Who Said Crickets Were Boring?

Where is everybody? I'm not the only one whose posting has been light lately ...

At least he crickets have something to say:

Sign This Petition

Better Pay for Adjuncts: Stop their Exploitation

Go to that link and add your name to the list if you haven't already. It's just one more way to attempt to be heard, to raise awareness. Because ... numbers count in this game.

And then, once you've signed the petition, go check out today's post at Transition Times, where blogger Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez neatly ties the plight of adjuncts to the trend towards distance learning. Contrary to critics of distance learning, Browdy de Hernandez first praises it and emphasizes its inevitabilty and significant potential, describing how a "virtual" classroom could bring together people who would be unlikely to meet in a traditional one:

[W]ouldn’t it be exciting to “hang out” in a seminar classroom with students from around the world? We higher ed folks like to trumpet the value of diversity and international education—well, distance learning provides the platform to make the dream of a truly diverse and globalized classroom a reality.

But Browdy de Hernandez goes on to discuss the "catch" to such a scenario. When distance learning is viewed as a cost-cutting measure rather than a means to enhance learning, both students and faculty lose out. "Outsourcing" instruction at U.S. colleges and universities to underpaid faculty, sometimes in other countries, and tasking them with responsibility for increasingly higher student loads and no one-on-one or small group face time, real or virtual, depersonalizes education, exploiting both students and faculty in order to support inflated costs at the top of academe's pyramid at the expense of its foundation.

And because smaller classes, whether virtual or real, are both a better educational model and more expensive, fewer and fewer students will have access to that kind of learning environment. The adjunctification of the professoriate, along with the outsourcing of instruction, will create a caste system, further separating poorer students from more affluent ones:

[W]e will be looking at an academic landscape where there will be a few highly paid tenured research professors and a vast majority of poorly paid adjunct professors all over the world, working mostly from their home offices via distance learning networks. While there will always be a few lucky students who will be able to again access to ivied classrooms through scholarships, those classrooms will increasingly be reserved for the children of the super-elites of the world. Ordinary kids who have the motivation and discipline to go to college will do it from home, a financial decision their parents will have no choice but to support.

Distance learning is often lauded as a way to level the playing field, since it makes higher education accessible to kids who would not otherwise be able to go to college.

This may be so. But it is also going to be yet another way to divide our society into Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons—in other words, to harden the de facto caste walls that are already making the old rags-to-riches, pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps American dream a quaint memory.

Now, go sign that petition because I know you read the rest of the post and already forgot the beginning of it!

Grammar Gripes: Cut "That" Out

"That" is one of the more overused words in the English language. Consider the following:

You cannot expect that you will overcome the obstacles that impede post-academic success if you constantly revert to the same limited perspective that you developed while in academe that prevents you from seeing that the nonacademic world offers many opportunities that you only need to discover in order to take advantage of.

Gah!! If "that" monstrosity didn't give you a headache, you've definitely spent too much time in academe. Try this instead:

You cannot expect you will overcome the obstacles impeding post-academic success if you constantly revert to the same limited perspective you developed while in academe. It prevents you from seeing the many opportunities awaiting your discovery in the nonacademic world.

Still cumbersome but note how much smoother it reads when you cut "that" out. Of course, I came up with this example because I'm as guilty as anyone else of cluttering my prose with "that." Sometimes you do need the word, but once you start paying attention, you'll find plenty of "that" to delete. 

Just for kicks, let's look at another example, inspired by the only grammar book to die for:

Ezmerelda felt keenly that the vagabond libertine that she had unwittingly kissed last night had deceived her by whispering that he was a gentleman in disguise so that he could seduce her unwilling heart and ravish the objections that she could not help, ultimately, but relinquish.

Gah!!!! "That" just takes out all the romance. Try this instead:

Ezmerelda felt keenly the vagabond libertine she had unwittingly kissed last night had deceived her by whispering he was a gentleman in disguise, seducing her unwilling heart and ravishing the objections she could not help, ultimately, but relinquish.

Or, for those of you needing "real world" examples:

The Court held that the defendant was entitled to a charge that instructed jurors to find him guilty of the lesser included offense only if they found that he had not stolen the victim’s purse.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ... instead:

The Court held the defendant was entitled to a charge instructing jurors to find him guilty of the lesser included offense only if they found he had not stolen the victim’s purse. (Via)

Via

Stuff Fluffy Ate

The following are the most common surgically removed items from dogs and cats:

1. Socks
2. Underwear
3. Pantyhose
4. Rocks
5. Balls
6. Chew toys
7. Corncobs
8. Bones
9. Hair ties / ribbons
10. Sticks

(And no, don't ask me how and why I know this ...)

A Question of Ethics

A hypothetical situation, a hypothetical question:

A leading scholar/expert does something very unprofessional. The action occurs outside their professional sphere but is of a nature that, under most circumstances, would compromise their professional integrity. The action is, technically, unrelated to their research. It is, however, driven by an activist's inclination to "make good" on the policy implications of that research. Under most circumstances, such an action would cause things like the cancellation of speaking engagements and censure within, if not outright ostracism from,  professional associations and organizations. It might not automatically lead to the revocation of tenure, but it certainly could provide grounds for building a case.

However, the "victim" of the scholar/expert's unprofessional action, in this instance, itself has an unfavorable reputation in many circles. While the scholar/expert may have committed more than one crime, the "victim" has done nothing illegal but yet is perceived in a highly negative light by scholar/expert's colleagues, allies, and supporters. Because of this perception, scholar/expert's breach of professional ethics is dismissed, even laughed off. The "victim" deserved what it got. It is itself an affront to intellectual integrity and so scholar/expert's action is fair enough in kind.

Except, scholar/expert's action is the kind of thing we teach our children and our students not to do.We'd punish them if we caught them. We might even fail or expel them.

And yet, it seems, scholar/expert is exempt because, here, the "victim" is perceived as the truer villain.

Aside from any legal charges the "victim" may pursue, what should the professional consequences for scholar/expert be? If this individual were scheduled to give a lecture at your institution, would you support it to go on as planned or push to have it canceled?

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?

Sunset of a Thousand Sunsets

Isn't that poetic? That's how Peaches put it. He has a much less foul mouth than I have -- Saturday's adventures with the Great Cactus, that is:

But pictures do it no more justice than words. And it's Monday again, anyway.

Back to work ...