It's college-application season, which means it's also college-application-interview season. This is the fourth year I've served as an alumna interviewer for my alma mater, and I continue to have somewhat conflicted feelings about it. I do, after all, teach at a local college, and part of me feels weirdly disloyal to my institution and to my students--even though there's only a very small overlap between the students who apply to Regional U and the students who apply to INRU.* Another part of me feels pre-emptively defensive: I remember what it was like to be a high school senior snobbishly passing judgment on the local colleges and universities. And a third part of me wonders why, of all the things I could volunteer to do, I'm doing this: feeding the hungry and clothing the naked it ain't.
But I enjoy doing the interviews and I enjoy learning more about the community to which I belong. It's interesting to learn where bookish teenagers go for fun, what kinds of educational extras middle-class parents are (and are not) willing to pay for, and how the local high schools compare. By now I know which school has an IB program, which has a state-championship sailing team, and which holds its classes in three-hour blocks.
Also, I'm good at it. Unlike some of the alumni interviewers in the region (dudes who got an MBA or MD thirty years ago, never knew anything about their institution's undergraduate program, and have no idea how to evaluate a high school student's "promise"), I know INRU well: I spent ten years there, the last three of them teaching undergraduates. I can craft an effective prose profile. And much of my day-to-day life involves working with, trying to draw out, and get a feel for the potential of late-adolescents and young adults. Relative to the average, my admission success rate is high.
So I suppose that I'm serving my community by advocating for kids who, however talented and sometimes economically comfortable they may be, aren't connected to the centers of elite power. Many live in semi-rural communities, most attend public schools, and few have traveled widely. A good number of the students who leave will never come back, but they help to diversify INRU and whatever centers of power they may wind up in--and I guess that still counts as raising the region's profile.
And there are other rewards. A while back I interviewed a kid who just didn't want to talk about himself. He was affable and laid-back, and I quickly got a sense of his wide-ranging talents, but he refused to spin the autobiographical soundbites that lots of college applicants specialize in. He didn't want to boast, he didn't want to say much about the unusual personal hardship he'd overcome, and for the first 30 minutes I felt like I had no sense of his actual personality. Finally I asked him if he had any questions for me, and the entire dynamic of the conversation shifted. He asked me at least three times as many questions as any kid I've interviewed before or since--and they were deeply thoughtful, sometimes rather personal questions: about my own experiences at INRU and my impressions of its students and its social and intellectual dynamics. He listened intently, he asked follow-up questions, and I suddenly understood why this unassuming kid was captain of virtually every sports team, why he'd been elected student-body president, and why he insisted that pretty much everyone at his high school got along: the nerds and the jocks and the goths and so on. It was pure, natural leadership--not showy, not demanding, not domineering--of a sort I'd never seen before.
Interviewing for INRU also helps remind me that students are students: the kids I interview aren't much different from the kids I teach. And most are worth getting to know.
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*For those joining us late, Instant-Name-Recognition University is the stupid pseudonym I invented for my alma mater seven years ago--i.e., too late to change it now.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Duking it in dark corners
I'm teaching the comedies and romances half of the Shakespeare sequence this semester, and one of the issues that this particular batch of students has found most fascinating is the number of rulers who assert control ineffectively or unrealistically, attempting to set limits to human emotions or behaviors that simply can't be legislated. Maybe it's the fact that it's a election year, but my students seem endlessly interested in characters like the King of Navarre in Love's Labour's Lost (who pledges himself and his friends to three years of fasting, study, and isolation from women); the King of France in All's Well that Ends Well (a well-meaning but simultaneously autocratic and impotent ruler who imagines himself as a maker and enforcer of marriages); and Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure (who, among other things, manipulates characters into excesses of grief, repentance, and forgiveness).
This pattern interests me, too, though I'm less compelled by the spectacle of bad leadership than by the way that Shakespeare dramatizes the failures of self-knowledge and the mania for control that often accompanies those failures. Frankly, it's an impulse that I recognize in myself. I'm not a "controlling" personality in the usual sense of that term, but I do have a hard time letting things lie. I want to fix everything, immediately, and that includes interpersonal relationships.
Indeed, I'd say that my greatest weakness is a belief in my own rectitude and rationality--the conviction that I understand my motives perfectly, that they're entirely justified by circumstances, and that any other interpretation of my actions is wrongheaded, misinformed, or rooted in some mysterious and inexplicable personal hostility. (This admission will, I realize, come as a total surprise to readers of this blog.) As I've gotten older, I've gotten better at recognizing and curbing this tendency, and I'll readily acknowledge that my narrative of a given set of events is only partial and subjective. Still, it remains difficult for me to accept that other people might have their own, very different interpretations of events that involve me--and that their interpretations, and whatever emotions result from those interpretations, aren't wrong.
Oddly enough, teaching has been helpful in training me away from my impulse to correct other people's experiences of the world. You might think that being in a position of structural power over my students would be a license for the worst forms of this behavior--forcing my views, ideas, and methods upon others--but in fact the structure of that relationship means it's easier to recognize my students as entirely other. They're my juniors; they're at an earlier stage in their processes of intellectual and self-discovery; and I've been teaching for long enough now that I know it's impossible to predict who they'll become and what changes they'll undergo. It can be mind-blowing how different a student can be in her senior year compared with her sophomore year.
So when a student doesn't understand or agree with something I'm saying, I listen. I take his ideas seriously, and explain my own. I lay out my best case... and then I let it lie. And when a student is angry with or seems to dislike me, I don't take it personally. I get that I may be misreading her, that she may be dealing with shit unrelated to me, and that, in any case, it's not my job to get her to like me. My students' emotional responses, like their intellectual responses, are their own.
It's harder to let things lie with the other people in my life--my friends, my family, my colleagues. But until I'm appointed Duke of Vienna and find an usually fetching friar's robe, I'm working on being more laid-back. And possibly cultivating more self-knowledge.
