, but ze never published any substantive criticism or interpretation. Nonetheless, during hir last semester ABD (hired ABD perhaps because ze went to Fancy Pants U and hir brilliance was a foregone conclusion -- I digress), ze was hired as Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) at a 3rd tier, teaching intensive, regional public university in the rural South, thus smoothly transitioning from graduate school to professorhood. A year into this 3-year appointment, ze publishes a book of poetry but still has no academic publications, other than a handful of reviews.

Here's how former professors, advisers,  and other drinkers of academe's Kool-Aid will see Success Story:

Ah, of course Success Story got a job! How could ze have done otherwise? Ze is brilliant, a brilliant poet with a promising future. And, of course, everyone from Fancy Pants U DESERVES a job. They wouldn't have gone to Fancy Pants U in the first place if they weren't true professor material, truly ready to dedicate themselves to the Life of the Mind. This wonderful VAP position is a great step ahead on the career ladder for Success Story, with the market as terrible as it is. Only the best and brightest get jobs of any kind, and this one will give Success Story the opportunity to prove hirself as a teacher with a VERY different set of much more challenging students from the ones ze taught SO successsssfully at Fancy Pants U. And we congratulate Success Story for having hir first book of poems published. Ze is as much a poet as a scholar, and we have no doubt ze will soon be able to turn hir attention to producing the scholarship ze needs to progress from successsssssful VAP to even more successssssssful tenure-track assistant professor. We have faith ze will be hired into an even better position when the term of hir VAP ends.

 Here's how other graduate students and adjuncting recent PhDs still entertaining hopes of an academic career but somewhat sobered (if schizophrenically) by the realities they see all around them might see Success Story:

Oh, Success Story is soooooooo lucky to have gotten a job, any job at all. I'd kill for a 3-year VAP position, even if it was in Rural Subtropical Wasteland. But ze really does have to teach a lot down there. The load is 4/4, which doesn't give hir a lot of time for research. No wonder ze chose to work on that book of poems. At least it was something ze wanted to do and is getting recognition for. But ... it won't look great to tenure-track hiring committees if, 3 years out from the PhD, ze still doesn't have any academic publications, not unless the position ze is applying for is in creative writing, ideally somewhere that offers an MFA. And we all know how many of those there are! Still, ze went to Fancy Pants U. Ze will get something. I sure wish I had gone to Fancy Pants U! Then I wouldn't be stuck adjuncting. Everyone knows it's not the quality of your scholarship but where you did your degree and who your adviser was that committees look at first. If only I had a better pedigree, if only I'd gone to Fancy Pants U! After all, I applied for that same VAP position. I have 5 full-length, peer-reviewed articles and a publisher is currently reviewing my monograph, and I didn't even get an interview. Sigh. Maybe next year. Success Story is an inspiration to us all. After all, you can never hope to get anywhere in this profession unless you try and try again.

 Here's how cynical post-academics might see Success Story:

Are you kidding me? You'd have to pay me a lot more than $37K a year to take a 3-year VAP in Rural Subtropical Wasteland teaching 4/4 to a bunch of brats who shouldn't have passed the 9th grade. Oh sure, it does have a decent honors program. But do you think, as a VAP, you're going to get to teach the honors kids? Hell no! Success Story is mostly teaching comp, not poetry, and that's hardly good for building hir CV. Moreover, I don't know whether Success Story is single or has a partner, but I certainly would not drag a partner to Rural Subtropical Wasteland. There's nothing there but the university and Walmart. Ze would be unemployed and we'd both have to get by on my $37K. Even if the cost of living is lower, what happens after 3 years when the VAP ends? If Success Story doesn't get another gig, tenure-track or otherwise, ze certainly wouldn't be able to afford to move back to Fancy Pants U City, not unless ze has rich parents. Maybe the book of poetry will bring royalties? Ha, good luck with THAT! And why hasn't ze published any scholarship anyway? It's not as if ze can get by on just having a degree from Fancy Pants U forever. Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Yet another awesome reason to leave academe!! Good luck to you, Success Story! You are academe's future, so make the most of it!

Good God, you get the nerdiest fucking people when you do a Google image search for "visiting assistant professor" and why-the-fuck are people who got their PhDs more than 10 FUCKING years ago at places like Emory, UNC Chapel Hill, and the London School of Economics still Visiting Assistant Professors (just click on the link)?

Why Is Academic Publishing So Slow?

OK, that's a rhetorical question. I'm not expecting you to answer.

Why am I posing this rhetorical question then? Well, the organizer of the conference panel from which I have just gracefully excused myself (see Monday's post) is putting together an edited collection on the same subject as the panel. Ze'd asked me to contribute to this, too, months ago, but I had forgotten. When I told hir I wasn't coming to the conference, ze asked if I still wanted to contribute. Cool, I said. Sure! Why not? How firm is the publisher's commitment and when do you need the paper?

