Smackdown For Email Eddie Who Hasn't Gotten Around to Starting That Project Yet, But Figures That If He Bugs You Enought You'll Help Him Like Mommy.

All right, here's the deal. If you email me one more freaking time tonight, you fail. Does that sound fair to you? Because you have sent me exactly seven--yes, seven--emails since three this afternoon. And I am growing weary of you.

Believe me, I know you are struggling. I guess I would be struggling too if I had done zero work on the project that is due tomorrow and were trying to put it all together tonight. That would suck, big time. But you know what I wouldn't do? I wouldn't make it as clear as possible to my instructor that I had done jack shit over the past two weeks. Maybe it's just me, but I think that would be a bad move on my part. I also wouldn't annoy the living hell out of the person who is grading said project by sending whiny little emails in text message form that ask questions like, "but then wouldn't i have to go to the lib and read the books? i don't have time 4 that."

What is it, exactly, that you want me to tell you? That I have access to magic books especially designed for your topic just sitting here right next to me? That I can fly them over to your dorm room ? That I can teach you to read lengthy tomes in mere seconds? Or that I will cancel the assignment on account of your lazy ass? Even if I could, I wouldn't. Now I had better not see your goddamn name in my inbox again.

Listen. You Make Your Policies, and I'll Make My Mine. Pedagogy As A Way to Avoid Battles.

I am so tired of the ‘let’s band together as faculty and be sure to implement the same policies’ crap. Have you ever given any thought that the reason I drop one quiz grade at the end of the semester is so that I don’t have to fight every single flippin’ student who comes in with some very sad (usually untrue) story as to why they missed a pop quiz in my class by either coming in late or not showing up at all? They are made aware from the beginning of the semester the ‘opportunity’ to miss or screw up royally on one quiz. Miss more than one and it is NO LONGER MY PROBLEM.

Have you ever considered that the reason I allow makeup exams (under certain circumstances with documentation – so hey if that ingrown toenail is so bad you have to go see a doctor who am I to say different? Just be sure you have a note from the doctor) is so that I don’t have to go to battle with every single flippin’ student who missed an exam due to dead or dying or near dead or dying relatives or even relative or close friend who is about to give birth and they need to be there to share in the end of life/beginning of life circle of life? They are made aware from the beginning of the semester the ‘opportunity’ to make up an exam is a decision that should be made with care (all essay, none of that T/F multiple choice filler). Over the years I have found that those students who lie in order to take a makeup exam are no better prepared when they take the makeup exam. Here, let me give you a little more rope to hang yourself…and it is NO LONGER MY PROBLEM.

This comes after years of trying to distinguish the truth from the lie, the deserving from the undeserving. I just don’t have the time or the emotional energy. So you have your policies that work for you and I will have mine. When some student comes in and says “well, Prof. X let’s us take an exam as often as necessary so we all can get A’s” or some other ludicrous sounding policy, guess what, the student is probably lying.

Some Last Day Suggestions From the Center For Touchy-Feelyness.

Like many campuses, ours has a Center whose purpose is to promote teaching and learning. I won't even get into the irony of a college that has to have a special center to promote *teaching and learning*!

But this center does have some events and resources that have been somewhat useful to me in the past. One of the services they provide is sending teaching suggestions periodically through a listserv. Very occasionally these have proved useful to me; most often I read them and delete, as the suggestions are things I already know, or that are not appropriate to my field or my classes. Most of the time, the submissions are not particularly memorable, for good or bad. The most recent one, though, stopped me in my tracks:

The last day of class can be hectic for students as well as instructors. This is a stressful time for all of us, and students may lose their focus just trying to make it to the end of the semester. Many instructors feel compelled to squeeze in those extra gems of knowledge on the last day. There are,however, more productive ways you can spend your time. One suggestion is a last day of class party. Have fun and plan some closing activities.

WTF? A "last day of class party" is a "more productive way you can spend your time"?!? A way to keep students from "los[ing] their focus"? The message goes on to list other variously educational and touchy-feely things we can do to wrap up the semester.

Maybe I'm hopelessly old-fashioned, naive, or pedantic (or maybe all three!) but I just can't believe that the last day of class--at least in a course with some actual content--isn't best spent maybe reviewing that content, or reinforcing concepts, or making connections with the earlier material, or, I don't know, helping students prepare for the final exam. Then again, it seems a lot of classes here (though not those in my department) don't bother to have final exams either.

A lot of my students seem to think that: (1) nothing really happens (should happen) during the first week of classes, (2) nothing really happens (should happen) during the last week of classes, (3) they shouldn't have required assignments or exams during the week before or the week after a holiday or break, (4) final exams are optional, and (5) they shouldn't be tested on anything that wasn't said out loud in class.

In short, a lot of them appear to think themselves entitled to at least a B for showing up in class at least half the time and breathing in and out. They take it as an affront when we actually start presenting material on the first day of classes ("What? You're not going to just pass out the syllabus and let us go?") and meet on the last day ("None of my other classes are meeting that Monday.") I can only assume their other profs are the ones saving the last day for cupcakes, letters to next semester's students, and a big group hug.

The Big Thirsty Question: Did Grad School Leave You Defeated?

Q: Why is it that no matter what, you leave graduate school defeated? You leave with your degree in hand, yet a little emptier for it. You have accomplished what you set out to do, but inside you fear that there is something missing. It is as though you were misled, and you don't feel like the degree you now hold makes up for the suffering you endured.

A: Send them here.

Oh, We Get Lots of Lists.

We get a lot of lists sent to us, funny final exam stories, 10 outrageous lies students tell, you probably know the drill. But the one we get all the time is this one, a list of between 10-50 funny things for professors to do on the first day of class. (Our favorite entry is this one: After turning on the overhead projector, clutch your chest and scream "My pacemaker!")

We get that list from someone at least a couple of times a week. We love it, but have read it so often now that it's not nearly as funny as it was the first time.

But last night someone sent us a new version of the list that we've never seen, and while it didn't make us pee our pants, or anything, we were glad to see some new material. Here are the ones that tickled us most. Enjoy the flava.

----

Ten Things to Do In Class.

1. Bring a trombone to class and hand it to the student closest to your desk. Say, "You take care of Mr. T-Bone, and I'll take care of you."
   


2. Whenever anyone asks a question, just reply: "I don't know. What does your monkey think?"
   


3. Announce the start of the exam, but don't pass anything out. Put your head down on your desk and say, "You're all on your own. I'm turning on the radio in my head."
   


4. In the middle of lecturing, stop, look around and say, "My mama. Did you hear my mama? You, there, can you see her? Let me know if my mama is behind me!"
   


5. Tell the class that if anyone says the words "bacon," "dishwasher," or "panorama," that you've got a sock full of nickels in your briefcase that you'll smack them with. Hold the briefcase up and say, "If it's a trip to nickel city you're looking for, then I'm the man to send you there!"
   


6. If any sound comes from outside the classroom, check your watch and say, "My wife will be here any minute. And then we're all in trouble."
   


7. Pull aside a student and whisper, "That guy behind you? Man, he looks crazy!"
   


8. All semester long, whenever any student comes in late, say loudly, "And so that's where we buried the gold." Then laugh a little too loud and a little too long.
   
   
9. When anyone else is speaking, tap the top of your head with your palm. Stop when they stop, and then smell your hand.
   


10. Bring a big tray of food for yourself. Start eating from it, and occasionally point to various students and say, "These are my beans, baby. You may want some beans. But you'll have to get your own."
    

Ralph from Rutabaga Ranch Revels in Retirement. Recommends Against Restless Reaching.

I dare say I'm one of the older readers here, retired for 5 years now after 37 years as a professor, the last 25 at a large research university in NYC. I've left that behind now, and live on what you might call a "gentleman's farm" in upstate NY where I raise tomatoes, potatoes, rutabagas, and occasionally the finest squash in the colonies. I've not written to you before, but after having read this site and many other academic blogs, I couldn't help myself.

I believe I reached the top of my profession, articles, books, awards, and a certain notoriety in my field. I published 12 books during my academic career, 8 of them solo. The last one, the one we call the "BIG" one, was nominated for a national award. I only mention it so I can reveal this. It sold 412 copies over 5 years, and I daresay that many of those rest in libraries uncracked to this day.

Sometimes at conferences people would recognize me. Maybe one person would. My work was important in my own life, but hardly at all in anyone else's. I was ambitious, sought tenure and promotion, and found that there was no reward for either. I wanted to make a mark, but I discovered that a scholar has so little value in our culture, that my ambition was mostly wasted. I lived in an expensive and wonderful city for most of those years, and while my salary was large compared to the AAUP averages nationwide, I could barely afford to insure and park my car and get a dozen or so bottles of good port a month.

When I look back on the charging I did all those years, I just chuckle now. There's nothing up there, darlings, at the top of the ladder. Not if you're looking for acclaim or respect from without. It's true, what I did rewarded me personally, but that was not something I realized until I was nearly gone from the academy.

I read these academic blogs where the young scholars are looking for respect, notice, for their work to mean something. And I am wowed at their professionalism and achievement. In my day, one never heard of graduate students with publications and awards. Now it's commonplace. Even before I left the university I would sit in junior faculty offices and marvel at the tremendous new insight they brought to my tired old field. I think they should pursue their scholarship with vigor.

But I must tell you, unless you're studying celebrity culture or high finance, your work better fill you with pride, because nobody will ever care about it, not even one dram.

I don't say this to draw your wind, but to let you know that it makes sense to focus on the elements of the job that bring you personal happiness. Don't worry about what others think. The truth is that almost nobody will ever think of you, not even if you publish widely. Do it for yourself, and quit thinking about being ahead or behind of your peers - or even long-gone scholars like me.

I had a wonderful career, but too much of it was wasted worrying. While I was at a top drawer university, I always wondered if I should go somewhere else, to the west coast, or maybe the Midwest. I was wooed several times at a large school in Texas. The questions were with me my whole career. Will I get a good job. Will I impress my mentors. Will I publish the dissertation. Will I rise. Will I get tenure. Am I good enough. What about another book. Am I better than So-N-So.

It was for nothing. So-N-So had his own worries. Leave him and them to it. Do it for you, and quit frantically reaching for the top rungs of the ladder. What's waiting up there is not what you're chasing.

One Year Ago Today: "On Evaluations"

From 11/28/06:


Let me start by saying that I love my job. I love teaching. I love the research component because it's all mine, but I mostly love the classroom and the never-ending supply of young people. I've been in the game for 26 years and am pretty sure I will teach until I retire several years from now.

It's been the greatest career, with dozens upon dozens of amazing experiences. Students continue to engage me and interest me, and watching find their own feet is always a tremendous pleasure.

But today I woke up with a knot in my stomach, and I was out of sorts all day. I was giving my students the evaluation instrument my college uses. As soon as the large white envelope came out of my bag the students started their energetic twittering. I even heard the same comments I always hear: "Yeah, now we get to give the grades," etc.

I always read the preamble that my college gives me to read, about anonymity, about how grateful we all are to gather comments. How we're eager to find ways in which to teach the courses better. There's even a line that reads, "Your instructor welcomes your criticism."

And of course it's all complete bullshit.


(Continued. Read the rest of the post here!)

The Roots Of Academic Unhappiness Come From Us Being THISCLOSE To What We Really Want.

Academia, being a complicated relationship among many parties with aligned but non-identical goals, is necessarily frustrating for everyone involved: everyone is getting *almost* precisely what they want which makes the obstacles that much more glaring and maddening.

So RYS is not about anything as black or white as "I hate academia," but instead something driven by the frustration you experience when you can see how good certain aspects of the system are. Good teaching, good mentoring, and good research are all valued highly by anyone who perseveres long enough to get a faculty job, choosing this over far easier and more lucrative career options. The systems and institutions we inhabit and populate often, and sometimes unwittingly, thwart these values, even while nominally existing to foster and defend them.

The functioning of academic institutions requires a large scale - a big institution with many players - and this introduces opportunities for inefficiencies and exploitations of the system (e.g., deadwood faculty, students wanting good grades without effort, pointless committee work assigned unnecessarily by deans and other administrators, etc).

Students, who, along with our deans, administrators, and various financial backers, are allegedly our working partners in this fight, are those with whom we interact most regularly and who least "get it," being the least willing participants in the relationship.

The Chiefiest of all Chief Correspondents - Weepy Wayne from Waterloo - Waxes On Why We're So Woeful!

Regarding the question of academic unhappiness. Without question, there are worse jobs out there. I know. I had one of them. I was at the bottom end of the construction trade for 10 years before working my up from a community college, to a state university, to a private college for my graduate degree. My grad experience was comprised of long hours, genuine poverty, sketchy urban housing, malnutrition, and a lack of genuine human contact. Having said that, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. I sacrificed a great deal for something I considered worthwhile, and it showed me what I was made of.

After graduating at the top of my class, I arrived at the gates of academe, and was shunted into a janitor's closet as an adjunct. There I stayed, watching dedicated professors twice my age being drained of their vitality by an exploitative system that sold promises to tuition payers and larded administrative sinecures with pensioned hacks. In the classroom, I encountered students who were lazy, arrogant, and aggressively apathetic. They yawn at Dostoevsky, wince when confronted with a five page essay, and glare at me when I implore them to step it up for the challenges of that "Real World' they are so impatient to embrace.

Along the way I discovered how to make students succeed in spite of themselves. My reviews are often five-star. The best students who do care learn in spite their surroundings and make this all worthwhile. I am welcomed back to teach part-time every semester; however, despite my success teaching the "Big Kid" lecture classes in literature, I find that more and more I am offered "remedial" courses (i.e., Commas for Comas). These students I encounter are crassly materialistic and blithely delusional about the world beyond their dorm. As a result, my contact with buttercups who are openly hostile toward reading, thinking, and the possibilities of a university education has multiplied exponentially. Preparing them for the threshold of College Writing I is nothing short of draining. I find myself discussing TV shows I don't watch, and celebrities I couldn't identify on a dare. If I reach for Rimbaud, I will lose them. Instead, we deconstruct Britney Spears as I try to wedge in the Fisher King Myth.

In short, I left a brutal job, clawed my way up the hill, and found myself surrounded by the very people I wanted to escape when I was 20. There are many aspects of this job I enjoy, but I do understand when some of my colleagues feel cheated. We were never waved off by our English professors. Grad school happily took our money. And the current system is geared to exploit a glut of English majors. In a number of ways, I'm lucky to have this job. Hell, I could be installing insulation in a sub-zero crawlspace. But I'm not blind to the larger picture.

Somebody Got Into the Christmas Ganja A Little Early. The "RYStafarianism" Post.

We all know that the hallmark of every religious cult worthy of the name is a compound in a remote location. Since RYS apparently has one of these, why not go all the way and incorporate RYS as a bona fide religion?

After all, RYS already has its Sacred Libation, which only the initiated know symbolizes its fundamental and most holy doctrine: Margaritas Ante Porcos.

All we now need is a name for the cult (sorry, religion); I humbly offer RYStafarianism.

Why We Hate Deans.

I am very excited to let you know that the College of X has begun a small - but impressive - library of books, CDs and DVDs to assist with in-house Professional Development.