This pattern interests me, too, though I'm less compelled by the spectacle of bad leadership than by the way that Shakespeare dramatizes the failures of self-knowledge and the mania for control that often accompanies those failures. Frankly, it's an impulse that I recognize in myself. I'm not a "controlling" personality in the usual sense of that term, but I do have a hard time letting things lie. I want to fix everything, immediately, and that includes interpersonal relationships.
Indeed, I'd say that my greatest weakness is a belief in my own rectitude and rationality--the conviction that I understand my motives perfectly, that they're entirely justified by circumstances, and that any other interpretation of my actions is wrongheaded, misinformed, or rooted in some mysterious and inexplicable personal hostility. (This admission will, I realize, come as a total surprise to readers of this blog.) As I've gotten older, I've gotten better at recognizing and curbing this tendency, and I'll readily acknowledge that my narrative of a given set of events is only partial and subjective. Still, it remains difficult for me to accept that other people might have their own, very different interpretations of events that involve me--and that their interpretations, and whatever emotions result from those interpretations, aren't wrong.
Oddly enough, teaching has been helpful in training me away from my impulse to correct other people's experiences of the world. You might think that being in a position of structural power over my students would be a license for the worst forms of this behavior--forcing my views, ideas, and methods upon others--but in fact the structure of that relationship means it's easier to recognize my students as entirely other. They're my juniors; they're at an earlier stage in their processes of intellectual and self-discovery; and I've been teaching for long enough now that I know it's impossible to predict who they'll become and what changes they'll undergo. It can be mind-blowing how different a student can be in her senior year compared with her sophomore year.
So when a student doesn't understand or agree with something I'm saying, I listen. I take his ideas seriously, and explain my own. I lay out my best case... and then I let it lie. And when a student is angry with or seems to dislike me, I don't take it personally. I get that I may be misreading her, that she may be dealing with shit unrelated to me, and that, in any case, it's not my job to get her to like me. My students' emotional responses, like their intellectual responses, are their own.
It's harder to let things lie with the other people in my life--my friends, my family, my colleagues. But until I'm appointed Duke of Vienna and find an usually fetching friar's robe, I'm working on being more laid-back. And possibly cultivating more self-knowledge.
Monday, November 05, 2012
The application season of broken dreams
Like Bardiac, I spent part of the weekend reading job applications, and like Bardiac, I also came across some eccentric ones: applicants who weren't remotely qualified for the position, or who submitted highly peculiar job letters, or both.
But although the weirdo applications are the more amusing to talk about, the for-real ones inspire stronger emotions. First, of course, is enthusiasm: it's invigorating to learn about so many interesting projects and to be introduced to so many interesting applicants. Second, however, come the sobering reminders of what awaits so many of these promising applicants.
Hints of their fates--or if not their specific fates, then the fates of many like them--are readily apparent in their cover letters and vitae. A surprising number of candidates are U.S. citizens now teaching overseas. In some cases, I imagine, the gig is a largely or entirely positive experience: a one-year immersion in a foreign culture, a chance to teach a wide range of classes to an unusual group of students, and a welcome adventure after the long slog of graduate school. But in other cases the applicants have spent many years abroad, often moving from country to country, and in positions that don't permit them to teach within their area of specialization.
Then there are the applicants who are still here in the States, but stringing together several adjunct positions two or three or five years after getting their degrees. There are a few who have actually stopped adjuncting, and hence teaching, bowing to the need for a more reliable job--but who are still hoping they might be viable candidates on the academic job market.
And finally there are the superficially more secure candidates: those comfortably ensconced in cushy visiting positions, cranking out multiple publications a year, possessed of sterling letters of reference from some of the biggest names in the discipline. . . but who can't seem to land a tenure-line job. Usually, they're not a good fit for our position, and not really a good fit for any position according to the conventional job-market categories. I'm not talking about someone whose work spans, say, the Victorian and Modernist divide (although those people can struggle, too); I'm talking about someone who's written a book with one chapter on Marlowe, one on Blake, one on Oscar Wilde, and one on Lady Gaga.
Let me be clear: none of the above scenarios is necessarily a dealbreaker or a kiss of doom; we all know people who took three or five or ten years to get a tenure-line job, but eventually wound up with a great one. But I look at these applicants and I think: Gawd. This fucking profession.
But although the weirdo applications are the more amusing to talk about, the for-real ones inspire stronger emotions. First, of course, is enthusiasm: it's invigorating to learn about so many interesting projects and to be introduced to so many interesting applicants. Second, however, come the sobering reminders of what awaits so many of these promising applicants.
Hints of their fates--or if not their specific fates, then the fates of many like them--are readily apparent in their cover letters and vitae. A surprising number of candidates are U.S. citizens now teaching overseas. In some cases, I imagine, the gig is a largely or entirely positive experience: a one-year immersion in a foreign culture, a chance to teach a wide range of classes to an unusual group of students, and a welcome adventure after the long slog of graduate school. But in other cases the applicants have spent many years abroad, often moving from country to country, and in positions that don't permit them to teach within their area of specialization.
Then there are the applicants who are still here in the States, but stringing together several adjunct positions two or three or five years after getting their degrees. There are a few who have actually stopped adjuncting, and hence teaching, bowing to the need for a more reliable job--but who are still hoping they might be viable candidates on the academic job market.
And finally there are the superficially more secure candidates: those comfortably ensconced in cushy visiting positions, cranking out multiple publications a year, possessed of sterling letters of reference from some of the biggest names in the discipline. . . but who can't seem to land a tenure-line job. Usually, they're not a good fit for our position, and not really a good fit for any position according to the conventional job-market categories. I'm not talking about someone whose work spans, say, the Victorian and Modernist divide (although those people can struggle, too); I'm talking about someone who's written a book with one chapter on Marlowe, one on Blake, one on Oscar Wilde, and one on Lady Gaga.