I was expecting ze would say April ... May, maybe. Even June, to give people a chance to finish up their semesters and flesh out the conference versions of their papers.

Nope. Ze doesn't need it until December! Holy crap. It would likely be several months for the review process to happen after that and another six months to a year before the book came out. And that is if the publisher remains interested. My last experience with an edited collection dragged out for two and a half years and was eventually dropped by the publisher (but that's another story and hopefully not to be repeated).

Jeezusfucke!! Oh, the tyranny of procrastination! Do you know how much crap gets pumped out here at Think Tank, just in this office of Think Tank, in any given WEEK? I mean, it's not academic writing. A fair amount of it is recycled and revised versions of earlier material. It's not complex the way academic writing is or as heavily sourced, but some of it is actually researched. And, while people here don't teach, they do have other responsibilities besides writing. Like going to meetings and planning events and raising money. And yet shit gets done. Maybe it's the money. If people don't research and write here, whatever you may think of the content or quality, they don't get paid. Donors want to see evidence you're doing something with their money, so you produce articles and op-eds and reports. And then you write proposals for more funding. In academe, the same correlation between what you produce and when and what you get paid does not exist. So, people take their time. Hell, if you're on the tenure track, you have 5-7 years to turn your dissertation into a book. And that's just to get it accepted by a publisher -- add a few more months to a year before you can send Grandma a copy.

Academe's glacial publication pace does not give me hope for systemic reform. Not in my lifetime.

I will do the paper, though. There are no travel costs, and if the edited collection falls through, there are a few journals I could send it to. It would get picked up by one of them. Not that doing this does anything for me career-wise, academic or otherwise. It's just an idea I want to follow through with for a bit, take for a ride and see where it goes.

Via

Why Employers Should Hire PhDs

UPDATE: See below.

Several of my fellow post-academic bloggers have lately been expressing the frustrations they're currently experiencing as they search for nonacademic employment. A Post-Academic in NYC writes here about the problem of being perceived as overqualified. Unemployed PhD for Hire writes here about the problem of fit, which is a problem on the academic job market, too, but outside academe it's more concrete. For example, it's hard to re-brand yourself as a career changer when your highly "transferable skills don't match up to the competition who have EXACTLY the experience/training/skill set that organizations are looking for."

As I see it, these are problems of perception and stereotyping on the part of employers, rather than problems post-academics bring with them to the job search, but because the end result is that post-academics end up on unemployment instead of gainfully employed, these problems decidedly become theirs. Here's the thing, though: While most unemployed post-academics will eventually find jobs (Hang in there, guys! It really is just a matter of time!), the real losers are the employers who overlook smart, talented people who are potentially their most outstanding workers, people who have the greatest likelihood of progressing within the organization, and those with the highest probability of making important contributions. Remember, somebody will eventually hire these people and reap the benefits. Why not let it be you?

In no particular order, here are some specific reasons why employers should hire PhDs:

They will work for food.
OK, this is not literally true. You do have to pay them a salary. However, since they have been working for so little for so long, you can probably get away with offering them less than the person they're replacing was earning. To a former adjunct whose salary has been $20K for the last 8 years, $40K looks pretty good, even if the person who previously held the position was making $50K (that is, as long as your post-academics do not know this, but why should they?). Now, your post-academics will eventually wise up to things and you'll have to give them more money or they'll leave, but you can certainly save a little in the short-term. And, eventually, you will want to pay them more in order to keep them because they will be doing a good job. Even if you give them a raise, you might still be paying them less than their predecessors. All around, it's a good deal!

UPDATE: I feel compelled to tell you I am speaking only partially ironically here. In fact, given your salary history, it is very likely your first nonacademic employer will lowball an offer. While some positions do have fixed, non-negotiable salaries, this is the exception rather than the rule. You can and should negotiate. Know what the salary range is for that job type in your location. If you get an offer that seems low, it probably is. Probably, it is less that your predecessor was getting. Within reason, ask for more. Trust me, that $5-$8K means A LOT more to you than it does to your would-be employer. You will get taken advantage of if you are too naive to look out for yourself. And this has longer term consequences. If you start making $40K when you could have started at $48-$50K, this will impact what you're offered for your next "next" job. And you can't afford this because you have a lot of lost time to make up for.

They are flexible and adaptable.
It must seem ideal to HR folks to find an "exact" match for an open position, someone who's done exactly the same job somewhere else but for whatever reason wants to change jobs. Score! This person would hit the ground running. You'd have to invest very little in training. Why would you NOT choose this person over a post-academic? You'd have to be crazy, right? Wrong. As great as it might seem at the outset, let's consider the long-term, a year or two or three or ten down the line. Do you want a robot who can only do EXACTLY the same thing over and over and over again? No! We all know policies and procedures change. We know that technology changes. We know upheaval in the ranks of the higher-ups means doing things differently for the plebes, and sooner or later, there's always a change at the top. Somebody who ONLY knows how to do EXACTLY the job you hire them for in the short-term will likely be much less able to roll with the punches. In fact, that may be why this person is looking for a new job in the first place. By contrast, your PhDs may require a little extra patience and training at the beginning but down the line they will be much more flexible and able to use that new software or write those documents in the new and improved way or figure out how to complete whatever new task or project it is you need them to. Why? Because their expertise isn't just in their subject knowledge. Their expertise is learning itself. Since the most important thing you learn in graduate school is how to learn, your post-academics are a major asset to a growing, thriving, evolving organization.

