"My graduate students are unhappy"

Somebody found this blog by Googling that phrase today.

No shit, Sherlock! Yes, your graduate students are unhappy. And you're just now figuring this out? You need to go read ALL of the posts over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School, then go read From Grad School to Happiness and the other post-academic blogs I've linked to in my blogroll, and then you need to come back over here and read my blog from the beginning to the present (though I do give you permission to skip some of the fluffy cat posts).

One of the many things wrong with graduate school is that too many professors view their graduate students through the lens of their own experiences as graduate students and subsequent paths to professorhood. While this may give you a warmfuzzy feeling of nostalgia, it doesn't make for having honest relationships with your graduate students today and can actually be harmful to them. in terms of preparing for both academic careers and nonacademic alternatives, if you base your guidance to them on the way things worked for you 30 years ago.

Case in point: A professor I had in graduate school used to frequently mention to us graduate students how ze had spent several years working in advertising before deciding to go to graduate school and pursue becoming a professor. Ze was fond of telling us how easy it was, as a newly graduated B.A. in English, to get hired as a copywriter for an ad agency, how ze came up with successful campaigns (one slogan is still being used by the client -- you'd recognize it!) , and how much money ze was making.

Ze gave all of this up because ze felt ze wanted to do something more meaningful with hir life than think up clever ways to dupe people into buying shit they didn't need. Humph. Noble aspirations, right? How many of my post-academic friends wouldn't kill for a job like this professor gave up? Luckily for hir, ze went to graduate school, "suffered" through the poverty of 6 years as a TA and adjunct cushioned by savings from the advertising job, and got hired in the early 80s onto the tenure track while still ABD.

This professor was smart and talented, but the times were different, too -- not just the academic job market but the nonacademic job market. Because today you can major in things like ... advertising (!) ... it's much harder to get hired for the kind of job ze had with a B.A. in mere English. And much, much harder if you compound your job search with the whole "overqualified/underqualified" shit us post-academics are dealing with.

So, in other words, telling graduate students they always have "other options" without encouraging them to prepare themselves for those options is disingenuous. It's you old professor types taking the narrative you've spun upon your own lives to explain the circumstances of your successful careers and comfortable lives and imposing it on the lives and careers of your graduate students. It's irresponsible to do so. Stop it!

Yes, your graduate students are responsible for making the decision to postpone money-making career objectives for the "life of the mind," but they also look up to you with somewhat rose-colored lenses, respect you, and seek to emulate you. A few years into the Ph.D. program, when their reality starts to bump up against the rosier narratives you represent, yes, they tend to get goddamned unhappy -- not to mention stressed about how they've fucked up their futures, frustrated by their increasingly limited options, depressed by their poverty, and generally messed up by the mindfuck that is graduate school.

And I'm telling you this as someone who basically, in a lot of ways, liked academe and wished I could have found a way to stay. You owe it to yourself to understand WHY your graduate students are so unhappy, and, if you care about the mentorship aspect of your job as a professor, you owe it to your students to help them figure out sustainable ways to cope with the realities of what academe has today become.

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.

WTF Has Graduate School Come To?

Literally, just as I was about to begin a post about the "band camp" adventure I am about to embark upon this weekend (you'll have to wait for that!), Random Guy wanders purposefully into the office here at Think Tank and, without saying hello or introducing himself or anything, walks over to our wall of publications and starts looking through them.

Me: "Excuse me. Hi there. Can we help you with something?"

Random Guy: "This is Think Tank, isn't it? I am doing some research and someone told me you had some publications that would be useful."

Me, looking over at Coworker with mild puzzlement, "Yes, this is Think Tank. What is the subject of your research? Perhaps we can help you find what you're looking for."

Random Guy: "I'm a master's student, and I'm writing a paper for a graduate course I'm taking on Policy X. Somebody told me you guys had done some work on Policy X."

To myself, I am wondering if Random Guy has tried the library yet. Or, if that's too much trouble, a simple Google search? A Google search of Policy X would have brought up Think Tank pieces, as would, more directly, a search of Think Tank's very own website. I stifle something resembling a laugh and clear my throat.

