"The Regulars." Dana From Decatur Sends an Open Letter to The Old Dudes In Her Class.

Yes, you are older than me. You have lived many lives, seen many sights, and my experiences pale in comparison to yours. True. Fine. Great. And yes, you are maler than me. No need to whip out any proof; I had established that much myself. But here’s the thing, guys: THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU GET TO COMMENT ON HOW I RUN THIS FUCKING CLASS. Got it? In fact, I don’t value your opinion any more than that of the snot-nosed eighteen-year-old sitting next to you, whose mommy forgot to pack him some Kleenex this morning.

You see, you are here, in my classroom, at this glorious CC. MY classroom. MINE. You do not win it, get an increased say in it, or have any reign over it simply because of your old maleness. We are not going to debate this. We are not going to arm wrestle for it. I do not want to know how you think I should “handle” the brat in the corner who keeps talking during class. I am not interested in your calculated estimations of the perfect amount of time to allow for quizzes. And I am not going to listen to your opinion of how I could re-structure the syllabus to make it more “pleasant.” I don’t want your emails critiquing how I handled class discussions, I don’t want your patronizing “support” (“Keep ‘em on their toes!!”), and I certainly don’t want your not-so-subtle grade pandering (“I know you can see how hard I’m working - especially compared to the rest of them - so I’m sure that my grade will allow me to continue receiving financial aid so that I can feed my dear children.”)

Friends, in my classroom, YOU ARE ONE OF “THEM.” You are not God; you are not my co-pilot. You are another student, no different than those fresh from High School. Your life experiences have earned you no superiority here. Period. Done. I know the thought of being lumped with Playa’ Pete, Ditzy Dalia, and Slacker Sara may seem vaguely repulsive to you, but by enrolling in this class, you committed to it. I don’t know what brings you here at this point in your life, and frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn. If you want to succeed, do an exceptional job on all the work and show some respect (as in deference to my opinions, practices, and pedagogy - look it up - since this IS my job). But if you keep up this condescending, pseudo-kindness bullshit, you can guarantee that you’ll be just like them—an entitled, narcissistic egomaniac who thinks he deserves something that he is entirely unwilling to work for.

The Angst/Ennui T. New Prodo From RYS & Cafe Press.

The new T is ready at Cafe Press. "My angst gets in the way of my ennui." And yes, we know the saying can go the other way. But that's not how Cricket rolls. It's available for the ridiculous price of $12.99.

We Don't Think We Actually Helped Beaker Ben, But We Are Glad To Hear Dim Darla Won the "Panties" Lottery.

So for this week's Big Thirsty, Beaker Ben wanted to know how to respond to Dim Darla, who'd had quite a shock:

Hi Professor B.

The online homework system said that it encountered an error when I submitted my answer to problem #32. It also said that I should contact tech support. What should I do?

Dim Darla

Our readers had these thoughts:

• "Thank God you realized the system had been hacked by Al-Qaeda. 'Tech support' is really Bin Laden himself and had you contacted them, he would have gotten the coordinates he needed to attack your dorm!"


• "What on earth are you doing the homework for? Are you out of weed?"


• Reply to the email with the body of the original and with the message 'I'm in the machine, Darla. And I can see you. You don't have to yell.'


• Tell her that the answer lies in her keyboard, and she should raise it over her face, open her eyes wide, and shake it like a magic 8 ball. (I'm hoping she's on a desktop because this is a bit trickier with a laptop. Still possible though.)


• "Darling Darla, question #32 is the special question. You've won my little panties lottery."


• "FOR GOD'S SAKE DON'T MOVE. I'M SENDING THE CAMPUS CLOWN WITH A FULL BOTTLE OF SELTZER."


• "What online homework system?"


• How did that one saying go? Tell her: When in doubt, run around, scream and shout? (feel free to correct me on this one).


• "This is the homework system. Why didn't you contact tech support like I asked you to? You've made me very angry. If you continue to disobey, I'll have to disconnect the oxygen supply."


• "Dear Darla: Webnkd adkjfooad fjdkowjf ka;ldkje piouerpoim ja;dj cvncnvc; oeiruie uehgaohg dkeufgyrueo ajfowjf. Okay?"


• "Don't feed the beast..."


• "I'm sorry! I am a bit overwhelmed with planning just now; perhaps you would like to send your note to Dear Abby."

Wonderful Witchy From Wichita Creates Some New Sites With Which We Can Avoid Our Committee Work.

Based on the major success of a popular student website meant to help students vent obscenities behind their professors' backs, and the miserable failure of its mirror site, SateMyProfessors.com, meant to help these same students satisfy the requirements of a liberal arts education while keeping their professors happy as a clam, and in an effort to improve student performance and raise their morale, I propose a series of alternative websites:

(1) GrateMyProfessors.com, a culinary site where students learn to treat their professors like chopped liver. Membership includes free weekly recipes, including how to spike a teacher's apple with arsenic and make your own napalm soup.

(2) IrrigateMyProfessors.com, a site designed primarily for students of agriculture and environmental science to judge their professors in wet tee-shirt contests. Please ensure that your flash player is up to date.

(3) RaceMyProfessors.com, an interactive visualizer designed primarily for students in the athletics department to create customizable profiles of their professors in jockstraps. As in (2), please ensure that your flash player is up to date.

(4) DateMyProfessors.com: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Receiving Crap and Start Looking at Fabulous Grades. Open to women of all body types.

And finally,

(5) FaceYourProfessors.com, a radical experiment in web design that releases students from the tyranny of their computer screens and enables them to confront their professors head-on. The logistics of this innovative alternative, as well as real-size holograms of faculty members, are currently in the works.

Readers Go Wild For the Vid-Shizzle Litmus Test, And We Separate the Chaff From Whatever, The Quick From the Dead.

The recent vid-shiz-eo from the "magnificent" one generated a lot of chatter, what with it being an official litmus test for RYS readers. Here are our favorites:

Okay, I'll bite. We're supposed to guess if the "magnificent" video is something to mock or celebrate. Pass. It's a bore, regardless.

I'm on her side. This is the kind of video I think faculty need to watch periodically. These are kids!!!! Do you understand that? Were you a kid once? The folks who made fun of the previous Vid-Shizzle girl, the one who had "issues" with her English teacher, should just pull back on the thrusters a bit. It seems to me, based on the posts on this site, most of us deal with a lot of undergrads. Well, undergrads are up at 1 in the morning, being told they're "magnificent" or "hot" or "cute" or "swell" or "awesome," while we're at home sleeping. They're just making their way in the world, and I think the magnificent kid is just normal. If your readers hate her or what she stands for or anything like that, then I wouldn't want them teaching my kids.

My gay cat...that's the one that killed me. At least she's using a dictionary, man, that's a triumph in itself.

I love the litmus test. There should be an ejector seat situation where anyone who dislikes her should be forced to turn in their PhD at the humanity doorway.

She may be magnificent, but she should get to bed and get ready for my Chem test tomorrow morning.

But where's the rest of the story? Who called her magnificent? What was the context? How can I get the full "high drama" payoff if I don't know the whole thing?

I will answer with my favorite ever line from Entourage. "Smoke more weed, Turtle. Seriously."

Our students are dumb. Is that it?

That girl was me, despite the fact I was a boy. But I did the same thing in my journal at night after a day in class and a night in the dorms. It's cute, playful, and it's just someone living on her own for the first time, experiencing things. We forget, I think, that students go through an amazing transition out of their high school and family bedrooms when they end up in college. They are thrust into a world where they have so much power over their time. It's 1 am. So what? She is magnificent, and we need to recognize that students are just kids. They're on their way to adulthood, but they're not there yet. Don't let anyone bad mouth her, K?

January's 100th Post. Today's Vid-Shizzle.

In December of 2007, a much beloved correspondent made us the video below. It purports to show the actual RYS compound, although those of us who live here can tell you that the video is wildly optimistic. Please to, you know, enjoy:

Books? We Don't Need No Stinking Books!

One of the most frequent questions we get from newer faculty is about books.

So, next week we want to feature some essential books that all academics should have. Please submit the titles of a couple of our favorites, and note if they're especially field or discipline specific.

Send your lists here.

The Half-Dick is Back.

We're going to temporarily suspend Vid-Shiz-Eo because whenever we post a video, the half-dick who identifies himself as rateyourstudents05 harasses the maker of the video through the Youtube comments pages. (He also has used "abateyourstudents," "berateyourstudents," and "dateyourstudents" as parts of different screen names.)

We've wrestled with doing the right thing here, not overreacting, but here's the kind of thing we're talking about.

Posted on the Youtube page for our "magnificent" vid-shizzle girl:

Some of our correspondents claim they have indentified you on social networking sites other than Youtube. They are in the process of gathering & analyzing every piece of information you posted onto the web in order for us to identify your personal information and then forward this video to your teachies. Your spoken language ability is terrible at best. Your written language ability must be even worse. This video, by itself, proves that you passed Grade 1 thanks to social promotion policies.

You know? It's just about enough to unplug the big satellite dishes out back that bring us the Internet. If we had any other outlet for porn and Zappos.com, we'd do it, too.

Some ideas that have come in this morning (from a longtime reader who has tracked the activities of the half-dick for the past week or so), are to a) only link to videos that are already wildly popular and which have a large number of comments; b) don't link to naifs or innocents like the Vid-Shizzle Girls; c) only link to people we HOPE others will harass.

We stand by for any suggestions or ideas.

Beaker Ben Is Oh So Thirsty, And He Comes To RYS Readers For Help. "How Can I Mock Dim Darla While At the Same Time Appearing to Help Her?"

I use an online homework system for my class. Students are told in several ways (written syllabus, first-day lecture, interpretive dance, etc) that all technology issues are their problem, not mine, and that they can contact the homework system’s excellent tech support people. With that background, consider the email I just received:

Hi Professor B.
The online homework system said that it encountered an error when I submitted my answer to problem #32. It also said that I should contact tech support. What should I do?
Dim Darla

I’m overwhelmed by the possible responses I could give. Please, dear readers, provide me with guidance by answering this poll:

How should Beaker Ben respond to Dim Darla?

A. Quit now, before the folks of Rate Your Students rip you to shreds.
B. Your professor forwarded your email to the local tech support center in Unspecified American Town. My name is Beaker Bhavesh. Please delete your hard drive.
C. Enter a career field where incompetence is rewarded, such as politics.
D. For God’s sake, don’t contact them. You’ve paid $25 to access the homework website. You
wouldn’t want them to earn their money, do you?

If you have other ideas, send them in too. Keep them to 25 words or less. If I don’t get any responses, I’ll be forced to write a polite email to Darla that includes the tech support email address and phone number, gives her a three day extension on the assignment and asks for a follow-up email from her so that I know everything was taken care of to her satisfaction.

Please help.

Wherein Purgatory Patrick Takes A Swipe At High School English Teachers. It's Almost a Regular Feature Here on RYS.

Vid-Shizzle Girl's teacher is actually reading novels in class? Jesus, I went to the redneckiest high school in the wannabe Confederate States of America and even we had higher expectations for all our Future Farmers of America. OK, so the crap we read was treacly, New Age-ist swill (I am kept warm during these East Coast winters by my hatred for Barbara Kingsolver), but we were expected to read it at home. And we bitched less about having to buy 8-12 books per course in high school than some snowflakey students here at Prestigious-but-Poor Jesuit U. complain about the half-dozen texts (many of them classics, none of them too expensive) that they have to buy.

Anyway, the girl's complaints ring true. Sorry, high school English teachers, but unless you are at least moderately talented and/or physically attractive, your courses are by far the most worthless things we ever sat through; too many of you are drippy liberal coulda-been-a-contenda lit majors from college who didn't have the stomach for real research and are venting your frustrations and the remnants of your ideals on people who are, largely, prettier, smarter, and more ambitious than you. Frankly, I'd be more worried if the Youth of Today weren't bitching about their high school English course. (Don't try to blame it on NCLB, either; your courses sucked before Dubya's abortion of a bill, and they will continue to suck after Obama repeals it.)

We Wrap Up Our Series on Vid-Shizzle Girl ("I Have Some Issues...). Programming Patty Spars With Lex.

I agree with with Lex from Lakeland that IHAP METViG's English class sounds like a dreary waste of time but not that IHAP METViG is capable of oh-so-much more than the poor language skills demonstrated in her video suggest.

What is Lex's evidence for this girl's hitherto-unseen capabilities? I suspect Lex is one of those Pollyannas who believes that every child can have a superior vocabulary if only the educational system would 'give' it to them. Lex says this at least three times in her defense of IHAP METViG: "she hasn't even been equipped with a vocabulary rich and sophisticated enough to mount a decent critique of the experience ... she hasn't been given the language skills to express that ... an education that matches her abilities - an education she won't get, and an education she doesn't even have the language to describe."

If only language skills could be 'given,' we'd all be William Safire. Language skills, like most skills, are acquired through practice, with the added advantage that language skills can easily be self-taught. IHAP METViG might check out a few books from the library to read in her oodles of spare time that her un-challenging English class allows her. She might write daily in a journal or a blog, acquire a pen pal, or even one of those corny 'word-a-day' daily calendars. Instead of filming vague complaints about her English class, she might sharpen those language skills by writing an angry letter to her school's principal. No doubt this conflicts with Lex's teaching philosophy in which she has 'given' all her students their rich vocabularies and keen insight for critical analysis, but there are any number of ways to improve one's vocabularly and language skills without waiting for your high school English teacher to 'give' them to you.

It's never too late to learn how to read, write, and speak correctly and eloquently! If IHAP METViG has superior abilities simply for complaining about her English teacher, then so do all the snowflakes in the world who haven't been 'given' the language to properly express themselves.

Vid-Shizzle. I Slept Through Class Dot Com.

Wherein we respond to dozens upon dozens of requests to post this site.

Breaking News: Parents Want Kids to Get Higher Grades.

Viriginia Parents Fight for Easier Grading Standards.

"I Was Just Told I Was Magnificent. It's Like 1 in the Morning." Today's Vid-Shizzle.

Wherein we float another vid-shiz-eo litmus test your way.

Square State Sandra Surprises Snotty Snowflake Stevie.

Stevie Snowflake (or Epic Fail for short) is making my life miserable this semester. Doesn't show up for class (love this, he always raises his hand to answer questions - and is usually wrong); is late for lab; doesn't submit lecture notes; has missed 4 exercises out of 15 due, he usually hands in at the very last moment (Moodle is such a darling); is in the fifth semester of a computing degree and has already failed Programming 102 twice. This is his last chance before we relegate him to trade school, although he would have trouble figuring out how to dig a ditch properly.

He is constantly bitching for points - in the lab, after lecture, in my office hours, by email. Lucky me, he hasn't called at home yet. He needs points - he is failing, miserably. And he is often out of town on work, you see. He will have to ace the final in order to even pass.

Today he handed in another slovenly report - spelling checker? What's that? I can only guess at the meaning of his sentence structure. And yes, this is his native language he is writing in. I again called him out on last minute work, and he again got mad, feels this is an insult when I say this to him.

He just sent me a threatening email. I must quit saying that he doesn't work enough and must allow him to hand in late work. He is going to report me to the dean of students for insulting him.

Wait for it...

*I* am the dean of students.....

The Angry Archie Theatre Company Presents: "My B+." A dialogue in 14 acts.

So here I am, enjoying the relative calm of the beginning of the beginning of the new semester. I escaped the lurid spectacle of the AHA and ran off to the exotic tourist destination where I do my research. Now I’m tanned, rested, and ready to rock out with my ... but I digress.

So I open my office door the tiniest of cracks for my first official office hour of the new semester confident that I’ll be able to catch a quick jet lag nap between classes, since it is way too early in the semester for snowflurries of any description. So I lean back in my Herman Miller chair, and prepare to snooze, when a knock at the door disturbs my frame of mind. In walks T, from last semester’s course, and I know my day, no, my entire semester is about to be ruined.

Me: Have a seat T. What can I do for you? [as if I didn’t already know]

T: I want to talk to you about my final grade for your course.

Me (with my best innocent look): Sure, mind if I pull up my spreadsheet and see what you earned? [as if I didn’t already know]

T: No need, I got a B+.

Me: Sounds like you did well to me. What’s the problem?

T: I don’t think I did that well. I mean, I worked really hard and all I got was a B+. I think I should get a higher grade, given how hard I worked.

Me: Well, unfortunately, your own assessment of how hard you worked is not one of the grading criteria in any of my classes, so there is not much I can do for you.

T: OK, but I also felt the grading was really inconsistent.

Me: Don’t you mean that your written work was inconsistent?

T (stammering): Uh, well, no, yes, I guess...

Me: So then I also assume that what you mean to say is that you wish your work had been consistent enough to earn you an A-, but unfortunately it was not and you are disappointed in yourself.

T: OK, I see where you are going with this, but I just can’t get a B+.

Me: Oh, and why is that? [as if I didn’t already know]

T: Because I want to go to law school.

Me: Oh, don’t worry. A law school will accept you.

T stares at me with her mouth open.

Me: Is there anything else?

T: Can I come see you next week?

Me: Sure, if it will make you feel better.

T leaves.

There are 13 weeks left in the semester, and I will bet the meager contents of my 403b that I am in for 13 more dances around the Maypole with little T. I also know that the gears in her overtaxed pea-brain are grinding away at maximum rpms to come up with a better strategy for next week. I predict the “but I really felt I learned so much in your class, which is why I was so devastated by the grade” gambit, with the “I got an A from Professor P, and everyone knows that she is a really tough grader” diversion to follow in act three, and the “if I can’t go to law school, I’ll figure out some other way to get rich” feint somewhere around act ten (and yes, a student really said that to me once).

And I also know that by the 14th act I will have destroyed her will to live and the tears will flow like warm sewage from the cloaca maxima in ancient Rome, and I will push the box of tissues I keep for just such occasions across the desk and smile pleasantly. How do I know? Because this will be the third time I've gone down this road in the last four semesters. And of course it is always over a B+. It is the curse of working at an institution where two-thirds of the undergrads are so unimaginative, that the only possible future they can dream of involves either law school or medical school. The other third used to imagine themselves in the broker training program at some investment bank, so I honestly don't know what the fuck they are thinking anymore. Maybe they are working out a panhandling strategy, or a "fries with that" strategy. I certainly could not care less.

But deep in the darkest corners of my soul I live in abject terror. Because I know that while T has no chance at the A- she so desperately covets, I secretly fear that a day will come when I will no longer have the energy to push back for 14 long and lonely office hours of pleading and protestations. The day will come when I too will embrace the University of Minnesota’s grading standards. Ooops, sorry, I forgot. They have gifted teachers who provide perfect syllabi for their hard-working little students.

Archie out.

Reach / Teach!

"Just Shut Up & Listen." Gary Busey Offers an Impromptu Course in, Er, Well, It's Sort A Meaning of Life Sort of Thing. Vid-Shizzle.

Mid-Career Mike Returns And Is Packing His Bags For Fla.

Oh yeah, it's me. I love the photo of me, by the way, though I'm so much more handsome than that I can't even tell you.

Reamed Ass College made the job offer to me Friday, by phone, and it nearly broke my heart to tell them no. Imagine the kind of material I could have written about for you guys for years to come.

Regardless, my little foray on the job market has been fun. Besides Reamed Ass College, I also spent two days in a bucolic little college in northern Florida. What a bunch of backwards fuckers they were there! No, I'm just kidding. They were nice, professional, and the visit was just the opposite of the nightmare at Reamed Ass.

SodaPop College is in a surprisingly green and leafy town near the northern Florida border, and they were just the sweetest damn people I'd ever met. The chair and his wife (a faculty member in a different department) took the lead for my visit, carting me wherever I had to go, getting me there on time, providing water bottles and a choice - I am not lying - of three different energy bars right out of Mama Professor's purse.

The folks were smart, funny, collegial, and there was such a depth of knowledge among everyone about my research and my work that I felt at times like they must be putting me on.

They showed me a great office that could be mine. They arranged for a realtor to show me some neighborhoods - but only if I wanted to take the time. Our group dinner was at a faculty member's house, and we sat around a pool under tiki lights and drank beer and talked about politics, football, oh, and the college.

Before I left town on the crop duster airplane, I was sold. The first day I returned home they made the offer and I took about 14 seconds to accept.

I do not have a long history in the academic job market, but one thing has come to me quite clearly: when it's right, you know it. I've taken other jobs where my feelings were mixed. I needed a job and they had one. BOOM. But I've had my gut turn, too, and I tried not to get stuck in those places.

SodaPop College, which awaits my arrival in August, just felt right. I don't know how to universalize this experience enough so that it works for everyone. I know too well that the bad economy means lots of folks are scrambling and will take whatever gets offered them this year. I'm not saying that's bad. I recognize it, and without SodaPop College, I might be getting my boxes backed for Reamed Ass County right now.

But trust your gut. If it feels right, and if the folks are welcoming, almost nothing else matters. I could make more money somewhere else, I could certainly hang on and wait for a more prestigious place. But I had 2 great days down there, and that means more to me than anything.

I know I'm lucky, and although this may disqualify me from RYS (because it is a little sweet and sentimental), I just want to tell job seekers to hang in there. When it's right, it's going to feel right.