They are risk takers.
It takes guts to walk away from a career you've put the kind of effort and energy into that most post-academics have put into becoming professors. It takes guts to expose yourself to the unknowns of the nonacademic job market. It takes guts to work at getting a foothold by applying for entry-level jobs your undergraduate students are likelier to get interviews for than you are. It takes guts to turn your back on the work you love for the sake of your integrity, your sanity, and the chance to put poverty behind you. Risk takers are an asset to almost any industry. They are good at looking ahead and will do what they think is right and lead others to do the same. They innovate, whether we're talking about more efficient administrative procedures or better ways of building team cooperation or strategies for improving an organization's operations and progress. Do you want to hire people who are just good at doing the same thing over and over and over again? No, you want those who are forward thinking and embrace change.

They are resourceful, responsible, and capable of doing the job with minimal supervision.
PhD candidates, over the course of the many years it takes to complete the dissertation, may meet with their advisers and/or other committee members only a few times a year. Some advisers give virtually no feedback other than a thumbs up or thumbs down on any particular chapter. To get to the end of the process and successfully defend a dissertation, someone with a PhD had to draw upon unfathomable intellectual and emotional resources and take responsibility for doing whatever it took to get to the end of the project. When an adviser says, "This chapter doesn't work for me. Fix it," without saying what's wrong with it or how to fix it, a PhD candidate heads back to the library, back to the prose of the chapter itself, back to the logic that apparently didn't hold up under scrutiny, and figures out how to fix it.

They are good at problem solving.
In addition to the above paragraph, which is also an example of problem solving, curiosity and inquiry lead to research that answers questions or resolves problems. Moreover, having spent time as teachers, they've had to deal with student behavioral problems, like plagiarism, and pedagogical problems, like getting apathetic students to engage with the subject and participate in class discussions. Often, they've had to do these things with minimal support from supervisors.

They are smart.
Hiring a Ph.D. doesn't guarantee brilliance. Probably, you're not getting the next Albert Einstein. But you are getting somebody who came up with a research project independently and had the mental wherewithal to carry it out successfully. Content expertise aside (and, really, you don't care about the subject of their dissertation), completion of the project says this person, at the very least, has functional frontal lobes. While many job listings for general, merely-need-basic-capacity-to-think-to-succeed positions specify "B.A. preferred," the B.A., these days, no longer guarantees that someone actually does have a fully operational brain (as a former college instructor, I speak from experience!).

 They get stuff done.
 Ever wonder what it's like to undertake a major research project independently, work on it (or the preparation leading up to it) every day for the better part of a decade, prep to teach three classes  every week, grade 100 papers or exams every 2 weeks, prepare to present your work publicly at conferences you travel to 2-3 times a year, and submit your work to peer-reviewed journals -- all while earning a salary of around $20K? Yeah, I didn't think so. If you need stuff done, your PhD will get it done, more than likely at warp speed.

Lastly, let's not forget they are also steadfast and reliable (it took them a decade, give or take, of sisyphean toil to get where they are now, without any promise of rewards at the end except completion of a project very few people will ever know about), have integrity (it would have been easier to have just forged the damn diploma!(, and will immeasurably bolster your self-esteem by validating your choice NOT to pursue a PhD yourself!


So, what are you waiting for? Go out and hire a PhD today!

17th century handwritten doctoral diploma

For the Love of Words

No wonder so many nonacademic employers view post-academics with distrust when it comes to writing. Even though academics produce a lot of prose, they tend to bloat it with static verbs and meaningless filler. How else do you get a sentence like the following from a scholarly article about a novel:

Many _______________ argue, then, that it is not so much the difference between ________ and _________ that is at fault in our _____________, as the way in which that difference has been used as a justification for __________________________.

You and I have both read much, MUCH worse (remember the academic sentence generator from this old post?), but this sentence reads like a template. I left out identifying words, but you could fill in almost anything in those blanks and plunk it down in the literature review in your article.

ZzzzzZZZZzzzzzzZZZzz. How boring! I'm asleep already and there are another thirty pages to go. In case you are wondering, I'm reading the article to catch up on where the "field" is at before writing the paper for that stupid conference I'm supposed to present at next month. (Note: I have NOT reserved a hotel room or booked a flight yet. What does that tell you?)