Random Guy, rifling through our materials, clearly not finding what he's looking for: "Did you say something?"

Me: "Excuse me ... I don't think we have any of our publications on Policy X out on the shelves at this time. Have you been to our website?"

Coworker: "You know, we do more work on Policy Y at this office, which is why there's nothing on Policy X on the shelves, but recent Ph.D. is right. If you go to our website and search Policy X, you'll find a number of publications that will be of interest."

Random Guy, scribbling furiously on a notepad: "OK, thanks. Where do I find your website?"

Me, stifling something caught in my throat again, something large: "Ahhhem, you'll find us at www.ThinkTank.org."

Random Guy: "Oh, OK. Thanks. Are there any particular publications you recommend? Or authors?"

At this point, I remain polite but do not even try to disguise my mystification at Random Guy's approach to graduate level "research." What, am I supposed to do it for him?

Me: "Well, there's Supreme Expert on Policy X. He's done some work for Think Tank. You'll find his work on our site, but he also has his own site with more materials on Policy X, which you can find if you Google his name."

Random Guy stops scribbling and looks at me blankly.

Me, spelling it out for him: "That is, his name is spelled S U P R E M E   E X P E R T   O N  P O L I C Y  X."

Random Guy scribbles that down and then asks: "Do you have any general information about Think Tank? Any pamphlets that describe what you do?"

Me, picking up one such item from the shelf right in front of Random Guy: "Yes, here you are. This tells all about Think Tank and the work we do, and there's more information on our website, too."

Random Guy, heading for the door: "Thanks ... "

Me: "Good luck with your paper!"

*     *     *     *     *

Was Random Guy actually a graduate student? I hope not. Given our proximity to street traffic, neighborhood oddballs, and the occasional policy nutjob who wanders in, Random Guy's clueless strangeness is far from the strangest behavior I've witnessed from a visitor. That prize goes to Barefoot Mumbling Guy, who was convinced the baristas at Starbucks down the block wanted to give him AIDS and wanted to use our phone to let his brother know. (You betcha that warranted some Lysol!) And, likewise, people that know who we are will sometimes stop by to say hello and tell us they think we're doing a good job. Sometimes they ask for publications, too, usually more general things we always keep around.

*     *     *     *     *

So, yes, I really do hope Random Guy was just some random guy who wanted to know more about Policy X, had heard something about Think Tank, and simply wasn't that educated or otherwise familiar with ordinary research methods but thought we'd respect him more if he said he was "doing graduate research." Because ... really? You know as well as I do that graduate school isn't a meritocracy anymore, not anymore than academe itself, but we would like to believe there are at least SOME standards, no?

Via

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

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

One thing us postacademics get really tired of hearing really quickly is some version of the following:

If I were in your shoes, I NEVER would have made the mistake of going to graduate school. Everybody knows there are no jobs in academe, and nobody in their right mind should spend that much time, effort, and money on education and professional training that will NEVER pay off with a job. I just can't understand why so many otherwise smart people make such a stupid choice.

To be fair, I don't hear this, personally, all that often. But just the other day, an acquaintance was telling me about a friend, somebody still in her 20s but gainfully employed as a journalist, who is seriously considering going for a Ph.D. in the humanities. "I just don't get it," my acquaintance (who does not have a higher ed background and never considered graduate school) says to me,

I keep pointing out to Crazy Friend there aren't any jobs and, like, why would she quit the job she already has and borrow money to go for a useless degree? That's just mind-warpingly unfathomable. Is Crazy Friend being willfully ignorant? As far as I can tell, you'd have to be. I really just don't get why people just shut themselves off from what they don't want to hear and believe. The facts are pretty stark.And there's no shortage of articles, news stories, and blogs telling everyone that cares to listen that going to graduate school in the humanities is a bad idea. Why don't people listen to reason? I told my friend not to go, but she won't listen. She wants to be a professor.

Via

I just shake my head at both sides. Sure, the "I don't get it" crowd has a point, but, rationally speaking, if so many otherwise intelligent people are continuing to ignore obvious signs that graduate school is a trap, there must be more to it.