Let me be clear: none of the above scenarios is necessarily a dealbreaker or a kiss of doom; we all know people who took three or five or ten years to get a tenure-line job, but eventually wound up with a great one. But I look at these applicants and I think: Gawd. This fucking profession.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Trick or treat
Trick: I'd been planning on spending all day today catching up on the grading for my Milton class. Yesterday I realized that this is majors' advisement week, so I have a full day of meetings with my advisees.
Treat: One of my advisees, whom I first taught as a first-semester freshman--when I convinced her to add an English minor to the ludicrous-sounding field she was determined to major in (you haven't heard of it; let's just say it's pre-professional and totally non-academic)--announced that she wanted to upgrade to a double major. I've been gently encouraging her to do this for years, as she's a strong writer and raises the level of discussion several notches in every class she's taken with me, but I was determined not to push. I'm so happy it's something she decided she wants to do.
So I guess it evens out. And at least I'll have leftover candy to fuel a long night's grading.
Treat: One of my advisees, whom I first taught as a first-semester freshman--when I convinced her to add an English minor to the ludicrous-sounding field she was determined to major in (you haven't heard of it; let's just say it's pre-professional and totally non-academic)--announced that she wanted to upgrade to a double major. I've been gently encouraging her to do this for years, as she's a strong writer and raises the level of discussion several notches in every class she's taken with me, but I was determined not to push. I'm so happy it's something she decided she wants to do.
So I guess it evens out. And at least I'll have leftover candy to fuel a long night's grading.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Finding mentors
In the comments to my last post, a grad student, Canuck Down South, asked how I managed to make friends and find mentors among senior scholars. It's a good question, and something I think is important for grad students and junior faculty to start working on as early as possible.
This is partly because it takes time and it's nothing you can force. I'm not a model of success, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about from the moment I got this job: I either already knew or vaguely intuited that, with the exception of my advisor, my recommenders going forward should absolutely not be faculty from my graduate institution. At the same time, there was no one at RU who would be appropriate, since I didn't have in-field senior colleagues. So, if you can't or shouldn't lean on your grad school profs or your colleagues at your first job, where do you turn?
Unless you're already publishing work that gets you unsolicited fan mail, I think the only answer for a junior scholar is conferences, professional societies, or anywhere else you meet people in person (for example, if there's a regional colloquium or working group that draws scholars from institutions other than your own). And your best bets at an early stage are the smaller venues: special one-off conferences, where you might actually get to talk at some length with people who are vastly your seniors; small societies dedicated to a specialized aspect of your research; or conferences that involve workshops or seminars rather than formal paper presentations.
And then. . . you present good work and you seize any opportunity that presents itself. If you see people whose work you admire, introduce yourself and tell them so. Sometimes--not always, not even most the time--they'll ask you about yours. And for goodness sakes, if someone comes up to you after a paper and wants to talk to you about it, keep talking. If you chat with someone for more than a few minutes, and especially if they offer you something in the way of real advice (even if it's not actually immediately useful or relevant), drop them an email after the conference saying how nice it was to meet them and how much you appreciate their suggestions. Most of these people, too, will not turn out to be actual mentors, but as I wrote a number of years back, the point of networking is that you never know.
Gradually, you'll start to know people. And sooner or later, someone will explicitly tell you that they'd love to read your work, or keep in touch about the results of your research. You'll be flattered, but you may not believe them. Believe them. Take them up on it.
Because here's the secret: most established scholars really want to know what younger people are working on, and where their corner of the discipline is headed. Many fear, at least a tiny bit, losing their finger on the pulse of what's happening. This is especially true for scholars who aren't teaching at doctoral institutions, or who teach at second- or third-tier ones. We all need mentors. But many people also want mentees: they're an additional way to stay engaged, an opportunity to give back to the profession--and, yes, a means of extending their own scholarly influence.
When it comes right down to asking for a letter of reference--or seeing whether someone would read an article draft or whatever--there's still usually a point where you just have to ask. And for me, anyway, the cold ask has never gotten easier: even when I'm asking for a letter from someone who's written letters for me in the past, it still takes days or weeks of avoidance before I'll actually send that email. But if you've laid the right groundwork, and the other person is someone who's been sincerely supportive of and enthusiastic about your work, they won't mind. After all: it's their profession, too.
*
Wise and worldy readers, what additional advice would you give?
This is partly because it takes time and it's nothing you can force. I'm not a model of success, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about from the moment I got this job: I either already knew or vaguely intuited that, with the exception of my advisor, my recommenders going forward should absolutely not be faculty from my graduate institution. At the same time, there was no one at RU who would be appropriate, since I didn't have in-field senior colleagues. So, if you can't or shouldn't lean on your grad school profs or your colleagues at your first job, where do you turn?
Unless you're already publishing work that gets you unsolicited fan mail, I think the only answer for a junior scholar is conferences, professional societies, or anywhere else you meet people in person (for example, if there's a regional colloquium or working group that draws scholars from institutions other than your own). And your best bets at an early stage are the smaller venues: special one-off conferences, where you might actually get to talk at some length with people who are vastly your seniors; small societies dedicated to a specialized aspect of your research; or conferences that involve workshops or seminars rather than formal paper presentations.
And then. . . you present good work and you seize any opportunity that presents itself. If you see people whose work you admire, introduce yourself and tell them so. Sometimes--not always, not even most the time--they'll ask you about yours. And for goodness sakes, if someone comes up to you after a paper and wants to talk to you about it, keep talking. If you chat with someone for more than a few minutes, and especially if they offer you something in the way of real advice (even if it's not actually immediately useful or relevant), drop them an email after the conference saying how nice it was to meet them and how much you appreciate their suggestions. Most of these people, too, will not turn out to be actual mentors, but as I wrote a number of years back, the point of networking is that you never know.