The Dean's Office will have a lending system for anyone to check the items out of the library. Attached are the titles and descriptions of all the media that is in the library at this time.

You will find in each document essential information that can be utilized in both professional and personal situations.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey
Powerful Lessons in Personal Change.

Relationship Strategies
Tony Alessandra
Using the Platinum Rule to Create Instant Rapport.

Contagious Leadership
Monica L. Wofford
Learning the art of successful leadership (Turning managers into leaders).

Coaching Skills for Managers and Supervisors
Fred Pryor Seminars
Inspire, motivate and create winners.

Self-Esteem & Peak Performance
Jack Canfield
Discover how to live life with energy and optimism. Learn to feel good about yourself and others.

Reading Dynamics: The World Famous Speed-Reading Program
Evelyn Wood

The World Famous Speed-Reading Program.

Dynamic Delegation: A Manager’s Guide For Active Empowerment
Mark Towers
A manager’s guide for active empowerment.

Motivation in the Workplace
Barbara Fielder
Practical Techniques for motivating workers to peak performance and productivity.

Power Phrases! The Perfect Words to Say It Right and Get the Results You Want
Meryl Runion
The perfect words to say it right and get the results you want.

Letters & Memos Just Like That
Dave Davies

Letters and memos.

Organized for Success
Nanci McGraw
95 Tips for Taking Control of Your Time, Your Space, and Your Life.

Managing Priorities and Deadlines
Marcia Dennis
28 Secrets to Time Management Success.

The Unhappiness Found on Academic Blogs.

I've been reading the academic blogosphere, including RYS, over the last few months, and I don't understand why everyone is so bitter about academia when it was their choice to enter.

I understand professors complaining about students anonymously. Students are incredibly aggravating, and that complaining doesn't mean professors aren't fulfilled in their jobs. But I'm puzzled by posts like "Is graduate school a fraud?" You're entitled to your opinion, naturally, but if you think so why do you go? There are so many more depressing things you could be doing.

So many academic blogs seem to be written by young professors complaining about how they don't want to do their research and how evil the tenure application process is and how unfair the profession is.

Aren't they at all happy about what they do? Aren't there other things to do on the Internet?

I have to admit that I am not in academia, but the statement "you're not in it and if you were you'd see how miserable it is" does not constitute an answer to my question. I don't see why people want to be unhappy with their lives.

Am I just missing the joke?

More Insane Faculty Demands Regarding Temperature and Perversion.

Dear Heads of Seriously Full of Itself University,

Would you mind terribly to turn on the lights and the air conditioning on the weekend? I realize you are desperately trying to prove yourselves to be saints -- that is to be highly ranked and carbon neutral -- but I would like to be able to do the research necessary to keep myself here on this hallowed holy campus. Unfortunately, I find that my type of research, the not-in-a-bazillion-dollar-laboratory-kind to be a touch difficult to complete when it is 48F in my office.

Of course, you could also open and police the library and I would happily go demonstrate to my students that I am a hard working individual by doing my research there, in their presence. I mean, you would have to open the library before 1 pm on Sunday and close it after 11 pm. And it would be wonderful if you could have more than 1 employee per floor to tell our precious tutioners to turn off their phones and get off of their girlfriends/ boyfriends.

I seriously could do research in the library if I weren't trying to tune out the sounds of undergraduate love-making and iPods.

See? People Love the Academic Haiku OR Short, Enigmatic Free Verse About Academic Matters, Occasionally Referencing Seasons, Nature, and Margaritas.

When we started the academic haiku feature last year, we never imagined the controversy, the alarm, the high drama of it all. Yes, we're familiar with what a haiku really is. No, we don't care. Academic haiku, at least here on RYS, are short-ish, somewhat enigmatic, focused on the academy, and usually a little silly or mean.

We've chosen some of the best and liveliest of the recent submissions, and present them below. Enjoy the flava, but don't miss earlier installments: Here, here, here, and here.

~~~~~~~~~~~


Leaves crunch underfoot.

Spanish moss sways in live oaks

Outside the window.

Still, we can not have

Lecture outdoors. Your whining

Face ruins my view.


~~~~~~~~~~~

Like the autumn leaves
your criticism tumbles --
Thanks, schmuck. What a putz.

Icy cold, your words
RYS exists to vent
"Real deal" or not -- ass.

Pale green, translucent
Leaves, like words, emerge fragile
Spring calls us to crab.

Bright summer sun shines
A beacon, RYS is!
Screw you, critic-boy.


~~~~~~~~~~~

"Hope you don't teach lit?"
Pretty funny, coming from
One who uses "ain't."

~~~~~~~~~~~

precious snowflakes come

summer's serenity gone

freshman infestation

~~~~~~~~~~~

In my office
The Monday before Thanksgiving –
Utter silence.

Stack of student papers
To grade over Thanksgiving.
Yeah, right. More wine?

I am thankful for
my students. No, really, I
need to pay the bills.

~~~~~~~~~~~

"Is teaching worth it?"

I look around and wonder.

Let me consider.

Publish or perish!

Rake in that grant cash, bitches!

Teaching gets short shrift.

Students wander in

Dead-eyed, dead-headed, lost.

"Do we have to read?"

Fuck it. The blender calls --

"Margaritas all around!"

Don't forget the salt.

Is Graduate Education A Fraud?

I am a 23-yr-old female in her second year pursuing a Ph.D.in the sciences from a large research university. I don't suffer from this fraud syndrome, even though, as the youngest person in the program, I might seem pretty eligible for this "syndrome."

It is very obvious to me that I am eminently more qualified to teach the labs I teach than any of my students. I don't feel like the big university made a mistake admitting me. I don't feel like I am winging it through the program. In fact, I would go so far as to say, if anyone is the fraud in this situation, it's the system.

There are a lot of lies about what graduate school is and what it gets you. Faculty members aren't inclined to tell you how you can use your degree--apart from desperately pursuing, against staggering odds, success in a tenure track faculty position. That sounds pretty fraud-y to me. What about the idea that all of these big universities are actually "educational" institutions and not completely consumed by big-time research, publications, and federal grants? Fraud. Teaching doesn't matter in tenure decisions, let's be real.

And what about the whole culture of graduate school that centers around making graduate students feel inadequate when they're NOT? Fraud!

The question I'm asking myself now is, how did *we* come away with a syndrome that we're the fraudulent ones?

The Return.

So, for the first time in 9 years I arranged it so I wouldn't have to grade giant stacks of essays over Thanksgiving. I didn't check email. I didn't check voicemail. I went to my boyfriend's family home for 4 luxurious days for the holiday and just snuggled in the comforter in front of a fire, watched crying movies on TV, and ate up the family goodness.

I know what awaits me when I check my school email here in a few minutes. I know all of the explanations for why papers won't be ready. I know there will be people angry that I didn't read hastily prepared rough drafts likely emailed to me on Thanksgiving Day. I know Kayla, Karla, and Kyla will likely let me know that they're still in Wisconsin because Grandpa Eddie is turning 75, and wouldn't it be nice get one more day with him.

But for now I'm just drinking some tea and delaying the return to my job as a professor. For now I feel human and nice, and don't want to ruin it.

Seriously, Academic Haiku Are Not Really Haiku At All. They're Enigmatic and Short Free Verse. And Usually People Hate Them. Watch for More Next Week!

Hey, RYS fools:
even your "real haiku" ain't
the real deal. Schlemiels.

True haiku are more
than five-seven-five. They must
focus on nature

Your webpage drabbles
are better called "senryu";
Hope you don't teach lit.

What If We Don't Feel Like a Fraud?

The debate about feeling like a fraud is a bit like the repressive hypothesis. According to the posts sent so far, many people (especially women) feel like a fraud, but never talk about it, and have no one to bond with over it. So when they share it, they realize that so many feel the same, and are ready to start deconstructing the false fraud syndrome. But is this really the academic world we live in? It hasn't been mine. Quite the contrary, I've heard too much about feeling like a fraud. There is a shared understanding that we're all supposed to feel like a fraud even when we don't.

During my first graduate student orientation, a well-intentioned advanced student explained that she, like many other women, had felt that the great University had made a mistake by admitting her. And that we, like many other women, might also feel that way, but need to realize that we're not there by mistake and that we're not frauds. Then, six years down the road, a professor brings an article about feeling like a fraud to our dissertation writing class. I appreciated the article, but didn't see myself in those pages. And then, before my first week of classes at my job, my colleagues are telling me that it's normal to feel like I don't know what I'm doing before the first class (though I never intimated any need for such advice) and that they always feel that way, even after years of teaching the material successfully.

So what am I supposed to say? "Um, I actually don't feel out of place, thank you very much?" But if I say that I don't feel like a fraud, will you accuse me of being cocky or not even smart enough to know how little I know? Just how modest do we need to profess to be?

What We Should and Shouldn't Do To Help Our Students.

Reading the post on Theodore from Three Rivers made me grit my teeth. This is exactly the type of behavior that enables the snowflakes to maintain their illusions of snowflake status. Letting students know what grades they would need to receive on the upcoming assignments? OK, a little extra work but understandable. The students who care are already keeping track of their grades, but this could be a wake up call for the rest.

However making mock test questions so a student who is failing the course can pass? What makes this worse is that Theodore didn't even come to you asking for help, you went to him. That is ridiculous and as you can see by his response completely ineffective! Since you are apparently such a fan of hand holding maybe you should send a copy of the test to his parents so they can be sure that he studies them.

This is exactly the type of (instructor) behavior that gets under my skin because Theodore will come to my class and get a slap in the face when he fails for not turning in assignments, is not able to retake a test, and no, I will not email him notes to study from. Theodore is an adult, no one in his profession of choice will hold his hand throughout the day; quit doing him a disservice by treating him as though he is incapable of the work. He can do it, however as he has shown he is too lazy to do so. Don’t beat this dead horse any longer, focus your efforts on students who actually want your help.

Where A Reader Charts A Course We're Considering Ourselves.

From what I can tell, a steady diet of arrogance, ignorance, and sense of entitlement makes your balls grow really big.

Huey the Student finally showed up today for an appointment to discuss his (non) thesis. When it becomes clear to me that Huey has in fact done nothing on the thesis, which is due in a month, I try as gently as possible to get Huey to admit that he needs to focus and buckle down.

Now here's the big surprise. Huey turns on me. In spite of my two decades of college teaching, teaching awards, publications, prestigious degree, etc., Huey says that I'm boring, unprepared, incompetent, under-qualified, and my class sounds like I'm reading the Wikipedia article on the subject aloud.

And it's not only me! Huey (and Dewie and Louie, the other majors) are skipping classes because the whole faculty of the department is incompetent and boring! And if we would just get our act together we wouldn't lose these sainted majors. It might shock you hear that Huey, Dewie and Louie do absolutely mediocre work and skip class liberally.

Honestly, if we live in a world where the "customer" is always right, then I just want to work in the mall.

It's Academic Haiku Time Again. Even Though We Can Barely Stand the Thought Of the Dismay We Will Feel When It Goes Poorly Again.

Today's academic haiku entry is not a haiku. We've discussed this on the site before. When we actually did publish some haiku, not a peep was heard from anyone. Nobody wrote to say, "Now. THAT'S a haiku!" Or: "Thank you for the REAL haiku!" (We really liked the one that started "There is no compound.")

Anyway, we thought academic haiku day would be big. We thought there'd be little parties all across the academy when a new academic haiku came out. But mostly we just heard from folks saying that they weren't real haiku. (And the underlying message always was: "You just aren't good enough. Daddy didn't love you. Mommy only tolerated you. That scar is never going to heal. Your face is too fat, and we don't like the slope of your forehead.")