Our Faith In Humanity is Restored, As Lex from Lakeland Arrives to Support A Recent Vid-Shiz-Eo Kid...

I was somewhat surprised by Pollyanna's reaction to the "I have a problem with my English teacher" vid girl [or IHAP METViG]. Pollyanna calls her a "little spoiled snow-flakey bitch" and lists boredom, distraction and entitlement as her chief faults. Now don't get me wrong--IHAP METViG was annoying, and her video revealed a great deal of immaturity (she is in high school, after all). But underneath the adolescent melodrama and repetitive blathering I spy a picture of a failed system and a girl hungry for more than her leaner- (but not learning-) centered school will deliver.

Note how many times she complains about the absurdly slow pace of the class. They are apparently reading this novel together, in class, at the pace of a chapter or two a day. The student recommends assigning reading at home, as homework. That's right, the student is asking for homework. If we read at home, she says, we could move through this book in a week. That would leave time for other books--they could read more, learn more. If she's a snowflake, she's a snowflake with a work ethic and a desire to read.

She read The Catcher in the Rye before, and loved it. Now, "all the goodness" is gone from the experience of reading it. Why? She blames "all the worksheets" they have to do and the posters they have to make. Worksheets? Posters? Does her teacher really think that filling in blanks and drawing pictures on posterboard will generate real understanding of a rich literary text? Of course all the goodness is gone. So is the intellectual challenge. This high school class isn't preparing her for college. My students read 300-350 pages every week. Every week they compose their own questions for analysis and discussion, and a couple of times a semester they write 8-10 page papers with a research component. No dittos. No fill-in-the-blank. No posters. No sugar-cube models.

IHAP METViG's high school English class is failing her, and she knows it. The reading is below her level. She isn't being challenged intellectually. She's cranking out worksheets and posters and knows that none if it is important. What is, to my mind, even sadder, is that she hasn't even been equipped with a vocabulary rich and sophisticated enough to mount a decent critique of the experience. She knows she's not doing what she ought be doing--what she is capable of doing--and yet she hasn't been given the language skills to express that. And so she comes off like a snowflake, whom we dismiss and mock, while the system continues to fail her. Perhaps she will lose her desire to read and to learn yet retain her sense of grade-entitlement: become a snowflake in the true sense of the word.

Or perhaps she will fail to negotiate the transition from slow-reading and poster-making to the rigors of the college classroom. I don't have the solution to IHAP METViG's problem. But I do have more sympathy than scorn for this girl who sits in her bathroom and begs for an education that matches her abilities--an education she won't get, and an education she doesn't even have the language to describe. Immature? Absolutely. Snowflakey, not yet. But if the cryptic Mr. M does his job, she will be. Better get busy with those posters, IHAP.

Snowflake, Thy Name Is Honesty.

Original.

Some Links for Monday.

• Outlook grim for wannabe proffies. From the Village Voice.


• It'll only be a post-literate world if proffies keep using words like "physiognomy." From the John William Pope Center.


• Where in academe are the safe jobs? From the Digital Journal.


• More perspectives on the "value" of student evaluations. From the Indiana Gazette.


• Inauguration day classes? How on earth will we ever witness the historical yada yada? From the Merced Sun-Star.


• Sex offender posing as college proffie. (Fill in your own joke here.) From IndyStar.com.

Lethbridge Lou Scattershoots some Smackdown On Some Non-Trad Targets. (We Admit We've Been Waiting Forever For Someone To Get that Bookstore Lady!)

Dear Chucky the chair,
Thank you so much for having my back when I told Dumbass Doug that missing several weeks of class was not going to work. It was so nice when you informed me that his was a “special case.” Now Doug is sitting there knowing he can bitch his way through the class. But that’s ok, he’s “special.”

Dear Granny Gurty,
You told the young ladies in your class you were stepping out of the room so they may better arrange their clothing. Isn’t that sweet. You think I should say that? No...how will I know who to give a B...or maybe a couple of Ds.

Dear Brenda the bookstore bimbo,
Golly you’re right...that is almost the same title. Gee...it is cool how the guy wrote more than one book. But this is still the WRONG FUCKING TEXT! Can you spell isbn?

Dear Tina the One-Year Person,
Read your contract. Around here, visitors have 10 month contacts instead of signing every semester. You are not tenured or even tenure track. You’re really not that special, unless, of course, you’re dating Dumbass Doug.

Wherein Two of Our Readers Take on Modesto Melanie.

We had a number of folks who wanted to take on Melanie from Modesto who recently offered a unique perspective into grade inflation (generally), and the inflation at the U of Minnesota (specifically). We chose these 2 to represent the mail that has come in so far. Please to enjoy:

From Cute Cleo in Calumet City

Yes, I agree, if ALL the little flakes took advantage of all the help offered to them and worked their butts off, the grade scale SHOULD be higher than a natural curve. This doesn't happen, but I'll take Melanie's word for it that, in her case, it magically does. I also "teach well, have a clear syllabus, and clearly lay out course objectives and my methods for achieving them." At least I think I do. I'm guessing that most of us think we do. But thanks for letting us know that we don't and that's why all our students don't get As.

I'm also a little confused when she says that students shouldn't be judged by the standards from within the field. What the hell standards should they be judged by? I don't judge my first year undergraduates students by what I expect from a first year grad student, no, but I judge them by what MY FIELD expects out of an undergraduate-- mainly decent writing, reading, and comprehension of the subject at hand. I'm guessing that Melanie is in the humanities (as am I).

People in the hard sciences don't fall into the trap of thinking that by expecting students to be able to perform the SUBJECT at hand that they are somehow lost in their ivory tower with unrealistic expectations. Students don't all naturally "get" chemistry, but in a CHEMISTRY class they still have to learn the chemistry, by the standards of the field that is chemistry. ("I think I'm going to interpret the periodic table from a music theory standpoint-- for a thought exercise. Will that get me an A?") Students THINK they all naturally "get" English or history because it is "just reading" but it is readily apparent that many don't. And if you ask the adult college graduate five years later, most will admit that they, for example, "got" anthropology when they didn't "get" history or "got" literary criticism when they didn't "get" philosophy. Fields are different from one another. So we need to accept that yes, all of that extra help COULD get most students to a B and a few to an A. But I, for one, am still holding out the A for the students that show some talent in the field at hand. I didn't expect an A in chemistry class. My students shouldn't all expect an A in history class.

-*-*-*-

From Garrulous Griffith from Green Bay:

There's a fatal flaw in Melanie from Modesto's nefarious plot to explain the excellent grades awarded to the students of the University of Minneapolis.

She notes that students can, essentially, score well because college instructors have refined evaluation methods and expectations to a razor's edge of excellence. She notes, specifically, that "[s]tudents can participate substantively in online discussions, use the campus or department writing tutors to revise drafts before essays are due, know rather than guess what the professor is looking for in a particular assignment, and spot the professor's thesis in a lecture/discussion/learning unit."

Because students know exactly what's expected of them, they can excel! Mel suggests this is a different sort of teaching that elides the elusive bell curve where average performance was awarded a C (even of the Gentlemanly sort), and most of the class was supposed to get that grade. Except, well, um, who said everyone is supposed to get an A just because the prof can tick off a list and say everyone did everything? Where's the evaluation of quality in this equation?

Let's go through that list again, shall we?

Participation in class discussion (in-class or online)? Hard to do when you're busy working those 5 part-time jobs you NEED to pay for the 5 classes you're failing. Also, how does one mark a student who does nothing at all? Or the bare minimum? Tick it off and move along! They triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiied!

Drafting essays and getting feedback before the final submission? What? See 5 part-time jobs excuse above. And, how does one get feedback when one is "drafting" the night before the paper is due? Do you get a TARDIS along with those laptops and iPhones at freshman orientation nowadays?

Knowing what the prof wants for assignments? Well, my own profs back in the day were light on written instructions, so I was all for eradicating that little nuisance when I taught. But, well, I could pass out the numerical rubric with the lengthy instructions (that were also explained in class) and I'd still get 30% of the class who ignored them yet squealed "I didn't knooooooooooooooooooooow!" when they earned an F.

Spotting the professor's thesis in a lecture? I once spent a week lecturing on such topics as the legacy of Edison to the film-making industry, the history of the development of cinematic technology, and the social aspects of film-watching to a classroom full of undergrads. Some of them asked me at the end of the week which chapters they were supposed to read for the test on that topic. I suggested they explore that multi-page leviathan I called their syllabus and look at the table of contents of their textbook for the chapter title that seemed to capture the essence of the lecture series. Yes, these brainchildren didn't realize the chapter titled "The Motion Picture" would be the wise choice to study. If so many of them lack the awareness to spot an over-arching topic, can we really rely on them to grasp the thesis of a lecture even if we ram it down their throats?

So, while I do agree with Mel that students should be excelling with all the instructional support they now get [often at the expense of the instructors], one must examine the students involved in the situation as well. Is the University of Minnesota some hotbed of braniac activity? Is that where inbred Mensa members send their superspawn? Cuz, if it's some run-of-the-mill, typical undergrad sort of place, then I'd put good money on "grade inflation" as the cause of all those A's and B's.

A well-designed course should end up with mediocre students earning C's, good students earning B's, and excellent students earning A's. If not, then all of the grades of those of us from previous generations should have our GPAs retroactively increased by one full point. To not do so is, to quote our favorite snowflakes, "not faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaair!"

Bitchy Bear Lets It All Out.

So I teach a class in which I have an assignment whereby a student has to work with a volunteer among their friends or family network who is nearing or over the age of 70. It is not a hard assignment. But this assignment has broken a new personal record for me: this assignment has prompted an outraged student complaint to the undergraduate program chair the very first week of school.

Let me digress for a bit. Do you have personal records? I've always been a competitive little SOB, and so one of the ways I entertain myself in this rotten business is to document points where the job has driven me to new highs or new lows:

• Earliest in the day I have made a student cry: 8:13 am
• Shortest number of blue book pages I read before they drove me to the drinks cabinet: 1
• Highest number of bathroom breaks I have to take in a faculty meeting to prevent the words "would you people STFU" from blurting out of my mouth: 4
• Highest number of times I have had to tell the same parent that I am not going to discuss her child's grade with her: 5
• Highest number of "I learned a lot but she was a mean meany meanpants" on one single set of evaluations: 30
• Highest number of lies I have caught a single student in: 7
• Highest number of my students I have seen, ever, in the library: 0
• Highest number of times the same student has threatened to have me fired: 3
• Highest number of times the same student threatened to sue me or the university because of me: 1, so far
  

Anyhoodily, you get the drift. Sometimes I think I am my own little Rainman, keeping these little tallies on the Things In My Life that Shouldn't Be.

But back to our little friend who has gone to my director to complain. I teach in two programs, and this program director is one of those delightful senior faculty you basically dream of having. He's a kindly, grey-haired gent with the tweed jackets and with smile lines around his eyes and a distinguished career of work behind him that he himself never refers to. He genuinely listens to students' complaints and then, based on the content, either tells the kid to grow up or comes to talk to you to get your side of the story. He's totally got your back. He has the patience of a freaking saint and/or bottles of Jim Beam hidden all over his office. He is also 72 years old. I can only imagine how this complaint sounded to him based on the class interaction I had:

Snowflake: You mean, we're supposed to talk to AN OLD PERSON. (Said in the same tone I'd imagine young flake would use were he discussing the possibility of panning for gold in a sewer).

Dr. B. Bear: Yes.

Snowflake: Can't we just ask anybody?

Dr. B. Bear: No.

Snowflake: How are you going to KNOW that we asked AN OLD PERSON?

Dr. B. Bear: Because the assignment requires you videotape the interaction.

Snowflake: But I don't know any OLD PEOPLE.

Dr. B. Bear, tiring of the interaction: You have a choice of doing 3 out of 6 assignments. Just pick different assignments then.

Snowflake: But the other assignments make you READ A BOOK. (Said, this time, in the same tone he'd use were he confronting the possibility that he'd have climb Everest with only his boxers and a can of chocolate-covered cashew nuts).

So, dear director, I am terribly sorry that one of my assignments prompted this little gem to come see you, an older person who epitomizes the gift that older people can be, about how wrong it is that I expect students to interact....with older people.

Good Gravy! This Just Makes Me Want to Login Somewhere and Get Another Degree. Today's Vid-Shiz-Eo.

Today's Vid-Shiz-Eo. "Uh, Isn't It Just Easier To Peek Over Glen's Shoulder?"

One Professed Pollyanna Lets a Recent Vid-Shiz-Eo Get Under Her Pink and Pretty Skin.

Hi All--You may remember me. I posted a while ago about my Pollyanna attitude towards my students. I would like to believe that I still have that same outlook but it may not be as sparkly as it once was.

I watch the video of the "I have a problem with my English teacher" and I have to first admit that it was the first of the videos taht I have watched. BUT...I can't wait until that little spoiled snow-flakey bitch gets into my class. I only hope that she lives near my Mid-west, Mid-size U and enrolls in my section. She displays so many of the many traits that are wrong with the students of today; bored in class and boring to listen to, easily distracted, and most of all, entitled. I, personally, love her comment about how she would be upset if someone gets a better grade than her in the Humanities course. I would hate for her feelings to be hurt.

So here is to my Pollyanna attitude-tarnished as it may be-and here is to waiting for that pleasant little Flake to make it to my classroom. I'll be drinking gin and tonics until she arrives with her trumpets sounding and flags waving.

Melanie From Modesto Wants To Suggest An Alternative to the Cheap and Tawdry Explanation That Good Grades Are Given to Curry Favor with the Flakes.

It seems to me that nobody is asking the professors why there are so many A and B grades at the University of Minnesota. This is very annoying. I read the literature on education; I read reviews of reports about how the brain learns new things; I participate in workshops put on by the campus center for teaching and learning; I succumb to administrative pressure to make my syllabus into a contract which specifies goals and outcomes.

If I teach well, have a clear syllabus, and clearly lay out course objectives and my methods for achieving them, two things are happening: 1) I am teaching differently than professors used to teach when bell curves were expected to naturally occur, and 2) students perform better than when they were judged by professional standards within the field.

One no longer needs to be an academic-in-training to earn a high grade. Students can participate substantively in online discussions, use the campus or department writing tutors to revise drafts before essays are due, know rather than guess what the professor is looking for in a particular assignment, and spot the professor's thesis in a lecture/discussion/learning unit.

Students SHOULD earn higher grades under these circumstances, or what was all that work for? If I can’t do better than a “normal” grade curve, then teaching doesn’t matter at all. It might just be the case that the University of Minnesota has a lot of really good teachers.

On Public and Private.

Three recent Vid-Shiz-Eos are no longer available to us, a result of the videos' owners making the work private. We think that's fine.

At the time that we linked to any of the videos on this site, they were publicly available to anyone who stumbled across them or found them through searches. In the case of the professor's video we posted a couple of hours, he sent us a note before pulling his video back explaining that it was really just intended for some pals, and he had failed to note the privacy settings available to him when he posted it.

We're debating what to do. We got a couple of notes from other folks who are annoyed that we've linked to these pieces, and we're trying to be sensitive, but at the same time we're just linking material that is on the Internet and accessible to anyone already.

As a matter of public record, if we link to a video of yours and you're unhappy about it, make the video private. Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, and MySpace all allow this sort of security.

Our best,
RYS

(Compound Cricket)

Fritz From Fizzy Wine State Examines His Department's 2008 Hires.

All this talk about boon or bust candidates makes me think a bit about my department's own situation. We hired 2 terrific on-paper collegiate stars last April, and they are now just a bit more than 1/2 way through their first years with us. They couldn't have worked out much differently.

I teach at a massive Great Lakes uni, in one of the largest departments on campus. We have more than 100 faculty members - if you count everybody - and it's a little easy to get lost in the shuffle here. But, those who want collegiality get it. There's, in fact, a very active "core" group of proffies who advertise "coffee seminars" weekly to catch up on what's going on in the department. It's possible to stay on the outside of things, but it's also very easy to work closely with others as if you were at a small school.

Get-Involved Greta and Leave-Me-Alone Lisa both came from top 20 R1s from the northeast. They were among our top 4 picks last year, and we were very pleased to get them. Their interviews had been similar. Both were very smart, sharp, and spoke easily of their work. They're in different sub disciplines, but they fit our job ads beautifully. Both expressed a real interest in our city, and both had family members within a half day's drive. Both were single.

When they arrived, it was remarkable how different things were. Greta got involved. She asked about committees. She wondered if there was a list of majors she could look over. She asked about the history of the department. She kept office hours during the day, and when she was overwhelmed with our large survey course, she asked for help.

Lisa, on the other hand, well, nobody ever saw her. In about week 4 I remember our chair coming to my office (as I was officed nearby) and asking whe I'd seen her last. "At the interview," I said.

Lisa taught during the day, like most of us, but kept office hours after 5 pm. She didn't come to the first "all department" faculty meeting, but when she came to the second she said her name during our new faculty introduction, but nothing else.

It bugged our chair so much that I was asked to make an attempt to check in with Lisa to see if she needed anything. I stayed after hours on a Wednesday until her 5:30 pm hours started and I think she was startled to see me. Another colleague was chatting with me in the hall and when Lisa saw us she walked past us into her office and closed the door. I knocked and waited and when she opened it I told her our chair had wanted me to follow up with her. Everything okay? Did she need any help? Did she have any questions? Had she spotted any parts of the department she wanted to be more involved in?

All of this took place with me in the hallway, and Lisa peering out at me.

"I can't think of any questions," she said. "I have some work to do," she said next.

I went home, told the chair the next day she didn't have any questions.

Greta, meanwhile, well I see her at lunch and at the coffee seminars. I see her before and after her class. I see her talking to students. We don't require first years to do any committee work, but she asked to be an ad hoc member of the survey class's committee on textbooks. We haven't had any substantive conversations about her adjustment, but I get the sense she'd ask me or others if she had them.

When we got back from holiday break, it was not a huge surprise to hear from the chair that Leave-Me-Alone Lisa was on the job market, and had already had 3 campus visits planned. It was clear she was leaving.

Now I don't know what happened. Of course there are a terrific number of things that influence our career paths, but I'll always think of these two job candidates together: one who made the position and the job work, and one who seemed determined to avoid it all costs.

So, Who Did you Get in the Draft?

• The Big Thirsty asks, did we ever hire this year's hot draft pick only to wish desperately that we had not done so? And there's a related question she didn't ask: have we ever wept bitterly into our sherry because we missed out on this year's Prince Charming of the MLA Ball and had to hire second best - and felt lucky every single day that we hired the one we did? Oh, yeah. The distinguishing characteristics of a Prince(ss) of the MLA are: 1) fashionable thesis topic; 2) comes from an A-rated school; 3) brand name references; and 4) a sprinkle of fairy dust. The "fairy dust" is inexplicable; suddenly someone gets popular, that's all. Everyone wants to dance with this one because, well, everyone else wants to, there must be some reason. But you'll notice that none of these four characteristics actually guarantees a hardworking, congenial colleague who will publish interesting stuff, teach good classes, and pull his/her administrative weight. You can have all four of these things and still be a primadonna, an impossible colleague, a terrible teacher, and your fancy research may turn out to be flash-in-the-pan meaningless crapola easily seen for what it is a decade from now when everybody ISN'T doing it. Or you can have none of those things, and turn out to be a spectacular hire. And it might be easier to tell, because the search committee won't be dazzled by the fairy dust.




• Listen, any attempt to figure out how hiring works is doomed unless you recognize that in most cases, committees never hire the absolutely best candidate or the one with the most potential. In most cases we hire someone mediocre, someone inoffensive, someone who didn't annoy anyone on the committee.




• As one of the much despised silverbacks, let me preface this by saying that I have excellent relations with our junior faculty, at least the ones who stick around. (I'm sure most of you have stopped reading.) But, it has worked out at my nondescript and ordinary liberal arts college that whenever we "overreach" for a candidate, someone who seems too good to be true, a Harvard or Yale, for example, someone with a $1400 suit, someone with a book right out of grad school, they never stay. We fool ourselves into thinking that our pleasant department (and it is) will win them over. We'll get the hero hire and he/she will help us get better. It's never happened. Never. We've never had an overreach stick around. Whenever we pick someone who went to a school like ours, someone who shows up in the same middling suit (or pantsuit) that we wear, they stick, make it work, end up being our pals, (one time a spouse!), and our colleagues.




• I love today's question. We had what we though was a dismal job season last year. We lost our top two candidates right after the AHA. Then our next two bailed before we could get campus visits. #5 stuck at her college. We got to #6 and #7 before we got to campus visits, and we hired both. They've been little miracles in our department, hard working, interesting, real bursts of energy for us. And to think we bemoaned our bad luck while we waited at the airport for each... Shame on us. Lucky for us!




• Oh yes, we have made hires we've regretted. The most common problem is lack of social skills, when dealing with students: I like to think we're a collegial, supportive department, but some young faculty turn out to be tone-deaf in ways only academics can be, and that this will happen isn't always obvious during an interview. There's also the perennial problem of faculty who don't publish, or even prepare for class. We haven't had any "diamonds in the rough," because the job market is so tight, it makes us risk-adverse.