Gradually, you'll start to know people. And sooner or later, someone will explicitly tell you that they'd love to read your work, or keep in touch about the results of your research. You'll be flattered, but you may not believe them. Believe them. Take them up on it.
Because here's the secret: most established scholars really want to know what younger people are working on, and where their corner of the discipline is headed. Many fear, at least a tiny bit, losing their finger on the pulse of what's happening. This is especially true for scholars who aren't teaching at doctoral institutions, or who teach at second- or third-tier ones. We all need mentors. But many people also want mentees: they're an additional way to stay engaged, an opportunity to give back to the profession--and, yes, a means of extending their own scholarly influence.
When it comes right down to asking for a letter of reference--or seeing whether someone would read an article draft or whatever--there's still usually a point where you just have to ask. And for me, anyway, the cold ask has never gotten easier: even when I'm asking for a letter from someone who's written letters for me in the past, it still takes days or weeks of avoidance before I'll actually send that email. But if you've laid the right groundwork, and the other person is someone who's been sincerely supportive of and enthusiastic about your work, they won't mind. After all: it's their profession, too.
*
Wise and worldy readers, what additional advice would you give?
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Letting the advisor go
I'm applying for approximately 87 different things this fall, most of which require lining up the ol' recommendation letters. But for the first time in more than 10 years, I didn't ask my dissertation director for one.
Advisor remains the biggest name I could rally to my cause, and a small part of me wonders whether that isn't reason enough to ask: the patronage-model-cum-magical-thinking that sustains grad students hasn't entirely left me. But a larger part of me is relieved not to have to go there, by which I mean to go back there, to that anxious, cringing, supplicatory phase of my life.
It's not about Advisor herself. I could ask, and she'd probably write for me. She's been good to me over the years. Nor do I think it's inappropriate to have one's advisor write on one's behalf many years after the fact: some people remain close to their advisors, in a relationship that evolves into friendship and even collaboration. But that's not true of our relationship: I see her from time to time and send her cards at Christmas and that sort of thing, but she doesn't know my recent work hardly at all--certainly not as well as the mentors I've acquired since graduate school.
More important, though, is my reluctance to revisit that particular phase of my scholarly life. Longtime readers will recall that my experience of grad school was Not Good. It's increasingly clear that the problem was with me, or with grad school as a phenomenological state, rather than with my program or my advisor; I've reflected before that grad school made me incapable of the friendships that I needed and wanted from my classmates, and I was probably similarly incapable of the advisor/advisee relationship that I wanted.
For the first few years after I got my degree, I worked very hard to develop a new, adult relationship with Advisor. And it worked well enough. But there are reasons both personal and professional--matters of temperament as well as specific events in our respective lives--that mean we're never going to have what Cosimo and his advisor have, or what some of my other friends have with theirs.
Once that would have made me sad or frantic: not having my advisor's love, in the way I wanted it, felt like a personal failing, a sign that I wasn't deserving of it. But some relationships are never quite the right fit, and some we outgrow, and most of us manage to find others who do love us in the way we want to be loved.
I'd been planning to ask Advisor for a letter. I'm sure she'd have written a strong one. But when it occurred to me in September that I didn't have to--that I had professional friends who were senior scholars who liked my work, that I didn't have to reenter that particular tortured headspace--I felt so relieved that I almost burst into tears.
Advisor remains the biggest name I could rally to my cause, and a small part of me wonders whether that isn't reason enough to ask: the patronage-model-cum-magical-thinking that sustains grad students hasn't entirely left me. But a larger part of me is relieved not to have to go there, by which I mean to go back there, to that anxious, cringing, supplicatory phase of my life.
It's not about Advisor herself. I could ask, and she'd probably write for me. She's been good to me over the years. Nor do I think it's inappropriate to have one's advisor write on one's behalf many years after the fact: some people remain close to their advisors, in a relationship that evolves into friendship and even collaboration. But that's not true of our relationship: I see her from time to time and send her cards at Christmas and that sort of thing, but she doesn't know my recent work hardly at all--certainly not as well as the mentors I've acquired since graduate school.
More important, though, is my reluctance to revisit that particular phase of my scholarly life. Longtime readers will recall that my experience of grad school was Not Good. It's increasingly clear that the problem was with me, or with grad school as a phenomenological state, rather than with my program or my advisor; I've reflected before that grad school made me incapable of the friendships that I needed and wanted from my classmates, and I was probably similarly incapable of the advisor/advisee relationship that I wanted.
For the first few years after I got my degree, I worked very hard to develop a new, adult relationship with Advisor. And it worked well enough. But there are reasons both personal and professional--matters of temperament as well as specific events in our respective lives--that mean we're never going to have what Cosimo and his advisor have, or what some of my other friends have with theirs.
Once that would have made me sad or frantic: not having my advisor's love, in the way I wanted it, felt like a personal failing, a sign that I wasn't deserving of it. But some relationships are never quite the right fit, and some we outgrow, and most of us manage to find others who do love us in the way we want to be loved.
I'd been planning to ask Advisor for a letter. I'm sure she'd have written a strong one. But when it occurred to me in September that I didn't have to--that I had professional friends who were senior scholars who liked my work, that I didn't have to reenter that particular tortured headspace--I felt so relieved that I almost burst into tears.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Small kindnesses
I spent a few hours last night in the emergency room at the local hospital. It turned out to be nothing--I'd had discomfort in my chest and neck and running down my left arm that I thought might be cardiac--but once I was there I had to stay there, for a long and boring while, getting tended to maybe once every twenty minutes. I had a book and I had PBS's pre-debate coverage on the t.v., but what I found most engaging was watching and listening to the hospital staff bustling back and forth.