So, you can tell how hard it has been. But, because we're gluttons for punishment (and margaritas, and Kit Kat bars, etc.) we offer another academic haiku below. Please feel free to crush our remaining trust and hope in humanity. This comes - as you will see - from a grad student trying to sort it all out. Please enjoy the flava:

~~~

graduate student,
sciences,
trying to decide between
academia or industry.

I like teaching,
won an award,
but this semester's students
have me reeling.

So, to you all,
junior professors,
tenured old timers,
and adjuncts:

is it
worth it?

Thanksgiving Theodore Thunders Back to the Three Rivers, Therefore Thwarting His Thalvation.

My favorite student, Theodore, is also one of my weakest. He suffers from the typical college student frailties, too much freedom and ale. Yet, I have a soft spot for him. Last week I passed out little cards to each of my students, giving them an idea of how they would need to perform on the last 2 assignments to meet their academic goals at semester end.

Theodore's card pointed him toward a D or F, but a C or low B was within his reach with good performances. I pulled him aside as he was leaving class to let him know it wasn't hopeless. "You can do it," I said. "I really know you've got a handle on this new material. Why don't we get together before and after class next Tuesday to run the problems together.

Theodore was happy, relieved, I'd guess you'd say. Over this past weekend I wrote up some sample problems which would be similar to what he'd face in the closing weeks, and I pulled out some books from my own (recent) grad school days that we could look to for support.

Any of you who read this page regularly probably can already tell what's coming. Of course it's Thanksgiving week in the U.S., and this morning while I was checking my weekend email, I get this from Theodore:

"Dear Professor. I know were suppose to meet for a meeting after class tomorow but I have to go home for Thanksgiving. I kow its on Thursday, but my mom and pop always put on big spread and we have relatives from all over Pennsylvania come for our food. I know you'll understand and maybe you could email me some notes about what you wanted to talk about so I can get that B in your class. Theodore."

So tomorrow instead of helping my student, he'll be back home (supposedly) helping his parents get Thanksgiving dinner ready. I suspect he'll be spending time with his old Three Rivers buddies, personally, but it's not for me to say.

Regardless, not only will Theodore miss his special study session, he'll also miss another day of class. And I fear that his chances for success will be thwarted.

Two Replies on the Ignorance/Incompetence Divide.

• Ignorance is not an asset. The correspondent who maintains otherwise is still surfing the curling crest of adrenaline-induced invulnerability that comes with having narrowly survived another class session with his feigned status of expert intact. We're all so bloody smart and highly trained that the only thing left that we can brag about is how ill-prepared we are. That said, the word "incompetent" was flung with particular force. Before we dig too far in to the trenches that separate our fields of expertise, here are a few questions: Isn't our training not only the acquisition of a specific body of knowledge but also meant to make us able to learn new things on our own? Graduate study should give us the ability to locate the canonical texts, identify the major debates in the field, draw up a reading list, and read up. Obviously, there's a limit to how far afield we can credibly venture. Still, why shouldn't a PhD in French literature be able to branch out into Francophone colonial African literature, say, at least for the purposes of teaching undergrads? If we still need the blessing of a panel of accredited experts to duck being called incompetent, what separates us from the graduate students? And if we are to be locked into our own PhD reading lists, what are we supposed to do with all this insatiable intellectual curiosity we supposedly have?
  


• I teach in a dynamic subject area in which it’s always challenging to stay abreast of the cutting edge of the field. This sometimes puts me in the position where I am preparing for a course I’ve taught several times like it’s my first time. It also sometimes puts me in the position of not being able to immediately answer a question. This does not make me feel insecure. I discovered long ago that there is no loss of respect when a professor says “I’m not sure, let’s find out…” and then follows though. Don’t feel like a fraud if you are teaching a course for the first few times and are continuously in preparation throughout the semester. If you are assimilating the material, presenting it in an understandable logical progression with visual aids and examples, providing meaningful learning activities, and using assessment to refine your techniques; you are doing your job (and probably doing it well). On the contrary to feeling like a fraud: I think tackling a new course occasionally or teaching a very dynamic subject builds confidence and flexibility. Of course, there will always be those who conceal their own inability to adapt by zeroing in on any weakness and making you feel as bad about it as possible. It wouldn’t be surprising that someone with that attitude is a teacher who has taught the same courses for twenty years in a subject area that hasn’t changed for a hundred years. Let it sink in as far as water on a duck’s back people! Take pride in your willingness to accept a challenge, work hard, and succeed.

Ignorance is Never an Asset.

While many of us have taught classes before where we were a little beyond our depth, not many of us have an entire teaching schedule of that. The mail was pretty heavy last night regarding Saturday's post, "We're Rarely a Lesson Ahead." Here's one that captures the general dismay:

You are quite obviously incompetent in the field in which you are employed. Just because someone made a mistake and you got the job does not obscure the fact that you are unable to teach the material.

Anyone with above average intelligence can read the material ahead of time and present it as is to the class – real knowledge is demonstrated when you critique the textbook, explain the motivation of topics or why this material is taught at this particular time.

Your ignorance is not an asset -- it will never be. Once you believe that, you're a lost cause.

Smart Women and The Feeling of Fraud.

I felt like a fraud for years. This feeling of defrauding the world, of not being as smart or together as everyone thought I was, became the most intense during the five years immediately following my undergraduate degree: during my master's program, my stint in industry, and two subsequent years I spent as an instructor, teaching in an area not quite within my expertise. I always felt like I had to work harder to compensate for the gap between what people thought of me and my own self-assessment. I also always berated myself for not working hard enough at this endeavor, fearing that someone would catch on to my inadequacies and expose me to the world for the fraud I knew I was.

Then, for reasons I don't recall, I read Barbara Kerr's Smart Girls, Gifted Women. And I had a paradigm shift. I saw myself in those pages. The pattern of being certain that I was less phenomenal than everyone thought I was, and working hard to compensate for it--there it was. Other women did the same thing! Kerr reported that the result of this effort to compensate resulted in women in this position actually doing fabulous work.

I passed the book along to my sister and some friends, and they reacted the same way. They had secretly felt like frauds all along, and were as surprised as I was that this was really a pattern among smart women, that it led to our success. I mean, come on. I was in a full-time teaching position at a nice private college with only a master's degree. Clearly, I was doing something right!

So I gave myself a break and took stock of my accomplishments. I was shocked to see how much I'd driven myself to do out of fear. And so I decided to go ahead, get that Ph.D., and choose a topic not out of concern for seeming good enough or smart enough, but just something that I would enjoy and find rewarding on a personal level. So I did,and I continue to make fantastic accomplishments (publications, cool speaking opportunities, and a tenure-track job)--but without all that fear and self-hating. I seriously think that reading that book at the right time saved me from what would have been years of therapy.

I still have to remind myself now and then that I'm okay, that I'm not defrauding anyone. I still teach things slightly outside of my field now and then, and I just tell myself that even though I'm not the world's foremost expert in Subject X, I still know WAY more about it than my students, and so it's all good.

So, to my peeps who feel like frauds: You're probably much more amazing than you realize. You rock!

We're Rarely A Lesson Ahead, And We 'Know' What We're Doing.

I was hired to teach ALL the classes in a new major at a small university. I do not have a degree in this major. I have never worked in this field. In fact, I have taken exactly zero courses in that major! My degrees and experience are only loosely related to the major I was hired to teach, advise, and oh yes, write the curriculum for.

I'm quite competent in a similar subject (without naming the subjects, let's just say they are about as closely related as Italian and Spanish), but a neophyte in the area I was hired to direct.

I got hired because there's a lot of demand for teachers in this subject, and the administration and other faculty liked the adjunct work I had done for them in the past in my own area. Did I feel under qualified? You bet your ass I did! For the first two years, I was, at best, one lesson ahead of the students. Frequently, I was a couple of lessons behind! I studied every night, and learned more in my first year than I did in three years of Grad School.

I'm in my third year here in a Tenure Track position, and things are easing up. I can safely say I'm two or three lessons ahead of most of them, and a dozen lessons ahead of some! I only get completely stumped in front of my students about once a week.

My tactic for dealing with all of this was to tell everyone at the university the plain, unvarnished truth-I don't know anything about the subject, I'm just making it up as I go along! This strategy worked surprisingly well. Most of my colleagues thought I was being modest, and appreciated that I wasn't bragging. The administration was reluctant to complain, because they had hired me without checking my credentials very well, and didn't want to pay for another search. The students liked having a professor who cut them some slack for not knowing everything, and it was kind of like a shared adventure in learning.

In general, my ignorance turned out to be an asset in many ways. It seems strange for a college professor to feel this way, but I've come to the conclusion that knowledge about a subject is a little overrated.

"Oh, Deer."

Oh, I'm sorry, was it inconvenient of me to schedule class on the first day of hunting season? Right, I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was an "unofficial" state holiday. I'm just wondering, how can you expect to nail a deer in the woods when you can't seem to find your textbook in your car?

And those three days before thanksgiving too? It's totally inappropriate for me to have class then too? Oh... I see... your family is making you leave... dragging you to Disneyworld for Thanksgiving... wow, hardship. Oh, and all of your other instructors cancelled class? Absolutely, you're right. Let's cancel those days too - I didn't really have anything special planned.

And the first weeks of December? Oh... your work hours are increasing for the holiday season and so you can't really make it to class anymore. Will that be okay? Well, it's not like we do ever do anything important.

Tell you what, let me streamline this process for you. Next semester, just write me a check for the $1000 in tuition instead of my college, and I'll give you the same F, but I won't make you feel guilty for it by asking you to come to class or learn anything. It will just be an even trade.

Really, it will be less painful for both of us.

Big Thirsty!

Our third installment of the Big Thursday Question(s) went over big. It turns out a lot of us feel lonely in our positions, and even more of us feel like frauds. No wonder we're so messed up!

We got a ton of mail, and as always we feel badly we can only showcase a few pieces. We did want to note a couple of things that many of you mentioned.

First of all, a recent article in the Chronicle addressed academics who feel like frauds. You can check that out here. And secondly, many folks schooled us on the "impostor syndrome," which certainly seems like a common affliction among academics.

So, basically, we have classrooms full of precious snowflakes, each one unique, wonderful, and gifted, all led by us - a group that appears to be lonely and not even sure that we belong there! It's no wonder we drink.

Enjoy the posts below, and take heart that you're not alone.

Whether You Get It on the Inside or Outside, The Lonely Academic Doesn't Need to Be Alone.

• How I envy you lonely academics! In my department, "pulling together and sharing our fears and frustrations" seems to be an unwritten part of the job description. Now, this is all well and good if you like your colleagues well enough to be their bosom buddies, but it's torture if you don't. Oh, don't get me wrong--most of them are fine people and first-rate colleagues--but my actual friends, the ones I turn to when I want to share my fears and frustrations, tend to be people outside of the university. The result is that I'm seen as an aloof loner, while the person who came up to me in the hallway during my first year and said: "I hear you have local friends! How on earth did you meet them?" is seen as behaving perfectly normally. My advice: those "pods with separate tracks" are a blessing in disguise, because if you want real community, you have to look beyond the academy. There's a whole big wide world out there.
  


• I think the lonely campus life is a sad reality for some places, and there are lots of legitimate reasons for it being that way. I have worked at major universities 25,000 students strong and little schools with as few as 2000 students. I also think, though, that instead of waiting to be invited to something (which I usually do too), think of being the inviter (invitor?) I worked at a campus once where one of my colleagues, bothered by the same lack of connection, started something on her own called SOFA (Something on Friday Afternoons, or, as it eventually came to be called, Soused on Friday Afternoons). She and a few of her colleagues merely sent out an announcement that they were going to be at a certain fine establishment (aka bar) on Friday and anyone who wanted to come was invited. It is amazing how this thing grew in the three years I was at that school. It eventually evolved into quite a gathering -- semester long schedules were made, people ended up having SOFA's in their homes, end-of -semester barbecues were planned. It wasn't that this original person was that extraordinary a host; she just decided to start somewhere. I am at a campus now where every now and again, a group of us has a margarita "focus group." Again, start small, see where it takes you. You just need someone to get things rolling.
  
  
• For years now a group of faculty at my university have been gathering every second Friday at a local Irish pub for our "seminar." We're the "seminarians," of course, and the group which started as 3-4 has become a looser aggregation of 20 or so folks. And, while we were all about the same age at the beginning, all pushing toward tenure, our group now includes old timers and newcomers alike. When a new faculty member joins our department or division, an invite to a "seminar" is proffered, and most come to check it out. The potato skins are free on that first night, and we throw off the cloak of the academy for an hour or so. Most of them come back the next time we meet. Of course we all have friends, families, spouses, dogs, etc. But it's nice to know that the folks you work with, teach alongside, also have your back.

The Big Thirsty Responses to Feeling Like a Fraud.

• Some time ago, I had some conflicts with a senior member of my department. I was in my 30's and he was in his 60's. They began almost from day one of our acquaintance and I could never understand precisely why he took such a dislike to me. Finally, I figured it out...he was intimidated by me. It came as quite a shock. He had a respectable reputation in his own field and I had never considered myself especially intelligent or competent. What did he have to be intimidated about? Well, I'm a little older now and find myself interacting with colleagues fresh out of grad school. Guess what? They intimidate me! For the same reasons as my earlier surprise, I don't consider myself particularly intelligent or competent and these younger profs seem to have it all together. Ultimately, we cannot be objective about ourselves which makes us poor judges of our own abilities. We are neither as accomplished as we would like to be nor as incompetent as we fear we might be. Our judgments of others will also be skewed given that we only see their public persona and are not privy to all the conflict and insecurity that may go on behind that mask.
  


• I have been teaching for over ten years, have published, spoken at international conferences, mentored students who have scholars in their own right, and been nominated three times for excellence in teaching awards and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't feel like a fraud. I love what I do, even on the bad days when students push my blood pressure through the roof. Yet I regularly feel like somebody's made a mistake. I'm thankful that I get to teach and write but I'm glad to know I'm not alone in feeling like a fake sometimes. Maybe we should get a discount for group therapy.
  


• In my first couple years teaching I was so happy with what I was doing I couldn't believe I was getting paid for it! But at the same time I was so afraid that I would be "found out." That a full-timer or dean would figure out that I didn't know all that I should, or didn't know how to teach. Hell, I wasn't much older, and in some cases even younger than, my students, and this didn't help my own perception of my credibility. This faded somewhat over time. After I got my full time job, I couldn't believe they hired me. I was like "you're kidding? Me?" My fear that I would be revealed as a "fraud" and that one day they would catch me pretending to be a professor plagued me. The tedious tenure review process didn't help. But it wasn't until I considered today's question that I realized I haven't had this thought for quite some time. Halfway though this tenure track I guess I've earned my stripes. I'm confident, I have the acknowledged confidence of my peers, dean, and my students, and I don't think that I'm a fraud or that they're going to catch me playing at professor anymore. I know I belong here. I know I know my shit.
  


• I felt like a fraud in graduate school, sure that my incompetence would be discovered and that I would fail my classes. When I got A's in all of them, I decided my graduate program itself was seriously deficient. When I had technically met all the requirements for the program, I felt it would be wrong for the school to award me a degree. (But, having accumulated a goodly amount of student loans, I decided to accept the degree.) Now I'm in a tenure track faculty position, and I still feel like I should be tending the water cooler rather than being out on the field playing. My colleagues talk about books I haven't read, philosophers I haven't studied, and local political situations that I have no grasp of. I'd like to ask them, "Did you feel this dumb, this naive, this incompetent, when you were just starting your academic career like I am?" But, of course, I'm afraid they'd look at me strangely and say, "Uh...no."

We Put the 'Lux' in De-Luxe!

One note about the stunning new RYS calendar. The deluxe edition ($27.99) features glossy pages and is much larger, 13" X 19". The standard edition ($19.99) is 11" X 8.5", and is printed on 100 lb. cardstock. Each features the same 12 smackdowns and original color artwork, and both have comb binding. You can buy it here! Lulu.com takes all major credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, etc.), plus Paypal.

Lonely. Another Big Thursday Question.

I guess the kind of school you're at matters, but where I am - a modest state university in the northeast - I feel completely alone in my enterprise.

There's no collegiality, no community. Our department is a mix of junior and senior faculty, adjuncts, and grad students, and I can't recall ever seeing any of them working together, lunching together, or even hanging out.

It feels like we are all riding in our own little pod on our own separate tracks. We teach our own classes, mentor our own students, and then get the hell off of campus as soon as possible.

It wasn't what I expected two years ago when I took my first t-t job. I was flush from a great grad school experience where the group of us pulled together, shared our fears and frustrations, and made it through together. I know that older faculty likely have families and a big network of friends, but it doesn't seem anybody here has invested much time or energy in the campus relationships.

Maybe I'm naive, but I thought there would be a community wherever I took a job. Is it just this place, I wonder?

Q: Is it like this for you, too?

A: Send here.

The Big Thursday Question: Do You Feel Like a Fraud?

Q: I have been ready to ask this for some time but I guess never wanted to admit it. Does anyone else ever feel like a fake or a fraud?

I know that when I am in the classroom, I am a great teacher. But I feel like I am a child playing dress-up in mommy's clothes sometimes. This is especially true when I talk to the other instructors, attend department meetings, or hear other's research interests. Although I always loved school, I was never comfortable there - I always felt like everyone else was smarter.

Am I the only one with this fear?

Send us your replies.

We Especially Like the Last Line; It's One That Accompanies Much of the Mail We Get!

Mary sent an email to explain that she wasn't coming to class or turning in the paper that was due that day. I replied that she needed to consult the syllabus for the late paper policy and the attendance policy (I know, a shockingly novel idea); her attendance was over the limit and would result in a point deduction from her overall grade. She wrote that she would do anything to make up the missed points, including extra work, and asked if we could meet. She asserted that my class was the only one in which she was doing poorly, that all her other classes were going "so well," and she was confused about what was going so wrong in my class.

She missed our appointment, of course, and came to me with a lame excuse for why and the statement, 'I hope it wasn't a problem that I didn't show up.' Gee, no, it's no problem, and why don't you do a whole bunch of extra work my other students won't get to do, all because you had no idea that you've missed so many classes. It's hard to keep it all straight, including the part where, if you ask for a meeting and don't want to honor it, the least you can do is inform the professor that you won't be coming.

We rescheduled, she came to that meeting, and I saw her later that evening on campus at a social event. She asked me, 'Can I talk to you about the paper now?' Gee, no. I've been in my office for 12 hours now, and hell no, I don't want to talk about your paper now.

But clearly I had missed the point: it's all about her. I plan to call her tomorrow at 8 am to ask her to talk about how the reading for my class went, and to find out if she understands what we did in our class. I'm sure that she'll be chipper, fresh, and ready to talk business after a few hours of sleep.

Sigh.

Is "???" Not Enough? Well, We Have One More Level of Feedback For You, Darlin'.

Each of my classes has upwards of 100 students. On every exam there's at least a page of some sort of free-response questions and problems (though there is also a multiple choice section.) I have TAs that help with some of the grading and I'm very grateful for them, but I usually grade most of the free-response portions myself, and it takes a lot of time. All told, I grade about 1600 exams/semester. I used to write explanations in some detail, but now I don't--and I do use the "???" because it at least keeps me from writing, "WTF?!"

Many of my students don't even bother to check the posted key, don't read comments, don't respond to pleas to "come in and see me about this topic--it is critically important and too involved to explain here." The few who care will come in and talk to me and I'll be able to help them. The ones who don't come in, I can only assume, don't care. So, the student who wants more than "???" on the paper needs to face a huge stack of papers on which the same comment will be written 40 times, will be actually read by two students, will be addressed MAYBE by one. Oh, and said student also needs to realize that the comment nearly always addresses something that has been amply discussed and emphasized in class. The instructor writing "???" on papers needs to take a deep breath when a student comes in to talk about it--that's exactly what we should be hoping for. Not that the student comes in to grub for points, but that there is an opportunity to look the kid in the eye and make the SAME DAMN POINT we've been making in class for eight weeks and hope that the eye contact makes it stick this time.

One strategy that I and some friends in other fields have used, with some success, is making a half-sheet, numbered list of common transgressions, and while grading, using those number codes to mark papers. "1" could be mechanical problems such as spelling or grammar, "2" math errors, etc. At some point on the list are "Complete misunderstanding of the point of the question," "Gross error in application of concept," "Irrelevant," etc. Students are either given the list in class (if the problems listed span the entire semester) or it's stapled to the paper as it's handed back (if the list is more specific to one assignment.)

One last thing: a grad school buddy of mine happened to be at a going-out-of-business sale at a hardware store, and picked up a rubber stamp with the word "FERTILIZER." I don't know if he ever had the nerve to use it on a student's paper, but I'm sure it must have been comforting knowing it was there.

One Prof Gets Wise And Offers Her Students the Secret To Plagiarizing!

One of these days, I'm going to walk into a freshman composition class, and it's going to happen. I'm going to stop giving the "plagiarize and I will cut off your naughty bits" lecture and just sit them down and tell them how to do it effectively.

Because I am tired of the insult to my intelligence that cutting and pasting the first thing that pops up on Google is. I'm going to say to them "Hello, class. Today we're going to learn the important life skill of *not* getting caught. First, I'd like you all to pick up your bags and follow me to the library. What's that, you ask? Well, once upon a time, people couldn't Google things -- it was before the Internet -- and so they wrote lots and lots and lots of things down, and someone printed them and bound them and those things were called books. And then someone had the bright idea of gathering them all together in one place, and that was called a library."

Then, my class will follow me, duckling fashion, because they wouldn't want to seem to know where the library is. As we step inside the doors, I'll explain to them the magic of the library. "Do you know what this is? This is a place where knowledge that is not available online lives. So if, when you panic and decide that just giving me a Wikipedia entry is not a good idea, just take a nice deep breath and come here instead. You might just get away with it.

Because here's the thing -- in order to nail your little ass to the wall, I have to find what you copied. And my time is limited. So if I can't just Google it and find it in an hour or so, I might just give up."

And then I will give them milk and cookies, and let them go back to bed.

The Divide That Won't Die. Er, At Least Not Until After Today, Anyway.

from the compound:

Do you all remember "gumdrop unicorn" days? Oh, what a time it was. As we discussed on the site a number of times, the original snarky senior faculty member, Dr. Mushy Brains, invigorated a lot of our readers. Right after the initial post we put up some contrasting replies (in red and green ink, no less!).

Over the next week, we continued publishing stuff that was representative of what we were getting, about 65-35% in favor of the original smackdown of the Junior Faculty / Just-A-Jobbers. But, we also gave space to the best posts we got on the other side, including the passionate Gen-X Jenny. (To be sure, we posted some serious Gen-X smackdown the next day, but people...that's what the mail said. We never said we were fair, folks, we said "representative." Based on what comes in, we try to offer the flava of what we get.)

Since then, however, junior faculty have mobilized, and we've received a flood of their notes, even one claiming that RYS is just a bunch of haters. We've picked out some of these to showcase today because they're the best and most impassioned of what we've got.

We're not saying the debate is done. After all, shit, we all work in departments, right? It's never going to be done. Those of you who are junior now are already looking pretty senior to this year's crop of job-seekers! But we must say that we think the ideas expressed below put a lot of this into perspective.

Why Is It Whenever Somebody Leaves It's Never Wicked Walter?

I'm beginning to side with the people who called you out the first time, saying that your sympathies are obviously with senior faculty. Seriously--how many more senior faculty tantrums are you going to air--all of them are based on the same logic--"I'm special, my scholarly 'community' is special, and you junior faculty don't tell us how special we are enough!" Fine, we got that message four posts ago.

There are legitimate issues that junior faculty face, and it's not all about being a gumdrop or demanding higher salaries. But you seem abjectly unwilling to air these issues, instead issuing post after post of senior faculty taking a big smelly shits on people who have less power than they do--either adjuncts or junior faculty. It's unseemly. And, ironically, that's why I am done at RYS.

My feelings aren't hurt that you didn't post my stuff. Who cares? The world can live without my tantrums, and somebody much funnier than me will come along and smack back. What I'm finally beginning to see here is that my usual batch of daily glee at reading somebody's frustration with their students, so like my own frustration, is actually rather unsavory. The self- important "you kids should listen to us as we are so so special" crap that senior faculty are handing down to junior faculty is the same crap I always enjoyed about the site--only directed at students instead of me. And now I have to stop reading for two reasons.

First of all, getting tenure and teaching your first years are hard and demoralizing. I don't need to know that my senior faculty hate my guts because I failed to kiss their asses to the extent they believe themselves entitled, the same way my students hate my guts because I'm not kissing their asses either. I don't need the pressure of worrying I'm not kowtowing enough in addition to worrying I'm not publishing enough. But rest assured, before any of you (obviously senior faculty) moderators get your Depends in a wad, I'll do right by my senior faculty from now on. I'll go into work-- oh! I meant my spiritual calling--today to my office, the crappiest office they could find, to teach my classes, the crappiest classes in the department, and announce to the line of closed doors my senior faculty, the backbone of my department, hide behind every day: "Golly! What a beautiful day! What a fine day to be in this GRAND university! How lucky I am to work with SUCH GREAT colleagues." I'm converted to the way and the light of investing in my institution and investing in my relationships with my senior faculty who have been known to throw such pearls of mentoring wisdom as "the copier's broken" to me on their way to and from the bathroom, their classes, and the parking lot.

How grateful I am that my senior faculty are investing so much in my success that they are willing, at such a great expense to themselves in terms of time and energy, to mentor me away from the broken copier. Every time I ask one of these people to go out for a cup of coffee or lunch they can't because they 'are crashing on something,' and it's not clear to me that's really just their special, giving way of mentoring. If I were doing my job (oops, grand calling), I wouldn't have time for lunch or coffee and if I did I wouldn't waste it on somebody who can't do anything for me, like a junior faculty member. Such mentoring! Closeness like that you just can't buy. I mean, sometimes my senior faculty even wish me a good weekend on the way to the bathroom, the copier (when it's not broken), their classes, or the parking lot. Wow! And some people would equate the special, special relationship I have with them with any other, mere 'work' relationships.

And second of all, I now see that there is no difference between the sniveling that the senior faculty are doing about junior faculty like me and the sniveling I do about students. Intergenerational complaining is an old sport inside and outside of academia, but now that I've seen how self-indulgent the senior faculty sound...I can't be a part of sounding like that any more.

The whining from the senior faculty sickens me: it makes them sound less like scholars and more like spoiled brats, and you bet I'm looking in the mirror, and I don't like a a whole lot about what I've said myself about students. I'm not going to pretend that I've had some sort of soul's awakening here and I'll never complain about students again. But I now see how ugly and entitled all the complaining sounds, and I don't want to do it anymore or read it any more. It's excusable from 18 to 21 year- olds on their RMP, because they are young, and to some degree youth and stupidity go together. In old people, it's just ugly and entitled. I don't want to be either.

So I'm out.

A Junior Snowflake Urges His Senior Icicles to Join Him In a Thaw.

I sit in a department where I can't think of a good reason to keep half of my junior colleagues. That half is selfish, pompous, unproductive, and a general waste of space and resources. They even disproportionately tend to cause about a third of the department's total problems.

The other junior faculty, however, (and I'll include myself in this one) has already outperformed most of the senior faculty in publications, grants, service, you name it - for the past several years. (Even if you go back to their qualifications when they went up for tenure.) Long story short, by the time I and many of my friends go up, we’ll have exceeded most of our "senior" colleagues in total pubs, grant money, and service - all 15-20 years before they did. As for the “seniors," they generally cause about half of the department problems with the administration making up the rest.

Also, how many of you old-timers jumped ship from somewhere else before coming to your current department? I thought so...so back off.

Juniors, this doesn't mean that you should do it 2, 3, and 4 times though. Those of us doing our jobs (junior and senior) have better things to do with our time than take digs at our colleagues and cause rifts. So, precious, pompous, fluttering, junior snowflakes and embittered, old, clinging, senior icicles, I would like to raise a margarita to the coming spring thaw when hopefully you'll both just melt away and leave the rest of us (Junior and Senior alike) to do our work.

A Call To Return To Snarking On the Kids.

Enough already!

Save the curmudgeonly snark for the students, who are more worthy of your cane-shaking, get-the-hell-off-my-lawn wrath. We’re all in the same trenches here, even if some of us are looking for different mud-holes to die in. While I have no doubt that there are plenty of I’m-such-hot-shit junior faculty out there making life miserable for their departments, this confidence in one’s specialness is hardly a trait of the untenured exclusively.

During my time as a graduate student at Over-Priced Prestigious U (OPPU), the worst of our professors were the tenured faculty who believed that their connections to famous people (usually French and frequently dead) made them too special even for OPPU, who were constantly looking for other prestigious jobs to get salary increases, and who were certainly too important to be spending time helping out their grads (or their undergrads). We cheered when they left for greener pastures, as the department was without doubt better off without them.

But more to the point, let’s face the facts: the job market for junior faculty SUCKS. I don’t know what life was like when you first went on the market, but last I checked the numbers in my field, there are approximately 300 jobs every year for about 1000 Ph.D.s on the market. Since my field isn’t math, I’ll leave it to you to figure out the percentages, but even my self-centered snowflake brain can see that there aren’t enough job offers to go around.

The fact is, except for the truly special (or well-connected) among us, we don’t get to choose where we go: if we want to stay in academia, we have to take what is offered us. And if we’re fresh out of graduate school, what we’re offered isn’t much.

So let’s get this straight. We don’t take your jobs because we love your department, or because we think your school is great, or because of the money you offered: we take them because we love being professors, and yours was the only game in town. (Which reminds me: don’t ask us in job interviews what attracted us to your department: the real answer is simply that you were hiring, but we aren’t allowed to say that.)

Maybe we got lucky, and the only game in town was a pretty good game. But how are we doing anyone a service by staying in a position that we simply don’t like? It’s like staying in an unhappy marriage “for the kids” and making everyone—including “the kids”—miserable in the process. It’s not your fault that the market sucks, but then, it isn’t our fault, either.

We’re all suffering through this mess together. So cut us a little slack, and let’s get back to complaining about students.

RYS Releases Its 2008 Calendar Just In Time For Holiday Shopping! Sweet & Soothing Student Smackdown!

The 2008 RYS Calendar

is now available

in standard and deluxe editions!

You can buy it here for $19.99 (standard)

or $27.99 (deluxe).

It features 12 clips from the Rate Your Students blog, an all-smackdown feast, along with original color artwork for each month. Keep track of "dead grandmother" stories, plan ahead for "Margarita Monday," scope out those rare long weekends, or just mark the upcoming faculty meetings (with dismay).