• One year we got five hires. Three of them are gone. One left after the first year for the job he really wanted at State U. One sold a screenplay and ran away to Hollywood after four years. (I'm still waiting for that movie to come out.) And one was fired after deciding to take an unauthorized two-week international vacation in the middle of the term. Of the two remaining, one sleeps with students and gives out A's to anyone who asks for one. The other has a nasty temper yet still manages to keep his job despite assaulting a student and regularly holding screaming matches with colleagues in their offices.




• We recently denied tenure to a prof that I hired when I was chair. She had given a rock star interview, lecture and performance. She really gave it thought and panache. But from day 1 on the job, she was a mess. Her lectures were poorly organized, at a grad level for freshman non-majors and she spoke very softly and without thinking. Labs including winter field trips were a disaster, forgetting supplies, students and more. She couldn’t and wouldn’t work with others in her department. The dean and VP got involved offering her help and advice, sent her to some training courses she really wanted to attend and she was given a fabulous mentor. Despite 2.5 years of trying to help her succeed, she didn’t. It was very difficult emotionally for the department to deny tenure to someone who held such promise but tanked. We haven’t missed her. A more recent hire was a gamble, young fresh Ph.D. with the right HR credentials (i.e. minority). We had a good feel about her; her lecture and interview weren't perfect but she had energy. We need that. We took the gamble and everyone fell in love with her, her students worshipped her and we began to think we needed to rethink our hiring policies to hire these newbies.




• This may be tangential to the question, but I think it bears some discussion. Before we talk about hiring and committees, let's be sure we know what we're talking about. There's a class of college that does not fuck with the search committee system as it's most often run. I'm a recent grad from a top 10 university (in any way you want to measure them). For as long as I was there - 7 years - they hired in the following manner. One person is in charge, sometimes the chair of the department, sometimes it's a former chair. That person unilaterally identifies someone he wants to hire. (In the 7 years I was there, it was a he for 4 years and a she for 3.) In any case, that job search is unofficially called by that candidate's name - and this is before the candidate even knows he/she's in demand. In the chair's office, a folder gets written up, the "Superstar Sydney" folder, for example. Then the chair begins to wine and dine Sydney, while some lackey starts a job search through the normal channels, professional journal, etc. There are interviews and campus visits and all the niceties, but those poor schmoes might as well have just thrown their CVs in the ocean, because if Sydney doesn't take the job, then the chair just picks someone else he wants and goes after him. The rest is a sham. We had 4 major hires in the time I was in my PhD program, and every one went exactly like this. It wasn't until I got out into the real world, a nice and mediocre state uni in my home state, that I realized how insane that superstar practice is. Let's be clear. There aren't a ton of schools that run it like my alma mater, but when you're talking about job searches and committees, keep in mind that there's a class difference. There's us in the great middle ground of American colleges, and then there's an elite class where the rules (even if they're just polite rules) don't apply.




• I was really liking the metaphor of the job search as a draft. Then I realized that the last time my search committee tried to trade our pick for cash and a prospect to be named later, we got in trouble with the dean. It's still a fitting analogy. In every search, you always have to decide whether you want to go with the safe choice who will be a decent role player but not much else, or take a chance on a young kid who hasn't accomplished much but has the potential to put your department on the map. Of course, superstars in the making generally demand trades to to a large market team the second they meet their potential, making them dangerous picks for the Regional R1 Warriors (seriously, why does every regional school have an incredibly generic mascot? Warriors, Bears, Wolves... would it kill someone to be a Schooner?) I've been on a couple search committees and we always seem to play it safe. Oh, we bring in the studs-in-the-making for personal workouts (on-campus interviews), but that's really just to increase the value of our pick. In the end, we always go for the guy who will give us a solid 20 minutes at backup power forward (read: the person who will publish quietly, teach the worst of the gen ed survey classes for us, and not leave us for MIT after the first book deal). When you draft conservatively, you get comparatively few busts. However, we have had a few stars come out of our conservative draft picks. Some of them bolt for large market teams, but a few others have stayed in an effort to win the championship here.... excuse me, in an effort to remove the "borderline" qualifier from our "Top 50 program" status. We also traded one to Pittsburgh for a goalie from Kamchatka. Nobody really understands Jiri when he speaks, but he's recorded four shutouts this season... excuse me again, I mean he hit four keeners repeatedly with the flat end of his stick when they tried to get to my office (he even caught one in his glove before batting it away). Wait ... what were we talking about again?

"I Have Some Issues With My English Teacher..." Latest Entry In the "Coming to a Classroom Near You Soon" Series.

Some Eagle Eyed Swedes Send In the Following Grading News from Mpls. (And Yes, Before Anyone Asks, We Did Spend ALL Day on the Graphic.)

Good grades the norm at the U, but do they come too easily?
By Jessica Huang

TwinCities.Com

More students at the University of Minnesota get A's in classes than get C's, D's or F's combined, according to a Pioneer Press review of grades.

The examination of marks handed out at the state's leading university between fall 2004 and spring 2007 also found that in lower-level courses, more than 70 percent of students get either an A or a B.

School officials say the top-heavy grading is the result of smarter students. Education observers say the practice highlights a growing tendency at colleges across the nation to trade good education for the higher scores that attract better students and alumni support.

But students can and do figure out how to work the system to raise their grades. The result is that they do less work for the higher grades, said Michael Delucchi, a University of Hawaii professor who has written about student consumerism.

"The customer determines the quality of product," he said.

Full article here.

Big Thirsty Examines the Academic Draft.

As I was reading through Layla's last post about the MLA (and her whining about getting the BESTEST of the BEST candidates--like any of us who couldn't even get an interview really care--yeah I am a bitter like that) I began thinking about professional sports and the college draft.

Every year there is usually some highly prized collegiate athlete which every team wants to draft and then sign. Every once in a while, there is, well for lack of a better word, a real dud who is drafted early, a fantastic collegiate athlete who just can't seem to get it together to make it in the pro league. By comparison, every draft usually contains a few "diamonds in the rough," athletes who are considered mediocre and are drafted in later rounds.

Lo and behold however, these people sometime excel in their sports and are considered steals because they were drafted in later rounds.

Q: I ask you, all who have been on search committees, have you ever hired a candidate that you had high hopes for who then turned out to be a "bust?" On the other hand have you ever hired a diamond in the rough?

A: Send replies here.

"Yo Comments Are Whack." Wherein We Wonder Again Where People Find the Time.

"As Part of the Preparation for My Upcoming Campus Visit, I Was Sent this Promo Video from the English Department. Wish Me Luck!"

Tina from Topeka, Our Favorite Undergrad Du Jour, On Student Loans.

Tina has written us before, most recently her fabulous "posting while drunk" email about a favorite proffie. Ever since then we imagine her out there with some Peppermint Schnapps, dreaming up new pieces to send us. Listen, we're waiting.

I'm still rocking John Stossel, usually I hate the dickhead, but still. No, wait, I still hate him.

But did he do a special on the kiddos who DON'T need a 4+ year education? Holy shit, on a stick. Seriously. My daddy is paying my way through nursing school (he's still betting that I want to be a doc) -- it's all undergrad. God bless him. STILL.

Friend is working on her Masters in education. She wants to teach. She's going to be making around $30,000 a year, her student loans are going to be around $50,000. Not to mention that her hubby bought a fuckin' car for $10,000 on her student loans.

Doctors bitch about their loans, but at least they'll meet or exceed student loans with their jobs. Do people bitch about this, really? Do undergrads even wonder: "Gee, I'll never be able to pay my student loans with the job that I want?"

The Crackpots at Rust Belt State Apparently Have Re-Tooled For the New Century of Advising. Tool? Get It? It's Like We Think They're Tools. Masterful.

As you know, Rust Belt State's long-standing program known as the First-Year Testing, Counseling and Advising Program (FTCAP) is provided for new first-year students entering each of the University's 20 undergraduate campuses. Online placement testing for students at all campuses is coordinated though our office at [main campus], and each campus provides the "academic orientation/academic advising day" component.

As we make our way through the first decade of the 21st Century, improving and modernizing FTCAP is a continuous effort. One important enhancement is an update for FTCAP's formal name: "First-Year Testing, Consulting, and Advising Program." /Note that "Consulting" now replaces "Counseling" /in the title, reflecting the focus on academic advising and consultation in this new century. Even with the revised name, the 53-year old program is still FTCAP.

No doubt, it will take time for those of us responsible for FTCAP at each of Rust-Belt State's campuses and for those maintaining academic information resources to find all of the places were "Counseling" must be replaced by "Consulting." Please begin this process as you update Web sites and written materials, but don't be overly concerned by some omissions. Changing the name will be a work in progress for the next year as we work to educate the University community, along with incoming students and families.

Thank you for your support of this very important academic orientation program for our new students.

Sandra from Sacramento Sends a Shout Out to Her Fifth Grade Teacher, and Makes Her Vote to Keep Homework Going As Long as It's Worth Something.

I had to respond to one of the recent comments about the no homework movement: "Similarly, making students fill out one hundred research note cards does not prepare students to research." Hell yes, it does, if you make them organize the cards by topic and then organize the topics and come up with argumentative claims and then make an outline and so on.

When I started proffing English here at Generic State U., I assigned a final research paper to my first batch of upper-division students. What I got made me lie down with the smelling salts. Quite a few had never used the campus library stacks, had no idea how to use an online catalogue, and did not know how to summarize an argument or even use quotations effectively, let alone enter into any kind of critical dialogue. For this reason, quite a few plagiarized verbatim. Others simply gave up and wrote book reports. I could not fail a whole class in my first quarter of teaching here, so I curved two letter grades up.

I've since designed a set of "babysitting" exercises to romp them through the process, but that's not my point. My point is that I wrote my first research paper in FIFTH GRADE. Mr. Carl Beers (wherever you are, I worship you still) had us come up with a topic, learn to use the Dewey Decimal system, write all information on coded notecards (hundreds), categorize them by topic and so on as above. Meanwhile we learned all about thesis statements, supporting evidence, summary, paraphrase, quotation, etc.

By year's end, each of us 10- and 11-year-olds produced a 15-page, argument-driven paper with footnotes and bibliography. There was, needless to say, a ton of homework involved, some of it totally rote and boring. But at least now I get to look at my college students who say, "I've never written a research paper!" and say, "Well, I've seen 10-year-olds do it, so I'm pretty sure you can learn."

And really. Mr. Carl Beers. If you know him, give him my best.

Video Kerfuffle Rundown: Some Longtime Readers Weigh In.

• There are two categories of prof who read this site, I think. The first like students, enjoy young people, and can laugh at themselves. When we (I place myself in that first category) smack down a student, we do so out of frustration because we know the student can do better. And to head off the vitriol, no, I do not own a cat. The second type of prof hates students, finds them a boring nuisance, and wishes they would go away. That's the kind of jerkass who posted the comment on that youtube video. I could never believe in a God who didn't dance, and I could never teach a student who didn't have fun sometimes. And the truth is, the last time I found a statistically significant result in my data, I quietly closed my office door and did a little Cabbage Patch. The dildo who posted that comment on youtube needs an enema, but if he got one, his head would probably disappear.
  


• I think RYS treads a very fine line most times. We hate our students so much sometimes BECAUSE we love your students so much MOST of the time. If we didn't care about our jobs we wouldn't spend our time here at all. We'd just stare down into the pool of pee at our feet. Instead we come to RYS to work things out, to shake off the dust of a bad day. I know that RYS is a sort of mind-spa for me. I come in beaten down, and leave all pink and puffy and happy. I saw the girls in the video. I saw that you were making fun of the fact that homework was being delayed by a little M.I.A. track, but I also saw the sheer joy in the girls and I recognized myself in the video of my own imagination. (If you want to know my age, let me tell you I did the same dance, but I was wearing gigantic headphones and grooving to Frampton Comes Alive.) Anyway, don't sweat the kerfuffle. And tell the girls to groove that tune one more time THEN get to those Chem equations.
  


• Context matters. Seen on YouTube the video seems innocent enough. Seeing it on RYS I at first had thoughts similar to half-dick-wit's. But then I thought a bit and realized that you folks don't hate your students, that you are mostly blowing off steam and hoping a few students figure out what is expected them in college. Then I realized you posted the video because you thought is was funny and cute. I just gave my calculus class a quiz on the prerequisite material after reviewing for three days. Out of 29, only eight scored over 50%. Anyone who overheard me griping at the coffee shop would think I had nothing but scorn for my students. But I spent the last two hours writing to their advisers to refer them for tutoring, placement testing or career counseling, depending on how low they scored. If I didn't care I wouldn't need to gripe. And we need to laugh once and a while.

The original. * Youtube page. * Our reply.

It's Been Ages Since We Ran An Academic Haiku. Remember? "Short, Engimatic Free Verse About Academic Matters, Occasionally Referencing Margaritas?"

I had a student

in my intro class

last semester.

Freddie Flunky,

who had the lowest grade

in the class.

So he will take the course

with me again

next semester.

(He says he wouldn't

think of taking it

with anyone else!)

But it conflicts

with another class

so he can't attend.

"May I submit homework

and take exams

Maybe come to an office hour?"

"Freddie," I say.

"This is a student-centered college.

What do you think?"

Shit! If We Can't Blame High School Teachers? What Are We Going to Do? A Longtime Reader Moonlights And Files This Report From the Farm Leagues.

It's so easy to blame HS teachers, but is it really fair? I think blame is to blame. Professors blame parents and teachers. Teachers blame students and parents. Parents blame teachers and little league coaches. Little league coaches blame mommies, liberals and Bobby Bonilla. But few people accept that identifying a scapegoat doesn't actually fix the problem. When flight 1549 hit the geese, did the pilot stop and blame the geese, or did he land the fucking plane without killing anyone?

I'm one of the RYS adjunct outcasts who has to supplement her income with another job. Guess what that is. I teach AP physics. By comparison to what most HS teachers have to deal with, my job is a dream. I've got the cream of the crop, and it's still a difficult job.

It was mid-term week last week and I had to proctor the below-Regents chemistry mid-term concurrently with my class. So while my kids are trying to work out AP physics problems, I spent the entire two hours telling the chem. class "I can't answer that," over and over and over. For instance, "What does 'ionization energy' mean?" "Discerning whether or not you know that is the point of that question, so I really can't tell you." "Huh?" "I can't answer that, go on to something else." "What does 'which of these elements have similar properties?' mean?" "That's the question, you're not asking for clarification, you're asking for the answer. Just do the best you can."

There were only eight kids in that class, but I actually spent two hours fielding requests for the answers. I know their teacher. I know he doesn't give them answers when they take tests, and yet they keep asking for them. Something is happening that can not be blamed on their teacher. I know all of their teachers and we sit in the faculty room shaking our heads. We don't know why this is happening or how to fix it, but we try.

And in case you still don't feel like HS teachers are in the same boat, here's another little excerpt from the saga of the science midterm. The third time I wouldn't give the same pain in the ass the answer to a question, he said "shit" 15 times, a little bit louder each time, just like the Isley Brothers song, rising from his seat at a rate to match the volume, then screamed "I'm not doing this," held his answer booklet to the wall and wrote, "I'M NOT DOING THIS!!!" all over every page until his point broke.

Then he sat back down silently for a minute or so, got up and walked to my desk and said, "I need another answer booklet and a pencil."

Whatever Happend to Poor Old Mike?

I have to send out mad love to Mid-Career Mike who made my day the other day. I haven't laughed so hard in a while. He captured the campus visit (or one kind of them) beautifully.

I will never forget the old Dean's office smelling like "death and oatmeal."

Mike, you da man.

Now, of course you know what happens next.

• Mike writes another piece, a little more over the top. It's ... eh ... funny.


• Mike doesn't get enough feedback from his brilliance, and writes a mean post about the site, his current colleagues, or a cat.


• People begin to complain about Mike. "If this is what RYS has become, I want out." The affrontage!


• Mike disappears then comes back with an unhinged post about his grad students a la Walt.


• Mike believes himself to be bigger than all of academe.


• We turn on Mike.


• Someone from the compound is dispatched to kill him.

Oh, it's as sure as the sun shining or the snowflakes melting in front of the heat of a midterm.

But, Mike, it was great while it lasted. Now fuck off before it's too late.

Dreamiest. College. Student. Ever.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
1948
Morehouse College
Sociology

Homework Video: Some Half-Dick Fucks Up Something That Actually Brought Us Pleasure - Momentarily.

Last week we linked to a terrific video of two college students putting off homework for a few moments while they jammed to one of our favorite joints of last year, M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." We generated a few hits for the video, and we got a ton of mail from folks who enjoyed the video.

Then some half-wit (using the screen name rateyourstudents05) posted the following on the youtube site that hosts the video:

Rateyourstudents has embedded this video into their website. Professors across the United States (and the world) are LTFAO at you idiots. If you scholars don't want your current or future employers reconsidering your job status because of this video, then click on "private" and share this video only with your fellow drunkards. Rateyourstudents has forwarded this video to your bank (i.e. parents) to demonstrate how you're wasting their money. Nice mu-suck. BTW: I've downloaded a copy via keepvid.

You know what, this has pissed us off in a number of ways. We're not very pleased with the half-dick who sent the post to the girls who hosted the video, and who used a screen name that suggested he was involved with our site. We've since sent a note apologizing for any inconvenience to the students.

Listen, maybe we're off base here, but we liked the homework video. The girls aren't drunk; they're not dressed like $15 hookers. They look - forgive us - like good kids, stuck in a 2 hour homework session and taking 5 minutes off to jam. The half-pint who posted the note above has soured us on the whole enterprise - as if it takes very much.

We welcome any thoughts you all have on this. Publicly, to Heyweasley, we never meant any harm. We certainly didn't do anything like half-baked rateyourstudents05 claimed has happened. We're sorry for any inconvenience.

The moderators,
RYS

**UPDATE**
The original poster of the video has written us a nice note after we sent her our explanation. The video is now embedded again on our original page. Thanks, Weasley!

It's One of Our Favorites. "The Email We Want to Send, But Never Do."

Dear Proffie,

Do we really need the textbook that you have assigned for your Soc class? Being the poor college student I am, I am just making sure I spend my money on a book we actually put to use.

Thanks and see you next week,

Student Snowflake

--

Dear Student Snowflake,

First, what I want you to do is drop my class. Clearly you are too stupid to be in college.

Second, it is time to face reality... you go to Way-Overpriced-Private-University, not North Reamed Ass Community College! Here is a suggestion... sell your Ugg boots or your North Face jacket for the money you will need for your book. I am sure mommy or daddy, who have already dished out $46,000 this year can spear another $(insert price of book here).

Or hey... here is a novel idea... take a Thursday night off from drinking. On the other hand... scratch that one. Next time you are in one of your drunkin stupers and one of those 'oh so slick college fellers is itch'en to tap dat ass... just charge him!! Hell you were going to bang him anyways. Turn a few tricks and you will have made more than enough to pay for the books for all of your classes.

Third... wanted to remind you to drop my class!!!!

Your Oh So Caring Professor

Darling Dana from Decatur Sends An Open Letter to The Poor Dear Retakers.

To all my dear students who took this class last term,

I know that you guys just love to be honest. You tell me in my office hours, "I was kind of messed up on drugs for a while, so this will be my second time in the class." (Fine, blame the drugs; but have you seen your writing sober?) You tell me in writing, "I took this class a couple of times before but I had really bad teachers who didn't like me, so I didn't ever do very well." (Interesting choice. You've already made it clear that your failure--in the ever-so-unlikely case that it would again occur--will be my fault. Way to step up, sweetie.) You tell me during class, "This is my second time taking this, and I just still don't understand why this class is important to my life." (Great way to start the term, bucko. Tell the instructor you are already disengaging.) You tell me after class, "I kind of screwed up last semester when I took this with Prof So-and-so, and I was just wondering, can I just use this book I still have even though it's completely different from the books you just told me we were using?" (Sure. In fact, just pretend that you're still in that other class--you know, the one you failed. We already know the ending.)

As much as I would love to admire your honesty, I was just wondering if you thought it might be better to, oh, I don't know...shut the fuck up. Are you unaware of what you are telling me? Do you really think that I'm going to side with you? When you tell me you had "bad teachers"--you think I fucking believe you??? Because I DON'T. In fact, this is what I hear: "Other people have found my skills quite lacking. I probably was really annoying in class, and I probably threw little hissy fits when my lazy-ass, sub-par work got Fs. I was unwilling to learn, engage, or put in the appropriate amount of effort. Now I'm here to torment you. Let the games begin!" Is that really how you want to begin the term? If you would just shut your mouth, take the class in stride like the rest of these people, and leave well enough alone, you would avoid saying really stupid shit, and I could spend at least the first few weeks of the term blissfully unaware of the future thorns in my side that are sitting doe-eyed in front of me.