Really, I am still engaged with the subject of my paper and have read a handful of sources that have kept my attention. Nonetheless, I cannot escape bad academic writing. It abounds. It makes me embarrassed for my discipline. True, we taught something resembling templates in the freshman comp classes at Grad U to help students understand the rhetorical moves writers and speakers make, but the goal, after they'd practiced using the templates, was to have them make those same rhetorical moves in their own ways, to speak in their own voices.

It may have gone out of fashion in academe, but I still believe you cannot separate content from form. We are what we eat. You are what you speak.

I hope those of us who've had the clarity of mind to leave academe will also leave our bad habits behind. Outside academe, if you can write about complex things in clear and concise language, without reductively treating your subject yet without wasting words, you can call yourself a writer, people will respect you, and they will read what you write. Inside academe, unfortunately, everybody is a "writer," whether anyone reads what you write or not, and if you can obscure simplicity in arcane and turgid language, muddling your subject and bloating your sentences, then you can call yourself not only a writer but a scholar, too!

Haha. Ahem. Hmmmmph.

I love words. Have I mentioned that before? Not everyone in  academe does, especially literature people. Some of them hate words. Don't ask me what they're doing in academe. In some cases, it's their only opportunity to posture at being hipster intellectuals, carrying around heavy books, wearing black, drinking too much, chain smoking, looking down on everything and everyone. Or, at the opposite end, you have the frumpy dumpies. The ones who forget their glasses in the freezer and wear mismatched socks. They NEED something obscure to hide behind. Or be buried under.

*     *     *     *     *

But I love nekkid words, my peoplz, sexxxy and unruly words!!! I love words that misbehave with grace, words that tumble like Olympic gymnasts, flip and twirl and cartwheel and balance perfectly, even upside down.

I love free and easy words dancing beneath my fingers, appearing on my screen and yours all at once!

(That's where you're supposed to say "Awwwwwwwww, we love you, too, recent Ph.D.!")

Happy Valentine's Day, friends! Here's some luuuuuv art from the streets of Crapitol City:

I Taught an SAT Prep Class Last Night

I know. I know. Technically, it's adjuncting, since the class is run through a community college, but I teach it at a high school and the pay works a little differently. There's no grading and no prep (since I've done the same class 100 times in the past and the curriculum doesn't change), and so it's a pretty decent on-the-side wage for just showing up, giving practice tests, explaining answers, going over strategies, and going home -- forgetting all about teh kiddies until teh next class. And I must be doing something right, because their scores always go up.

Though, why their parents subject some of them to this torture -- and pay for it to boot -- is beyond me. These are good little suburban kids. They're well-behaved and totally freaked out that their already relatively good scores aren't good enough, yet they are bored shitless by the test itself. As much as I think the standardized testing industry is a ripoff and that the tests themselves don't necessarily predict all that well how well some kids will (or won't) do in a college environment, there's something to be said about curiosity for curiosity's sake and engagement with challenges. Back when I took the SAT, I actually WANTED to know what all the words meant (I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't look them up!), and I'd get into the readings in spite of myself. And I didn't even study that much, just flipped through a book after my other homework was done. I certainly NEVER would have paid money (nor would my parents have) to have somebody tell me things like "look for the definition of the word you're trying to find in the surrounding context" and "use process of elimination to narrow down your choices."

Shouldn't these things be obvious to college-bound high school juniors and seniors who have attended reasonably "good" schools and earned reasonably good grades?

Well, on the one hand, I'm happy to get them up to speed, but, on the other, aren't curiosity and engagement the qualities we'd like to see in college students rather than the regurgitation of test-taking strategies they've acquired in expensive prep classes?

Seems to me that priorities all up and down academe's spectrum are screwed up.

*     *     *     *     *

But you know what? I miss being in a classroom. I mean, not enough to go back to adjuncting or the academic job market or the culture of denial, delusion, and bullshit that surrounds it. But I do miss that environment. A classroom. It's a place where your purpose, in theory at least, is to think freely, to express yourself freely, to learn, to explore, to dream, to aspire, to discover, to grow, to grow up, to expand, to take risks, to push your limits ... maybe even to evolve into your humanity.

Maybe I'm being too idealistic (feel free to throw up a little in your mouth), but I've never said here or anywhere else that I didn't believe in the value or importance of an education. I just think something has gone very, very wrong with our system. I don't know how or why it went wrong, and I don't know how to fix it. But it will be a scary world 100 years from now -- if we don't destroy ourselves first -- if we can't figure out how.

Blast from the Past

Saw one of my charter high school students on the subway today. I taught 11th and 12th grade there before starting grad school.

Kid used to sit in class and draw. And draw and draw. Never paid much attention but was otherwise a nice kid.

Former student: "Wow! Ms. recent Ph.D! Nice to see you! Are you still teaching?"

Me: "No. I left Charter School and taught at Grad U for awhile, but it didn't work out. I work at a think tank now. What are you doing these days?"

Former student: "I'm a freelance artist and graphic designer."

Me: "That's great!"

Former student, who seemed both happy with hir life and happy to see me, is older now than I was when I started teaching at Charter School.