There IS more to it. Consider:

Prospective (and, indeed, current) graduate students get a lot of conflicting information and mixed messages they aren't really equipped to sort through. For example, the student might have read some articles in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle (or any number of mainstream publications) that talk about the dearth of academic jobs and what a big waste it is getting a Ph.D. To a nonacademic with no graduate school inclinations like my acquaintance, this is both the only information they have and the only information they think they need to be able to pass judgment on someone like Crazy Friend.

But the aspiring student has a host of other information -- some of it quite personal -- to grapple with. There is the praise from undergraduate professors, some of it no doubt truly misleading the student to believe they are the "special" exception -- a standout even among those talented enough, passionate and committed enough, to be distinguished from the masses. Of course, this praise does nothing but perpetuate the myth of meritocracy. Even if your undergrad profs are right about your talent (and ... well-meaning as they might be, they're probably wrong), how good you are only matters when How Good You Are Matters matters more than How Well You Fit Based on the Frantic Review of 600 Candidates Right Before Finals (all of whom were similarly praised and encouraged by their undergrad profs years ago).

So, if students can depersonalize praise and be objective, they would less likely fall into the trap, but most people would have a hard time doing that -- and the naysayers would, too, if they were on the receiving end of this encouragement and had an interest in further academic pursuits.

Also, the strong interest in further academic pursuits itself leads even those not drunk on their undergrad advisers' praise to believe "facts" and "statistics" about job placement rates used by departments to promote their graduate programs. Speaking personally, this was one of the largest factors clouding my judgment. Since a few years had passed between the time I finished undergrad and started grad school, I had some distance (like acquaintance's Crazy Friend). Rather than overzealous praise, my own desire to succeed in a profession I cared about, coupled with more disciplined work habits and more general maturity than the typical 22-year-old entering a grad program, led me to choose a program that, while not the most prestigious, for one thing, had what appeared to be a very robust number of job placements.

In other words, I DID look at career prospects. The larger picture represented in the media told one story, but the program I'd been accepted to and looked forward to attending told another. And this was 10 years ago, when the kind of information readily available today to anyone with Internet access wasn't out there -- was either not collected (and, in many cases, still isn't) or was misrepresented (i.e. placements are meaningless unless you know how many others who started the program the same year have since either dropped out or are working as adjuncts). At the beginning and throughout my time as a graduate student, I repeatedly heard announcements of tenure-track job placements, along with yearly totals that seemed impressive .......... impressive, that is, until several years in I started observing how many others the department was simply retaining as adjuncts, with and without the Ph.D., and how many just walked away, just disappeared without a trace to become postacademics. My understanding of who adjuncts were -- and how many of them my own department employed -- was limited by my experience. During the first few years, I saw them as failures, if I saw them at all. Duh, why weren't they following all the CV-building advice I was and publishing and presenting at conferences? But later ... well, who knew there were so many? And who knew so many of them were there due to no lack of competence on their part? They were doing the same things junior faculty on the tenure track were doing (they had to in order to stay competitive for tenure track jobs elsewhere); the university simply wasn't acknowledging it.

A very large department like the one at Grad U depends on a significant degree of invisibility, whether deliberately reinforced or not, to make the kinds of claims it makes about job placement that allow them to recruit and retain people like me -- and probably like you, too.

*     *     *     *     *

There's a lot more to say on this subject, but this post is long enough for today. The bottom line is that there's a bigger picture the Shoulda Coulda Woulda naysayers outside academe aren't privy to. Take responsibility for your choices, but don't let anyone get away with telling you you're stupid for not doing your research before you got into this mess. It's more complicated than what some pundit writes for a general audience, however much truth she or he may tell.

Next time: Two very different ways of thinking about why academe NEEDS people who put their love for the pursuit of knowledge first and their best interests career-wise last ...

You Are Expecting Something OTHER Than Aristotle?

In this morning's mail, we got a message from Think Tank Boss's Boss about how "to convince conservatives and libertarians to communicate in a way that connects with [...] the 85% of the population with IQs below about 115." The wording seems to imply this 85% needs to be connected with because they're NOT conservatives and libertarians (i.e. they're liberals or independents), which would also imply that ONLY 15% of the population ARE conservatives and libertarians.