~~~

All correspondents whose work appears in the calendar have been notified, and will share in the meager, meager profits. RYS's share is earmarked for the American Red Cross. The calendar is created by Lulu.com, and they take all major credit cards and Paypal.

Add Another Checkmark Against the "Noflake" Proposition!

Please please please do not pass your threatened moratorium on usage of the term "snowflake" just when it's about to morph into a powerful and important new hybrid.

The signs are all around us. Junior faculty are annoyed with any suggestion they should be paying attention to the supposed wisdom of their seniors, and want more attention paid to what they can teach the folks who have been at this decades longer. They are frustrated with paying their dues, and they want their specialness tangibly rewarded now rather than later. They resist commitment, hate the notion they might have some responsibility or owe any allegiance to the communities in which they locate themselves, and claim that it's entirely natural to look out for number one. If you don't like your mirror, that can be solved with a quick trip to Ikea. If you don't like what's in your mirror you've got a more serious problem.

That grade-grubbing, attention-loving, where's-my-pony snowflake in your very classroom is you in miniature. Sure, the newer models come with optional iPod accessory and a couple more piercings, and without the polished grammar, but there's not so much difference that a quick airbrush job wouldn't make the resemblance obvious for all the world to see.

Take note, all ye academic snowflakes. When those senior faculty who you like to ignore complain about "kids today" they don't just mean the undergrads. They've seen you pass from the front rows of their tutorials into their graduate programs and now into the faculty lounge. And they aren't remotely as impressed with you as you are with yourself. Look into the front row mirror any time you need a reminder of why.

A Student Wants More than ???.

I hardly ever actually write a response to the posts I see on RYS, because although I am a student myself, I tend to sympathize with the professors whose students are incredibly lazy, don't care, are impolite or downright rude, or any combination of the above. The hypocrisy of the poster who resorts to marking students' papers simply with "???," however, compelled me to reply.

You say that the papers you are reading are crap. Interestingly enough, the only way for students to know which aspects you think are crap and why is if you tell them, and "???" doesn't cut it. If you don't make specific comments, you're simply setting yourself up for more bad papers. So the kids in your class can't write. Well, that's unfortunate. American high school education nowadays isn't great; I know I graduated without understand the importance of a thesis statement impressed upon me.

But hey, guess what? The fact that that "snotnose" comes up to you after class and wants to know what the hell your "???" meant means that they are, on some level, willing to learn and improve. Maybe their first reaction was to the "D" at the end rather than the ???'s scrawled throughout, but somehow they connected the two and if you're firm enough about it, they should eventually realize that in order to change that "D," they also have to change the things causing the ???'s. But you have to tell them what they are first.

So suck it up, grade the damn papers with a little more detail than "???," and DON'T complain about the kid who actually wants to figure out how to better his or her paper.

Many Readers Say "No" to "Noflake."

"Snowflake" is a term I've used for years amongst my peers and fellow teachers to typify a certain brand of undergraduate who apparently is quite common in the academy. I actually got the idea from one of my faculty mentors, who used the term in a completely pedagogical context. I often wonder if she'd chuckle at the way in which I've bastardized the term.