Oh, and for the special breed of you, intent on pulling out your best Rainman--"I'm really an excellent writer; I'm an excellent writer"--I don't believe that shit either. If you were an excellent writer, you wouldn't have failed the course--you could have passed it in your sleep. You are really just telling me that you're an arrogant prick who thinks that he has nothing to learn (despite having been repeatedly told otherwise by those annoying "bad teachers"), and so you will probably fail again. Your utter inability to sense how I might interpret your words already tells me that you have no fucking clue. And if you think that you're going to set me up ("If I tell her I'm an excellent writer enough, she will feel too bad for me to give me anything but an A"), think again. I have no concern for your inflated ego, false sense of skill, and whatever else you picked up from god-knows-where. But don't think there's no hope! After all, your instructor for this course next fall could be the gullible sap you've always been hoping for! Fingers crossed!!

Penelope from Podunk College Finds that Cold Weather and Snowflakes Don't Mix.

Sammy Snowflake: Um….it’s supposed to be like 27 below tomorrow. Um…that means class is cancelled, right?

Me: I doubt it. Podunk College doesn’t typically cancel class due to the cold.

Sammy Snowflake: Um…well, like, I am going to totally get frostbite on my way to class. (it’s a five minute walk from the furthest points on campus)

Me: No, I don’t think you will.

Sammy Snowflake: Like, if I DO, can I sue the school?

Me: I don’t think you will.

Sammy Snowflake: Well, like what if I do?

Me: Sammy, you’re a grown up, right? Grown ups know how to dress appropriately for the weather.

Sammy Snowflake: Well, um, like I don’t have like a coat or anything. Heheheh.

Me: Well, then, you better dress in layers.

Fast forward to today in class:

Sammy bursts into class 10 minutes late, obviously fresh out of the shower, wearing a tshirt and lightweight hoodie.

Sammy Snowflake: Like my hair totally froze on the car ride over here! Hehehe. It is so freakin’ cold!

Perceptive Pinneberg from Plainview Does a Hard-Target Search For Intelligence In the Classroom. The "Drawf Fur" Post.

I write in partial response to Duluth Dad from earlier this week.

I took your question to heart and this morning asked my 90 students to name ten world events from the past 500 years. I got 85 blank sheets of paper and five others with a mixture of Dwarf Fur (I’m translating that as Darfur) and AIDS and Viet Nam War. Next, out of curiosity I asked them how many hated to read. 80 hands went up; with answers to the question why ranging from time consuming to boring to stupid. Next I asked them why they would go to a four year activity (university) that centered around something that they hated so much. My example: I don’t like being shot at, so I am neither in law enforcement nor the military.

I reflected on their pathetic as shit responses, and I thought about mine own two chilrens who are still in primary school and wondered if they’d be telling someone these horrible things in a decade. I still don’t know what the answer to the Father’s question is. I know that my students think college is a big party with a $100,000 tab, (thank you Hollywood), but I also know that my undergraduate days were filled with too much drinking, fucking and fucking around, so today’s freshfolk really aren’t any different in that regard.

What I will tell you that is odd and oddly disturbing about them, is that they have no capacity, no ability and even less inclination to ask a question, or really to enquire about anything. My students are unimaginably passive, not just apathetic, but passive. They refuse to inquire, even when called upon directly to ask a question, they cannot. When called upon to answer a question, they invariably blush, look at their toes, get upset, fluster around. And for this I think the public schools take the sole blame. After a lifetime of being commanded how to walk, what to wear, how to bubble in yet another goddamned state-issued test by pedantic administrators whose sole purpose is to get the kiddos out by three o’clock everyday without a lawsuit, it is little wonder that they can’t think or enquire when asked or expected to do so here at Free Thought University. Or to put all this in pop culture terms (where the kiddos get their real education anyway), they are like Neo in the first Matrix movie. Neo tells Morpheus he can’t move his muscles, and Morpheus says something to the effect that Neo’s never needed them before. Engage in a discussion? Read a document? Ask a question? Answer a question? Write an argument? How can they? This is the first time they’ve heard these things before.

So, Father, I don’t know if it is too late for your girls or if they are college material. But I think you know. Did you teach them to think? Did you encourage questions, even of your own authority, did you let them be free?

Today's Vid-Shiz-Eo Thematically Follows Our Recent Conversations About Homework. You May Thank Us for Our Diligence Later.

"The Regulars." Mid-Career Mike LiveBlogs From a Campus in Reamed Ass County.

8:02 AM: Efficient Ella from Human Resources picks me up at the Reamed Ass Inn for breakfast. She tells me there are three choices: Denny's, where I've already had coffee and toast at 6 am; McDonald's, which is on the way; or the college cafeteria. I stare at her for a second and pick Mickey D's. I can see the arches as I get into the car. Ella has a Michael Buble CD playing at arena volume.

8:06 AM: We're through the drive thru and headed to Reamed Ass College. Michael Buble starts into "Me and Mrs. Jones." I eat my #8 with orange juice and Ella sings along. It's about nine degrees outside, snow is falling, and Ella has her left tires on the dotted line of Reamed Ass's Main Street.

8:17 AM: Ella drops me in front of a dour building with directions to a labyrinthine staircase that will take me to the 3rd floor to meet with the search committee chair, Dr. Timmy. (Two weeks ago I had a very nice phone interview with Drs. Timmy, Tommy, and Sandi with an "i.")

8:28 AM: I'm sitting in a student desk outside Dr. Timmy's office when I see what looks like a middle school student in a suit approaching me. "You must be Mike," the tiny voice says. "I'm Dr. Timmy." (Oh, I've made up names for these folks, but Timmy is an effective corollary for his own.)

8:45 AM: Dr. Timmy and I are in a classroom when Drs. Tommy and Sandi with an "i" walk in. They look like kids you'd see on a new Disney channel show, or the road company of a regional theater performance of High School Musical.

9:30 AM: I've finished the get acquainted chat with the kids, now I get to teach a class.

9:40 AM: No students have arrived at this optional event, but Timmy, Tommy, and Sandi with an "i" are joined by Dr. Scotty, another middle schooler who is wearing Cons, jeans, a wool pullover with deer on it, and a rakish scarf around his neck. Scotty and Tommy give each other a low five.

10:20 AM: I've finished teaching a class to the search committee kids. I swear that Dr. Timmy's feet don't even reach the floor while he's sitting in his desk. They all seem happy with what I've done. They fill in some of their own strategies on my topic, and there seems to be no rush to go anywhere else.

10:45 AM: I finally say, "Do I have to meet the Dean?" Sandi with an "i" jumps up, checks her watch and motions for me to follow. I'm carrying a briefcase, a winter coat, and a hat, and I ask: "Are we going outside? Should I put this stuff on?" Sandi with an "i" says, "Well you can, but the Dean's office is just across the quad." She squints at me like I'm crazy, and we race down the stairs and out into the snow with Sandi with an "i" just wearing her big-girl skirt and blouse.

11:05 AM: I'm alone now, sitting outside the Dean Ezekiel's office. A skeleton of a man, clearly 900 years old, comes out, grins at me with about 21 teeth, and waves me in. His office smells like death and oatmeal. We sit and he spends the next 75 minutes telling me about the college, about his time as a boy in Reamed Ass County, a pony that he won a blue ribbon with at the Reamed Ass County fair in 1816 (okay, I made that date up), his wife Esther, the new cafeteria, the person who left the job I'm applying for (and his wife and his kids), a FedEx box that he's been waiting for with some lampshades in it, and how hard it was to get his bookshelves just the way he likes them. It's 94 degrees in the office and I'm sweating when he finally asks me what brings me to Reamed Ass College. I talk a bit about my desire to relocate to a small college and then the door opens. Dr. Timmy has come for me. "Thanks, boss," Timmy says to Dean Ezekiel, and out we go.

12:45 PM: Timmy takes me to the new cafeteria. We get submarine sandwiches and sit among a group of students who don't seem to know Timmy. He calls them all "Sport" and "Missy." One of the "Missys" looks perturbed, grabs her salad and moves two tables over. Timmy asks me some leftover questions from the morning and then tells me that Ella will come and fetch me from the cafeteria when she's done her own lunch. He polishes off his sandwich, extends his hand to me, and leaves me there.

1:30 PM: Ella walks me downstairs to the human resources where Rolf comes in and gives me an entirely inappropriate 45 minute introduction to the health plans and retirement benefits. These are detailed far beyond what I need at this point. It's a canned presentation for new faculty, people who've already signed up. I sit through it all quietly because Rolf never breathes. He stands over me in a tiny seminar room and peels forms and papers off of a stack for me to review. He smiles at the end, tells me Sandi with an "i" will come and get me in a moment. I wait 30 minutes.

2:50 PM: Sandi with an "i" breaks the news that because of the snow and the weather dinner is off. "You can have some nice room service," she says. "Our treat." She's leading me back outside while I wrestle with my hat and coat. Ella is outside the building waiting, her car running. Sandi with an "i" opens the door and lets me in. She holds the door open, shakes my hand and says, "Any other questions?" I can't think of any, so we shake again, she winks at Ella, and the door closes. Ella slides out of the parking lot headed back to the Reamed Ass Inn. Michael Buble is roaring now, "So call me, unpredictable, tell me I'm impractical, rainbows, I'm inclined to pursue." Snow is falling like we're in a globe, but Ella murders us through the narrow campus streets to the main drag. We are hugging the center line and she turns Buble down for a second. "Fun, huh? Did you learn what you needed about us?" And I nod.

4:15 PM: No room service. I'm at the Denny's having a patty melt. It's fucking great!

RYS Readers Weigh In On the Less-Homework Movement.

Friday morning is a madhouse. The Big Thirsty replies fill the mailbox to the brim, and then somebody - me, today - has to read them all. We love the energy, and we do our best to pick the most representative samples that come in. As it worked out today, all the pieces below (save one) are from folks who've never posted with us before. So, welcome to the struggle. (Oh, and we've been getting feedback that the Big Thirsty replies are TOO long. So we've pared down the varieties of flava a bit to respond, because you know how needy we are, and how desperate we are to please every single person.) As a reminder, this week's Big Thirsty focuses on the less-homework movement partially spearheaded by Nancy Kalish. Duluth Dad, who most readers admired, asked what us proffies thought about its impact on incoming college kids. Here's what some of you had to say:

• I teach mainly first semester freshmen at a large state university, and while I’d love for high schools to concentrate more on grammar, there really is just one thing I’d like for students to come in knowing up front: take responsibility for your own actions!! Maybe students are naturally lazy, maybe it’s because they don’t have Dad there anymore to bitch at them about getting their homework done and maybe it’s because their high school teachers let them turn things in whenever they wanted to and in whatever condition they wanted to. But it’s their fault their alarm didn’t go off in time; it’s their fault they chose to wait until midnight to write their paper only to discover their printer didn’t work so now the assignment is late; it’s their fault they didn’t pay attention to the clearly defined deadlines in the syllabus given to them and stressed repeatedly in class; and it's their fault they chose to stay out drinking on a school night when they were under-aged to start with. And yes, they tell me these excuses in person. I explain very clearly why they get the grades they do and I put a lot of work into the grading process—the problem is not my grading, it is their performance, but that is often the last place a student wants to go. It’s not my fault, and it’s not my job to excuse their laziness/poor attention to detail / whatever. My job is to teach them, using the best techniques available. I come prepared to do that. I can’t do my job if they don’t think it’s their job to even bring a pencil to class. Or, Dad, at least teach them how to make up a better lie.




• There is a difference between homework and studying. I would advocate a decrease in homework if you are referring to meaningless rote work (endless math problems, vocabulary list to turn in, etc.). However, at the same time I would say that most students would need to study more (a self-motivated activity). I think teachers are assigning homework to compensate for their students not studying, hoping that some modicum of material will make through to them. Does this mean students are inherently lazy? Not necessarily, it is more indicative that they are being tested in a rote manner (standardized testing) and see little use for actual study (learning the connections between material).




• My niece is in 8th grade. A lot of her homework is busy work that just doesn’t add anything. I think the kids that come into college today are intelligent enough. Many are lazy, some aren’t. Where they aren’t prepared from where I sit is that they think they can do everything at the last minute and pull out an A. Essays are written poorly, rife with spelling errors and grammatical errors among other things. They don’t proofread – hell, spellcheck is more than I often hope for. I teach in a quantitative area and they don’t realize that you don’t learn how to solve problems overnight. Give them a more modest amount of homework, but make them think a little. I think the discipline is at least as important as the knowledge. In terms of discipline, I also mean more understanding. Too many of my students want to just do a brain dump and leave. Then they get pissed at me when I assume they remember at least a little something from the prerequisite courses. Silly me. I don’t have a problem with the “less homework” movement as long as what assignments the kids get actually help them learn instead of just doing the same thing over and over again. Now if we could get them to play a bit less beer pong…




• I would say that 10% of my students are functionally illiterate, 80% of them lack knowledge that any college bound kid should just HAVE, period. And 60% of them couldn't critically think their way out of a paper bag. Don't get me started on their inability to write very simple coherent papers (what the hell kind of student got through high school not having written a five paragraph essay? And I'm not talking about poor, underprivileged high schools, either...), their inability to follow a lecture, their inability to take notes from either readings or the lectures, and-- and I think all historians are familiar with this particular case of bizarre undergraduate disease-- their need to compare ALL historical events to Nazi Germany and ALL people in history to Hitler. I'm starting to believe that high school history classes consist entirely of the students doing dioramas portraying how EVIL Hitler was.




• Homework has nothing to do with it. To people who are really engaged in learning, the homework is never enough -- there' s always more reading, more research, more studying, that you want to do to make sure you fully get it. Either a student is intellectually curious and ambitious, or the student is looking to do what he/she has to, usually the bare minimum, to get by. What does it mean if your kids are in "coasting years"? Nothing: what matters is whether or not they really are coasting. (I spent my "reproductive years" earning a handful of higher degrees, working various jobs, traveling, going in and out of crappy relationships -- and NOT reproducing (thank God!) ... so are they spending their "coasting years" getting life experience and learning, or are they just coasting along with the prevailing breeze, like flakey bits of snow?




• College students are undisciplined, plain and simple. They have little to no work ethic in terms of academic endeavors, because they fail to see value or immediate rewards I actually think the "10-minute" rule of thumb is pretty good for primary and secondary ed. It reinforces that more work leads to greater rewards. But they should also realize that college isn't grade 13. Perhaps the problem is that kids have been burned-out by too much homework in their early years, and stopped putting forth the effort. Unfortunately, the school systems keep moving them through the system, so what they ultimately learn is that they're going to pass without requisite effort. Teach your kids about hard work, patience, and delayed gratification.Teach them that being average means earning a C and being good means earning a B. Finally, make sure they know that people who make mistakes learn more than people who think they are perfect.




• Oh, I'm all in favor of the less-homework revolution. The answer to our under-performing, stupid, ignorant children in this country is clearly to have them do LESS. Because the problem simply cannot be that we've come so far away from meaningful education that our little dears are just DUMB AS ROCKS. It MUST be that they are just stressed, right? The reason that my first-years can't pick the subject out of a sentence to save their ever-loving lives must be that they did TOO MANY hours of homework on that particular point. Poor, poor dears: we never should have doubted that the teachers were at fault for their intellectual failings. If we give them less work, I'm sure they'll rise to the occasion. They can spend the rest of the time that they have doing all those mind-building activities like video-game-whore killing, watching Tila Tequila on MTV 69, and generally learning how to glaze over their eyes enough to appear assimilated to American culture. What the fuck is wrong with people (I'm looking at you, Social Sciences, whom I consider key culprits in kiddie-catering studies like this)? Dumb or lazy isn't a choice; it is a statement. My freshmen come to me dumb and lazy. Both. At the same time. And everyone seems pretty intent on keeping it that way.




• Students are not prepared for college, largely, and more homework will not help. Forcing a student to do fifty math problems does not prepare them to reason mathematically -- it prepares them to memorize a method to solve a problem and then do it fifty times. It prepares them, in other words, for an assembly line. Similarly, making students fill out one hundred research note cards does not prepare students to research. It prepares students to look for factoids and have a higher regard for volume of information than quality. It also kills inquiry and curiosity. It's not just homework itself, but the wrong kind of homework, that fails to prepare students. In fact, if I were to design a system that guaranteed that students graduated unable to think critically and creatively, I'd invent high school.




• What annoys me here is that this author refuses to go into any reasons about her whining, crying, begging kid has so much homework to do. For one thing, snowflakes are freaking activitied to death. I spent my entire youth reading, laying on my tummy watching ants, and making up personalities for the trees on my street (one a badass ent). If I were growing up now, I would need endless play dates with peers, age-appropriate activities to stimulate learning, and then off to a child-gym for approved child-aerobics. (Used to be, we just "went outside and played.") Back in the day in school, there were "slow' classes and ways of tending the slowest learners in groups that could be caught up (or not) independently. From what my real teacher friends tell me, the classroom has to be integrated now and we all have to pretend that little dumb-as-a-brick Johnny is as bright as a new penny, but simply working along in the big group at a different level (like kids can't figure this out and make shit out of the others, which is what kids do). So I suspect teachers are spread thin teaching to a more heterogeneous group of learners. Bound to take up time. Add to that the pressure to pursue lots of games and activities and learner-centered stuff, which in my experience students do enjoy--but it eats up time like a ravenous wolverine. Add to that the fact that ambitious parents demand that school's offerings be engorged with college-appealing activities; study hall has become a dirty word for a lot college-minded kids. (Isn't that a shame; I loved me some study hall and detention, where you could sit and read without anybody pestering you. Oh to have that reading time back.) AND we also have all this state testing going on. So part of me suspects that there is a growing gap between what teachers can get done during school hours and what the kids are going to get tested on---and hence the pushing more and more material to after hours and home. I've not tested any of this, but I doubt the answer is simply "let's let little Suzy do less homework since she doesn't like it interfering with her riding lessons and texting." Of course she hates it; everybody needs leisure, but it's not like we haven't gotten to the point we are because of parents' demands that every be child be mainstreamed, edutained, and activitied like a young prince.




• The homework article cites Cooper's recommendation of no more than 10 minutes per grade level per night. That means a 12th-grader should have about 2 hours of homework per night. That means a 12th-grader, who is in school about 30 hours a week (roughly 6 hours a day), should have 10 hours of homework a week. That's 40 hours (or 45 if you count study hall and lunch), or the equivalent of a full-time job. Isn't that supposed to be a minor's sole responsibility in life?College students tend to be required to take 5 3-credit courses per semester, which meet for about 15 hours of in-class time per week. The standard recommendation has always been that a college student should expect to spend 2-times-the-credits in hours per week OUTSIDE of class doing reading, writing papers, performing library research, and general studying. So, 15 hours per week in-class plus 30 hours per week outside of class equals 45 hours a week...the equivalent of a full-time job. Again, isn't this supposed to be the primary focus of a full-time college student's life? (Hence the "full-time" epithet...)Except, well, in my experience, which I suspect is mirrored by many other college-level instructors who read this site, VERY FEW COLLEGE STUDENTS ACTUALLY SPEND 30 HOURS A WEEK PREPPING OUTSIDE OF CLASS!!!!!My conclusions, based on about 7 years college teaching experience, about 12 years of experience being a post-secondary student, and 12 years of being a primary and secondary student? Lazy and stupid pretty much covers it. But, those epithets don't just apply to the students, but also to their parents, previous teachers, and the admins of their lazy-ass primary and secondary schools, who aided and abetted their lack of intellectual fortitude and general growth.This whole self-esteem, no-homework, everyone gets a ribbon mentality has created a couple generations of morons and, as noted in the first article linked in Clara from Cleveland's post, bullies. And I am not just talking about the students.

Let the Spring Smackdown Begin.

Sneaky Student: Uh, Dr. Heard-it-All, I was in Dr. Numbnuts class in the Fall, and I didn't finish. But he said I should take you, and really, I have most of the work already done, but I just need to finish up with you.

Dr. Heard-it-All: What do you mean you didn't finish?

SS: Well, I didn't finish taking the class?

DHIA: You didn't finish? Did you get a grade?

SS: Well, yeah.

DHIA: And it was...?

SS: Well, it was an F, but not because I did lousy work. I just didn't finish. I wanted to finish this semester. I have most of the work already done.

DHIA: What work?

SS: Well the essays and everything. I wrote a bunch of stuff for Dr. Numbnuts and I'm already ahead of everyone here.

DHIA: Well, it doesn't work that way. If you failed the class last term, you need to take the whole thing again. I don't even know what Dr. Numbnuts teaches in his class.

SS: Oh, but I've got the essays right here. I've got three of them done, well two of them. The third was almost done but then I couldn't finish class. See, here's one of them.

DHIA: Oh, okay, so this is an essay from last semester? Uh, I see you got a D on it. That's not even a passing grade.

SS: I know, but it's done, that's the important thing. I've got a lot of the work done already for this class.

DHIA: Yes, but this D paper is not helping you any this semester. It didn't help with Dr. Numbnuts and it won't help with me. Let's focus on doing a great job this semester.

SS: But I've got a lot of the work done already.

SCENE.

-~-~-~-~-~

We welcome your random occurrences of student smackdown as Spring semester gears up. Send them here.

This Week's Big Thirsty. Duluth Daddy Wants to Know: "What Do the Proffies Think About the Less-Homework Revolution?"