Interesting prospect. (I'm not even going to touch the issue of IQ and political inclinations.)

BUT, what I thought was more interesting about this email, in conjunction with the above, was this quote by Important Person (the gist of the email was that were were supposed to mount and frame it):

People are not reasoned into action, but rather are inspired by tangible, concrete, emotional rhetoric.

Well, yes ... Okay ...

But not very original.

In fact, Aristotle said something similar in the 4th century B.C. What he says, in Book I of the Rhetoric, before devoting almost the entirety of Book II to pathos -- the skillful manipulation of emotion for the purpose of persuasion -- is

Before some audiences not even possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.

We taught watered-down Aristotle in the freshman comp courses at Grad U., but students at least came out, if they were instructable enough to have passed the course, with a minimal conceptual understanding of the rhetorical appeals ethos, pathos, and logos, along with the basic skills to apply them in their writing and recognize them in the speech and writing of others.

And that's not a bad take-away from a course. A successful democracy needs rhetoric to function. It needs leaders who can speak effectively. But, perhaps more importantly, it needs citizens who can know how rhetoric shapes the messages. how it influences what they read, see, hear, think, and feel.

While Aristotle devotes such a large portion of his text to persuasion through emotion, he also affirms what Important Person quoted by Think Tank Boss's Boss implies -- that is, that getting through to people by reasoning is better than moving them by emotion, BUT, because the former is so rarely truly possible, virtuous leaders will have to rely on emotion to persuade the people of what is Right and Just.

However, Aristotle also asserts,

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

And that's where the difference lies. Yes, Aristotle acknowledges, "there are people whom one cannot instruct," but these are only "some audiences," not 85% of the population. The rest of us, according Aristotle, should learn how rhetoric works, not only so that we may manipulate (for their own good!) those who are incapable of listening to reason but so that we can "defend" ourselves against those who would use it against us to achieve ends that may be neither good nor just. Indeed,

If it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might do great harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against all good things [...] and above all against the things that are most useful, as strength, health, wealth, generalship. A man can confer the greatest of benefits by a right use of these, and inflict the greatest of injuries by using them wrongly.

Ah, but who decides what is the "right" use of these? Maybe that's where we're stuck today with the conservative/liberal divide. We can't agree on fundamental issues of right and wrong: Are education and health care rights or privileges?  How do you define a "person" for purposes of the right to life or the right to give money to politicians? Economic growth is good, but are there some corporations, financial institutions, that are "too big to fail"? What should the relationship between business and government be and who should decide?

Important questions deserve sustained and serious and open public debate, not soundbites. In my comp classes, I always used advertisements to introduce the appeals. It was always so easy and yet such a revelation when students saw how ads worked to persuade them to want things.

Politics has become, overwhelmingly it seems, about the advertising.

I do not think Aristotle would approve.

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.

More Rat Corpses

Eh, the title was a warning you were going to get another image like this one. So, if you clicked and are now disgusted by this new one I almost stepped on today, it's your own fault:

Really, I don't know why I am taking pictures of dead rats and posting them on my blog. This latest one I'm finding even more revolting to look at than the first one I posted. I think it's bigger. It was only about half a block from where the other one was, and I'm going to get to watch it decompose all week unless I take a different route. Just like the other one.

Is there something metaphoric here? The first time I blogged about a dead rat, I wrote that, having left academe, I was finding myself looking down at grim, ratty reality rather than up at academe's idealistic fantasies and self-aggrandizing delusions er self-deceiving fictions or  -- what is the phrase I'm looking for here? Hairy ass Life of the mind or something like that...??

But, really, academics are no less subject to the rat race than anyone else. If anything, more so. Run run run run run. But where are you running to? A tenure track job? Heh. Not if you don't already have one. Promotion? Sure, go for it if you're already tt -- but, really, if you're tt, do you have a choice? And while tenure and promotion will certainly make your life at least a little better in terms of salary and job security, what about the future of the profession? In the long run, if those who have tenure now don't work harder to use the privilege of their position to both preserve and reform the profession, there won't be anything but adjuncts a generation from now.