Is it smug? Yes, and that wouldn't be the first time I was accused of that epithet. Is it glib? Well, duh. Is it a Fight Club reference? Yes, but its usage predates the movie.

Have you never heard of the Snowflake Theory of humanity? Every person in the world is a unique individual, special and precious in his or her own uniquely special way. It's utter rubbish, though, when one considers that snowflakes follow crystalline patterns that encompass certain trackable structures that have only the verisimilitude of uniqueness. And thus it is with people.

So, for the poster who is under the mistaken impression that we "paint them all [undergrads] with the same brush," you're missing the point that we are not. We are referring to that certain class of undergraduate [who is incredibly typical and common] who believes, acts, and exemplifies the unique specialness that makes professors everywhere wanna rip out their eyeballs [and by "their" I am not sure if I mean the students' or the professors' own!].

So, since you seem to be reifying your own reductive tendencies by ignoring the ways in which snowflakedom is expressed herein, I challenge you to generate a typology that pleases everyone.

In the meantime, I'll continue wringing my hands and applying cold compresses at the thought of the little snowflakes who have nearly driven me to a nervous breakdown.

Sometimes the Best Answer Is Not An Answer At All. Big Thirsty!

Q: I'm very interested in making my own classes relevant for my students. I teach in a field where new things are always happening, but it's always a struggle to connect these things with the immediate needs of a 19 year old. What do you do to make your course relevant?

A: Given that the immediate needs of a 19-year-old tend to be distressingly monosyllabic in their complexity, I have to say that my answer to the question as phrased is "I don't." My classes are not relevant in the sense of giving my students something they can use on their way to the bar that night. What I do try to give them, though, are things I can be genuinely excited about in class. I figure I went to grad school because there are things about the field that actually interest me. That does not mean there are things about my field that do not bore me. There are texts I would just as soon never engage with again. Some of them are classic, fundamental texts that are almost always a part of intro classes. I still don't teach them, because if I'm going to be loathing a week of class then it's a pretty safe bet all my students will too. It's not a guarantee of relevance or interest, but I find teaching material I genuinely care about all semester leads to a class that's interested most of the semester.

Dammit, Man. Let the Dog in the House. Life is Short. If We Don't Treat Our Dogs Better than Our Students, We're No Longer Human!

Thanks for dredging up that “flashback” regarding our need to band together as teachers and show these students what constitutes an appropriate excuse and what is simply self-absorption.

Sure, they’re going to ask for ridiculous shit. There’s an inverse reciprocal relationship between today’s student’s allotment of balls and his or her resident cache of self-referential objectivity. The phrase “there’s no harm in asking” seems to be a battle cry for many students.

I have a cocker spaniel. She has never been allowed to come in the house. The instant the door is opened, she tries to come in the house. I could assume that my wife lets her in the house when I’m not looking, or that a neighbor invites her into the house and teaches her to dig under the fence and chew on the lower branches of fruit trees, but that would be silly.

She simply has no shame, no sense of introspection, and no manners. It is in her nature to misbehave because she’s a spaniel. One or two students a term fall into the same category. I didn’t make them that way. None of their teachers made them that way. That’s just who they are.

To the Needy Job Applicant. (And Someone Breaks the "No Flake" Rule Within Minutes of It Going Into Effect!)

Dear Job Applicant,

Thank you for applying for a position at our university! I am confident that you will make an important contribution to our academic community, especially given how similar you sound to the little snowflakes already enrolled in this institution. Like you, they believe that their every action is worthy of personal notice and praise!

I deeply apologize for failing to send you a gilded thank-you note for gracing us with your stellar application. We should have done more to encourage you, especially since you couldn't possibly be one of the applicants who mails their application piece by piece, ensuring the greatest possible difficulty for the underpaid staff member who manages the files. Oh, you thought the search committee did that? No. It is a single work-study student making $7.40 an hour, but I apologize for the confusion.

Your confirmation letter wasn't proofread? I suppose that step was overlooked in the five seconds I was given to write it and send it to duplication services. I also realize that I misspelled your middle name on the form letter informing you that you did not, in fact, include a copy of your CV with the application. This is totally unacceptable and I apologize. I really should be able to be more detail oriented as I manage 200 pieces of mail in the three hours between my afternoon classes.

I also would like to extend my regrets regarding the fact that you cannot distinguish between the items we need in order to have a formally complete application with the items that we encourage you to include in order to give us more information on your, no doubt, illustrious intellectual career. You are clearly so talented that there is no reason why we might be interested in additional information on your teaching and research.

Please feel free to call me every day to ask if I have received your last letter of recommendation; I truly have nothing better to do than micromanage your file.

Sincerely,

[Officially forged signature

of the Head of the Search Committee]

Someone Wants Us All To Give Up "Snowflake," Even Though We So Enjoy Saying It.

One of the first things I tell my creative writing classes is to avoid cliches, and I expect the majority of you tell your students in your own classes much the same. So it bugs me when we here at RYS perpetuate our own cliches.

One in particular I'd like to call out is "snowflakes." It's smug, it's glib, it's a Fight Club reference. And it's overdone. Surely a bunch of smart, witty people like ourselves can come up with something better?

I've seen different varieties of entitlement and self-absorption in my students. Why paint them all with the same brush? It's easy, sure, because all cliches are. But why should we respond to the stupidity around us with more stupidity? Or, if not stupidity, simplicity. It's the same reductive approach that a lot of our students take to our own classes. I can understand the vindictive impulse behind this, but, meh. It gets old.

So can we retire the snowflakes? Or at least put them on an indefinite sabbatical?

A New Reader Discovers The Key To Commenting on Essays.

I just finished grading a batch of not particularly bad papers, just the usual uninspired, mush-minded stuff. I try to challenge students claims along the way with comments and questions in the margins before giving the final comment in the end.

As I was plowing through, my patience began to flag more and more and the marginal comments were getting shorter and shorter. Finally, I found myself just writing "???" next to whatever questionable assertion was written.

It just struck me as so funny. It is such a perfect symbol of how much they've beaten me down. The question marks ask why am I reading this crap? Why did you write it? Why aren’t you in vocational school? Why didn’t you just skip this assignment (since this paper didn’t help your grade)?

Why, why, why?

Of course it just means that some little snotnose is going to come up to me after class and ask, “What did you mean by this?”

One Year Ago: "You Want a Chocolate Fountain and a Backyard Full of Ponies, Too?"

Every week a student asks me for (a) lecture notes (b) a "retake" on a quiz or test (c) whether I "drop" low quiz/test grades and (d) whether he can take a quiz/test at his convenience because he has an ingrown toenail (an actual excuse).

I could blame the students for their wheedling and whimpering, but I blame other faculty. Where are students getting the idea that faculty hand out lecture notes so the little cherubs don't have to tire themselves by taking notes or attending class? They get these ideas from other faculty. Who is giving them lecture notes? Other faculty. Who is letting them retake quizzes, drop tests, and reschedule at their convenience? Other faculty. Some "teaching excellence" or "academic support" person will answer that these dumbing-down techniques improve student learning. They clearly don't. Have we seen any improvement in learning since faculty began handing out notes, powerpoints, and "retakes"? No.

I have a proposal. Faculty should hang together. Don't give lecture notes, and don't post lecture notes. The cherubs will learn that faculty expect them to attend class and take notes. Don't give retakes. The cherubs will learn that the first test or quiz is real and they have one shot at it. Don't give make-ups. Don't drop grades. Don't come in on Saturdays. If they miss class for Uncle Ernie's birthday party, then let them take the consequences. Don't IM with students. If the cherubs have something important to address, then they can address it like adults. Act like the bosses they will soon have. Stop making it harder on the rest of us.

An Open Letter To Job Committees Everywhere! (The Season Is Truly In Swing.)

For the past few months, and perhaps even longer than that, I have agonized over the job market. For weeks now I have driven myself; my wife; my family; and, quite possibly, my two cats crazy because I have been stressed to the max, ensuring that all of my letters to you are properly formatted and proofread.

Letter addressed to the right person? Check! References the appropriate job? Check! Uses the term “postmodernity” instead of “postmodernism”? Check! Duplicates the exact same bullshit that is in my CV, teaching statement, writing sample, list of prospective courses, and sample syllabi? Check, check, check, check, and check!

And, oh, by the way, is placed on the table next to my checkbook so that I can pay the Post Office an ungodly amount of money to send this stuff to you, knowing that many of you will never acknowledge receiving it? Check and double check!

So what do I get in return? I’ll tell you what: some of the shittiest letters of acknowledgement from about the two percent of you who have responded to me so far. Do you really think that I enjoy—anymore than you do—getting letters of acknowledgement that were so obviously not proofread by anyone?

Honestly, I’m not making this up. I’ve gotten letters referencing jobs that I haven’t applied for; letters telling me at the top, in the first paragraph, to send more stuff only to tell me at the bottom, in the last paragraph, that my application is complete; and letters telling me to send the same damn stuff that I’ve already sent.

So please, do me—and all of us prospective job seekers—a favor: Practice what you fucking preach, and do your homework. Proofread your shit, which is exactly what it is when it’s not proofread.

We're All About the Opposing Viewpoints. We're a Cuba Libre with Two Straws, A Shore With Two Seas.

• I'm glad *someone* agreed with me on the snowflake essays. I was surprised how many people disagreed, to be honest. How will students learn that not everything in life is going to "relate" to them if we encourage them to think that way? I know that they're narcissistic and self-involved. That was my point - we don't cater to these attitudes in other respects; why would we do it in their writing? We're just postponing the inevitably difficult battle if we don't ask them to think critically early and often in college writing. Those who manage to integrate critical thinking into snowflake essays, well, I think that's a great stepping-stone but again, not something that should be done all semester long.
  
  
• OMFG! *That last post about the snowflakes?* LOL!! Seriously, someone who claims to be the be all and end all of analytical writing should probably avoid using FOURTEEN “I” STATEMENTS in a brief post, and making an overall point backed mostly by claims that where a person teaches and what their background is gives them a right to opine! Listen up, oh ye precious snowflakes of academia. I teach at a minor community college, but I have better training and more class hours logged than 90% of the folks who criticize my methods. I get so sick of people calling me lazy for designing new assignments that get EVERYONE to write critically instead of culling out anyone whose toenails need a bit of trimming before their feet will fit into the standard academic class-issue jackboots. “Flaky?” Something that doubles my workload and forces me to constantly update and fine-tune my syllabus is anything but flaky. Figuring out ways to keep students from doing thing that will, as you so eloquently put it, “earn you a failing grade in my class,” is anything but flaky. Lashing out at other instructors because they’re realistic about who is in their classrooms while you aren’t—well that’s flaky. Snow-flaky. Walk the walk, snowflake. Walk the walk.

A Chief Correspondent - With "Flannel Cred" - Throws Down the Smack.

Dear X-Hole,

I'll say this much about the students: At least they go away. Tools like you outlast your welcome at "hello." That is, of course, until you surreptitiously pack up that hip bike messenger bag of yours in June to wave pom-poms for our cross-town rivals, the Flying Blowholes of Supercilious State.

I got a thought for you, Skipper. So hold on tight.

Instead of preening over your iBook, admiring your reflection in that liquid crystal pool of blather you barfed up for the rest of us, why don't you pull your head out of your buttsocket and look around. You sound every bit as immature as the 18-year-old snowflake who sashays across my path in the middle of a lecture to fire a spent can of Red Bull in the trashcan. Sure, she's a self-absorbed idiot. But understand this. She's 18. Someday she'll wise up. What's your fucking excuse?

You junior faculty kill me. Instead of dropping to the deck to throw a tantrum every time Grampa Emeritus gets his Depends in a twist, why don't you consider why he has something invested in Pond Scum U. I mean, can you blame him? No doubt, some doddering codger sporting a mortarboard showed him the ropes decades before you were squatting in your PacMan Underoos mashing fruit roll-ups in your piehole and rubbing one out for Smurfette.

If Pops wants to point something out, if he wants to give some advice - useless or not - who the hell are you to cop an attitude?

Here's the funny part. I'm your age. I've got Gen-X cred up to my eyeballs. I bleed flannel. The Rolling Stones make me gag. But that arrogance of yours just makes me cringe. I'm not even arguing with your shopworn bulletpoints. You're probably right on most of them. It's your table manners that suck.

And another thing. That simplistic article you attached on Gen-Xdom was three lollipops shy of childish. Is that the caliber of twaddle you use with your students? Mercy. You must really give those kids a run for their money in the classroom. Listen up, Professor KoolGuy, those doe-eyed freshman clustering in your wake as you saunter across the quad. The ones giving you righteous props for that fine retro toque you're sporting in August. After they collect their As in June, they shut the door to their dorm room, toss your textbook in the trashcan, and laugh so hard at your shit they wet themselves. Then they paste the whole mess on Facebook.

I've got some "instant feedback" for ye. Stop confusing this sprawling bureaucratic DeathStar U with a Dot.com start-up. Those desk tumors in administration were singing the same song when they were flipping peace signs and wearing icky headbands in the 60s. And they sounded every bit as immature then as you do now. You want innovation? That happens in your classroom. On your own two feet. If you think glittery bells and whistles like PowerPoint and your dumb-ass academic kittyblog are relevant, ask the kid dozing off in the back row if that shit matters to him?

You ain't teaching anyone here. Please take an iron to that oh-so ironic T-shirt of yours, have a cup of coffee with the old man down the hall, and for crissakes, get your head in the game.

Young and Old Alike Love to Pile On Gen-X Jenny.

• What you have just taught me is that you need to wake the hell up. You think your generation is the first to worry about retirement? To hate committee work? To be head-explodingly frustrated by the bureaucratic structure? To want modern classroom and office equipment? You haven’t expressed one original thought, except that you want academic recognition for a blog. Ever heard of “peer review”? Get over yourself.


• The Gen-X post reminded me of a discussion I had earlier in the week with a friend, in which she told me about all of the "how to interact with 20-somethings" books currently being marketed to businesses. According to these manuals, recent graduates need to be praised, not reprimanded, which in practice translates to praising someone for coming in on time, rather than reprimanding them for coming in late. Praising a worker, in other words, for meeting the minimum requirements of the job. I can sympathize with Gex-X's dislike of committees and paperwork (who doesn't?), but I'm not sure that this is a generational thing. Saying "If we are moving on, perhaps you haven't done enough to try to understand us and are just trying to make us fit in to your mold" sounds suspiciously like a "special [faculty] snowflake" argument to me.


• I want to thank the Gen-X dude or dudette for making it so perfectly clear that he/she is just a perfect little X-shaped snowflake. Someone else too precious for words, someone else everyone has to make sure is taken care of. Grow up.

The Big Thursday Question!

Q: I'm very interested in making my own classes relevant for my students. I teach in a field where new things are always happening, but it's always a struggle to connect these things with the immediate needs of a 19 year old. What do you do to make your course relevant?

Answers?

Two Chief Correspondents Cannot Stay Quiet.

As for the Snowflake essays...