Ever since I started this job, I've found myself enormously interested in the worklives of others whose jobs don't occur in a typical office environment--and especially those whose jobs involve continual, short-term interactions with the public: hairdressers, for example, see a different client every 30 or 60 minutes all day long, while clergymen and -women spend a certain amount of time "on stage"--but also have an endless series of individual meetings, many of them urgent, with couples getting married, families planning funerals, individuals in crisis. A clergyperson's worklife is probably most analogous to a professor's, in the sense that it involves roughly the same component parts (there's an administrative and office component, a performative component, a caring-profession component, and also a solitary and studious component), but I think of my hairdresser every time I schedule a day of student conferences and have to gather my energy up to make friendly chit-chat with each of fifteen successive students who walk through my door with a first draft of a paper.
I also try to remember, when I visit my hairdresser or meet with my priest--or buy stuff at the grocery store or take my car in for servicing--that although the other person's job may involve serving me, it's a dynamic relationship: I have a right to good service, but I'm the one entering their workplace; what I do there can make their workday more pleasurable or more exasperating.
So in that same spirit, I was interested in the ways the hospital staff interacted with each other and with me: the in-take nurse was brusque and impatient, putting me on the defensive and making me feel very small and stupid (why hadn't I called my doctor first? why would I think these symptoms could be cardiac?), but everyone else was warm and friendly and kind. I was handled by at least eight different people, not counting the front desk staff--three nurses, one physician's assistant, an EKG tech, two X-ray techs, two transport personnel (who wheeled me to and from the X-ray room)--and every single one introduced him or herself by name and job title, explained what they were doing, and made pleasant chit-chat in interstitial moments or as time allowed.
I came away very impressed with the hospital staff, not just their professionalism and training, but also all the intangibles that amount to bedside manner and putting a patient at ease. The X-ray techs were solicitous about my bare feet (which weren't cold, but they insisted on finding me socks) and had an amusing routine involving the questions they were required to ask me (said one, deadpan, in a G-man voice "we need to know. . . what you know"), and the transport personnel were cheerful and funny, joking with me about whether a hospital, in the name of public health, should even allow patients to watch the presidential debates.
Coming as this visit did just at the middle of the semester, when I'm emailing students about exam and paper grades and setting up appointments to calm anxieties and suggest strategies for improvement, it reminded me that small interactions matter a lot. The brusque nurse wasn't intending to be mean--maybe she'd had a bad day, and I'm sure she sees lots of hypochondriacs who panic and go to the ER for every little thing. But if she'd been typical of the hospital staff, I'd have left ashamed and reluctant ever to return, lest I be scolded for crying wolf. The other personnel were efficient and obviously very busy, but they listened when I talked, they smiled, and they treated me and my symptoms seriously. I left feeling reassured--and very pleased with my local healthcare community.
I need to remember this when a student drops by my office unannounced when I'm frantically prepping for class, or goes on and on about some irrelevant thing long after I've answered their questions and I have three other students lined up outside the door. Being brisk needn't mean being unkind. And we could all stand to work on our bedside manner.
Ever since I started this job, I've found myself enormously interested in the worklives of others whose jobs don't occur in a typical office environment--and especially those whose jobs involve continual, short-term interactions with the public: hairdressers, for example, see a different client every 30 or 60 minutes all day long, while clergymen and -women spend a certain amount of time "on stage"--but also have an endless series of individual meetings, many of them urgent, with couples getting married, families planning funerals, individuals in crisis. A clergyperson's worklife is probably most analogous to a professor's, in the sense that it involves roughly the same component parts (there's an administrative and office component, a performative component, a caring-profession component, and also a solitary and studious component), but I think of my hairdresser every time I schedule a day of student conferences and have to gather my energy up to make friendly chit-chat with each of fifteen successive students who walk through my door with a first draft of a paper.
I also try to remember, when I visit my hairdresser or meet with my priest--or buy stuff at the grocery store or take my car in for servicing--that although the other person's job may involve serving me, it's a dynamic relationship: I have a right to good service, but I'm the one entering their workplace; what I do there can make their workday more pleasurable or more exasperating.
So in that same spirit, I was interested in the ways the hospital staff interacted with each other and with me: the in-take nurse was brusque and impatient, putting me on the defensive and making me feel very small and stupid (why hadn't I called my doctor first? why would I think these symptoms could be cardiac?), but everyone else was warm and friendly and kind. I was handled by at least eight different people, not counting the front desk staff--three nurses, one physician's assistant, an EKG tech, two X-ray techs, two transport personnel (who wheeled me to and from the X-ray room)--and every single one introduced him or herself by name and job title, explained what they were doing, and made pleasant chit-chat in interstitial moments or as time allowed.
I came away very impressed with the hospital staff, not just their professionalism and training, but also all the intangibles that amount to bedside manner and putting a patient at ease. The X-ray techs were solicitous about my bare feet (which weren't cold, but they insisted on finding me socks) and had an amusing routine involving the questions they were required to ask me (said one, deadpan, in a G-man voice "we need to know. . . what you know"), and the transport personnel were cheerful and funny, joking with me about whether a hospital, in the name of public health, should even allow patients to watch the presidential debates.
Coming as this visit did just at the middle of the semester, when I'm emailing students about exam and paper grades and setting up appointments to calm anxieties and suggest strategies for improvement, it reminded me that small interactions matter a lot. The brusque nurse wasn't intending to be mean--maybe she'd had a bad day, and I'm sure she sees lots of hypochondriacs who panic and go to the ER for every little thing. But if she'd been typical of the hospital staff, I'd have left ashamed and reluctant ever to return, lest I be scolded for crying wolf. The other personnel were efficient and obviously very busy, but they listened when I talked, they smiled, and they treated me and my symptoms seriously. I left feeling reassured--and very pleased with my local healthcare community.