The most distinct memory I have of this student involves an incident with hir and another calling each other "motherfucker" in class. They wouldn't stop, and so I told them they had to look up the word and copy down the definition -- 25 times. "Is that what you really meant to call each other?" I asked.

No, of course not, but reaching that conclusion was very dramatic and difficult, involving a trip to the principal's office and detention.

I'm glad ze is doing well now, leading a normal adult life.

Would that us postacademics, especially those currently unemployed or adjuncting, will end up doing at least as well as our students in the not too distant future

Confession

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

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

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

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

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

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

Probably, it's some combination of the two.

My Take on Academic Conferences

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

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

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

A series of frantic phone calls and emails exchanged today:

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

Me: "Sure, no problem."

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

Me: "Sure, no problem."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*     *     *     *     *

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

Via

"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:

Ponderable

More people visit this blog in a day than will probably ever "visit" any of my academic publications in the course of my lifetime.

Academic Fantasy vs. Reality

Unfortunately, a great many people -- both inside and outside of academe -- imagine an academic's life to be very different from what it is for most academics these days. Fantasies of what academic life is supposed to be like come from a host of sources: books, movies, personal experiences both good and bad, observation limited by factors from familial relationships to socioeconomic privilege to willful self-delusion.

Before you can begin to extricate yourself from academe -- if only from the exploitative danger of its myths -- you must begin to examine your own fantasies and expose them for what they are.

What were my fantasies and where did they begin? I offer this evidence in the hope that it might stimulate you to think about your own academic fantasies vs. the reality behind them -- and those of your friends and family and advisers and all the rest of the people who don't understand why you've gone so far only to walk away. It isn't the only experience that affected my distorted perceptions of academe, but it's a good place to start.

*     *     *     *     *

When I was growing up, one of my adult relatives whom I admired and liked the most was my dad's brother-in-law, my uncle, a professor at a small liberal arts college (SLAC). During the summers, my aunt and uncle would stay at their summer cottage on One of the Great Lakes, and my parents, who were K-8 teachers, would often take my brother and me there to spend a week or two visiting. The cottage was part of a collective of 10 or so other cottages, and though but the humble relics of what had been something like a hippie commune in the 60s, these cottages were located on a property that included a private beach. It was idyllic. It was rustic. It was the kind of place where, if you were a kid, your imagination might play tricks on you as you watched the sunset over the lake.

The lake itself was mesmerizing, sometimes still as glass, sometimes turbulent. The air was intoxicatingly fresh. And the beach and forest smells blended with dinner on the grill and my uncle's tobacco pipe ... the sounds of the waves with carefree laughter ... things I dreamed with things that were real ...

Needless to say, I loved it there, but while most of the adults chattered away and the kids played games or splashed around in the water, my favorite pastime was sitting in a lounge chair -- on the land just above but overlooking the beach -- under a big, shady tree reading a book. 

My uncle was always reading, too. His books were scattered all over the cottage, on shelves, tables, chairs, the floor. At night, as I was falling asleep on a cot in the living room area, after everyone else had gone to sleep, I could hear him typing away on an old-fashioned typewriter by the light of a small desktop lamp, pipe smoke drifting across the cottage, out the window and into the night.

No one else paid any attention to me and my reading. But, while not much of a talker, my uncle would ask me what I was reading: "Oh," he would say, scratching his chin, "That's a good one. What a great writer! I'm so glad you're reading this. Have you read Other Book by Famous Author? No? Oh, well you should when you finish this one. In fact, I think we have a copy in the cottage ... " And then he would pat me on the shoulder or the top of the head, as if to say, "Aw, what a good kid," puff on his pipe and wander off, lost in his own thoughts, and I'd go back to my book.

I saw my uncle as a sort of kindred spirit during those summers, and for a long time the very small glimpse I got of his life as a professor colored my perception of what life as a professor was like for everyone. When I thought of becoming a professor myself, long before I'd even finished high school, I thought about my uncle. I wanted to do what he did (read books, think deep thoughts, write arcane essays). I wanted a life like his life (summers on the beach, winters on a quaint campus in Connecticut, a tweed jacket, a fragrant pipe, a comfortable office, distinguished colleagues, witty friends ....... my aunt in the kitchen taking care of the children?)

*     *     *     *     *

Wait. "What?" you say. Yes, exactly. Cooking? Children? Housework? There were things about my uncle's life as a professor that I simply missed. My aunt's role was one of them. She took care of everything related to home and children so that he could be "free" to think his deep thoughts, teach his classes, and write his books. My aunt was one of those "faculty wives" back in the 60s and 70s as my uncle was building his career. I don't know how she felt about this role, but it is certainly true that his success wouldn't have been possible without her willingness to fulfill this role. 