• I hate to be rude, but to those who replied in support of the "I'm a precious little snowflake" essays, well, you just keep telling yourselves you're doing them a service, "bridging" to critical thinking, blah, blah, blah. But it's bullshit. I teach freshman composition at a major university. I know the resistance to participate in anything that looks like work. I know that their eyes tend to glaze when not discussing Facebook and how awesome it was when they threw up on themselves twice last weekend. And I know that they haven't a clue about analytical writing. Or any writing, really. But I also know I'm not going to cater to their ignorance, nor am I going to let them float through my class still thinking that life is all about them. How do I do it? I teach only analytical writing. I don't worry about personal narratives, reports, or "relating their experiences" to class material. That will all earn you a failing grade in my class. We work hard on analytical thought throughout. I make them read tough essays with big ideas that appear to have nothing to do with their lives, and I make them discuss. And you know what? They do. And when they find out I'm serious about analytical writing--usually around the time they hand in a paper that does try to focus on narrative or reporting and promptly get a "D" or worse--they step up to the plate. They work hard, and they come away with skills they didn't have. And I think that prepares them far more than any coddling, pampering, or other "flaky" tactics will.

And, adding a voice to the "just a job" debate...

• I guess you can count me among the senior faculty, and therefore someone closer to Prof. Mushy Brain's age than to, say, Hannah Montana's. I have bitten my tongue for a few days while this site and many others (BTW, academic blogs are the most painful things on the web, and I'm including Ann Coulter and Matt Drudge), and I'm sickened by academics who think of their careers as "just a job." You probably are tired of hearing thoughts on this topic, but I think this mindset is to blame for why there is a divide between junior and senior faculty. I must confess that I think of this place as MY college. I go to the games, work freshman orientation, and tell everyone I know that they should think about having their kids, nieces, nephews and neighbors check us out when it's time. I've had jobs, you know? But my teaching, my research, my mentoring, that's something bigger, better, more. The younger faculty in my department are more attached to their alma maters than they are to here. On Friday afternoons, our faculty committee sponsors a series of open get-togethers for students, faculty, and administrators. They are sometimes a little formal, with an agenda of items from the student government, but usually they're just Swedish meatballs, punch, and a lot of mixing of people. Last Friday I was talking to two freshmen who were quizzing me about two new members of our department and I sort of looked around to see if either was there. What I did see was a group of faculty members, most of them my age or older, and not a soul - save the students - south of 40. And that's how it always is here. We love the new blood when faculty come to us fresh with ideas, but I at least just wish they'd invest more of themselves with this place, this career, OUR college. It seems to me, reading the "just a job" postings I've seen this past week, that it's likely not going to happen with this generation of academics.

"The X is For eXcellent, Dude!" (And Also eXhausting.)

Perhaps some of the "senior faculty" should read up on understanding "Gen X" (the current generation of junior faculty) and see why it is that we are the way we are.

While the baby boomers trust the academic institution, Gen-X has grown up without that kind of trust. Why? How many of you honestly think we will get social security when we retire? (even though we will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars into a soon-to-be-bankrupt system over the course of our lives)

We don't like committees - they slow us down. We are used to having our ideas heard instantly and valued by our peers, and can't stand the time it takes for ideas to trickle through five levels of bureaucratic hierarchy to reach anyone who can actually act on them.

For a generation who wants instant feedback to wait seven years for their institution to give them "feedback" on our job performance (tenure), is maybe just testing our patience a bit much. In this article reference I included it actually says "An effective mentoring relationship with them [Gen-Xers] must be as hands-off as possible. Providing feedback on their performance should play a big part, as should encouraging their creativity and initiative to find new ways to get tasks done." How about giving pre-tenure reviews every year so that we can see we are on track or not on track? That would be effective mentoring.

As a tenured Gen-Xer at an academic institution (where I have managed to last for five whole years), I feel completely stifled by the unnecessary difficulty involved in a) having an idea be heard by the folks that run the college, b) getting new technology in our classrooms, c) obtaining an upgrade to my computer (more layers of ridiculous paperwork and upper level decision making), d) being recognized for non-traditional forms of scholarship (like, for example, writing a nationally-read blog in my field).

Gen-Xers want to be recognized for their accomplishments, not ignored. If we are moving on, perhaps you haven't done enough to try to understand us and are just trying to make us fit in to your mold. You might even consider that we have something to teach you.

The Snowflake Essays.

• We all know that special snowflakes don't lift a finger unless something directly affects them. If I tell them to write about gender constructions, no one is going to pay attention. If I tell them to write about the gender-specific toys they played with as a child, they usually do the assignment. While it might not help to discourage "special snowflake-ness," I am trying to work with what I've got, and what I've got are a bunch of cranky teenagers who respond best when I appeal to their narcissism and self-involvement. I'm sorry if that causes problems for you, but for me, it's sort of like victory.
  


• I admit it—I do assign “Special Snowflake Essays.” Two of them! The first asks the little darlings to describe their identity. And yes, they’re Christians and Cowboys and Goths, oh my! The second asks them to explain what made them that way. Of course, they freak out. “You mean I have to explain this?” It completely blows their little minds that they have to sell me on WHY they’re precious instead of merely claiming that it’s who they are. Once that’s done, they have to write a third essay which explains how another person would react to the same kinds of stimulus, and why those people have turned out exactly as “special” and average, as my little snowflakes. The snowflakes recognize that their beauty is short-lived, and they will soon join the masses of other snowflakes who came before them. They crunch delightfully under my boots! So yes, I do assign “Special Snowflake Essays” and I suffer through grading them, but in the end, they will all be assimilated into the big frozen Borg cube that is academic writing.
  


• No, I will not stop assigning essays that ask my special snowflakes to draw on their own life experiences. I don't assign them because they're easy; I assign them because I believe in their value. I don't ask my students for "the most important day of their lives," because I don't give a crap. But I do ask my students to analyze the class material by drawing on relevant examples from their own lives. This encourages critical thinking about themselves, which lord knows they need. I am careful to explain to them that they will NEVER be allowed to write the word "I" in another class for as long as they live. Whether they care or listen is another matter. If they are writing about themselves when you want them to write about Flannery O'Connor, just take off 20 points for every "I" or "me" you see--or just flunk them.
  
  
• I am overrun with students whose lack of motivation to do the work is the direct result of thinking they "can't write." Not only do I have to encourage them to write, but I also have to encourage some kind of pleasure and confidence in the activity. Personal writing usually gets kids to realize that they have more freedom, strength, and value in their own writing than their high school teachers led them to believe. I don't want to hear about their awesome little lives, but I do want to use personal writing as a bridge into critical thinking and analysis.

What? You Mean That You Conference Attendees Actually Go To the Sessions? We Spend All Of Our Time Golfing Or Sitting At the Bar.

Your grouchy conference attendee touches on a point that has made me crazy for a decade now. Big academic conferences generally have many, even dozens of, concurrent sessions. Navigating the program alone takes a PhD. When I'm walking through a convention center, 250-page program in hand, talks circled on three different pages for a 3-hour morning session, I'm just hoping to make it to the next talk while the guy's still actually talking. So my big complaint? Session moderators who don't keep things on time. You have ONE FREAKIN' JOB as a session moderator and that's to cut people off (politely but firmly is good, but just firmly will do in a pinch) when their time is up. Keep to the schedule! 'Cuz as rude as it is for me to come in a couple minutes late and stand near the door, it seems even worse to stand up & leave while a talk is in progress so that I can get to the next one. I've been to sessions that were so far behind, I showed up on time to Dr. Z's talk only to find out we were still in the middle of Dr. X, with Dr. Y to go.

And f'chrissakes, presenters, you *know* from the moment you submit your abstract that you have 20 minutes to talk. Prepare a talk that takes 20 minutes. Any of us can talk extemporaneously about our work for an hour or two; talking for 20 minutes takes preparation. When you pull that act of glancing at the clock halfway through your talk, looking startled, and then skipping a bunch of slides, followed by five more minutes of breathless exposition after the moderator has stood up and started side-stepping toward you, we're not all sitting there thinking you're brilliant and accomplished. We're thinking you slapped this thing together on the plane and haven't taken time to look at it since. Oh, and we're also thinking, "Wrap it up already, I have another talk to go to."

Chesty Morgan? Man, You've Got to Update Your Stripper References. It's Like Getting a New Textbook Every Once in a While.

As a comparatively well-sexed male instructor with no discernible perversions or fetishes, I feel I’m amply qualified to make the following statement: “Darlings, could you put your boobies away before coming into my classroom?”

I’m embarrassed by the constant spectacle of Chesty Morgan and Watermelon Rose performing for my benefit as I try to discuss run-together sentences. I don’t want to look at them. You don’t want me to look at them. Both of us are embarrassed by these horribly exposed fleshy mounds, and despite the charms they may hold for the boys in the class, I don’t think they should be left to wander about unescorted.

If you wish for Chad and A.J. to look at them, you could take a camera-phone shot of them before class and send it off to them, thus keeping me out of the loop. Your “seductive clothing style” is about as subtle as a five-paragraph essay. “In this tank top I will display my right breast, my left breast, and a bunny tattoo which peeks out from behind my bra strap.”

Please Submit "Big Thursday" Questions Today!

Have you ever wanted the answer to a great imponderable? Would you like the considerable force and elegance of the RYS readership to put their brains up against your little quandary?

Well, here's your chance. Our first "Big Thursday Question" feature went over great, and we're looking forward to installment #2.

Please submit questions for our consideration. We'll post one a week, and may hold yours in reserve for future use.

Putting a Stop to the "Special Snowflake Essays."

Comrades,

Please stop giving students essay assignments that involve them talking about their super-special lives and all the interesting things that they've done, and how important and fascinating they are. Please. This generation has already been brought up to think that each and every one of them is the shiniest, special-est snowflake in the universe and that they deserve all of the attention, praise and As that we can hand out.

When you give these assignments, it encourages this attitude and makes them think that it's okay to write essays like this for EVERYTHING. Yeah, I know "Write about the most important day of your life" or whatever is a really easy assignment to give, but don't you find the pages and pages of winning touchdowns, prom princess moments and accepting Jesus Christ as their personal savior just a little bit fucking tedious? Where's the critical thinking? What are you doing? The rest of us then get these obnoxious personal anecdotes for essays on everything from Jane Eyre to Kubrick films to Russian history...

Every time I read one of these treatises on how "my mom is the most heroic person I've ever met" or an account of "the day I rescued someone when I was a lifeguard" or, for the love of god, "that really scary time I thought I was pregnant" (not kidding - got one of those just last semester), it just reminds me that most folks between the ages of 18 and 22 simply don't have anything interesting to say, have zero life experience, and are as self-involved as such utterly boring human beings can possibly be. In short, it makes me dislike the little ones more than I should.

Look - just spend ten minutes coming up with an assignment - ANYTHING but this. I'm tired of whipping out my angry green pen and writing "your first public boner is not an appropriate topic for an essay on Flannery O'Connor" or the more concise, "relevance??!!!" all over these diary entries that somehow ended up in my grading pile.

A New Student Hero To Annoy Us: The Arrival of Alphabitch! (Plus Someone Sneaks In Some More "Junior Faculty" Juice.)

After midterm exams, I decided to curve the grades so that 20% of my class would not score below 40%. Alphabitch, who marches into my class exhausted from her hectic life every MWF, is extremely angry at the outcome. Alphabitch is pre-law. Someday, wearing pink suits and carrying a little dog, she will rule the planet—all of us. In her dreams, she stages a coup in the magic mushroom kingdom and “recruits” the Smurfs into chiseling, rolling, and floating two ton blocks from rocky crags in Greece for construction on her 200 foot image in Santa Fe. By law someday we will all be forced pray to this statue at the sound of the timbrel, or Pink’s latest album.

Alphabitch is not happy with the curve, and she’s angry with me (she’s angry with anyone not speaking with a key turning in his back). She studied hard, and it is not fair that she only gets 4 points on the curve, while her inferiors got 15; she clearly deserves 15 points as well. Though she certainly did not get the highest grade in the class—she scored a B- on an admittedly hard exam—she smells a rat because the curve did not raise all of the students’ grades the same number of points. She informs me, in her ‘agitated lawyer’ voice, that she “has never heard of a curve” like the one I gave the class, and she has even asked one of her professors about it (inevitably the one with his lips on her butt). This professor, who must have been from the department of cosmetics, agrees there is no such curve that awards different amounts of points to different students. Despite the fact that her understanding of a curve has nothing to do with a normal distribution, I am forced to “dialogue” with her so that she does not take her complaint elsewhere.

As a junior faculty who wants to secure “just a job,” I have to get good evaluations, because in this democratic world some 21-year-old iPod-addicted, narcissist’s opinion carries more weight than my own. In order to get good evaluations, I have to radically inflate my grades. In order to even get to the part where I enjoy my job, I have to pamper arrogant students for three more years—and even then I’m not guaranteed tenure.

A Quick Sartorial Report from Conference-Ville.

I have spent the last three days at an academic conference with roughly a thousand of my colleagues from around the U.S. and I have a few observations:

• We’re always ragging on our students for slouching into class in their sweats, but, my god, people, who – or what – dresses you? I realize that clothes get wrinkled in transit, but there is an iron in your room. And tuck in your shirt! Plaids & stripes & polka dots? You got ‘em so you might as well wear ‘em, I guess, despite the fact that it makes you look as if you’ve been dressed in the dark by monkeys. That’s the men; women are a bit better, but the ubiquitous uniform of long skirt, black top & dangly earrings doesn’t say much for your originality. Unless you’re Madonna, you really shouldn’t wear that black bustier under your jacket once you pass forty. It makes you look like a cheap hooker cruising the conference rather than a cutting edge cultural theorist.


• Grad students, interestingly, mirror and amplify these sartorial tendencies: male grad students are generally just hard to look at, whereas the women tend to be a bit overly elegant.


• The rooms in which we meet are relatively small and often too warm, especially when full of people. Take a shower, brush your teeth, comb your freaking hair.


• Finally, would it be possible to arrive more or less on time for sessions? The constant clicking of the door and hovering near the entrance during the first paper must be distracting to your colleague who is presenting her or his work and it is infuriating to those few audience members who arrived at the designated time. I attended a session yesterday in which fully half of the audience trickled in – click, slam, rustle, click, slam, rustle – more than five minutes after the session began. Would we allow our students to be so freaking rude? I think not.

Why Does Everyone Want To Stop Our Fun? Several Readers Try To Kill "Academic Haiku Friday."

We have really enjoyed the occasional "academic haiku." We know none of them has actually been a haiku. What? You don't think we went to college?

We've published a bunch of poems that we call "academic haiku" because we liked the hard K sounds in that. Check out these past winners, for example.

Anyway, we've been collecting "real" haiku that have come in, and here are some now. Enjoy the flava:

~~

One student: slacker.
Another, just a dumb creep.
Both: grubbing for grades.

~~

Car stuck in snowbank.
Sprained knee, skiing accident.
Winter's excuses.

~~

Junior faculty,
running scared from job to job,
no place to call home.

~~

Adjunct faculty.
Freeway fliers, simple needs.
Gas, coffee, students.

~~

There is no compound.
Just a virtual commune.
Margaritas! Salt!