Run run run run run.

There's been a lot of buzz this week about William Pannapacker's latest take on fixing graduate school in the humanities. (go to my previous post for the link if you haven't read it already -- I'm too lazy to link again), especially about how the "satisfaction" of doing work you like is supposed to compensate for exploitation -- for using people for scut work and then disposing of them before they've had a chance to prove their merit, for taking advantage of their over-motivated willingness to do "satisfying" work for a pittance only to close doors as soon as they've earned the credentials to walk through them, for being worse in so many ways than the rat race so many graduate students think they're escaping through the Ivory Tower.

Run run run run run.

So often when I think of academe these days, I'm reminded of the title character in Ellison's Invisible Man. Specifically, I'm reminded of the scene in the first chapter when he dreams about his grandfather and the briefcase with the sealed letter, supposedly a letter of recommendation. His grandfather tells him to open it. Inside there's just another sealed letter. He opens that one. And there's another. Eventually, he opens the last one. It says, "To Whom It May Concern ... Keep This N----- Boy Running."

And, if I've run too far astray from rats, there's also the opening scene from Native Son, in which Bigger Thomas kills the rat in his family's apartment only then to use its corpse to torment his sister:

Via

The meaning? Let me quote from one of our students' favorite sources for explanification of those awful, mean, tough, long books we (in my case, used to) assign:

Symbolically, the rat is as "trapped" in the apartment as the family is; both are eating nutritionally deficient "garbage," none may escape and both are ultimately vulnerable to vicious murder.

Well, OK, so I'm exaggerating. Of course, it isn't as bad today to be an aspiring academic as it was to be black and poor in mid-twentieth-century Chicago. But you get my point.

Run run run run run run run run run.

Academe traps us like the rats that inhabit so many decrepit grad student basement offices (and I've seen 'em, too -- big fat ones that stink when they die under couches and no one notices for a few days).

Until you realize you're a rat and there's nowhere left to go but out.

*     *     *     *     *

Stay tuned for updates, kids! It's gonna be real hot here this week, and that corpse is gonna be REAL pretty to look at by Friday.

Idealism Gone Wrong

Exactly a year ago, I was deep in the middle of teaching a summer session course.

I'd been offered it last-minute, of course, a week and a half before summer session started. It was an upper-level course -- a survey but restricted to majors. It covered a period of about 400 years, only half of which fell within my field of primary expertise. Hence, I had about a week and a half to cobble together a syllabus, through only half of which I might be able to offer students something resembling the educational experience they deserved. And even when one is working within familiar territory, a week and a half is hardly enough time to put together a truly thoughtful syllabus for a course one has not taught before.

Scheduler of Adjuncts didn't care about quality, though, only about staffing the class. Only seven students enrolled initially, but the department chose to run it anyway (normally such a class would require at least twelve) because six of the seven were paying out-of-state tuition, which meant that one-and-a-half of them covered my adjunct salary and the university could pocket the rest.

I didn't really want to take on the class, but I needed the money. I didn't have a tenure-track job lined up for the fall, didn't know if I'd be offered any classes (or how many) to teach as an adjunct in the fall, and had no other summer work lined up but an SAT prep gig that didn't pay enough to cover my expenses for the summer.

Commencement, at which I newly became "recent Ph.D." was the last week in May. It felt good for a day, upon which family and friends reveled in pomp and circumstance, while I sweated in ridiculous regalia, posed for pictures, and later consumed a ridiculous abundance of good whiskey. Then it was back to prepping for the class that should have just been cancelled -- or at least scheduled a month or two earlier (oh, wait, it was, but the second most highly paid professor in the department decided ze was too busy, well into May, to be bothered with such responsibilities).

 But I digress. I pulled a syllabus together, ordered books, and generally got my shit together in order not to embarrass myself and, at the very least, to offer the students something that made them feel like the class was "worth it."

I shouldn't have worried too much, though. Six of the seven students were there to earn credit they needed to graduate the following year -- and that was pretty much all. They did the readings, wrote the papers, talked more or less enough to fill the time in class, and were more or less glad to get on with their summers when the class ended. They helped a class that should never have been turn out OK, for which I am grateful, but we need say no more about them. They are not my subject.