A number of readers have mentioned the Nancy Kalish book that has spurned a "less homework" movement. The book, The Case Against Homework, came out in 2007, but has had a little resurgence after a recent article in Parenting, and Kalish's appearance this week on the NBC's Today Show. We've coopted one of the pieces of email for our Big Thirsty.

I have strapped on my armor and come to you very quietly. I don't want to end up like your other recent outside "parental pinatas."

But I'm a dad of two kids on the verge of college and I found this site a few weeks ago. I'm frankly horrified. I don't want to claim my kids won't turn into snowflakes or anything, but I'm worried they might. I've spent the last 15 years trying to make sure my kids succeed at whatever they do. Right now they both want to go to college, and my wife and I are doing everything we can to get them there.

I wanted to know if you'd seen this recent article about homework in the school system. If things are as bad as you say they are in the college classrooms, I'd think less homework is the wrong way to go. Here's the piece I'm talking about. (This is just some flava; click the title link below for the whole thing):

--

Join the Less-Homework Revolution

By Nancy Kalish
Parenting

I used to be extremely pro-homework. In fact, I once wrote an article for this very magazine telling readers how to get kids to stop whining and knuckle down to work. Back then, I could afford to be smug: My second-grader was happily zooming through her ten minutes a night.

But a few years later, Allison started coming home with four hours of homework each night, and everything changed. Now there was not only whining but also begging, yelling, and crying — sometimes from both of us. The worst part: hearing my previously enthusiastic learner repeatedly swear how much she hated school.

I'd always assumed homework was essential. But when I finally looked into the research about it, I was floored to find there's little to support homework — especially in vast quantities. While not every child gets too much, many kids are now overloaded as early as kindergarten. I was appalled (I even cowrote a book about it, "The Case Against Homework"), so you can bet that this time around, you won't be getting any "how to be a good homework cop" tips from me.

Instead, I'm here to call you to action. You can change things for your child — even for the whole school. There are more and more frustrated parents and wised-up schools around the country, so why should your child keep suffering through hours of work? A less-homework revolution is brewing, and you can join it.

Homework is such an established part of education, it's hard to believe it's not all that beneficial, especially in large quantities. But the truth is, a recent Duke University review of numerous studies found almost no correlation between homework and long-term achievement in elementary school, and only a moderate correlation in middle school.

"More is not better," says Harris Cooper, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and neuroscience who conducted the review. In fact, according to guidelines endorsed by the National Education Association, teachers should assign no more than ten minutes per grade level per night (that's ten minutes total for a first-grader, 30 minutes for a third-grader).

"Most kids are simply developmentally unable to sit and learn for longer," says Cooper. Remember: Many have already been glued to their desks for seven hours, especially at schools that have cut gym, recess, art, and music to cram in more instructional time. If you add on two hours of homework each night, these children are working a 45-hour week. Some argue that we need to toughen kids up for high school, college, and the workforce.

--

Now it all reads like it makes some sense. But that last paragraph makes it sound like the researchers have given up on kids. If my kids were unable to sit and learn for longer than 30 minutes, I'd find a way to make them.

Q: You're the experts on college, I presume. My kids are almost out of high school. They're in their "coasting" years I'm told in fact. What I'd love to know from one of you or your readers is: What do college professors think of the "less-homework" movement? How are freshmen students not ready? Are they stupid or are they lazy? That is, do they need more knowledge in high school or more discipline? Is there one answer better than the other. I'm just a well intentioned dad and I don't want my kids to get lost in all this.

A: Send replies here.

Clara From Cleveland Earns a Moniker And Catches Us Up On Last Week's Big Thirsty on Entitlement.

I'm the nosy reader who wanted to know more about the entitlement / prestigiosity dynamic last week. Now that I've read the replies and thought some more about it, it's just as I had feared. The snowflakes have taken over the academy.

I wasn't surprised to hear that students at expensive/prestigious schools tend to exhibit a sense of entitlement. However, it was disturbing to see the number of replies that indicated the presence of snowflake students at the less prestigious, Spiny Bluff-type schools. I blame it on students' self-esteem.

Now, don't get me wrong. Feeling good about your achievements is fine, but the idea that "I am special, and that's all that counts, so give me that 4.0" is problematic, especially when one is turning in 2.0 work.

Researchers have consistently found that high self-esteem is positively correlated with academic achievement. However, this finding was misconstrued by numerous people to mean that high self-esteem CAUSES academic achievement. As a result, self-esteem classes were instituted in many schools, where students were encouraged to celebrate their own unique specialness - sort of a snowflake-in-training program, if you will. If you're feeling masochistic, you might consider asking your students if they had to take this sort of class in elementary or even high school.

In addition, Jean Twenge recently examined students' scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory from the past 20 years or so. Big surprise - their scores on the NPI have increased significantly over that time period. So, the perception that snowflakes are running wild and unchecked across the academic spectrum appears to be valid.

I think I need another bottle of Chianti.

Suggestions for further reading :

• The Rise and Fall of Self-Esteem.


• College Students Think They're So Special.


• Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled--and More Miserable Than Ever Before.

Just What We Need, A Stand-Up Economist. Today's Vid-Shiz-Eo.

One of our favorite Canadian correspondents, Ottawa Olivier, sends in this fabulous Vid-Shiz-Eo for today. We don't know why, but we'd never imagined Econ proffies were funny. But we'll give it up for Yoram Bauman from U of Washington. Please to enjoy:

"Can You Handle It?" Who Wants To Bet They're Going to Work On Their Chem Homework Next?

Lounsberry Layla Sends In One Last Missive From the MLA Convention: Can We GET Those Fabulous Candidates?!?

We're back from MLA, classes have begun and we're desperately hoping that we'll be able to get one of the two fabulous candidates we saw there. However, several things stand in the way: our pedantic chair, whose first question was whether everyone showed up (yes, mother) who will always defer action to discussion; our search committee of very disparate tastes (when deciding between the two people we rated equally for the third on campus interview, two members selected the male candidate because we have more women in the department than men. So, got a penis? you're in! Jesus wept -- apart from me all our recent hires have been male); and our newbie dean, who seems to be unfamiliar with most of the activities required of a dean, so now we're biting our nails hoping the calls get made and soon.

Our two best candidates immediately sent thank yous. A few of the other candidates did eventually, including one who sent an actual hand-written note with embossed seal (I'd date that one, but I'm not sure it helps in the hiring). It's not a deal breaker, but it tells us 1) you're a grown up, 2) you know the game and 3) you can remind us that you do really like this specific job (not just that you're desperate for any job).

But the race is on and I'm not sure our glacial administrative pace is up to it. Those top candidates will be sought after by other schools, so it behooves us to get our asses in gear, but our by-the-book chair and our apparently hopeless dean make me wonder if we wasted our time at MLA. I don't want the second (or gasp, third) tier candidates! At least with the fourth, I think we can argue against going there. It's not necessarily that they're bad people, but they don't suit our college or the position. If our eyes glazed over talking to you, what are our considerably less patient students going to do?

I'll say it again, even though to me it sounds like common sense, be yourself on the job market. If you offer a syllabus so generic that anyone in your field might have written it, it will seem that way to us too, and we will fall asleep listening to you drone on about it. What interests you? How can you infuse your syllabus with that sense of excitement? Anybody can teach a survey (well, maybe not, as Year One Yakoff demonstrates) but what's going to be the special spin of your survey? It doesn't have to be "original" -- it just has to be interesting. Even if you teach the same texts as everyone else, the way you link them together should have your personal stamp.

Our top candidates did that. They offered themes that allowed them to bring in all those disparate threads yet still gave a sense of continuity to something as lethal as the dread survey. That's why I'm terrified we're going to lose them. Sigh.

Unthinkably, Readers Want to Reach Out to Pessimistic Pietro and Offer Some Good Vibes. What the Fuck Is Going On Around Here?

• I sympathize, Pietro, but alas -- what the search committee did is perfectly legit. Not great manners or decorum, but legit nonetheless. And no -- they don't have to bring a set number of candidates to campus, or conduct campus interviews at all if they don't want to. (It's ill-advised, but it happens.) I urge you strongly NOT to inquire about why you were their second choice. Or, at the very least, don't phrase your question in those terms. I was involved with a search at an institution where the candidate did that and it came across the wrong way; he made himself sound like he was God's gift, and how dare we not make him an offer on the spot? But don't feel bad about being number 2 (or 3, for that matter). I've witnessed many a search where the Number 1 candidate didn't make the cut or withdrew -- and Number 2 or Number 3 came out the winner. All you can do is hope for the call, and when it comes swing for the fences. Good luck!


• I understand where Pietro was coming from. I've had interviews both in industry and in academe in which I was left with the sense that the desired candidate had already been chosen. My presence was merely to confirm the yet-to-be-formalized decision and I wondered just why I was there to begin with. I've heard stories of how some employers, even one that I used to work for, would post an opening, even though the position had already been filled. Internal regulations might dictate that the job has to be advertised for a given length of time and in given locations or outlets (such as newspapers) and that a certain number of candidates have to be interviewed. Often, however, many of those interviews would be bogus and are held merely to comply with the rules. Whether it's ethical is another matter. It's understandable why Pietro might want to know what he needs to do to improve his candidacy, but the institution in question would likely be in breach of privacy rules if it revealed what made his competitor score higher. Even if it gave him a response, there is no guarantee that it is necessarily true or accurate. Welcome to the higher moral code of higher education, Pietro.


• Maybe it was all the absinthe. Seriously, though--it is absolutely appropriate to ask what went awry in the interview process, especially if your sense was that all went very well. But not until AFTER it is clear and stated that the job will not be yours because it has either been offered to and accept by another or because the line was de-funded. And you SHOULD ask; more people should. We could all use insight into what about us is working for others and what is not. For next time, you know?


• Pietro, you sweetie. Hang in there. Turn that glass upside down and spill it on your pants. Don't think in terms of optimistic or pessimistic. You don't KNOW what's going to happen yet. The "top" candidate may not want the job. The top candidate may have offers elsewhere. The top candidate may just be shopping for jobs to make his/her own college come up with more money. Bide your time. Make your provisional plans. Keep getting ready for your chance.

RMP's #1 Professor of 2008.

No wonder I suck so hard. I haven't been teaching "life lessons" or provoking any "emotional responses" from my students. I'VE JUST BEEN TEACHING MATH ALL THIS TIME. WHAT A GOON I AM!!

PS from the compound-ites:

Hey, thanks for all the porn vid

links we've been getting lately.

We're not going to post them, but

Cricket loves them, especially the

ones that are tagged "fetish," "shoes,"

and "toes." Keep 'em coming.

Barbie the Bitchy Bear From Boston Wants to Blow the Whole Gestalt of the Site. (Oh, and KickTheJuniorFaculty.Com Was Already Taken, Smarty-Pants.)

Whoa. The boatload of sanctimonious snark aimed at Yakoff yesterday kind of turns my stomach. I'm starting to wonder if you shouldn't rename this site "Kick the Junior Faculty." You people suck sometimes. This has been RYS's favorite bloodsport since the gumdrop unicorn thing, and it's getting boring, though it's kind of good to know that the senior faculty hate me as much as I hate them, which I didn't think possible. Unicorns rule, silverbacks drool.

The replies to Yakoff were, for the most part, also a crock. So here's what we are supposed to believe: these people popped out their graduate programs teaching perfect survey courses the first time out! How splendidly and masterfully it all went! Every word that dripped from their lips (in the classroom, I mean, let's not exaggerate) was pure, unadulterated gold. Students have multiple orgasms in their classes. They have 17 chili peppers on that other, unmentionable site.

So let me give you some kindly (and truthful) advice, Yakoff.

1. Many new profs assign too much material. I did, all the people hired at the same time as me did, and all the faculty hired after me have (we're talking n=12 here.) Having checked my superhuman ego at the door, I asked for advice from my betters. I was told when I wrote my first syllabus to write it and then cut it by half. I obeyed; I still had too much. It's a shock when your knowledge and enthusiasm for the field hits the hard brick of wall of students' desire to do absolutely nothing besides wank, drink, and text.


2. There was one sane reply in the passel of horse shit handed you in replies: students don't retain much anyway. What you think was a disaster was what it was: you figuring out #1 and they learning about as much as they were going to anyway.


3. I feel like it takes me about three times teaching a particular class before I feel like I am teaching the right stuff in the right way (Insert all the usual self-serving shit about how I've won awards, I get good evals, yada yada).


4. The survey courses you have are not has easy to teach as people make them out to be. The content is basic, but the students are time-consuming: when is the test, again, Dr X; how many words is 1400 words; how do you check the number of words in Microsoft Word, Dr. X; I need to talk about my girlfriend who broke up with me, Proffie X; here's my assignment two weeks late Dr, X.


5. The assistant professor job is lonely and hard. You have to learn how to order your own time and manage your own resources. The self-management privileges of academics allow us to get into all sorts of trouble: I am completely over committed and shouldn't be writing this damn post, for example, and a supervisor would probably tell me to knock it off. Even though the replies yesterday gave you the impression that you should know all this already (because they, of course did all along---one of the benefits of taking 14 years to finish your dissertation is that you know the academy like the back of your hairy-palmed hand when you are done), most of us screw this up, learn from it, and move on.


6. Your senior faculty are both busy and selfish; you have to make them into resources. It's ok to ask for help from senior colleagues; if they blow you off, fine. But you can usually find one who is a good person, and it only takes a couple of minutes to skim through a syllabus. Don't send it via email: invite the guy out to lunch or coffee or stop by his/her office to see if he has a minute to just skim it. Chances are, these folks are willing to help out a bit if you appreciate it--and ask them in a constructive manner. Nobody is going to volunteer to look out for you, and as you saw in the replies, acting like you expect help will cause the rest of the pack turn on you like the vicious little weasels most of us are, even though we expect help, too.


7. Universities don't train professors to teach because it is easy and cheap not to, and if they tried, there would be a mutiny because as the replies indicate, most of us think we are already sheer perfection. Your university probably has a "Center for Teaching Excellence/Teacher Training/Etc" that offers classes. I always find these people to be soppy, preachy, and way too steeped in po-mo, po-co learner-centered crap to be of any real use, but your experience may vary. Check it out. They may be willing to look over your materials and help you out, and you might hook up with somebody outside your department with more teaching experience to help out.

Dude, Your Mom Was Totally Right.

Where Our Readers Extend a Helping Hand and a Considerate Shoulder to Yutzy Yakoff from Yakima. (And Where We Try to Avoid a Too-Long Set of Replies.)

• Oh boo fucking hoo. You got the job and now other people are responsible because you don't know how to do it? "Gee Prof. Snowflake, when we hired you you said you knew what you were doing. You had experience and everything. So, we thought we could leave you alone...you know...like we do the other professionals." When I was hired the chair gave me a text, pointed to the class and laughed. This term I'm teaching a course that just came on stream last term. When I asked the one person who taught it what he did he just shook his head and handed me the text. I like being on my own with only myself to blame or take the credit. If you need others to show you what to do then check out Starbucks. I hear they're hiring.
  




• Seriously? "Somebody should have helped me"? Aargh! Yes, year one of the TT is awful (and FYI, year 2 is worse: the bloom has totally fallen from the rose, and not only do you know how much work you're in for, your colleagues are no longer cutting you any slack), but if you've taught before, then you should have some sense of how to put together a course outline. As a tenured proffie, I always ask the newbies (including the adjuncts) how things are going and let them know that if there's anything I can help them with to ask me. I then assume that they're adults and if they actually need help, they will ask. I don't plunk myself down in their office and ask them to give me their syllabus so I can make sure it's going to work. But given the whining of the post, I'm thinking that it wasn't a problem with the syllabus, it was a problem with Yakoff himself, luxuriating in what he perceived to be the glory of his new TT status.




• Being thrown in is basically part of the gig. There is no grace period for this job. You have to hit the ground running, and you have to figure out how to make it work - that is actually part of the job, just as it was in grad school. You are falling behind because you are not organized enough in the classroom. I've been where you are, and I know the sinking feeling about sending students on without having fully prepared them. But here's the deal: You have to make the students responsible for their own education. Force them to do the reading ahead of time by giving them quizzes pretty much every day. The quizzes don't have to be long, or difficult. They just need to be set up so that the answers are only obvious to those who actually read the material. I found that I fell behind in classes because I was having to over-explain the readings to students who had not read, or had only skimmed the readings just before class. By forcing them to read everything before-hand, I am able to create a more student-centered (I know some of you hate that word, but it does work), interactive classroom. And that cuts down on my stress, too. Because when they are teaching themselves, I don't have to use my energy to re-read the book to them. It's a win-win.




• It's the college's fault that you designed a bad syllabus? That you tried to take on more than you could handle? That you tried to teach more than you knew? I don't think we can point the blame anywhere but at your own flailing flaky self, but don't take this as harsh condemnation. Everybody has made a mistake in course design along the way. It's a process of trial and error. You tried, you erred, and now you'll rethink the course. While an ambitious schedule of readings and lectures sounds great in theory, in practice it may require more time and energy than you actually have at your disposal. So you cut and trim and tuck and shuffle until you've got a syllabus that works--for you and for your students. That's all part of learning how to profess.
  




• Lay off blaming the college and your colleagues. It's the blame part that marks your snowflaky tendencies: "I designed a course that was beyond my ability to teach, and its my colleagues' fault because they didn't help me." Did they know you needed help? Or did they assume that the suited flake they hired was as capable of doing the work as he had made himself out to be? "I have seriously considered asking for more help, but that's the sort of thing that should have been offered." Now you sound like my students, the really flaky ones who complain that they "never knew what the professor was looking for" in their papers but who never knocked on my (always open) office door or sent me an email. Do you expect your colleagues to arrive in your classroom uninvited and unannounced, point out your errors and shortcomings, and force you to cut your syllabus? If you're waving to your colleagues in the hallway, how are they supposed to know that you're drowning?
  




• If I wouldn't take a student seriously who complained after the grades were in that the proffie didn't notice he was struggling and track him down so that the D on the midterm wasn't followed by a D on the final, why would I take Yakoff seriously when he complains at the start of the Spring semester that nobody protected his students from his ineptitude? There's nothing wrong with needing help and there's nothing wrong with asking for help, but there's something wrong with needing help, knowing you need help, and waiting for someone else to rescue you. College is for adults, and that means the teachers as well as the students.




• You are just too stupid to teach college. As the poster says, "not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up." You can't figure out how to teach a basic survey class in the time allotted? I say this to you as someone with only two years more experience than you: quit now. You are too stupid to do this. Go learn to be a barrista at coffee college. Of course, you may be too stupid to learn how to handle hot coffee too. Look, if for some reason you keep this job, ask to see other faculty syllabi you moron. And ask yourself, seriously, whether this job is just too hard for you. There are lot of useful jobs out there that don't require self-reliance. If the school hired you it's because you SAID you could teach this and other classes. You can't. It isn't their fault. It's yours. Go find something else to do and leave the college job to someone who can read a calender.




• Wow. Just...wow.
  




• I'm a graduate student teaching in a program that stresses excellence in college teaching, and have made some errors here and there myself, but not once have I ever blamed a colleague for "not preparing me better." Do you know what I do when I have a new preparation? I go and read colleagues' syllabi and ask THEM questions--they are always happy to answer and offer guidance when asked. If that fails, I do a search on Google for "Intro to Blabbity Blah Syllabus" and see what people have done at other schools. You're a professional--you have an education, you have experience, and the VERY LEAST your department should be able to ask you to do is to make the appropriate decisions to keep your course on track.
  




• Is it the end of the world that your students didn't learn 20% of the necessary material for the next course? Probably not... what percentage do you think they would retain anyway? Sure, they'll probably bitch about you in the hallways for the next few semesters, but I guess that's the interesting juxtaposition--some people just need something to bitch about. To me, you seem like the product of the same kind of environment that produces our "nightmare" students... if you've been spoon-fed enough over the years to be this angry about not being handed a syllabus and/or a book, you're a prof-flake.




• How could a person rise to the level of a full time teaching position at a university of any repute without one particularly important skill? The most ffffing important skill in all of education - that is, the ability to ask a relevant question!!! There are many posts on this fine blog that are entertaining, but this one just has to be fake...but, even given that, it think it illuminates two current issues that are swirling around our entire nation at this time: 1. Is anyone competent anymore to perform his or her own job? 2. Does anyone understand the meaning of the word "consequence?"




• Are you fucking kidding me??? First off, I want to know how a whiny bitch like you got a job straight out of grad school. Plus, know what? If 3/4 of your teaching experience was as a graduate TA, that does not make you "not a newbie." And third, whoa, you seriously want to blame your department and colleagues because you got in over your head with an overambitious syllabus? You are obviously not long out of school because you are acting like a snot-nosed sophomore. I am an adjunct of about a decade's experience and if all it takes is a PhD, a well-developed sense of entitlement and an incompetent approach to pedagogy to get a tenure-track position, then I feel even more pathetic than usual.




• Remember the old cliche about "genius steals"? Don't do it all yourself the first time out. Check your superhuman teaching ego at the door and get a syllabus from last year's offering of the course, then make minor tweaks for your own experience, research, interest, etc. Someone else already figured out how to fit the readings into 15 weeks -- leverage that expertise vs. reinvent the wheel. Each time you teach the course you can customize more and more but not starting out. That's my 2¢ worth.