I need to remember this when a student drops by my office unannounced when I'm frantically prepping for class, or goes on and on about some irrelevant thing long after I've answered their questions and I have three other students lined up outside the door. Being brisk needn't mean being unkind. And we could all stand to work on our bedside manner.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Better than I thought/worse than I thought
As my previous post suggests, I'm knee-deep in academic dishonesty paperwork. But in the course of chasing down one apparent case of plagiarism, I made a new and possibly more horrible discovery.
Without going into the specifics, let me present a roughly analogous fictitious example. Let's pretend that I'm teaching a 20th-century American novel, and I get a pretty good essay with one entirely gratuitous paragraph claiming that some event in Chapter Five is an allusion to the French and Indian War.
This strikes me as mildly odd: it's not impossible that there's an allusion to the French and Indian War--I can see what the student is talking about--but there's no reason why there should be; it doesn't add any layer of meaning to the scene or to the novel as a whole. Moreover, it's a little weird that a student should make this particular observation (I mean, the French and Indian War? The average undergrad doesn't know squat about that).
So I run a few checks, and bang! There that claim is, in SparkNotes--a whole stupid argument about this stupid supposed allusion (which I'm now even less convinced by). The student hasn't taken anything verbatim, and nothing else about the essay seems suspicious--but come on: The French and Indian War! A twentieth-century novel! It can't be a coincidence.
I haul the kid in, and he's surprised and terrified. The student stammers out that he loves this novel, and read it in high school, at the same time that he was taking a class in Early American history. He remembers this allusion, because he thought it was so neat, the first time he read the book, to know what his English teacher meant when she referenced the French and Indian War--because he'd just studied that in history class.
Oh.
Got it.
His high school teacher was cribbing from SparkNotes.
Imagonna bang my head against a wall for a while now.
Without going into the specifics, let me present a roughly analogous fictitious example. Let's pretend that I'm teaching a 20th-century American novel, and I get a pretty good essay with one entirely gratuitous paragraph claiming that some event in Chapter Five is an allusion to the French and Indian War.
This strikes me as mildly odd: it's not impossible that there's an allusion to the French and Indian War--I can see what the student is talking about--but there's no reason why there should be; it doesn't add any layer of meaning to the scene or to the novel as a whole. Moreover, it's a little weird that a student should make this particular observation (I mean, the French and Indian War? The average undergrad doesn't know squat about that).
So I run a few checks, and bang! There that claim is, in SparkNotes--a whole stupid argument about this stupid supposed allusion (which I'm now even less convinced by). The student hasn't taken anything verbatim, and nothing else about the essay seems suspicious--but come on: The French and Indian War! A twentieth-century novel! It can't be a coincidence.
I haul the kid in, and he's surprised and terrified. The student stammers out that he loves this novel, and read it in high school, at the same time that he was taking a class in Early American history. He remembers this allusion, because he thought it was so neat, the first time he read the book, to know what his English teacher meant when she referenced the French and Indian War--because he'd just studied that in history class.
Oh.
Got it.
His high school teacher was cribbing from SparkNotes.
Imagonna bang my head against a wall for a while now.
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
Real life
Over the weekend, a freshman at RU was beaten to death, in her dorm room, by her boyfriend from back home.
I didn't know her, and most of what I know about the situation comes from published news reports, which themselves don't have much to say: just names, ages, photos. (I won't link. If you must know, you can find the story on Google in one three-hundredth of a second.) If there was a motive, no one knows it. But who the fuck knows why a man kills his intimate partner? Even when there's a reason, there isn't a reason.
We mystify and romanticize and infantilize college students, even those of us who teach them--imagining their lives as uniquely free, uniquely sheltered, and even over-sheltered (for all the talk about helicopter parents, I've never actually met one). But our students live in the real world as fully as we do. Sometimes it's realer than we can imagine.
Rest in peace.
I didn't know her, and most of what I know about the situation comes from published news reports, which themselves don't have much to say: just names, ages, photos. (I won't link. If you must know, you can find the story on Google in one three-hundredth of a second.) If there was a motive, no one knows it. But who the fuck knows why a man kills his intimate partner? Even when there's a reason, there isn't a reason.
We mystify and romanticize and infantilize college students, even those of us who teach them--imagining their lives as uniquely free, uniquely sheltered, and even over-sheltered (for all the talk about helicopter parents, I've never actually met one). But our students live in the real world as fully as we do. Sometimes it's realer than we can imagine.
Rest in peace.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Life's hard all over
I'm eligible for a sabbatical next year, which at RU means either a semester at full pay or a year at half. At some point over the summer, it became clear that this was a no-brainer: of course I'd be applying for the full year.
This is an option that--at least in my particular financial circumstances--is only possible because I have a partner with a full-time job who makes an equivalent salary. Even then it'll be a stretch, budget-wise. On the other hand, it's also the only way that I can both keep my job and live with my partner (albeit temporarily).
And I've gotta say, I'm not thrilled by the mildly resentful reactions I've gotten from a handful of male academics (not all at RU, but generally all with kids and/or spouses who don't work full time) when I've mentioned that I'm applying for the full year. "Must be nice!" They say. Or, "Boy, wish I could do that--but someone's gotta pay the bills!"
Look. I want to say. I'm lucky to be part of a couple with two solidly middle-class incomes, in an affordable part of the country, and no dependents. But you get to live with your spouse year-round, every year; you only have to pay for one household; and you get to choose whether to have kids. I don't live with my spouse full-time. We have two households, in two different cities, plus significant commuting expenses. And you have no idea whether we want kids, because they aren't an option as our lives are currently structured.
Are there perks to this arrangement, financial and otherwise? Sure. And you'd better believe I'm going to take advantage of them. But there are downsides, too, and it makes me wild when people make casually thoughtless remarks about how hard their own lives are without considering who they're talking to (like the older man telling his reluctantly single and childless female colleague, "Oh, I can't make it to that talk tonight--I'd like to actually see my family for a change").