The seventh person who had initially enrolled already had a college degree. And a law degree. And, ten years since graduating from college, was gainfully employed at a law firm.

And ze thought ze wanted to go to graduate school.

Because ze had Deep Questions that couldn't answered anywhere else. Because Academe represented a Beacon of Light and Hope that cast the Enlightenment that comes through living the Life of the Mind upon the Intellectual Darkness of day-to-day drudgery at the law firm.

Really, ze was too old and experienced not to have known better. But the Life of the Mind was calling, and ze had signed up for my course as a kind of refresher and also because ze had attended an undergrad program that didn't have traditional majors (actually, an excellent program, but, alas, such consequences!), like English, and so ze was seeking, through my badly planned, half-assed, last-minute excuse for a class, an immersion in the discipline, a true experience of Intellectual Inquiry through the study of Great Literature, an introduction to the Great Gods of Theory, a journey towards Wisdom in the Word. Indeed, ze burned with a hard, gemlike flame.

Our conversation went something like this:

Student (after first class, clearly beneath hir intellectual functioning): "Do you think this is the right course for me?"

Me: "Well, I don't know. You have a college degree already, and a law degree. Why are you taking an undergraduate course?"

Student: "I felt I needed to take an English course to enhance my knowledge of the Discipline before applying to Graduate School. I also feel I need to prove to Admissions Committees that I'm serious. Because, you know, in my program we didn't have majors, and I need to prove that, for sure, Literary Studies is the Right Field. Because I'm working as a lawyer, not doing what an English Major would do. And because I've never taken an English course."

Me: "How can you be so sure you want to get a Ph.D. in English when you've never taken an English course?"

Student: "Because it is in my blood. Because I have burning Intellectual Questions, and I feel that English is the field most suited to answering them. I want to be a Professor."

Me: "Having burning intellectual questions is great, but you already have a career. And you don't need to go to graduate school to pursue your intellectual interests. You already have enough education to know how to learn on your own. And do you know how few professor jobs there are? Most 'professors' just end up doing what I'm doing, teaching semester-by-semester, course-by-course, not having enough time to prep their classes, much less pursue Deep Intellectual Concerns. And never having enough money. I'm pretty sure you're better off as a lawyer."

Student: 'IknowIknowIknow. I've read all the 'stay away' articles. I've read Thomas H. Benton. I've read Marc Bousquet. But I know this is really for me. That I'm meant for it. If there are not jobs when I graduate, I can always go back to lawyering, or I can teach high school. Or I can just be an adjunct, because my spouse is a lawyer, too, and ze makes even more than I do. So, it's just irrelevant, the job market."

Me: "The job market is irrelevant?"

Student: "Well, for me it is."

Me: "For fear of spewing cliches, you do know that 'no man is an island,' right? I mean, the job market may not be relevant to you, but it is for most of the rest of us. And the reason we're having this conversation -- you wanted to know if this summer class is the right one to nurture your intellectual curiosity -- well, the reason I would say it's not the right course for you is that it will not be the kind of intellectually stimulating course you may be expecting. It may not be what you're expecting at all, and the reason is directly tied to the academic job market and, more broadly, the labor structure of higher ed. I wish I could tell you differently, but I'd be lying. Honestly, I'd love to have you in class --and I hope you'll stay -- but you'll be wasting your tuition."

Student: "Oh.................but, you know, I thought so-and-so was teaching this course. Ze has a really impressive scholarly profile. I wanted to Learn from hir..........Why are you teaching this class?"

Me: "An explanation at this point would be futile. I'm telling you these things because I think the next generation of academics has a responsibility to be concerned about the state of the profession they are entering, not just their own Intellectual Interests. I wouldn't say that no one should go to graduate school, but if all you care about is yourself and your own 'interests', well.....what about your future colleagues? What about your future students? Your choices indirectly but ultimately affect their working conditions and quality of education. Those things should matter to all of us, above and beyond our petty individual interests. Because what do those interests matter, if the learning community of which we are a part falls apart?"