Monday Miscellany, Including Info on a Cool Cat Translation Site!

• If you send me a semi-literate email in IM-speak about how you "rly dntknow u were supposed to actually tlk 4 ur participation grade," and do I think "this wll hurt ur fnl grd," I'm going to reply to your message with a translation from speaklolcat.com and say: IM SRY, TRY AGAIN NEXTYER. MISTAH KITTEH SEZ U R NOT GUD STUDENT.


• I am slogging through student drafts. Some are sloppy. Some are suspiciously over-polished. Others are so stupidly cobbled together from online sources that it takes me 45 minutes to find some tactful way of saying "Do you want to just have me fail you for the semester now, and you can get back to your other classes, or would you like to revise this in your own words?"


• I HATE when students write things in their papers that make *me* debate ethics. I even tell them, "don't admit to felonies, anything where I'll be called in as a witness," etc. But I had a student write a paper about his fraternity house keeping a file cabinet of tests, papers, etc., for students to borrow from their "brothers." He wrote about it just as another part of frat life he enjoyed, like beer pong and girls. HELP! What would you do?


• Don't tell me you had no idea you were supposed to be turning in those short writing assignments throughout the semester. The reason I'm looking at you as if you'd just grown a pair of green tentacles is that this is all in your syllabus, and I go over the prompts in class before they are due. What the hell did you think your classmates were periodically handing in to me? Love notes??

We're Wussies, But At Least This Guy's Not Coming Back. Which Allows Us to Query, "Dude, Does Your Husband Know You're On the Computer?"

I am disgusted that all of you at RYS wussed out on the "great divide." You teased us with some real arguments, then put up the sissiest post of all time, and then the next day fizzled completely out with two benign and not even useful posts to "finish" the debate.

It's ridiculous.

You stated twice that Prof. Mushy Brains had more supporters, and I'm certainly among them. The cavalier and casual attitude of junior faculty makes me want to never retire. I couldn't leave this college in their nervous and sticky hands.

But you had a chance to really shake them up, to show them that folks who have been in the business for a little while longer have something they can teach them. But you got worried when the mail got too hot and simply wimped out. Are your stockings too tight, darling?

I'm not coming back again, but I still dare you to post this.

Using the Keynesian Compact To Explain the "Job-Hoppers." And We Thought It Just Had Eye Shadow In There.

One thing I think senior faculty are missing about the junior job hoppers is that this is not the 1950s and 1960s. Back then society was, in some ways, incomprehensibly different to a person under the age of 30. (I'm around that age, and *I* have a hard time believing the differences!)

Back then, at least lip-service was paid to what some people refer to as a kind of "Keynesian compact," which was that employers, private and public sector, would do right by their employees as long as said employees put in their 8 hours or equivalent, and made an effort to do what was required of them. "I scratch your back, and you scratch mine."

So the societal mythos, as flawed as the reality of that era was, at least held up a kind of paradigm that looked down on fundamentally selfish behavior. It just wasn't the done thing for a CEO back then to ruin thousands of employee Christmases for a quick fillip to the share price in order to haul down millions of extra dollars all just for him. Ditto some other aspects of behavior that are very common today.

However, the social mythos has changed, and with it, the paradigm of acceptable behavior. Since those leaders of our society tend to model the kind of behavior that many people tend to incorporate into their own day-to-day actions, the selfishness that started at the top has permeated downwards. Since it is no longer a part of the "Compact" that employers reward steadfastness in their employees, employees are increasingly feeling little compunction to do right by their employers. I've heard of people blatantly writing resumes on company time as soon as they get a rumor that the CEO plans to cut half the staff; I could cite numerous other examples, such as ongoing petty theft, employment counsellors in government Social Services offices directing people on welfare who lacked high school to falsely claim they completed it, and so on.

The bottom line is that loyalty,when unrewarded, rapidly leads to an increasing tendency for each and everyone of us to look out strictly for ourselves, even if it means lying, stealing and cheating. In the academic realm, part of the driving force of this tendency to not want to put in an effort to stick it out for the long term is partly due to the perception (be it unvalidated or validated at a particular institution) that academic tenure is getting impossible for junior faculty to ever attain. And why not? Daily, all people in society are bombarded with aphorisms such as "no job is safe anymore," "you're not indispensable to your company," "9 to 5 is Dead!"

And to think some people can't make the connection between excessive individualism and the day-to-day roving eyes of junior faculty. Well, it boggles the mind. Maybe said tenured senior people who look down on the "job-hoppers" should be checking their own green of envy before they speak.

Why Wicked Walter is a Tantalizing Tonic!

One of the first posts I ever read on RYS was Wicked Walter's insane ramblings from August.

I'd been told to check out this site by two colleagues and I was a little disappointed on that first visit. "Nutjobs," is what I think I said. But now after checking back more and more regularly, I understand the site a lot better.

I writhed painfully through the "great divide" posts, but was absolutely fascinated by them. In fact I talked about those specific problems at my own university the very next day.

I could really identify with the conversation that took place about college students as kids or adults, because those kinds of problems are always present in my classes. And of course, the smackdown! Love the smackdown! My favorite was pretty recent, addressed to the "Great King of Entitlement."

Anyway, there's lots to think about on this site, and so when Wicked Walter arrived again yesterday, I loved it. We need to mix in Walter every now and then to balance whatever else is going on. It's this mixture that makes this place so much fun, so real, and - in the end - so useful. I wish I had a Wicked Walter in my own department!

When I began teaching 5 years ago, I never imagined how hard it would be, how much stress I'd feel, and how wiggy I would get on a daily basis. And the idea of confessing all of that to my peers and colleagues, just didn't feel possible. How could I show that I wasn't handling it? RYS shows me that I'm not alone, gives me a place to let it all out when I have to (even if you haven't published me yet-meanies!), and provides a no-holds-barred virtual faculty lounge where we can share the misery and the happiness that is our careers.

Who Says There Are No Answers to Academic Questions? Three Readers Take on The Dreaded Book Report Problem. Installment #1 of "Big Thursday Question."

Our new feature, the Big Thursday Question, brought in more mail than we were expecting, and some pieces were extraordinarily thoughtful. Here are the answers we've chosen to share. Many thanks!


Q: How in God's name do you get your students to stop writing book reports and start writing actual papers with actual theses?

A1: I'm actually fairly sensitive about the thesis statement problem, having struggled immensely in my lit classes (which I loved, regardless) as an undergrad. I don't think I finally started to feel confident as a writer until I entered my doctoral program, where things finally started coming together for me. Therefore, I try to be generous when dealing with book report-type papers. After all, even the best critics summarize plot and other events when performing their analyses. If we present our students with critics who do that, how do we fault them for doing the same? Obviously, the problem is when students drone on and on, summarizing what we already know about "Moby Dick" and then jam the stake right through our collective hearts: They title their papers "Moby Dick." I have found Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's" 'They Say/I Say': The Moves that Matter In Academic Writing" to be particularly helpful on the the issue. They supply a series of templates that students can modify to fit their own writing, helping them move into a mode of argumentation a little more smoothly. The book seems somewhat elementary, but most students I've worked with--at the freshman comp level, mind you--have found it helpful. If they don't have thesis statements in their initial drafts, I can point them back to that book--as could you. And if they don't revise accordingly, following Graff and Birkenstein's paint-by-number examples, I'd say fail them. Fail them all!



A2: I build my literature classes around the idea of asking questions. We begin the semester with a challenging poem -- usually something fairly modern that they wouldn't have seen before -- and instead of my telling them anything about it, I simply instruct them to read it and make a list of questions. They pair up, see which questions they can answer, and ask more questions. With their lists of questions, we can talk about the 3 basic types of questions about literature (as I define them): Questions that could be answered by knowing more background information -- about culture, history, writer's biography, etc.; Questions that could probably be answered by reading more closely, more carefully, or (in the case of a longer text) further; Questions that could probably only be answered by analyzing or interpreting the text. We discuss some major branches of literary theory, but primarily in the context of what questions each theory asks about literature (How do socioeconomic issues shape the characters' interactions? What is significant about George taking on the typically feminine role of caring for the baby?). This sets the stage for what I tell my students all semester: scholars -- your professors, the people writing your texts and journal articles -- don't know all the answers. Scholars know which questions to ask. The class is then built around the students asking -- and struggling to answer -- questions. We are discussion-based from the beginning, and the discussions come directly from the students' questions (I only put forth my own questions if I think they are critical to understanding the text, and no one in the class has gotten there. I'm always surprised by how rarely this happens.) I make it clear that the "Questions that could be answered by reading more closely, carefully, or further" are questions that students should attempt to answer before coming to class. Once it becomes clear that if they bring those questions to class, I am not going to answer them, the students usually buckle down and get to work. When it comes time for the papers, I ask the students to write several questions about course texts. They work in groups and with me to evaluate the questions -- are they likely to have a complex answer? Is there likely to be an answer at all? When the student has a good, solid question, I explain that the paper should answer that question, and show the reader how the student came to the answer. The thesis to the paper is the answer to the question. Since students are comfortable with asking questions, with struggling to answer questions on their own, and with accepting that there may be multiple plausible interpretations of a text, most of them do relatively well. Even the worst papers I see are more complex than book reports.



A3: The key is to encourage your students write about something that genuinely interests them, even if the course as a whole doesn't. I've had wonderful results in my course on Intro-Astronomy-for-Students-Not-Majoring-in-Science, ever since a Fashion Merchandising major wrote her paper on space suits. The paper was great, and I learned a lot from it. She'd clearly gone out of her way to learn something about the science taught in the course, and to relate it to what she'd learned in her major. For example, her paper covered why the outer layer of a space suit is made of Kevlar (to protect against micrometeoroids), why the middle layers are Gore-Tex (for thermal insulation, since with no air in space to even out heating, an astronaut bakes in the Sun and freezes in the shade), why the inner layer is Neoprene (to absorb body moisture, since astronauts exert themselves greatly because the suit is so stiff because it's pressurized to prevent the astronaut from getting the bends)---even down to the details of the in-suit drink bottle and the modified adult diaper. Now, I give my students a list of suggested topics, sorted by majors. I also remind them that these are only suggestions: they're free to make up their own topics, which is why the list is always growing. Here's a sample of the list:

• Psychology: Perception and Illusion through the Telescope / Stress During Long-Term Spaceflight


• Education: Astronomy lesson plans for elementary / middle / high school


• Biology: Could Earth Bacteria Survive in the Atmosphere of Venus?


• Social Sciences: Human Mass-Migration into Space


• History: American Rocket Pioneers / Astronomy of the Ancient Egyptians


• Physical Therapy/Kinesiology: Spaceflight and the Human Body

The Return of Wicked Walter.

It's been quite some time, but Wicked Walter from Waxahachie returns today. After his first post back in August, most readers thought he was a put-on. But, as we sometimes do, we tracked him down. He does exist, and is a professor at a large state school in Texas. (We don't think he's really from Waxahachie, however, because we're pretty sure a nutjob like him would get run out of a nice town like that.) Anyway, Walter is back. You may want to avert your eyes.

***

What in God's name are you smoking out there on the compound? This site has gone to hell in a hatbox, and I've decided to mobilize myself to save y'all's bacon!

Just this past week I see you let your crazzy-ass, cat-lover nutjobs duke it out with the Depends-wearing old codgers who couldn't chew a decent piece of meat with borrowed teeth. That's a non-starter. Don't let the crazzies have an open forum.

I'm the answer to your problems. I'm neither junior or senior. I'm right in the middle of it all, and I say, quit bickering among yourselves and let's save the venom for the real evil-doers: students, administration, Wanda in the cafeteria, and Roger the I.T. guy with his little screwdrivers and tight trousers.

Seriously, here's what to do to get back on track. You can thank me later. I got a million good ideas, and I'm happy if you just want to name one of your children after me:

• Start showing some video. I mean it, man, I want to see some of that TMZ shit on here, Lindsay Lohan eating a prune, Nicole Kidman all glassy-eyed rubbing her head on that honky-tonky husband of hers, Slappy White doing his show from the Sands in 1965.


• Get with the times, man, and hire yourself some needlenose from your computer science department to get the format of the page together. Some days you got the margarita glasses going, now you just this shit-brown thing with the sideways building. Too arty! Big and bold. American flags and fields of hay and strippers with guns and, well, you get my drift. Boldness is what goes over big here in Texas, and I'm sure it'll sweep the rest of those damn dull rectangle states y'all probably live in.


• Put the focus on the students, not just how they're bad at education, but how smelly they are, how badly they dress, and why can't they run a comb through their hair. Let's go personal. Hey, on that other site, some rotter called my class "a good place to catch a nap." Yeah, well, we'll see how my new airhorn goes over the first time I see some candy-coated co-ed start to nod off. Man, I'll make 'em jump and start running until they hit the Red River. Then they're on their own.


• I see you got "Big Question Thursday," you're trying out. I give you snaps for a new idea. But also add, "Big Butt Wednesday." Use one of those new cameraphones to capture a big butt on campus, student, groundskeeper, but most likely some suit from the Administration building. Go ahead and blow those pics up to monster size and post them. You won't believe how your hits will go up. People is always searching Google for "butts," "asses," and so on.


• I got one more before I have to back to the lab and put some whup'ass on those nutty grad students. How about you take RYS on the road. Get yourselves a Handycam something or other, and start knocking on faculty doors. Go to the source. Walk in on Dr. So-and-So and say, "What about them students? Ain't they the worst? How come you're crying? Don't you like my belly?" You get my drift. Quit waiting for the world to come to you, get out there and drum up some content. I see those people on the TV do it all the time. Shove a camera and a microphone in front of Dewey Dumbshit from Sociology or whatever and find out what he really thinks. "RATE 'Em, Baby!"

See. It ain't hard. I spent 9 minutes on this and I came up with 20 ideas better than you ever had in your lives. And I'm not even breathing hard.

Listen, get back to me on this shit right away. Last time I wrote you didn't say a damn thing.

XOXO
Wicked Walter

It's Our Birthday, And We Don't Even Have Any Crows Feet Yet!

Two years ago today, "The Professor," a humanities professor from a small liberal arts college in the South started Rate Your Students in this very space. (He's a hero to us, of course.)

As many of you know, he ran the site until February of 2006 before turning it and its archives over to the current moderators. (We of course, drank the Kool-Aid, got the tattoos, and built the compound out of adobe and feathers.)

The press on the site was huge in those early months. The New York and L.A. Times did articles, Chicago Trib, the Chronicle, the Village Voice, countless campus papers, etc. International papers in England, Australia, and New Zealand also did features. "The Professor" even wrote a piece for the London Times Higher Education Supplement.

While his time at the helm was relatively short, on our second anniversary, we wanted to give a shout-out to the past. Here are two clips, his opening salvo from this blog, two years old today, and a quick note he sent us this morning.

*^*

As we begin, let's be clear. Rating students and professors is a gigantic waste of energy and time. But as long as Ratemyprofessor.com continues to operate mostly unmoderated and with no real intention of limiting anonymous attacks from anyone who'd like to log in, we will operate over here on our little site.