But this post isn't about the thoughtlessness or unexamined privilege of men who benefit from traditional domestic structures, or at least I'd like for it not to be just about that. I'm sure I don't fully recognize the stressors that afflict such men--or indeed the stressors of any of my colleagues whose personal and domestic lives are notably unlike my own. I don't know what it's like to bear the burden of being the sole breadwinner, or of trying to juggle parenthood and a career. I can imagine, but have only the briefest of experiences, being unwillingly single in a place with a limited dating pool. I don't know what it's like to be a racial or sexual minority trying to find a partner in a culturally homogeneous area. I don't know how embittering it is to live or teach somewhere that I despise, or where I feel personally thwarted.
Not all hardships are equivalent, of course: some are ultimately unsustainable, and others come with compensatory advantages (having someone to lean on emotionally is tremendous, but having someone to split household chores with is also pretty tremendous). But most domestic and personal arrangements have some upsides along with their downsides.
So I'll tell you what: I'll try harder to imagine and sympathize with your hardships if you try harder to imagine mine.
This is an option that--at least in my particular financial circumstances--is only possible because I have a partner with a full-time job who makes an equivalent salary. Even then it'll be a stretch, budget-wise. On the other hand, it's also the only way that I can both keep my job and live with my partner (albeit temporarily).
And I've gotta say, I'm not thrilled by the mildly resentful reactions I've gotten from a handful of male academics (not all at RU, but generally all with kids and/or spouses who don't work full time) when I've mentioned that I'm applying for the full year. "Must be nice!" They say. Or, "Boy, wish I could do that--but someone's gotta pay the bills!"
Look. I want to say. I'm lucky to be part of a couple with two solidly middle-class incomes, in an affordable part of the country, and no dependents. But you get to live with your spouse year-round, every year; you only have to pay for one household; and you get to choose whether to have kids. I don't live with my spouse full-time. We have two households, in two different cities, plus significant commuting expenses. And you have no idea whether we want kids, because they aren't an option as our lives are currently structured.
Are there perks to this arrangement, financial and otherwise? Sure. And you'd better believe I'm going to take advantage of them. But there are downsides, too, and it makes me wild when people make casually thoughtless remarks about how hard their own lives are without considering who they're talking to (like the older man telling his reluctantly single and childless female colleague, "Oh, I can't make it to that talk tonight--I'd like to actually see my family for a change").
But this post isn't about the thoughtlessness or unexamined privilege of men who benefit from traditional domestic structures, or at least I'd like for it not to be just about that. I'm sure I don't fully recognize the stressors that afflict such men--or indeed the stressors of any of my colleagues whose personal and domestic lives are notably unlike my own. I don't know what it's like to bear the burden of being the sole breadwinner, or of trying to juggle parenthood and a career. I can imagine, but have only the briefest of experiences, being unwillingly single in a place with a limited dating pool. I don't know what it's like to be a racial or sexual minority trying to find a partner in a culturally homogeneous area. I don't know how embittering it is to live or teach somewhere that I despise, or where I feel personally thwarted.
Not all hardships are equivalent, of course: some are ultimately unsustainable, and others come with compensatory advantages (having someone to lean on emotionally is tremendous, but having someone to split household chores with is also pretty tremendous). But most domestic and personal arrangements have some upsides along with their downsides.
So I'll tell you what: I'll try harder to imagine and sympathize with your hardships if you try harder to imagine mine.
Friday, September 14, 2012
How to have ideas (a remedial course)
This semester I'm doing something I haven't done in a long time: I'm keeping a notebook. Sure, I've always taken notes--I buy legal pads in bulk for my reading and research and endless to-do lists--but not since the days when I thought I was a creative writer have I carried around a notebook for jotting down disconnected observations and ideas.
I just never saw the point. For 10 years, I was working on one big project: my dissertation-turned-first-book. I published a few unrelated articles in that time, but each one was a well-defined project, often in response to a commission or CFP, and each one, like my book chapters, had both physical and digital files into which I could dump any ideas I had on the spur of the moment and refer back to at a later date. And as a matter of temperament, I dislike having too many things going on at once. I want to bore down into one project at a time, and I like to finish one thing (or one part of a thing) before starting another.
But as my first book began to approach its final form, I started to feel at loose ends. I didn't have much on the back-burner--stuff that I was eager to write conference papers on or work up into an article. Even after the parameters of my second book project started to take shape and I wrote the better part of the first chapter, I had the nagging feeling that that wasn't enough: Book Two might take me five years or it might take me ten, but however long it took, I'd need to be publishing more than just the one or two articles I could profitably extract from it.
I needed, in short, to be having ideas.
"But I'm not an idea person," I told some friends. "I'm basically not creative. I don't have a fertile mind. I mean, I'm insightful and whatever, and dogged as hell. Once an idea comes along, I can do more with it than most people. But they don't come around all that often. I can't make something out of nothing, ya know."
It was suggested to me that I was protesting too much, and that what I really needed was to pay attention to ideas as they arose.
Thus, the notebook. And thus my extremely ambitious research plan for the semester: read everything I've assigned my students. And have thoughts about it. And write some of those thoughts down.
It's so crazy, it just might work.
I just never saw the point. For 10 years, I was working on one big project: my dissertation-turned-first-book. I published a few unrelated articles in that time, but each one was a well-defined project, often in response to a commission or CFP, and each one, like my book chapters, had both physical and digital files into which I could dump any ideas I had on the spur of the moment and refer back to at a later date. And as a matter of temperament, I dislike having too many things going on at once. I want to bore down into one project at a time, and I like to finish one thing (or one part of a thing) before starting another.
But as my first book began to approach its final form, I started to feel at loose ends. I didn't have much on the back-burner--stuff that I was eager to write conference papers on or work up into an article. Even after the parameters of my second book project started to take shape and I wrote the better part of the first chapter, I had the nagging feeling that that wasn't enough: Book Two might take me five years or it might take me ten, but however long it took, I'd need to be publishing more than just the one or two articles I could profitably extract from it.