Student: "I don't like you. You're scaring me. I'm not taking your class. Who can I talk to in this department that will tell me what I want to hear?"

Me: "Over there. There's the door. Many people here, unfortunately, will tell you exactly what you want to hear."

And so ze withdrew. I was sincere in saying that I would have loved having hir in class -- ze had a lot to contribute. But the class wasn't what ze was looking for, and I felt an obligation to disclose at least a glimpse of how things really are to someone aiming to throw away a career ze already had for a naive ideal.

*     *     *     *     *

I'm not sure there was a course being offered that summer that was what ze was really looking for -- or that graduate school, more generally, would have given hir what ze wanted.

Self-interest, self-absorption, self-aggrandisement, self-deception, self-delusion. Academe encourages these qualities by mislabelling them idealism and commitment to "the life of the mind."

I'm not saying I'm any better than this student. I fell into the same trap a decade ago -- had a career as a high school teacher, had a gainfully employed partner, ignored the signs of a sick sad academic world because my Intellecktaulle Interests took precednece.

Why do so many people keep falling into this trap over and over and over and over again? Doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results? Isn't that the definition of insanity?

Do Your Students Know What an Adjunct Is?

How easy is it for a humanities department to replace an adjunct who quits a week and a half before spring classes start? As easy as it was for them to find me a week and a half before this past summer session began.

I didn’t want to teach this summer class, but I needed the money. I didn’t have a full-time job lined up and didn’t even know if I had any teaching assignments to look forward to in the fall (they wouldn’t finalize adjunct assignments until late July or early August). So, I agreed to teach a class I had never taught before, a class that was only partially in my area of specialization, a week before classes started. Because I needed the money.

The class only had six students enrolled, and under normal circumstances, this class, with a cap of 35, would have been cancelled, but four of the six students were paying out-of-state tuition. I guess the university was making enough money from the out-of-staters to run the class.

The only good thing about this class was that it was small. The intimacy motivated the students to come to class prepared and ready to talk, and the lack of intensive grading made it possible for me to spend time on the prep I should have been able to do in advance – though, of course, I couldn’t make up the time I had never had to actually select and organize the readings.

It wasn’t a great class, and although it went better than I had expected, I didn’t feel good about teaching it. Didn’t my students, for all the tuition they were paying, deserve to be taught by someone who had given time and thought and care to a well-planned syllabus? Didn’t they deserve a teacher in whom the university had invested as much as they themselves were investing in the class?

I don’t know the adjunct I replaced over the summer (*update* 7/4/2011: I actually learned later, after posting this originally, that I didn't replace an adjunct but someone tenured who just decided ze had more important things to do -- read more about my experience teaching this class here), just as I don’t know the person the department found to replace me this spring, and it doesn’t seem to matter that there is neither a sense of community nor commitment here. I’m sure they found someone glad to take my composition section, because it’s easy – for those of us who’ve taught comp many times – to fill in at the last minute. The syllabus is standardized, and the students are none the worse for having a different body in the room. But my other course? Well, my replacement’s book list suggests ze agreed to teach a course ze had never taught before a week before classes started for the same reason I did last summer. I had actually put some thought into this one and was somewhat looking forward to teaching it. If only my department could have made a small commitment to me, offered me four classes – even three – instead of two, I might have been less willing to flee. No longer a graduate student with loans deferred and family support available, I can no longer support myself on the salary from teaching just two classes.

But spring enrollments were down, and I guess departments like to spread things around among the adjuncts, keeping as many of us around as possible, you know, since we’re so prone to quitting.

We already know that the adjunct system doesn’t benefit adjuncts. In what possible way does it benefit students? It doesn’t. It benefits no one and nothing but the administration and their bottom line.

How do we change this system? Undergraduates are a key part of the solution. They have the numbers – and ultimately the financial power -- to demand change, but most of them don’t even know what an adjunct is.

If you’re currently an adjunct, come out to your students this semester. In the name of transparency and change, tell them who you are and why they should want their institution to make a greater commitment to you in terms of job security and salary. An investment in you is an investment in their education. A commitment to you is a commitment to them.