• Grow up. Most people who teach in grad school have some interaction with the survey course and the people who teach it. And most people who get through grad school learn how to work independently. If you need help, ask people who've taught the course before, even ones at your previous schools. (And don't blame the department for not telling you who they are - ask the secretary.) Ask for copies of their foolproof syllabi and make them your own for a term, until you learn what works best for you. And there's no harm in saying that certain chapters will be on the final even though they are not covered in class. You weren't one of those students who never went to office hours or talked to the prof and then complained about getting a B-, were you?
  




• Seriously, Yakoff? You (a) fuck up something over which you had total control, (b) blame your school for not interfering, and (c) expect symapthy from readers of THIS site? A recurring theme, if you haven't noticed, is frustration over lack of personal responsibility. ("It's not MY fault I failed the class," students moan. "My prof never hunted me down to warn me that it's bad to skip doing the assignments!") If your school really had stepped in, and some administrator had told you to bypass your unit on Mesopotamia because you'll need that time later in the semester, would you have been grateful for the advice? Or would you have resisted because it's YOUR class that you're proud to teach, and damned if some bureaucrat is going to dictate your schedule? Or do you only want the full responsibility when things go well?




• Well done, Yakoff. I'm teaching the second part of the survey and am glad to know all of your students will be unprepared. For Gog's sake don't ask any of the rest of your colleagues for help. We expect new people to know everything - like us when we started. Keep floundering down there in the small office, but don't mess it up. We'll need it for the faculty member we're going to replace you with.

The Ways We Killed Weepy Wayne...

• We beat him to death with a copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.


• We suffocated him under a bed of back issues of the Chronicle.


• We made him eat at the cafeteria EVERY day.


• We buried him in a blizzard of snowflakes.


• We swapped out his margarita with Prestone.

He doesn't want to play anymore. He's turned his back on us. He's jilted us just like Steven Deckyser did in the 6th grade. And so, like he was the man in any good Lifetime movie, we've had to kill him. We didn't want to, mind you. We'd give anything to have him back, but it's over.

Yes, darlings, he's gone. Weepy Wayne has left RYSWorld. We don't even want to admit this, but he was always our favorite. His emails came in from left field, and filled our dark, dark hearts with sunshine. If anyone would have been given the directions to the compound it was him. We always went on about Wicked Walter, of course, but ask yourself: Who's the only RYSer to get his own prodo, the Weepy Wayne "Burbon" Cup?

Do you realize he was THE chief correspondent? The Chiefiest? That's why this breaks our heart. Oh sure, we'll always have his old posts. We'll always have the memories. But there is no new material coming from Wayne ... ever. Who will be there to take down the biggest elephants that rumble through here? Who will gleefully pick off the weak members of the herd?

Oh, there may be someone else someday, a new "regular" who's mean, but nobody will ever be like Wayne. We're heartbroken.

• Waxing on Being Woeful.


• Whomping the Wombat.


• Pounding Polly.


• Pissing on Pete.


• Prattling on About Philip.


• Knocking Out Nothaughty.


• How to Kill RYS.

A Soaring Endorsement of the Art Institute. Who Knew "Prison Rape" Came with Classes in Anthro? Former AI instructor responds to a recent Vid-Shiz-Eo.

The problem with your recent "I wasted 30 grand to go to college guy" is that he didn't really go to college. I taught anthropology part-time at the Art Institute of Los Angeles in Orange County. (As part of an accredited Associates Degree program students still take math, English, science, humanities and social science classes). At my current CC I've always got a few students who don't want to be in my classes, but at the AI it was ALL of them. They were required to take my class, and they hated it, and they hated me for it.

I taught there for 2 quarters and then ran like hell. The Arts Institute does everything this guy says they do. We instructors were bullied by the administrators into putting up with bad behavior, encouraged to lower our standards, and literally forced to give good grades. F's were seen as my failure not the students. The inmates run the asylum there, partly because those students pay so much money. The whole place was a fucking joke. The education these kids got even in their art classes (the *real* reason why they were there) was worse than what I tried to give them in a subject they hated learning about. And they blamed and hated me for trying to teach it to them.

They acted just how you would expect caged animals to act. They learned nothing. The Art Institute lied to them around every corner. And the thing that made me laugh all the more was that this supposed great education in art or culinary fields for seriously $20,000 a year, cost about $500 down the road at my CC for the EXACT SAME FUCKING THING!!! And at least at my college, my REAL college, they get a real education, with real results.

No buddy, college is worth it. The crap you did is not. It's a scam. I feel sorry for this guy and all those poor sots I taught back then. They think what they did was "college." What they went through was more like prison rape.

* We aren't actually endorsing the Arts Institute. We don't know anything about it, except that you can take classes in culinary arts - which we think is cool - and in media or something. We see the ads on late night TV, and the campuses always look like Boca Raton, sweaty, white hot, yet the poor saps are acting like it's a beautiful spring day, just some classes in sauteeing and lens filters and then we play some hacky sack in the parking lot before going back to their part-time jobs at Wendy's. We're actually sure that there are some good faculty at the AIs around the country, and good students. And well meaning and intentioned people all over. Happy people. People who aren't cynical dicks like us. We don't know any of them, of course, because they're losers. But we don't want you to think we're saying anyting bad about AI, just in case our T&P falls through and we're begging at their back door for some classes next year.

Coming Soon to Your Freshman Class...The "Really" Girls.

Pessimist Pietro from Pittsburgh Wants The Truth. Job Hunt Madness Continues.

I'm not a wussy. I can take the truth. What I can't handle is the game playing that goes on in the job market.

I'm one of those MLA/AHA year-end convention interviewees who spent Christmas in airports and hotels rather than with family? Why? So I could get a job and fulfill my life's destiny. (And pay off my folks, the government, and my girlfriend.)

I had 6 conference interviews, 5 that felt mediocre and one that felt great. I got my first call this morning, from the interview that went great. It was the same search person I'd been corresponding with since October. He told me the good news that they wanted me for a "flyback," (even though I might take the train), and then he said. "We have one candidate before you, however, and there's a possibility that we might have closed the position before you come out."

What the fuck? Is that even legal? I thought they HAD to bring a number of candidates to campus.

Anyway, I started stammering around, my dreams of striding around campus on my guided tour dying, and I said, "Well, can I ask why your first candidate got the call ahead of me? Is there something in my cv or my preparation is lacking? I'd love to address it."

"Oh now," the search committee contact said. "That'd be highly irregular, and pretty inappropriate."

He gave me the department's secretary's phone number to set up my "conditional" travel plans, and said goodbye.

I went from happy to sad, optimistic to pessimistic in a flash. I'm not one of those "glass is half empty" guys. I feel good that things will work out. I went into the job search with an optimistic attitude. But is this how it works everywhere? Who's that lucky sap who got called 9 minutes before me and what has he got that I don't? Why can't I know? How is it inappropriate if I want to make my case stronger?

This academic job hiring clusterfuck gets worse and worse the more I know about it.

Year One Yakoff from Yakima. (This One's Got a Surprise Ending!)

I admit I'm in over my head. I'm in the middle of my first year on the tenure track. But I'm not a newbie. I have 4 years of teaching experience, three in grad school, and then 1 year as a VAP where I taught 3/3 at a private college.

But this past semester was my first time on my own, 4/4 load, my own syllabi, my own decisions, my own time management.

And I blew it. I especially blew it in my classes. I had 2 sections of the large survey course in my discipline. This was the course I was most looking forward to. But what happened was miserable. I built a "foolproof" syllabus, but then became the fool. I fell further and further behind the reading schedule. Finally, in the last 5 weeks, I had to just cut huge chunks of what we were to cover. I couldn't finish it any other way. I excused one major unit test, skipped 20 years of important developments, and sent my students into the second part of the survey sequence missing about 20% of what they need to know.

I know how to build a reading schedule, but what I could not do was cover all the essential material AND get finished in 15 weeks. I kept thinking all semester, "survey is stupid." I know that's not the answer.

I sat down over the holiday determined to rework the course - and my courses for THIS term - and I just can't seem to do it.

I really think some of this is the college's fault. They have to know that a new person is going to need guidance. But after wooing me through the job process, they more or less just let me run my own ship, and that's not turned out so well. I have seriously considered asking for more help, but that's the sort of thing that should have been offered. If my students aren't ready for the second part of the survey, I think the department needs to know that they could have helped avoid that unpleasantness by helping me more.

I'd like to hear what other new proffies think about their departments and how we're introduced to our job. I've made a mess of the Fall semester, and while I may be partially to blame, I blame my colleagues just as much for not better preparing me.

Pita the Part-Time Student Discovers The Real Damage of the Snowflake-Friendly Popular Instructor.

I've been taking a foreign language at the local community college for a couple of years. When I started, there was a new teacher who had only one class per semester, and a much older teacher who taught two or three classes. Somewhere around what would have been my fourth semester (I took some time off), the assignment of classes changed, and this new teacher has all but taken over the whole damn department. Why? She's upbeat and personable and young and fresh and, above all, popular.

She probably gets fabulous reviews from students. Why shouldn't she? She expects nothing of them. This a class that focuses on conversation, and she apologizes every time she has to explain a point of grammar. What are we - five years old and reluctant to eat our vegetables? She has to candy-coat everything for us? Most of us are adults taking the class for "personal educational development," which means we're highly motivated. We don't have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into learning grammar. If we didn't care about speaking this language *well* and only wanted to be able to get across simple ideas, we wouldn't have to take the class. We could just grunt and point.

What really torqued my tail was that I took her class for a letter grade; who knows, maybe some day I'll want to get into a class elsewhere and I'll need it. This instructor got it into her head that I was taking it as a credit-only course (despite evidence to the contrary from the registrar), but promised to correct my transcript. It took eight months of keeping after her and finally a complaint to the department head to get a grade entered. When she finally took care of it, she told me, "You got an A, of course. Everyone did."

Huh? Everyone got an A, including the people who were absent every other week? And the full time student who sat in the back, doing who-knows-what on his laptop for the entire class, and only managed to cough out a couple of words of the language when he was asked a direct question? He got an A, too? Gee, if I'd known that, I wouldn't have spent eight months trying to get this charming idiot to enter a grade for me. I didn't realize it was absolutely worthless.

But, hey, she's cute and energetic and the snowflakes adore her because she makes learning fun! I'm starting class again next week with a different adjunct.

Today's Vid-Shiz-Eo. "Mad Professor."

Today's video gives us an insane amount of pleasure. We are happy to share it with you. There's no deep meaning. It's not especially germane to any conversations on the site. It's just a nice, pretty moment that takes us away from the searing and endless pain of living. So, please enjoy it like we did...irony free.

We've Fucked Up. RYS Vid-Shiz-Eo Is A Feature People Like?!?!

We can't kill the site when shit like this happens. Our newest feature, RYS Vid-Shiz-Eo, has some fans. We're getting submissions of a variety of clips people would like us to feature. Oh, and for the Astronomy proffie who sent us the 9 part series of lectures...uh, no thanks.

But if you've got or have found some enigmatic, lively, or odd videos that might be of interest to our readers (viewers), send the links to us. We'll try to post one a day until the hatred and bile come forth begging us to stop. Then we'll carry on blithely as if it didn't matter. Because of course it doesn't.

Catching Up On the Winter Hiatus.

Balls to the hiatus. We had the biggest December in the page's history, and hit counts over the holiday were astronomical. We had hoped to take a little time off before the Spring semester, but it didn't happen.

But if you're one of our regular readers and were too busy skiing or drinking (and, probably), then here is the best of what you missed. Please to enjoy:

• The Perfect Campus Visit.


• What We Did Wrong in Fall 2008.


• Proffie Porn.


• Dr. 1-38 And the Replies.


• Posting While Drunk. Student of the Year?


• Sour Sarah at the MLA.


• Ten Interview Mistakes.


• Hank the History Prof.


• Our New Leader: Cricket.


• Layla Wraps up the MLA.


• Archie Arrives at the AHA.


• We Killed It.


• RYS Navel-Gazing.

"How I Wasted 30 Grand." 7 Minutes Of Your Life You'll Never Get Back.

Nobody Doesn't Like Everything.

Can I comment about the Big Thirsty comments? Christ, what a boring read. No wonder your kids fall asleep in class. The email link says, “Email yer pain!” not “Send us your thesis draft.”

I hate to get all science-y on you (actually not true – it’s what I live for), but the comments can be summarized in the simple graph below.

"I Was Bucky Before Being Bucky Was Cool." One of the Great Uncategorizable Posts That Make Their Way to Us Sometimes. Gifts...Sweet Poetry.

A reply to all those fretting over various Buckys and Ezras.

“Whaaa!!! What do I do about all those Bad Bucky’s?” Really? Give me a fucking-break! This is so fucking simple you wet-towel! Document your students’ behavior. When will you Ivory-Towered, silver-spooned wannabees cease your warm and fuzzy denials that you actually wield power? Once you do that, then you can get on with the business of attending to the requisite responsibilities.

Yes, this means you are surveilling, and Bucky is subject to your “gaze.” Deal with it. Presumably most of his communications arrive via e-mail, so make a “Bucky” folder (ask your IT person, you nitwit) and throw all those Bucky disasters in there. If Bucky comes to see you in person, have him write down his excuse and sign it, then throw it in a Bucky file. Create a paper trail, you know, like you do in your scholarship. (In the Humanities you call them “primary sources” and in the Physical Sciences it’s called “evidence.”) Keep a record then forget about it. Bucky will do as he pleases, you cannot stop him.

I should know because I have a long and undistinguished career as a Bucky. I came of age in the “who-gives-a-fuck-we-are-all-gonna-die-in-a nuclear-holocaust-tomorrow” early-eighties. At that time, there was no motivation to pursue a degree. Many intelligent young people felt they had only two choices, despair or hedonism. Since I chose heavy doses of the latter with a sprinkling of the former, my Buckiness spanned six universities in three states. (Top that, “Bucky.”)

In all of my travels I met but one prof who actually stepped outside of the power game like all you whining wannabees think you are doing and you are not even close. He was a satyr, Socrates, and Buddha all in one. His genius was outpaced only by his humility—and that by his libido. I’ve never known anyone who more nonchalant regarding power than this modern day Diogenes. (That includes my time with “Roshi” at a Northeastern Zendo and at a hippie-holdout commune in the Midwest. There was, of course, along the way, the requisite diabolical genius—one of the living dead—and that half mad art prof who spoke in rambling “Blake-ian” parables that sometimes luminesced, but I digress.)

I took five upper-level undergrad courses with the satyr-Buddha but never completed any of the assignments—“why should I, when the world is going to end tomorrow?” Yet, I was welcomed to his house on multiple occasions and we students occasionally partied with him. He invited all of us--not just the dedicated elite--to meet informally with his distinguished visitors. He assured me that he would change my “incompletes” into grades at any time, so long as the bureaucrats could be kept at bay. There was no animus toward me for my “Buckiness” and I doubt that he ever fretted over it.

I’ve kept in touch with this odd little fellow, off and on, for over two decades. Whenever I see him, though years might have passed, he greets me warmly. Through all of that time I can't recall so much as a hint of a whine from him like those here at RYS. (Perhaps because he knew of other troubles, having escaped from Soviet occupation and the Nazi Blitzkrieg.)

So, “Whaa!!! What do I do with all those Bad Buckys?” Keep a record so that you can feed the soulless carnivore "Dean Bureaucratis" when he/she asks about retention and quit sweating the little stuff. It obviously is, since Dean B. is so desirous of it. Let Bucky just keep on Bucking and forgeddabowdit.

You on the other hand, don’t you have an article or chapter to complete? The world is waiting.

2 1/2 Hot Dogs. Life in a College Dorm Room. Today's Vid-Shiz-Eo.

Is it any wonder they are as they are?

Florida is #1 ...

... in player/student SAT Gap.

An investigation of NCAA schools has revealed that the University of Florida has the largest gap in SAT scores between its football players and its student-athletes.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has scrutinized the standardized test scores at 54 of America’s top colleges and found that the University of Florida, where players scored 346 points lower than the school’s overall student body, has the biggest gap in SAT scores between football players and the student body as a whole.

But just about every school has significantly lower admissions standards for football players than for students as a whole; the average gap across the country is 220 points. (The average gap between basketball players and the student body is even higher, 227 points.)

Georgia Tech had the highest average SAT scores for its football players, with Oregon State and Michigan tied for second. But those schools all still had big gaps between their players and their other students.

Said Tom Lifka, the head of admissions at UCLA, “If you’re going to mount a competitive program in Division I-A, some flexibility in admissions of athletes is going to take place. Every institution I know in the country operates in the same way. It may or may not be a good thing, but that’s the way it is.”

Those Kids at Washburn U Have Got Too Much Time On Their Hands. Today's RYS Vid-Shiz-Eo: Plagiarism.

Although We Thought This Was Over, There Are Still Readers Who Want to Get After Otto. How Can We Refuse? Edna From Effingham Tees One Up.

Excuse me, but I need to bitch slap Otto the Outsider. I know those of us who post here on RYS are often seen as whiners, even though we’ve adequately defended ourselves on that point before. Your obvious lack of understanding of what goes on in a room full of snowflakes these days is more than overwhelming because you ask, and I quote: “What the hell is wrong with professors these days?” Look back through the posts, Otto, and know this – we aren’t making this shit up.

I’ve spent many an hour standing in front of a classroom reading off the exact statements you so succinctly pen for us. That’s right – my classroom policy, which is attached to my department syllabus, clearly says there are no electronic devices allowed in the classroom. I discuss, in detail, the difference between having a phone on vibrate and turning a phone off. I make sure everyone understands I don’t take late papers, there are no excused absences, and everything that happens in the classroom plays a part in the final grade. I point out to them that I don’t have to enforce an attendance policy because anyone who misses more than 4 classes tends to flunk all on their own. I’m brutal, Otto, and I have it on good authority that students leave my classroom terrified about how hard the class is going to be. I’m known for following up on every threatening statement I make. So do cell phones go off in my class? Hell, yes! Why would that happen Otto if I’m doing what you say I’m supposed to do?

I’ll tell you why, Otto, we are living in a world where we have to print “contents may be very hot” on the side of cups because just touching the sides of a very hot cup does not seem to clue the holder in on the fact that the sides are hot because the contents are, in fact, very hot. They don’t believe us, Otto. Even when we follow up on what we have said, they still stand there totally dumbfounded that they aren’t passing. So, I’ll ask the question I have every semester: Who the fuck told these kids their shit doesn’t stink?

I ask you this, Otto, since you’re on the outside. That’s where they’ve come from. Are you telling them they are exempt from the rules, nothing is expected of them, and everything is going to be wonderful for them forever and ever while they do absolutely nothing to make it that way. Are you looking the other direction, or are you holding every kid you see responsible for their actions? Do you look the other way when kids are rude, don’t hold open a door for an adult, or push in front of you in line at the store? Or do you demand the kids you deal with act like human beings instead of rabid animals? Are you afraid to hurt their little feelings? Because if you haven’t disappointed them just a little bit once in a while by pointing out that their shit does, in fact, stink and no one is going to clean it up for them, Otto, you’re not doing YOUR part and If you don’t do YOUR part before you send them to us, you’re a great big part of the problem.

What’s wrong with these professors? Nothing a little help from you outsiders wouldn’t fix.

Some Replies to The Entitlement Thirsty.

We want to apologize for the long post. We did not get many replies to yesterday's Big Thirsty on the Snowflake / Prestigiosity question posed yesterday, but the ones we did get were a little long. As a favor to our reader who sent the question, we'd thought we'd put the most germane ones up for her to consider. There's good stuff below, but it does stretch down the page considerably. Please to enjoy, and have fun with that scroll wheel!

• I can’t speak for Spiny Bluff Beauty College, but here at Rich Kid U 90% of my students are snowflakes. They’ve just been told for too long how special they all are. You should see the look of disappointment in their little beady eyes when I give them their first B, or tell them for the first time that class starts at 9 am and their arrival at 9:15 means they get to go back to the dorm. You’d think I’d just keyed the door to their Mini Cooper.




• My recent stint at a large urban community college has brought me a mixed bag. Some students, mostly older, are true gems. Even if they’ve got kids and a job, they rarely ask for special care or help. They do their work or they suffer the consequences. I failed a sweet 50 year old woman who has 4 kids, 3 still at home, and a husband with brain injuries. She didn’t get the work done and she knew it. She didn’t blame me or use her various situations to game the system. She came up at the end of the semester and told me I’d done a good job and she asked my recommendation of who she should take next semester for the course if she couldn’t get in my class. But my younger students? Flakes. Every one.