I needed, in short, to be having ideas.
"But I'm not an idea person," I told some friends. "I'm basically not creative. I don't have a fertile mind. I mean, I'm insightful and whatever, and dogged as hell. Once an idea comes along, I can do more with it than most people. But they don't come around all that often. I can't make something out of nothing, ya know."
It was suggested to me that I was protesting too much, and that what I really needed was to pay attention to ideas as they arose.
Thus, the notebook. And thus my extremely ambitious research plan for the semester: read everything I've assigned my students. And have thoughts about it. And write some of those thoughts down.
It's so crazy, it just might work.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Never forgetting
Eleven years on, it takes me a few seconds to remember, when scheduling things for September 11th, exactly why that date registers so strongly in some emotional quadrant of my brain.
And you know, to hell with "never forget." I wrote last year about exasperation as an appropriate response to terrorism, but this year I'd go further: forgetting is also an appropriate response, if by that we mean not holding the day (and ourselves) hostage forever to pious sentimentality.
Because there's forgetting and then there's forgetting. It's not "forgetting" what happened to let the actual date pass unremarked; in fact, that should be our goal. Regular life--holding normal classes and going to bullshit meetings and getting irritated by traffic jams and broken photocopiers--is actually the profoundest kind of victory over terrorism.
Regular, boring, ordinary life. We're lucky to have it. And it's the luxury of the quotidian that I'll be celebrating this September 11th--and hopefully for many more.
And you know, to hell with "never forget." I wrote last year about exasperation as an appropriate response to terrorism, but this year I'd go further: forgetting is also an appropriate response, if by that we mean not holding the day (and ourselves) hostage forever to pious sentimentality.
Because there's forgetting and then there's forgetting. It's not "forgetting" what happened to let the actual date pass unremarked; in fact, that should be our goal. Regular life--holding normal classes and going to bullshit meetings and getting irritated by traffic jams and broken photocopiers--is actually the profoundest kind of victory over terrorism.
Regular, boring, ordinary life. We're lucky to have it. And it's the luxury of the quotidian that I'll be celebrating this September 11th--and hopefully for many more.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Reversion to the mean
After today's insanely early department meeting, I decided I owed myself a trip to DSW. I spent a long time looking for THE PERFECT pair of black pumps to replace my worn-out almost-perfect pair (and the two other not-at-all-close-to-perfect pairs I've been making do with). I bought these, which are exactly what I was looking for: sturdy, stylish, tall.
And then I spent even longer considering a pair of low-heel pumps, or maybe flats. . . but somehow, instead, wound up with what can only be described as "dress clogs" (Clarks brand, no photo available). Now, I'm not a clog-hater; there are plenty of groovy women in the academy--and in my native land, the Great Pacific Northwest--who can rock 'em. But it's fair to say that I never imagined a world in which I myself would own clogs.
But 37 appears to be the age at which I'm no longer able to hike all over town in heels, and I've recently started inserting cushions in the fore part of many shoes I wore comfortably for years. And suddenly, I understand the walking clog: tall enough to wear with long, boot-cut jeans, dressier than sneakers, and just the thing for a day of urban tourism.
Or maybe it's that academic womanhood has finally fully interpellated me: first cats, now clogs. What--I hesitate to ask--could be next?
And then I spent even longer considering a pair of low-heel pumps, or maybe flats. . . but somehow, instead, wound up with what can only be described as "dress clogs" (Clarks brand, no photo available). Now, I'm not a clog-hater; there are plenty of groovy women in the academy--and in my native land, the Great Pacific Northwest--who can rock 'em. But it's fair to say that I never imagined a world in which I myself would own clogs.
But 37 appears to be the age at which I'm no longer able to hike all over town in heels, and I've recently started inserting cushions in the fore part of many shoes I wore comfortably for years. And suddenly, I understand the walking clog: tall enough to wear with long, boot-cut jeans, dressier than sneakers, and just the thing for a day of urban tourism.
Or maybe it's that academic womanhood has finally fully interpellated me: first cats, now clogs. What--I hesitate to ask--could be next?
Sunday, September 02, 2012
If you must be a grasping machiavel, be better at it
Something I knew long before my most recent publishing disappointment:
You should not list, on a C.V. that you post publicly and that you point everyone toward (via your Facebook page, your faculty profile page, etc.), the specific press with which your book is currently under review.
You should especially not do this if you're a famously ambitious young scholar who regularly burns bridges and dicks people over in outrageous, gossip-producing ways.
Because there are people out there who will check up on your career from time to time. Some of them may wish you well, but others will fear or envy or flat-out despise you.
And all of those people will notice when Fancy Press A and Fancy Press B are no longer the places where your book is "under full review," but are replaced in that vita line by a third wishful-hopeful prospective publisher.
It's not that I don't appreciate the opportunity to indulge in a little schadenfreude at the expense of someone who shat on a friend of mine. But I'm pretty sure you don't actually wish for every person you've ever met to have access to the details of your professional setbacks.
This has been a public service announcement.
You should not list, on a C.V. that you post publicly and that you point everyone toward (via your Facebook page, your faculty profile page, etc.), the specific press with which your book is currently under review.
You should especially not do this if you're a famously ambitious young scholar who regularly burns bridges and dicks people over in outrageous, gossip-producing ways.
Because there are people out there who will check up on your career from time to time. Some of them may wish you well, but others will fear or envy or flat-out despise you.
And all of those people will notice when Fancy Press A and Fancy Press B are no longer the places where your book is "under full review," but are replaced in that vita line by a third wishful-hopeful prospective publisher.
It's not that I don't appreciate the opportunity to indulge in a little schadenfreude at the expense of someone who shat on a friend of mine. But I'm pretty sure you don't actually wish for every person you've ever met to have access to the details of your professional setbacks.
This has been a public service announcement.
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