There were other things, too ... my uncle, of course, began his career in the late 60s when there were still jobs aplenty. A call from your adviser, supposedly, was all it took. But even then (and I didn't know this until much later, well into my own grad school years), he spent several years as a VAP at two different institutions, as well as a year as a postdoc somewhere else, moving his young family all around the country before finally landing a tenure-track job. But the way my parents talked about it, he had simply "taught" at these different places. They made no distinction because they themselves didn't understand academic hierarchies. My uncle, retired now, was the only professor in our family and the only one with a Ph.D., until I got mine (though we do also have a few medical doctors).

And the cottage on the lake? The large, nicely appointed house in Connecticut?? I don't know what my uncle earned at any of his faculty jobs, but he was a full professor at the liberal arts college when he retired. I'm sure his salary was comfortable enough. The thing that I didn't know, though -- again, not until much later -- was that whatever he was earning, it didn't really matter all that much. Nor did job security. Nor benefits. Not really. His mother, I learned, was quite well off. He had a good relationship with her, and he knew that she (and her house and resources) were available to him should he and his wife and children ever need them. Moving across the country for a one-year VAP appointment with no assurance of employment beyond that term? No problem if it doesn't work out. There's always Mom. Taking a postdoc that doesn't pay enough to support that second kid that's on the way? No problem, Mom can help out. 

When his mother died about 25 years ago, she left everything to my uncle. He could afford to live the "life of the mind." 

But as opportunities have become even scarcer than they were for my uncle's generation, as academic life has become even more precariously contingent, it is ONLY people like my uncle who can afford the sacrifices.

*     *     *     *     *

The purpose of this post is not to belittle my uncle. He's still one of my favorite relatives. He and my aunt still have the cottage on the lake, and Peaches and I still go now and then to visit. But my uncle's reality is not mine. The "opportunities" he took advantage of early on -- the postdoc and the VAPs -- no longer carry the career-furthering weight they once did, and I don't have the luxury of leaving it up to fate and "fit."

And that is why it is important to separate the fantasy of the "gentleman scholar" from the reality of poverty and job insecurity that the majority of younger academics face today.

Via

(Oh, and if you are into symbolic evidence, there was that pipe smoking ... but not anymore. Lung cancer. He survived and has been cancer free for several years now, but he lost a lung, too ... )

A Post-Academic Remembers 9/11

Everybody has a story about where they were and what they were doing when they first got the news. I wouldn't really think my story was particularly memorable, except that, in the context of this blog, the fall semester of 2001 was when my entrance to academe conincided with my exit from teaching high school. The experience of 9/11 was very different in those two worlds -- and perhaps I should have recognized it as a sign of things to come.

So, this post isn't really about 9/11 per se, the tragedy, the victims, the political or military fallout (go everywhere else to read about those) -- it's about two ways of responding to "real" world events.

*     *     *     *     *

First, some background: In September 2001, I had just begun my first semester as a graduate student. I was in a terminal M.A. program because I wasn't sure that I wanted to go on for a Ph.D. at the time. Technically, I was a full-time graduate student, taking three classes and also working as a T.A. But, in addition, because the T.A. salary was so low and because I wasn't sure where my career was heading, I kept my high school teaching job part-time. Long story short, what this meant was that every morning I taught 11th and 12th grade English at an urban charter school from 8:00 a.m. to noon. Three days out of the week, I left promptly and commuted over to Master's U., where I sat in on the class I was TAing for from 1:00-2:00 and then held office hours. Later, I went to class. On the longest day of the week, I left my house at 7:00 a.m., taught my high school classes, TAed for the college classes, held my office hours, attended grad classes that met from 3:00-6:00 and 6:30-9:30, and got home around 10:00, at which time I settled down for some dinner and a few hours of grading, studying, writing, or prepping for the next morning's classes.

It was exhausting, to say the least, and I quit the high school job at the beginning of spring semester, but here are two vignettes, memories of 9/11, that capture, perhaps, some differences between academic and nonacademic life, differences that have since come to be more important than they seemed at the time.

*     *     *     *     *

A little after 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was sitting at my desk in a windowless classroom in a rundown school building east of the Anacostia River. While I was going over lesson plans, my 11th graders were, more or less quietly, taking a quiz.

All of a sudden, I hear some shouting and door slamming in the hall. Oh no, I think to myself. What now? My students -- mostly at-risk kids who hadn't done so well in the regular public schools -- were easily distracted, and some disturbance in the hall could easily disrupt the entire class period's plans. We'd have to redo the quiz at the very least ...

Just as I'm having these thoughts and noticing my students looking up from their quizzes and rolling their eyes at each other, the door to my classroom bursts open, as Crazy Kid sticks his head in and shouts at the top of his lungs, "We're under attaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!! Y'all better take COVER, WE"RE UNDER ATTAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!"

He slams the door and runs down the hall, and I hear him do the same thing to the classroom next door.

Not entirely surprising. Crazy Kid is known for his antics and interruptions. But. Great. Now my students are all talking to each other, yelling stuff back at Crazy Kid (who is truly insane and spends more time in the halls and the principal's office than in class):

"What the fuck?!"