• I've worked at a state university with a large first-gen/working population, a state university with a largely traditional population and a top-tier liberal arts college. The state university with all the first-gen/working students and the liberal arts college saw/has seen only flurries of 'flakes. I think that each of those institutions has students who behave in ways that are superficially similar to snowflakes, but that those students are not the genuine snowflake article. It was at the other state university where we needed the snow plows. I think that the students at that place had the two major components necessary for a blizzard: the vast majority of them were well off enough to feel entitled AND they were (with delightful exceptions) pretty average in terms of talent and ambition. I don't know what your other correspondents will report, but most of my friends who are working at places that stand out on the US News survey (for whatever that's worth) seem to have trouble with students who have panics and meltdowns and can sound like snowflakes, but, at their core, they really lack the "I want this without having to lift a finger" flavor that distinguishes the true 'flakes from the pretenders.




• I teach at a 4-year extension campus of Big Midwestern U – mixed population of rural and urban, with lots of “first generation” students – and as a Dept Chair get to deal with the most delicate of our snowflakes AND their mummies and daddies whenever a prof makes a frowny face at them. But in general, I’d estimate our resident ratio of 1) entitled snowflakes in whose brilliant presence I am able, nay, privileged to work, to 2) clueless dolts who have no business being here, to 3) pleasant (or at least harmless) students who generally do most of the work and whom I enjoy being around at about 15/15/70.




• At Windswept Rock University (about the equivalent of a modest state school in the US) the entitlement does not take the form that I often hear reported on RYS. It is not “I paid a lot of money for this course, so you owe me a good grade,” but rather, “I did my best on this assignment, so it deserves a good grade.” Occasionally a student comes to me insisting that he worked really hard on his essay, and I have to bite my tongue lest I respond, “Well if this is what you produce when you work hard, you must be really stupid.” No matter how many times I explain the standards, and why they matter, and that the grades are not assigned on a personal whim, many students simply cannot grasp the idea that their best may not in fact be their best, or that their best may not, in the end, be very good.




• I think a more reliable predictor of snow is a college's expense, rather than its prestige. The more expensive a school, the more likely you'll hear, "I'm not paying over $40k/year to get a B" (never mind they're rarely the ones paying, or paying full-freight). You could test this hypothesis: how snowflaky are students at Caltech, M.I.T., or Rice, three very prestigious schools that aren't as expensive as Harvard or Bennington? I teach at a western, mid-size, relatively inexpensive, essentially open-admissions state university distinguished by large first-generation college student and immigrant populations. True, some of my students have shockingly deficient academic backgrounds, but that's often not their fault, and I can fix it: the good part is that I have yet to tangle with an irate parent. I still get enough whining and grade-grubbing to be annoying, but almost always from thoroughly Americanized teenagers, and of course pre-meds.




• I can speak from personal experience that snowflakiness isn't just restricted to elite universities. I used to teach at a two-year tech school and I often faced blizzard conditions, contributing to the next Ice Age. In a class of, usually, 20 - 25 students, there would be at least one snowflake, and quite likely more. I had snowflakes who were shiftless and work-shy and believed in being amply rewarded for doing nothing. I had snowflakes whose marks were well above average and who thought they were always entitled to maintain that status. I had snowflakes who were fresh out of high school and were accustomed to being snowflakes. I had snow flakes who were older (some even close to me in age) and who thought that being out of school for several years granted them special status and, thereby, lower standards. I had snowflakes who were allowed to remain snowflakes, regardless of the amount or quality of their work, because the department administration liked them and they knew how to whine to get what they wanted. I had snowflakes who had large gaps and deficiencies in their academic backgrounds but who still believed they deserved to pass. I had snowflakes who tried to weasel extra marks out of me in order to get on the honour roll or become eligible for scholarships. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Had I known that I'd encounter such flakiness when I started teaching, I would have bought a snowblower for my office.




• Certainly in my part of the world, snowflakery is well correlated with university size and PERCEIVED prestige. I teach at two institutions. We'll call one BigU and other other LittleU. I hate teaching at BigU so much it makes me want to stick forks in my eyes so I don't have to look at the smug pricks who dare me to give them less than an A. The sun shines so brightly out of all their asses that the overhead projector pales. At LittleU, my students are amazed to be attending university and their moms and dads couldn't be prouder that they even just finished high school. They read, they participate, most of them give it their all. Most importantly they know that their success rests squarely with them. I'm sure this is an ethic they take from their parents who obviously did not hand them everything. A few of them are brilliant, most are solid. Even the really weak ones who probably won't finish don't give me any grief and appreciate all attempts by me and others to see them through.




• I teach at "Named for a famous Transcendentalist-Poet but Actually named for Some Guy Non One Has Heard of-College" which specializes in media, film, drama, writing, etc., you know, the really useless but passion-driven courses of study in the arts. Not all of the students are entitled-acting; some work hard at their studies and know what it is to work a summer job and have a respectful demeanor in class. But many, many of my students are entitled, spoiled little assholes. They drape their expensive little electronic gadgets around themselves like students in the 1940s flashed their silver pocket watches or gold cigarette cases, I imagine. They talk/text/sleep during class as if what the lecture is about doesn't matter and their friends' dumb text messages are the Rosetta Stone. They crow loudly and inarticulately about their drama in my ear as I'm waiting in the cafeteria for my broasted chicken. They smoke in the doorways of all the buildings, in their $200 jeans stained with their latest meal of sushi and lambic (what happened to the humble repasts of students past, the cold pizza and Jagermeister, the nachos and malt duck?). They wander in thirty minutes late for the first class, sit in the front row and immediately start checking their phones for messages: no apology, no acknowledgment, no embarrassment when asked to put the phone away (in fact this is met with a huffy sigh and a rolling of the eyes). One good example of an entitled student combines many traits in one: I'll call him Chubby, Complacent Chas. This kid comes from a hard-working immigrant family whose dad made it good in a traditional skill and has a successful retail establishment in this large Northeastern city. His dad's success has kindled this kid's lazy-ass specialness. Chas sat with arms folded in every class and never took notes in a 100-level lecture class where students were told they were specifically tested on this material. He finished his exam before anyone else and got up and swaggered out of the room acting like he aced it (he got a C minus). He'd get up to go to the bathroom during class (something I normally do not allow except for emergencies) and would be found chatting on his phone in the hallway, or, worse, once hugging and chatting up an equally entitled female classmate who also was struck with life-threatening diarrhea at the same time. This physically-unappealing, stupid, arrogant waste of space will probably go on to great things because he's never had to work for anything and comes from money. Chas will get some high-powered job ordering around underlings whose character is 1000 times what his is even capable of becoming. The world is going to hell in a handbasket.




• Hell yes-- there is a strong, positive correlation between the prestige of the university and the entitlement of the students! I did my graduate work at a top-ten private college, and when I taught, they did everything but request I wipe their asses for them. I can't say I miss their Hummers, their incessant grade-grubbing, and the occasional call from Mommy. Now that I'm at a massive, middle-of-the-road state university... well, they never show up and couldn't write their way out of a paper bag, but they fail my courses with a little more dignity. I'll take the state kids any day.




• I've taught at two 4-year U's, one in a rural college town and the other in a major metropolitan area, and at both the snowflakes were distributed about as well as dogshit on a soccer field -- not common, certainly not a plague, but every now and then, when you just get running, you step in some and it ruins your whole day. At both U's we got students from poor to middle class to rich (always rich and dumb, because if they were rich and smart they could have gone anywhere -- but rich and dumb does not always a snowflake make: many dummies are diligent, and I love to work with them and see the results!). Economics-wise, I've seen no pattern -- snowflakes seem to come from all classes equally. The origin seems to be poor parenting (which knows no class), especially parents who protect their kids from ever failing at anything, not realizing that failure is part of the learning process. If there's no failure, there's no picking yourself back up and trying again, there's no concept of the self as a flawed and meritorious actor in the world whose words and deeds are subject to judgment by others, whose role is to productively contribute to society rather than consume. (Which is what my momma taught ME!)




• I teach at a mid-sized, mid-level university in the Midwest. This particular university has a bit of an inferiority complex and really, really wants to be something other than a school for rich kids who couldn't get into a more prestigious school. I have experienced a moderate amount of snowflakiness in the time I've been here, but it seems like my department is in the middle of a fairly calm pocket of weather, with massive blizzards swirling around us. I've personally had students petition grades because they didn't think the material I was testing them over was important, tell me (via email) that they "need" me to force add them into my class because it meets at a better time for them...a month into the semester. Students that complain because I didn't offer enough extra credit for them to get the grade they wanted, and students who come to my office without an appointment expecting to be added to a senior-level class even though they haven't had any of the prerequisites because they are "pretty sure (they) can figure this stuff out" and then respond to my refusal with "allow me to convince you." I know of people who have had students demand that the instructor transcribe their lectures for them and students who have approached instructors and said "you're going to need to really sell me on why I should take this class." It's not even that they necessarily think they're smart, stereotypically. It's that they're mostly from well-to-do families, are sheltered, and find themselves attending college in a small town where the university is the biggest employer. They've been taught all their life that the world exists to serve them, and their college experience is no different. The Eskimo may not actually have 40 different words for snow, but there are multiple varieties of snowflakiness, at every level of prestige.




• I have taught at several institutions across the country. At my northeastern state school there were enough first-generation students and students from small, rural towns. Most in-state students were solidly working class and many were just glad to be there, out of their hometowns, and happy for the chance to hang out, earn a degree, maybe move to the Brand Name City down the highway upon graduation. These students were ecstatic sometimes about C or C- grades; I wondered why there weren't more complaints, actually, until I asked some about it. The impromptu focus group told me they were happy to pass - complain about what? There was very little entitlement, though I did suffer from the occasional belligerent young man who was chuffed that some woman (a feminist, no less) dared to have any authority. At my midwestern, small, religiously-affiliated college, similar students. One student had not had plumbing in her home until she was in the 6th grade. Again, very few complaints, happy to pass the class as often as not. One noteworthily wretched entitlement play was courtesy of someone I 'gift-passed' on the first paper or two (D- when the work should have flunked). After he flunked the class, the student made my life miserable for a good six months with his wheedling and threatening and bullying and going over my head to deans and chairs and provosts. But other than him, there were very few who felt magically 'entitled.' And many students were thoroughly midwestern, unfailingly polite, and raised not to make trouble (not always a virtue though). At a prestigious private school (northeastern) where I taught, there were actually precious few snowflakes. I think it was because the college was everyone's second choice. Most, if not all, of the students really wanted to go to any of the several much more prestigious schools up the road. Though the students were mostly upper-class (and pretty white), they tended to just put their heads down, do the reading, and do good-to-great work. Maybe they didn't feel special enough because they weren't at First Choice U? At my current institution, also in the northeast, at a private unaffiliated school, the class profile is considerably higher. My college used to get lauded for its intense parties despite its rather compact size (Alc-o-Fest 1988!! Woot woot!!). Complaints, and snowflake-ism, are rampant, along with grade inflation. There is a distinct perception that the grade scale should be A, A-, B+, and B, with the B obviously being tantamount to saying that a student is an illiterate no-good losah who never came to class.... Thus anything below a B is grounds for chest-puffery and assertions about how, since the class was 'just an elective' it was 'supposed to be easy.' At my school, students regularly fail to grasp what a midterm grade is and write panicked, run-on emails after finals: 'i just saw i got a B in yr cls for finals but i had B+ for midterm so why wld my grd go so far down???!!!' I just received an email from someone who skipped class 10 times, among other missteps, asking if I could "find it [my] heart" to just bump him up half a grade (from a really bad grade to a slightly less awful but still really bad grade) because my "teaching was so good" but his head just was not clear enough to grasp all my "teachings." Another lovely email came from the student who slept through the first three weeks, or more, of class, and wondered why she hadn't done well in class but was "shocked" that she flunked. Most of my current students do indeed feel entitled to something ... easiness? Slickness? Their own self-aggrandizement? The delusion that they are already fully formed into all the best adjectives - brilliant, charming, wealthy, cogent, exceptional? I think it's related to social class primarily, and I'm sure parenting has a huge part to play as well. The rich kids, wealthy kids, kids who've never been told 'no' or had to deal with consequences ... they all seem to be much more snowflake-y, based on my experience.
  

This Week's Big Thirsty Focuses On the Likelihood of Snow.

I was sitting at the kitchen table last night, well into a bottle of Chianti and bemoaning the rapidly approaching start of the semester, when the following question occurred to me. Is the level of student snow-flakiness related to the prestigiosity (prestigiousness?) of the college/university where said flakes are enrolled?

I teach at a small 4 year state college in a rural part of the state, and (to my undying gratitude) have experienced little to no student entitlement. Yet, it appears to run rampant at other institutions, as I've read on RYS and elsewhere.

Q: So, what say you? If you teach at the extension campus for Spiny Bluff State College, are you just seeing the occasional flurry? What about those of you who teach at Prestigious U? Are you under a Blizzard Warning? And, what's the forecast for Middle of The Road U - possible snow showers? Fuck, I'm even willing to analyze any semi-coherent results that get generated. Do I smell a conference presentation?

A: Send your replies and comments here.

25-33% of Incoming Freshmen on Psychotropic Drugs? Tell Us How That's More Encouraging Than When It Was Just Weed and Schlitz?

A reader at Case Western U sends us this video that her institution is distributing to the university community.

Beaker Ben, One of Our Regulars, Weighs In On Repeat Students.

I too have a repeat student in my senior level course. She is neither bright nor inclined towards hard work. Am I looking forward to seeing her clueless stare for the next four months? Hell yes. This chick is smokin’ hot. Therefore, bad student behavior is a bit less annoying.

• Tardy? Oh, darn. Now I have to stop class as you walk across the room to sit down in the front row.


• Wear inappropriate clothes? Tsk tsk. I hope you act more professionally, perhaps starting next semester.


• Ask stupid questions during office hours? No problem. Make sure you take good notes this time. Oops, it looks like you dropped your pencil.


• Fall asleep in class? That’s distracting, especially when a little bit of drool slowly oozes out the corner of your open mouth. Mmm, sweet dreams, princess.


• Begging for a better grade? Please don’t say you’ll do anything for an A. No, seriously. I’ve got a wife and kids. Have mercy.

"Students Today Are Completely Full of Shit."

Brilliant saxophonist (and occasional music proffie) Branford Marsalis offers some insight into the modern student:

What I've learned from my students is that students today are completely full of shit.

That is what I've learned from my students. Much like the generation before them, the only thing they are really interested in is you telling them how right they are and how good they are.

That is the same mentality that basically forces Harvard to give out B's to people that don't deserve them out of the fear that they'll go to other school that will give them B's, and those schools will make the money.

We live in a country that seems to be in this massive state of delusion, where the idea of what you are is more important than you actually being that. And it actually works just as long as everybody's winking at the same time. If one person stops winking, you just beat the crap out of that person, and they either starting winking or go somewhere else.

My students — all they want to hear how good they are and how talented they are. Most of them aren't really willing to work to the degree to live up to that.

from Before the Music Dies:

Angsty Audrina from Attleboro Joins In With the "You Sucked the First Time, Son, Whatcha Doing Back Here Again?" Dilemma.

I feel Bucky's proffie's pain. I have been in this same situation, with a student (Excuse-makin' Ezra) who actually had a faculty member (Groovy Grady) acting as a sort of guardian angel for him.

Groovy Grady emailed me one semester about Ezra, saying he wanted to be kept informed about whether Ezra was turning in assignments, as he'd had trouble in the past. Grady was right on; Ezra never turned in one single assignment, and this was a seminar class with a fair amount of work. He finally dropped the course 3/4 of the way through. I later found out Grady was not just acting as a nudge to Ezra; he was really asked to be in touch with Ezra's father (Sucker Stu) who wanted to be kept informed of his son's shenanigans, since he apparently didn't want to keep paying the $30,000+ tuition costs if the kid was going to just keep being a lazy piece of dog poop.

Ezra never missed a class (until he dropped) and was fond of using that tired old chestnut "I really like your class, it's really interesting," whenever I asked him where his assignments were. Ezra actually asked me about taking a second class with me. I told him there was no way I would want him in my class unless he was going to actually do the work. He ended up enrolled in a colleague's class instead and I warned her about him. She asked to speak to him after his first essay did not come in on time, and said she simply would not stand for it and if his essay was not on her desk in 24 hours he would be asked to drop the class.

He bucked up after that. So should your Bucky, if you take him aside on Day One and say you expect him to approach the class like a mature adult who wants to be there.

Another Reason to Go Get that Wal-Mart Application.

Good grief. My nephew gave me this book as a gag gift this year. I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before. Here's some text that I found at the publisher's site that serves as a sort of abstract. I'd add some witty comments, but I'd think your readers can fill them in for themselves. Just another brick in the wall, baby.

From John Janovy's Outwitting College Professors: A Practical Guide to Secrets of the System

There are three basic reasons why you need to outwit your college professors, and here they are:

• College professors can, and usually do, have a reasonable amount of control over your life and your future. In general, anyone with any kind of power over you needs to be outwitted. Profs have power because they issue grades in courses for which you pay lots of tuition, but they also have much power to recommend you for scholarships, write good letters of recommendation, and provide interesting experiences that you can talk about to impress dates and people who might be interviewing you for a job.


• College professors usually are far busier than most people think although that busy-ness often concerns activities that many people—especially those engaged in real business—think are pretty dumb. Nevertheless, professor busy-ness takes their minds off things that are important to you. So you need to get them back on track. You need to get them thinking about your welfare instead of some deadline imposed by their department administration. That is, you need to get them working for you instead of for their own bosses.


• College professors live in a paradoxical world because they are among the most privileged and intellectually free people on Earth, but at the same time, they operate under a massive burden of regulation, compliance, and rules for behaving properly so their institutions won’t get sued. They usually need help living in this paradoxical world (although most of them don’t realize it), and you can provide such assistance. Your interactions with them can soothe the irritations caused by rules and regulations, relieve the frustration resulting from academic politics, and make their job a satisfying one. In theory, they should reward you for such favors by opening doors for you. Maybe one of those doors will be at a fine medical or law school.

The author, John Janovy, teaches Biology at the University of Nebraska. Here's an interview I found with the mad "genius."

This Is Why We Never Let Our Names Appear in the Course Schedule. The Curious Case of Bucky and the Boot.

He’s back. Or at least he will be. The student who must have had the absolute worst semester in the history of higher education.

Let’s call him Bucky. Bucky enrolled in my class last semester and seemed like a good enough student. He asked questions (legitimate ones) and his first assignment was good (B material). Then, hell opened up on Bucky. His brother went into the Coast Guard, so he became responsible for caring for his brother's ailing mother-in-law (who happened to live twenty miles out town).

Then his bike was stolen. Then his boss at work doubled up his overtime. He missed turning several assignments during this time, and never made any effort to make them up. Then he came back to class for about a week and seemed to be getting back on track, turning in a topic proposal for the final paper and presentation. Then he disappeared again.

Two weeks later he told me he had been receiving threats from someone. And then a passenger in a car had thrown an old work boot at Bucky as he crossed a street near campus. He was now too scared to leave his dorm room. Even with his previous undocumented absences, I wanted to take his claims of threats seriously. Only I hadn’t heard anything about students being threatened in this way.

Thinking maybe I had missed something, I checked with campus police to see if Bucky had registered his complaints with them. They had heard nothing. I told Bucky that I would need to see the police report to excuse the absences and accept the assignments he’d missed. I never heard back from him, and with all his missed assignments, I failed him. Honestly, I was glad to not have to deal with him anymore.

But he’s back. Today I was checking my class rosters to see if I recognized any names, and there he was. He had registered for my class again. Now I don’t know how to react to him when I see him on the first day of class (if he shows up). Do I ignore him and hope that he is just a normal student this semester? Do I take him aside and let him know that I really don’t feel like dealing with his drama this semester? Ask him to take the class with a different professor?

F L O O D ! ! !

Edwardsville Eddie's Early Thirsty on RYS Navel-Gazing generated a ton of mail. We're still getting it, but we didn't want to let another day go by without some content on what many of you called the page's "essential issue." Please to enjoy:

• This introspection will kill you, brothers.



• I have been a reader since (nearly) the beginning. The page is as it was. It soars some days and veers off the highway on others. (I don't need any more Britney.) It's an unholy mess, just like the profession it reviews.



• The beautiful thing about academics is we never run out of shit to complain about. When we have students to smack down, we do. Until then, we bitch about whatever else comes to mind—interviews, tenure evaluations, or asshole posters as the case may be. While it may not be what it used to be, it’s far from over.



• Nostalgic old farts need not read any further. The page will become what it will become. I think the best thing about RYS is that the readers drive it. Sure, those compound crazzies might steer it a bit, but we provide the engine. We'll make of it what we will, and there's no amount of bitching going to stop it.



• Mainstream? I teach at a tiny Christian college in Indiana. RYS is NOT mainstream. I wash my hands after reading a few posts - and sometimes even wash my own mouth out with soap. (But I *love* it.



• I was one who complained a couple of years ago when the smackdown quotient was way too high. Why not let the voices in the emails (not in your head!) tell you what to do? I think the ratio of sublimity to ridiculousness is about right. And if I don't, well it's not my page. If I want it to be different, I'll make my own site.



• I don't know if Eddie is smoking something or not, but RYS is NOTHING like those forums on the Chronicle. My God, that's a wasteland. 24 people post all the time, and they think they're in their own little private lodge for earnestness and haughtiness.