We will rate our students here. And we will play it fast and loose. And we will do it without compunction. There are no guidelines. There is complete anonymity. You may let loose in any way you like. Email your ratings and I will take care of the heavy lifting of getting things formatted nice and tidy.

Then we'll just see where we're at. We'll still be fucked. We'll still be poor academics. But at least those callous and ignorant "customers" of ours will know what it's like.

What we believe here at the site is that if it's little, you say it's little. That's it.

*^*

Dear Compound Clyde, Compound Celia, and Compound Clint - if those are your real names!!

I take very little credit for what RYS has become. The current moderators have let the site expand into a free ranging and exciting forum about academic life. I never imagined that it would continue to grow and thrive, and the real credit probably needs to go to the seemingly endless supply of readers who continue to fill the virtual mailbox at your "compound" every night. (You people crack me up!) I am quite honored to be the first moderator of RYS, and I check in on you folks often, to make sure you don't just switch to covering Britney Spears full time! Here's to another year!

The Professor

Some Caution for Naive Nina.

Here's a final installment on the "just a job" discussion. See also: Nina Naive & some first responses.

I know this this is difficult to envision right now, but I suspect there will come a time in your scholarly career where you will need to be able to say "it's just a job." I needed to, anyway. While earlier on RYS a senior faculty poster ridiculed junior faculty as "believing they are the first to discover the joys of friends, family, and pinochle," framing your job as "a just job" at various times as junior faculty helps keep you grounded and sane for several (healthy) reasons that have nothing to do with leisure time.

First, some senior faculty take delight in rubbing your nose in the fact that you are untenured and that they hold the votes to decide your future. If you think your committee is bad, pray you never wind up on a faculty of bullies. I did. If you have to face that, day after day, you will quickly frame your lifelong dream, your calling, into "just a job." Why? Because that way, if the jerks do the worst they can to you at tenure time, they would be taking from you "just a job" instead of your whole life.

Second--and this is a very healthy reason--it is probably not good for your research or for your teaching for you to put too much of your identity into either of them. Whenever I have to deal with some blowhard lecturing me about his deep, personal calling as a teacher, I usually find that the students really can't stand him--and it's nothing to do with how much he demands in the classroom. It's because they know he's gratifying his ego off of them, and there is something vaguely creepy and vampiric about that. They sense he is not there for them; he is there for himself. When you get over the notion that your classroom work is "your calling" in favor of viewing it as collaborative work with students, it hurts a lot less when students act like meatheads and assholes (and they will) and you will be better capable of not letting them ruin the work for you or the students who are neither meatheads or assholes. When you see your research as your work rather than as your calling, it also hurts a lot less when Reviewer #2 writes "This work is vaingloriously insignificant; it is my recommendation that the manuscript be rejected and the authors beaten with sticks."

Gradually, as you come out of your first frantic years as junior faculty, by your third year I found, you will get out of the slump you cause yourself by working too much and worrying too much about tenure to realize that you have your work, rather than "just a job." It is indeed possible to love and devote yourself to your work. I was raised in an ethnic tradition where it is practically sinful to do bad or shoddy work. I find that value helps me do my best in the classroom and as a researcher. It is enough, friend Nina, the work is more than enough, to satisfy that part of you who wants to lose yourself in learning both as a teacher and as a research.

Just a Job? Three Readers Offer Naive Nina Some Insight From the Front Lines.

• I'd recommend that Nina, or anyone else wondering about the profession, check out an excellent article from a couple of years ago that appeared in the Phi Kappa Phi Forum. In it, the writer says, "My experiences have led me to the inescapable conclusion that colleagues considering their professorship as just a job, as a way to make a living, will be not-so outstanding - my former dean's euphemism for lousy - teachers. To become an excellent professor requires genetic aptitude, which is created in a person's DNA at the time of conception by the fusion of a maternal with a paternal gamete, a process exemplifying the divine creator's signature of a higher calling."


• The academy is most emphatically not "just a job." I've had jobs; in fact, I worked in the "real world" for many years before switching to academia. In a job, you have a boss who tells you what to do, and at the end of the day you get to punch a clock and go home. There is a fairly clear distinction between "my" time and the "job's" time. I've been in this second career for about a decade, and I'm at a small college that emphasizes teaching. During the academic terms, I have very little time I can call my own. I am constantly thinking about class preps, or grading papers, or planning the next exam or assignment, nearly every waking hour. It is demanding and it can at times be frustrating, but anyone who tries to tell you that it is "just a job" ought to get out of the profession and go wash dishes at the local greasy spoon. That's a job.


• Whether or not a career in academia is "just a job" is entirely up to you! You have probably seen enough (and read enough here) to know what you are getting yourself into, and want it anyway. You will have days where it takes every bit of your self-discipline not to ask the poor idiot sitting in your office how he or she got into college without knowing what a decimal point is, or that Mexico is not one of the United States of America. You will be discouraged by the students who skip class because of a hangover, then come to your office and want a private make-up lecture. What you don't read about so much on this blog are the days where one of your students tells you that they love your class, that they are learning so much, and that they have found their own calling because of it. And that's fine, because this blog is for venting, and we desperately need to do that sometimes. So you will have hellish days during which you fantasize about early retirement or winning the lottery and not giving ANY of it to the university, and you will have wonderful days during which you can’t believe you are getting paid for having so much fun. Most days will be somewhere in the middle. But if academia is your calling, you understand that it’s not really about you, and you will never be bored, and it will NEVER be “just a job.”

Nina Naive Checks In With a Question of Her Own: "Just a Job? That's Not What I'm Looking For."

I'm a longtime lurker who just had to step out of my self-imposed shadow. Call me Nina.

I am a PhD candidate at a school in the northeast, about 2 years away from my first run at the job market. The recent postings here and elsewhere about the junior faculty / senior faculty divide were very interesting to me, but I don't want to talk about that because I simply don't have the experience to get into it.

But what I do want to say concerns a comment I saw a number of times on many of the other academic blogs that discussed this incident.

"It's just a job."

It is? That's not what I'm looking for. Maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but I can get "just a job" anywhere, doing anything. I'm not working toward my teaching and writing career for that. From the first day of my undergrad education I fell in love with the university. My professors were gracious and interesting. They worked hard for me, gave me more respect and care than I was worth then, and their careers were callings, not just jobs. That's what I wanted.

And now after years of grad study and with a focus on the future, the last thing I want to be told is that a career in academia is "just a job." It's not worth more than that?

Nimble Nudnicks Neatly Navigate Nietzsche. Boss Bawls: "BULLSHIT!"

In what my students must imagine to be my throwaway spare time I teach a Philosophy course, and in their throwaway spare time they might do an assignment or two. To those of you who, much like my students, are asking yourselves what the value in philosophy is, I’ll tell you this: as far as critical thinking goes, there are few better ways to hone it. But I’m not here to defend philosophy as such. We’ve recently begun reading The Ol’ Friedrich Nietzsche, and, like many professors, I asked them a pointed question about the material to be typed up and handed in the day I started lecturing on it.

Newsflash: Nietzsche is nearly incomprehensible to a first time philosophy student. I get it. I’ve wrestled with Nietzsche for years and there are countless aspects of his immensely rich thought that I still don’t know or fully understand. I told them it would be difficult but that they were not to get discouraged and they were, instead, to fight with the material. This is the essence of learning, of being a good student and a critical thinker.

Now, apparently my students believe that I’m a complete moron, because when I read their responses I noticed that many of them had sophisticated views of the material well beyond the capability of what they’ve ever shown me before. It appears that I was just supposed to assume that, somehow, they’d grown brains overnight and suddenly were able to navigate a thinker like Nietzsche with ease (when, by the way, they couldn’t even explain what “I think, therefore I am” meant after I’d gone over it ad nauseam). Suddenly, the progression from the master morality to the slave morality was clear as a bell!

Bullshit. Guess what, folks, we all know when ideas have come from you or from the leading goddamn scholars in the field. Guess what: I know if you came up with that idea yourself or if it’s been pulled from Martin Fucking Heidegger’s account of Nietzsche.

Perhaps I’ve been remiss in my duties of telling them that philosophy, among other things, isn’t always about getting the right answer. Sometimes it’s about asking the right questions, and most times it’s about simply putting in the effort to understand very challenging material. I can hear them now: “Well, how is going to Spark Notes and getting the explanation any different than you giving me the explanation?” It isn’t necessarily different (although my explanation is more thorough). And if you were educating yourself in Nietzsche outside of academia I might even suggest that you look to a few basic sources like this initially while you’re trying to come to grips with it.

The difference comes in when the assignment is one given in a classroom with the express purpose of trying to make you think critically about difficult material BEFORE you have the crutch of the lecturer. If you forever tie your child’s shoes for him and never make him practice it on his own, it’s unlikely he’s going to be able to tie his shoes when no one else is around.

The worst part of this whole thing is that not only did they have four days to do the assignment, not only have I repeated countless times in class that I want them to email me at any hour if they don’t understand something in their reading and I’ll help them: but that they took the easy way out. They shrugged off their status as student, as one whose job it is to think, to fight, to learn, to ask questions, and they treated the assignment—the CLASS—as a job. It was all to get the right answer. To churn out something A-worthy. And they cheated themselves out of something far more valuable than an A.

The Birth of a New RYS Feature: The Big Thursday Question!

We often get pedagogical questions of such number and variety that we normally just throw up our hands in horror, delete the emails, and report the questioners to the Internet Task Force on Unanswerable Dilemmas. But with so much free time on our hands - heh heh - we thought maybe we'd quit being so damn dumb and turn the questions on to our readers. We'll pick out a couple of good answers that come in - especially those that can avoid calling the questioner either sanctimonious or narcissistic - and post the replies here later on.

And since today is Thursday, we'll make it a regular Thursday feature. (Or it might be another day, depending on the compound's winter croquet season.) Some questions may be a little out of your field, but we'll try to offer a variety of queries for you to work on. Here's our first. Reply here with good ideas.

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Q: How in God's name do you get your students to stop writing book reports and start writing actual papers with actual theses? I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here. I've provided examples, explained until I'm blue in the face, given assistance in coming up with a thesis (and then still gotten a book report back) ... I am at a loss and it's very frustrating. Do any RYS readers have good tips? Other than just failing them?

As Homage To the Great Candy-Day, Let Us Celebrate Our Chocolate Hangovers With These Final Notions About the Evil Stuff.

• I confess: I hand out chocolate. However, I wouldn't dream of doing it at evaluation time, but give out mini candy bars at exam time. Did it on a whim as a beginning teacher years ago, and it has become a tradition. Nothing exciting. No Godiva. Students seem to think it means that I have some sympathy for the stress they are feeling, and it makes the test seem a little less daunting. I still fail the slackers and the know-nothings, but they will tell you I care about them. My evals are stellar, but I don't think the candy is the reason.


• You’re right, bribery is unethical. It’s wrong and ignoble to offer students chocolate in an attempt to boost one’s reviews. It’s also wrong and ignoble to slam an instructor and say horrible, personally insulting things about him or her for daring to *gasp* make you work for your grade or *gasp* grade you fairly. Students, for the most part, have no clue what they’re talking about when they’re evaluating their instructors’ performance. They generally have no frame of reference with which to make an accurate and honest evaluation of the instructor’s work. Instead, they spew so much vitriol because their professors didn’t treat them like the precious little snowflakes that the students believe themselves to be, taking the time to spoon feed each student the information, wipe his or her little poopsie and kiss his or her little booboos, and do everything possible to make said snowflake a passable student—screw personal responsibility for your education. Think about it this way, pumpkin. If you can be bought so easily with a Hershey bar, how valuable are your opinions, really?


• Listen, just because a study seeks to prove the obvious doesn’t mean it lacks merit as a study. In fact, part of its merit comes from the fact that it DOES prove the obvious: this way people can start drawing proper and, in some manner, culturally fact-based conclusions from it instead of pulling conclusions about the world out of their asses, which we’re so often wont to do. Have you ever considered that, perhaps, some people might think it was oh so obvious that students would grade their professors WORSE because they might know this was a blatant attempt to suck up to them? This seems just as “obvious” a conclusion. Moreover, you’ve suggested, and rather bitchily, I might add, that the original article was posted with an air of amazement. Judging from the rather ironic title of the post, which your penetrating and critical mind has clearly overlooked, the staff was under no delusions about this being some giant surprise finding. It appears that the post was not necessarily a matter of “discrediting student evaluations,” as you’ve declared, but an interesting tidbit of information. Way to go on the critical thinking there.

The Sun Did Come Up This Morning. Either That, Or We're Seeing The Giant Fireball That Will Finally Bring Closure To the Great Divide.

I honestly don’t see what all the furor is about with the junior / senior faculty divide. I must lead a blessed life in a blessed department, or maybe I’ve just gotten so senior that my mind is gone. I’ve been in my current position 20 years & this spring will have the little lapel pin to prove it. (No, I’m not so square I actually wear the pins, but I do like having them in the little tray in my desk drawer.)

When I was an assistant prof, I applied for other jobs, but for a variety of reasons wound up staying put. (Yeah, yeah, Gumdrops, I hear you snickering that I wasn’t “marketable.” Nice word, that.)

Like many academic departments these days, mine is aging fast. We’re a looming Social Security crisis all by ourselves. But we have been able to hire some junior faculty over the last few years. We have tenured two of these colleagues and look to tenure two more. I’ve even managed to palm off my Faculty Senate position on one of these recently tenured souls (BWAHAHAHAHA!).

This year are lucky to have some folks just out of grad school doing what are essentially post-docs. Of course they’re looking for jobs. They bring a terrific freshness to the department. I have learned from their colloquium presentations and from my hallway conversations with them. I hope it will be possible for at least one of them to switch over to the tenure track.

I think a lot of the venom directed at the Gumdrops has more to do with their narcissistic tone than with their job hunting. I think every junior faculty member should be on the lookout, if not obsessively. I think what’s offensive to many older faculty who have put the time into a department is the attitude that what we’ve built is merely a low-status stepping stone to some imagined academic Valhalla.

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Feeling a little jealous? Perhaps the warm fuzzy feeling you get about your institution is simply making a virtue out of reality. Maybe you see in the professional mobility of your junior faculty the opportunities that you never had, and it is dawning on you that your comfortable little office is going to be yours until the day you retire. And why are you going to stay there? Perhaps it is because you love it so, or maybe it is because you are too old, too senior, and/or not famous enough in your field to get another job. Regardless of the reason, hacking on a junior faculty member for leaving has the stench of academic jealousy all over it.

I was also struck by the responses of senior faculty who had their little feelings hurt because the junior faculty did not appreciate their mentoring. Get over yourself. At all three of my academic jobs there were older faculty who felt the need to “mentor” myself and the other junior faculty. Guess what? None of us asked for it nor needed it. If I want your insight or clarification, I will ask for it. I somehow managed to live my life, get an advanced degree, have children, and get a job I like all without your help. What makes you think that you have some great professional insight that no one else does? What I do not want to become, and will never be, is a new version of you, so save both your breath and your "mentoring" for whatever poor soul actually wants it. In the pained whining of these senior faculty one can hear the echo of a whole generation of crotchety old grandparents bitching about the young whipper-snappers down the street.