"Yo, what Crazy Kid be smokin' today?"

"You muthafuckahs, shut the fuck up. I'm tryin' to take my quiz, yo!"

"Ms. Future Recent Ph.D., you gonna do something about Crazy Kid? He sound like he need some help today, like he ain't take his medication or somethin' '" (some whistling and high fives all around for this crack -- Crazy Kid usually gets his due with or without teacher interference).

"Ahem. Settle down, everybody, please. Crazy Kid is not in our class, and I'm sure Mr. Hall Monitor will make sure Crazy Kid is taken care of. Now, please, let's get back to those quizzes."

So, they start to settle down. Papers rustle. Pencils start scratching away. A few muffled comments are whispered to stifled laughter.

We can still hear Crazy Kid out in the hall arguing with Hall Monitor and Assistant Principal, but then ... there's an announcement over the P.A. system:

"Teachers, please keep your students in class with your doors locked until further notice. There has been a suspected terrorist attack. The safest place for you and your students is in your classrooms. The building is on lockdown until further notice. We will keep you informed as details become available."

My students and I just look at each other. One kid asks, quite seriously, "Does this mean we still have to take the quiz?"

And then more information starts to emerge. There is another P.A. announcement. The World Trade Center. The Pentagon. Parents will be contacted. Arrangements will be made. In the meantime, an hour later, we're still on lockdown in the classroom, and everyone's getting restless. One kid asks if he can go to the bathroom, and I let him go. We wait anxiously to see what news he will return with.

He returns fifteen minutes later with a radio! I have no idea where he got it, and he won't say. We all huddle around the radio and listen, hardly talking ... except, the mother of one of the kids works at the Pentagon, and he's starting to freak out ... and he says he has to go to the office and see if he can get in touch with her ... he doesn't care if he gets in trouble for leaving class ... and so he leaves and doesn't come back ...

And, when he goes, it's as if the reailty of the situation is finally starting to sink in. The kids are visibly worried about what's going on, and I have no idea what to tell them. These are tough kids in a tough neighborhood. They're used to violence. The last time we were on lockdown was when a car filled with suspected gang members, visibly armed, was slowly driving in circles around the school for nearly an hour before police got it to move away.

But this is different. As we listen to the radio, "Do you think we'll be next?" one kid asks, "Do you think the terrorists will come after us? Do you think they'll bomb the rest of the city? Do they have nukes?"

Another kid answers, "Naw, dawg, don't no terrorists care 'bout poor black people. Naw, not when they can blow up rich white people. We 'bout in the safest place we can be out here!!"

*     *     *     *     *

Eventually, lockdown ended. Everyone got home safely. The kid's mother who worked at the Pentagon was OK.

But there was no school the next day ... This charter school was run by retired military and drew a fair percentage of its students from the nearby military base. The kid in my class wasn't the only one with a parent who worked at the Pentagon ...

Everyone, whether neighborhood kids or base kids, needed time to process. Their reactions were visceral and fundamental:

Who are we? What is our relationship to the world outside the microcosms of home and school? Has that relationship changed? What does the rest of the world think of us? Who are we as Americans -- in general and as a specific group marginalized by race and class? How are we united? How are we divided? What does the future hold? What is our role to be?

*     *     *     *     *

At Master's U., classes for the rest of the day were cancelled, but the next day, the university was open. Professors could make their own decisions about whether to hold classes or not. Old and Boring Theory Prof decided to hold class.

No one could think of anything but the attacks of the previous day, but we didn't talk about it. Old and Boring Theory Prof sat and read from his notes of thirty years ago, as he did every week, and we sat and listened and took notes for three hours. No one said anything or expressed any emotion.

It was as though nothing at all had happened.

*     *     *     *     *

Until MLA, that is. There've been plenty of panels devoted to the subject in the ten years since.

"What Is a Post-Academic?"

(Yes, I'm still on vacation, but I'm at home waiting for some work to be finished on my basement floor -- before and after pictures later perhaps. In the meantime, what else to do but write a short post?)

Some questions around the blogosphere have been raised lately about leaving academe: "if you take a different job, a job other than adjuncting or professing, does it always mean you've left academe? Are you, by default, no longer an academic?"

For many post-academics, the answer is emphatically yes. Many people decide they don't like the work, in one way or another. Others don't like the working conditions. Still others decide they like neither the work nor the working conditions. For all of us, walking away seems a better option than staying in a profession that, as Anastasia points out, does not care about us. Indeed, A Post-Academic in NYC says that "walking away" doesn't even
accurately describe what we're doing because it implies there was somewhere to walk to. And we're all pretty much agreed that there isn't.

But if there are those who emphatically no longer see themselves as academics for one reason or another, where dies that leave those of us who -- wherever we may be working, whatever we may be doing -- on some level still identify ourselves as academics?

Because I know I still do ... it has something to do with a state of mind, with ways of thinking, with ways of relating to the world. I think, in some ways, I was an academic before I ever even thought about becoming a professor.

But I digress. What is a post-academic? A post-academic is simply someone who has worked in academe, who has pursued a career as a professor, however successfully or unsuccessfully, and has, for any combination of the above reasons, chosen to take a step back (or two or three -- or perhaps run at a sprint never to look back) and do something else to earn a living -- for now or for forever.

My point is that a post-academic is never going to go back to being a nonacademic, unless you willfully reinvent yourself as such. For me -- and for a lot of us, I'd gather -- you don't ever really get rid of those habits of mind you developed, whatever it is you happen to be doing for a living now and/or in the future.

And I think it's important to emphasize the academic part, too, even if you never teach
another class, present at another conference, or publish another peer-reviewed article. Because, as much academe has exploited us, academe itself his, country's system of higher education, is losing something when we leave. Not that there aren't plenty enough other masochists to take our places right now but that we were contributing something that had -- and has -- a kind of value our society is unwilling to reckon with. And will continue to refuse to reckon with as long as the true cost is disguised by an underpaid workforce.

Grad U Library After Earthquake

Yes, the library ... where I still have modest borrowing privileges, though I remain unaffiliated.

No, I didn't take the picture (and sorry for not giving proper credit ... for obvious reasons). The library remains closed while staff work to re-shelve over 10,000 books before the start of classes next week.

Some Advice for Unhappy Grad Students, Disgruntled Adjunsts, and Other Would-Be Post-Academics

Wish somebody had apprised me of this shit once upon a time. Now I have a whole lot of catching up to do:

Graduate school is a trap; orchestrate your exit before you have to leave.
Lots of reasons lead us to graduate school and the pursuit of careers as academics. I'm not here to judge those. I had my own, and, if things were different, I'd be sticking around. But, whatever your reasons for entering and staying for however long you find it sustainable to stay, know that there's probably going to come a time when your options become "either leave academe or stay and be miserable." Nobody's going to tell you this except us crazily sane post-academics, and nobody's going to tell you what the best strategy for planning your exit is. But you need one -- even if you never end up using it, you'll be that much better prepared to advise your own students in the future.

Do your research on what post-academic life has to offer you; you're not going to end up a corporate bot unless you let yourself.
Whenever you do leave, you're probably going to dislike on some level whatever it is you end up doing, even if there are also some things you like -- heck, we all know it ain't like reading Great Books and thinking Deep Thoughts. Prepare for this inevitability by researching possible jobs and careers and acquiring skills and knowledge that will lead you to the greater likelihood of a job with more that you like than dislike (Currently, I am researching day trading, and I expect to be blogging about what I'm learning further, as I learn more -- wish I had done this earlier, like when I hit the dissertation dry spell and couldn't write for three months, 'cuz while there are things I like about my current job, I don't aim to be a secretary forever, and I think I could be really good at this day trading thing, something I never even considered before.).

Anyone that tells you that you're compromising your ideals by looking into alternative careers while still pursuing your academic goals? Tell hem to piss off. They're wrong.
That pretty much says it all. Most likely your adviser, well-meaning as ze might be, will tell you this. It may have been true in the past. It's not now. The only thing you're compromising by pursuing your academic goals WITHOUT looking into alternative careers is your own future -- and your capacity ever to support yourself without the help of your partner, family, loans, credit, or food stamps.

Don't get hung up on the academic job market.
It's just around the corner now. The MLA Job List for 2012-2013 is coming out in less than a month. Don't stress. Your academic career is out of your hands. If you're going on the tenure-track market (fuck postdocs and VAPs), just send out letters to the places you can imagine yourself working. If you can't see yourself working there, don't waste your time. Concentrate on presenting yourself well to the ones that make sense for you. If that's only 3, then only send out 3 letters. The rest is ... not up to you anyway, so don't sweat it. Send out those letters and CVs, go have yourself a nice drink, and forget about it. Odds are no one is going to call you. It'll be a pleasant surprise if they do. In the meantime, work on that alternate career, so that next semester you can tell your Scheduler of Adjuncts (who earns $95K) to pay you more or fuck off, because you have options.

Make some friends outside academe.
They'll really help you put things into perspective. Odds are, you'll find a few smart, funny, creative, totally cool people, and they'll help you see what you're missing out on by burying yourself in academe. Not that a career in academe might not still end up being an option, but life on the outside isn't what you thought it would be as the 22-year-old pseudo intellectual you once were, either. Let's face it, you might still love academic work, but you no longer burn with that dumbass, naive "hard, gemlike flame." Grow up and get to know the world around you. Might turn out to be just a little more interesting than the "life of the mind" -- that narrow little world inside your own head insulated from the outside by academe's musty corridors -- that's trapped you for the last decade. And, even if you end up winning the jobs lottery and staying in academe, you'll be that much better prepared to interact with and advise your students.