• RYS isn't like any other academic blog I read. It seems to be its own animal. And if it's your cup of meat, then drink heartily. If not, go cruise someone else's dirty alley.



• This site is hit or miss, and it ALWAYS has been, but if it's not worth my time, I skip it. If I've got something to say, I send it in. But I don't cry because they don't re-print my favorite post from 2006 every day.
  Eddie's question is really the most essential issue of this page. I am at times horrified by the meanness on the site, but I don't have to read it. I choose to because I believe - as the moderators often tell us - that academics here can say it like they mean it. I think it's a useful and illuminating look at the psyche of the profession.



• Well, the page IS a little more corporate now. I don't know that the ads are necessary. Do you still donate everything to the American Red Cross? I'd ditch them in favor of more graphics, personally, a sort of rogue's gallery of past pinatas, perhaps?



• Oh, man, I hate to be "that" guy, the old-timer. But I have very meek and mild colleagues who know what RYS is now, and that was NEVER the case a couple of years ago. I mean, it was a guilty pleasure, and I felt a little wicked reading it. Now it's a lot more well known, and it takes away some of the sneakiness I felt reading it in my darkened office!



• I'm on the job market for the second time, once post-RYS, once pre-RYS. Last year I went through interviews blind as a bat. I was asked questions about dealing with problem students, and I was just baffled. This year during my interviews, after devouring your archives, I felt as though I'd spent a decade in faculty lounges all across the country. I had one interviewer even say "precious snowflake" when discussing a student!



• Eddie has it right: “I think you've mythologized old Walt out of all proportion.” His one shtick wore out long ago and the just-concealed whine running through his latest missive from the outback of his own delusions is, well, embarrassing, you know, in that way that the drunken, self-absorbed uncle is embarrassing at a holiday gathering. If that’s really his last post – and why would he want to hang out with a bunch of losers? – it hasn’t come a moment too soon. I do agree with one thing Walter said, though: we really should have kept Katie around for awhile—that kind of self-involvement is RYS gold.



• RYS doesn’t feel mainstream to me, whatever the hell that means. (In fact, in my line of work, “mainstream” is just a contentless insult intended to demonstrate the insulter’s superiority over the insultee.) As for the site, people write about what they want to write about & the clicks either come or they don’t. I thought the mission was to print a cross section of what shows up in the Inbox. Walter’s nostalgic for an exclusive little coterie to be the boss of – that’s not the RYS I want to be a part of. RYS gives us courage to face the snowflakes and the zombie deans, but that doesn’t mean there ought to be relentless negativity. Nobody, in any case, is going to mistake RYS for the Chronicle.



• I don't give a shit if anyone else reads the page or not. I read it because it's funny and it keeps my own pistol in the lockbox.



• Really, the page belongs to the readers. If you don't like the direction, write something with a little "liveliness" and it'll usually get used. Send in something limp, and you don't get to play.



• I'm pretty new to the site, but it all seems like a laugh to me. I can't admit 90% of the things I feel about my job, but I find real spiritual colleagues on almost every page of RYS.



• Quit worrying about it. Didn't you yourself say a couple of months ago: "We're just going to do what pleases us. We're pretty sure we lost our way this year. After all we have the emails to prove it. But if we return, we're going to all shave our heads, get down to our high school weight, and let the freak flags fly. If it's something you dig, we'll be happy to have you along for the ride, sending in your own screeds." Sounds like good advice. Somebody has to be Mommy.
  
  

Here Come the MabeSnows!

I’m heading into 2009 armed to do battle with my favorite snowflakes, Maybe-college-is-for-me-sapiens. I call them Mabesnows.

The more advanced of the Mabesnows are the ones who left the rural wonderland to go to the big four year college and, having found any number of reasons to not make it, come home to spend some time in community college. I love ‘em.

They’ve whined with the masses in big lecture hall gatherings on the days they managed to wake up soon enough to go to class, so they have a few new words added to their vocabulary. Instead of ‘I always got As in high school,’ they say ‘there’s nothing wrong with this paper because I worked really hard.’ They say things like ‘at my other college’ as if spending a semester drinking and partying makes them alumni. They brag about how they’re going to recycle papers from the last time they took this class because a D there has to be an A here at Hay Seed R Us. There is a rare strain which has a latent gene with a humility predisposition, but it almost never emerges.

The barely evolved of the Mabesnows are those snowflakes who woke up Christmas morning and decided they wanted to be college students. Having laid out for several months, spending the high school graduation cash for high end entertainment equipment, they’ve resorted to doing chores around the house for pocket change. Their parents were convinced they needed a break from the rigors of Horrible High School and the high demands of learning, so they required almost nothing of them. Lo and behold, the skies parted on Christmas Eve and everyone realized that Dingo Danny and Slovenly Suzie weren’t going to choose unless choice was forced upon them.

They face what they’ve decided is the lesser of two evils – go to school or get a job. They are usually laid back in demeanor having sharpened the vernacular of the uninvolved so that “huh” is key to all situations requiring communication. They have no predispositions, or if they do, it emerges so seldom that a verifiable case of ambitiousness has yet to be recorded.

This species of snowflake drives down the Eternal Assessment Numbers, but I love them for what they give me – a built-in response for the Sacred Forms I have to complete on Bore Me to Death Faculty In-Service days. I can relax from the retention frenzy I’m caught up in during the fall because everyone knows they tend to quit and drop-out. They allow me to do what I do best: teach, and let the frozen chips fall where they fall.

Eddie from Edwardsville Poses an Early Thirsty.

Are you always in crisis there? I read the ever-changing "About RYS" text almost every day, and each day I worry. Do you have a pistol? Are you going to do yourselves in at the compound? Who will be there to rescue me from the semester's doldrums.

And I read Walter's latest yesterday and I don't know if I have an answer.

I see his point; I really do. (Please don't lock me up!)

But he's also just a wingnut. I think you've mythologized old Walt out of all proportion.

I don't think it's an either/or. You can be dark and mysterious and still do it with a nice clean font, you know? I think Walt's concern about the mainstream is just a reflection of his own animus for his colleagues, department, or his career. It's not you.

Sure, it's sort of fun when you're naughty, and you simply smack the crap out of Junior and Missy. But, shit, if people send you stuff about the conferences - especially when it's as hilarious as Archie's stuff - you should post the best of that, too.

Q: I guess what I'm getting at is: Do you have to be all or nothing? Do you have to revert to the dark days of this page's mono-maniacal past, OR be some Chronicle wannabe? Can't you do a little of both without destroying anyone's world? Let the readers decide. Oh, and you guys, too. I don't wanna piss any of you off either...heh heh.

A: Send your opinions here. Wait, let us set the pistol down.

Oh, These Links are Optional. But Who Wouldn't Click Through When We Tell You They're About Sex, Christ, Beer Pong, and a Big Anti-Gay Hotel?!?!

• "Handjobs at the Hilton." A Report on MLA Sex. From InsideHigherEd.


• The MLA's Economic Pinch. From the LA Times.


• The Grand Hyatt In San Diego Can't Be Gay. What About All That Salad Tossing? From George Mason University's History News Network.


• The Politicalization of the Year End Conference. From InsideHigher Ed.


• Blago 101. From the Chicago Daily Herald.


• 13% Addicted? Pikers. From the Christian Science Monitor.


• Bet My College Is In a Cooler Building Than Yours. From the NY Times.


• "One Pill Makes You Smarter..." From the London Times.


• In My Time It Wasn't a Pro Sport. We Did It For the Love of the Game. From Associated Press.

Mission Accomplished. WW from W Rings the Death Knell.

"...all eyes on me in the center of the ring, just like a circus."

- "Circus" by Britney

Well, y'all said you wanted to do it, and you did. We used to have the crazzy times here, we really did. We used to howl at the moon, drive with the windows down. We used to call it little and we used to love it. But not anymore.

You done killed the site.

The desperation just pours off the screen. Your need to be liked, your need to be professional. You get your name linked on the Chronicle and Inside Higher Ed pretty regular now, so you must be worth something, right?

Yep, you've killed it. And it was a shame, too, because you didn't have to.

I've watched the site almost from the start, and it's dismal what you've done. This place used to be a lot more real, a lot more fun, and a lot more wicked. But you've let the heathens in the door, letting needledicks like Outsider Otto tell us (from afar, mind you) what we should be doing. You've let these conference attendees have pages and pages of space to whine about their interviews, or the inhumanity of the interviewers, and it's all just a big clusterfuck. (I did enjoy the interview wrapup from some of the job seekers. Not because of the feel-good bullshit they all dripped, but because I just imagined the horror they'd feel when they actually got a job.)

I loved this site. I think a lot of longtime readers did. And now the place is all clean and well lighted (and heavily advertised!) and it's just another mainstream piece of bullshit. You know what it means if an idea has 75% of the faculty in favor of it? It's a colossal waste of time. If you let 5 academics run anything, it turns into the biggest fucking mess since the Bay of Pigs. (See, I read my history, too.)

I don't suppose you want to hear this because your darling new moderator, (Cricket isn't even a good made up name), seems to be steering the site right into the fucking sun, something that the past moderators (Compound Chlamydia, Compound Cankersore, etc.) had been doing for months.

You still toy with good ideas. That insane Katie was someone you could have strung along for months, printing her inane bullshit (she would have eventually sent pics of her cats, you know). And that new fella Archie has got some skillz, but as his posts have continued he's gotten more and more mainstream, more and more bootlicking, and pretty soon he'll be like that murderer's row of "regulars" you have, earnest, in need of affirmation, and dull as ditchwater.

My friends, you have killed it, a fresh fucking idea. It was better when it wasn't all so popular. I know you like the mail and the hits and the pageviews, and I'm sure those Nazis at Google probably reward you for increasing the ad units, but what are you doing this page for?

Are you needy? Are you shallow and pathetic and in need of someone telling you - "Hey, your little page is nice!"

If you're adults and still in need of that, then there's nothing I can say that can help you.

I'll keep checking in, just for old time's sake. Maybe you can get Weepy Wannabe Wayne to write an obituary. I'd do it. I'd fucking burn it up. But I'm too sorrowful to put in the time.

You done killed it. And I hate you for it.

Archie Summons Up Some AHA Detox.

Thank fuck that’s over with. Last night I was so beaten down by three days of non-stop AHA that I was unable to summon the energy to write a new post. So today, on my first day of post-AHA emancipation, I’ve got a final thought or two on the annual fiasco.

Let’s start with those lovely interviewees. We wrapped up our search interviews yesterday with a pleasing lack of self-destruction. If I may, I’d like to offer all the grad-flakes and unemployed historians out there a hint or two. This is the same advice I give my own grad-flakes, without the free beer that sometimes comes with it. Like all things that are free in life, you may do with it what you will (up to and including telling me to stick where the sun don’t shine). However, if you total up the hours I’ve spent in hotel rooms at the AHA—on both sides of the room—I’ve probably lost at least a week’s worth of waking hours of my life to this bullshit. I can never get those hours back, but maybe you can get something useful out of them. In other words, step-off bitch, because I know a thing or two more about this than you do.

First off, while I understand that you may not believe this, every person in that room is praying to the divinity of their choice that you will not decide to do a 40 minute tap-dance all over your own dick. Or if you prefer a more gender-neutral way of putting it (because as you all know I am all about sparing your delicate feelings and sensibilities) we all are praying that you will not perform a recto-cranial insertion right in front of us. If nothing else, it is just plain awkward and uncomfortable watching someone make an asshole out of themselves. More importantly, at this stage of the game we want to find our campus candidates. The more of you pee your pants during the interview, the harder that gets. So you are facing as sympathetic an audience as you will ever get. That’s why I don’t bring my big duffel bag full of hostile questions that might actually reduce you to fucking tears to the AHA. Instead I bring my flower-covered tote bag full of friendly and encouraging questions that are intended to get you talking about your work in interesting ways. I’m sure that somewhere out there in this fair-fucking land of ours, there are giant dickheads who love nothing more than to humiliate poor little grad-flakes. But in that week of waking hours I’ve spent in hotel rooms, I can honestly say I’ve never seen it. I mean it is like beating a small child, after all. Only a true sociopath would get any pleasure out of it. That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen bad behavior on both sides of the room. But that usually had to do with committee members airing their grievances against each other, or the search chair who interviewed me while actually lying prone on the bed. And I always knew that that kind of stuff had nothing to do with me. So don’t get your diapers in such a twist. If you’ve made it into that room, it means we want you to do well. If you approach it in that spirit, you’ll see that your interviews will turn into friendly conversations about your work, and we will all be able to imagine you as a colleague instead of an arrogant little weasel with no idea what the profession is really about. In other words, we will do our best to make some chicken salad out of your chicken shit. And isn’t that what you want?

Which brings me to my second point. Candidates screw themselves in a variety of ways. The most common is the rambling incoherent answer. But I already addressed this in one of my previous post. Today I’d like to discuss the sins of unforgivable arrogance that will derail even the smartest little grad-flakes on interview day. If you are interviewing for a junior position, it is almost a given that you are the only person in that room who has not written a book. And to be totally honest with your little asses, that means you have no fucking idea what it takes to do so. You have not yet had your editor write to you and say “we’re ready to go ahead, but we want you to cut 30,000 words from the manuscript.” You haven’t been told that “you need to make the work more accessible so we can sell it at Barnes and Noble.” And since you haven’t got a clue about the brutal compromises that you are going to have to make to write your book, we’d all appreciate it if you would not piss all over the work of people who in many cases have successfully navigated that minefield several times. And it would be even better if you tried not to whip it out and give a senior and well-respected member of our department a golden shower from the lofty heights of your vast experience as a snowflake, as someone did this weekend. Being critical is good. In fact, it is desirable, and the only form of respect that counts in my book. Any candidate who can’t critique the historiography in her field is not getting a job in my department, and any scholar who can’t engage with a genuine critique is just a pussy. But a good critique requires that you treat the object of your critique with respect. Intellectual engagement requires that you take the ideas of others seriously. If you are openly dismissive, then you are still little more than an overgrown under-flake. You are, to be brutal, simply not ready for prime time.

I know, I know... your advisor told you your dissertation is already publishable. Let me tell you something there dingleberry, we say that to everyone at their defense. We want you to feel positive before you have to face the cold shower of years of painful revisions. Because if you aren’t positive, you’ll never get through that next stage. Just because someone told you that the big pile of brown smelly shit in your diaper is the golden turd, don’t make it so. The most honest thing I can tell you is this: all dissertations suck. The best dissertations—the ones that get you a job—just suck in ways that can be fixed. The sooner you face this fact, the sooner you will be able to face the reality that your precious little thesis is going to have to be rewritten from scratch if you want to write a book that anyone besides your mommy will actually read (and you know she’ll just pretend to read it). And just so you don’t think I’m being an arrogant asshole myself, let me tell you that my dissertation sucked every member of the equine family in seventeen different ways. I had to rewrite it three times before I wound up with a first book I could be proud of. And I was told by many people, including hiring committees, that that heaping pile of horsecrap formerly known as my dissertation was “basically a book already.” Well it wasn’t. It had some book-like characteristics. A sufficient number of them to land me multiple job offers in ass-kicking departments at prestigious universities in the following years. But it wasn’t a book. It never was. It was a shitty ass dissertation. So now that we’ve got the facts straight, let me reiterate that your steaming pile of dissertation shit is no book. “Publishable” in this context means that it is good enough to merit revision into a book. So check yourself before you puff up your little chicken-chest in the interview room. Act like you’ve been there before, not like some insecure little Heather who needs to dominate the other kids in the cafeteria. This is academia bitch. We like the nerdy girls and hate the heathers.

Finally let me close with a report on the business-meeting brouhaha from yesterday afternoon. Now we all know that those weenies over at the MLA won’t have their meeting anywhere where there is some old colonial-era law against blowjobs that no one remembers or cares to enforce, or where someone once looked at someone cross-eyed for wearing pastels. At this rate, all 9,000 of them are going to have to cram into Judith Butler’s basement every year, because it will be the only politically pure space left on the North American continent. But historians have always been a little more sensible about these things. That is until now. Next year’s meeting is in San Diego. Now I think San Diego happens to be a nice choice. It makes for a nice change of January weather for those of us who live in cold-weather cities. But it cannot possibly come as a surprise to anyone that it is a pretty conservative town. I mean Pete fucking Wilson started life as the mayor there for fuck’s sake. So when it turned out that the owner of the hotel for next year’s meeting gave a bucketful of cash to support Prop 8 this year, a petition to force the AHA to change venues was put on the agenda of the business meeting.

Now let me point out that I am all for principles. In fact, compared to the MLA’s very abstract and ultimately meaningless objections to many venues, this strikes me as legit. This guy is clearly an asshole, and I’d like nothing better than to see him humiliated (possibly in ways that involve him being forced to film a gay porno). But no one knew this four fucking years ago when the AHA signed the contract. Pulling out now would put over $500,000 of free money in his pocket (the penalty for breaking the contract) thereby rewarding him and bankrupting the AHA. On second thought, maybe that’s a good idea, but I digress. So I went to my first AHA business meeting to see how things would play out. The whole thing was high theatre. It was like a bad department meeting on steroids. There was the guy on the council who is the resident expert on Robert’s Rules of Order (more on this in a second), the distraught and tormented LGTBQ caucus members speaking on both sides of the issue, and a labor organizer who promised his organization would secure the AHA pro-bono legal representation to make sure we didn’t lose our half a million deposit for breaking the contract. Right, like that rich, white, connected, Rancho Santa Fe Republican shitbird wasn’t going to have an army of better lawyers ready to kick the shit out of their pro-bono schlubs in JC Penney suits. Since this is real life, and not a movie starring John Travolta or Julia Roberts, I’m going to say that going that route would be fucking stooooopid. Anyway, cooler heads prevailed. An amendment that gutted the petition was introduced, Robert’s Rules of Order guy shut down debate in the way that only an anal-retentive procedural freak can, and we wound up with a resolution that created a fund to hold a bunch of history of marriage panels in this asshole’s hotel. This strikes me as the saner route. It might even get picked up in the media, which might then actually cause this fuckhead some embarrassment at the country club. I mean isn’t that better than giving him half a million free dollars because we all want to be pure? Apparently not for some people. No wonder there are no effective left-wing politics in this country.

And that wraps the AHA for me. Good luck to all the grad-flakes out there who are about to go on campus interviews. Remember a little humility goes a long-fucking way. And to all those departments who are about to sit through those job talks (good and bad alike), yes they suck ass, but so did you once.

Hasta bitches,
Archie out.

Sarah From Shingle Springs Spreads Some Soft and Soothing Sense On Those Shitty Interviews (And Offers Up A Scapegoat.)

Interviewing is awful. Nevertheless, consider the fact that the people sitting in front of you at the year-end conferences - especially if they are under 45 - have endured a horrible labor market and a sped-up work process (sometimes for years), to get their jobs; have sometimes read hundreds of files before selecting yours; have likely been sitting in an airless room for hours while they desperately wish for a bathroom break or a glass of water; and have an investment in hiring someone good after all that work during what should have been their holidays too. For god's sake, don't take it all so personally.

Usually, it's not about you (unless you are an hour late for your interview, in which case it is most definitely about you). These conferences are truly awful, but they're the only way to ensure that everyone interviews candidates at the same time so candidates have maximum bargaining power. It was the solution to the old-boy network wherein you wouldn't know if you didn't get a job, because someone would have called his best crony and asked for a Wordsworth man or a specialist in Eastern European History, or whatever, with no advertisement or interview pool. The problem is not the conferences, the interviewing committees, or even you; it's the overproduction ofPh.D.s and the defunding of higher ed.

Sunny Sarah from Salinas Is Clearly Someone We Made Up, An Apocraphyl Junior Faculty Member Who Likes Her Deadwood.

First, let me reveal my bias--RYS, you had me at "snowflake." The snideness and snark that I can rely on RYS to provide is a wonderful way to counter the occasional self-centeredness and overblown self-importance that is sometimes found in academic circles, as well as the sometimes surreal, well, "snowflakiness" of some students.

However, recently as I've been skimming through posts, I find my irritation and disbelief swells. I can hold it in no more. Gumdrop Unicorns, WHAT IS YOUR DEAL? I ask you as a fellow GU--I defended my dissertation this past May (In the softest of social sciences, but from a top notch program that often elicits squeals, or at the very least appreciative nods from other professionals.) and just finished my first semester of a great new tenure-track gig. I can certainly relate to the nervousness of job interviews, sizing departments up to assess "fit," ambitiously asserting your strengths and talents, as well as looking at senior faculty, wondering about why they've stayed at (any mid-size/state school/university beneath you) as well as when they'll leave so you too can have the comfiest of chairs/your pick of classes/the ability to scowl rather than smile at your co-workers regularly. What I don't get however is the apparent disdain for our well-established colleagues, and the arrogance and entitlement expressed so regularly by the GUs who can't even frame their doctoral degrees yet because the ink's still wet.

It's all well and good to have an ambitious agenda--you will be a fantastic teacher, a ground-breaking scholar, yadda yadda yadda. It's great that your parents' effusiveness have provided you such a, uhm, healthy sense of self-esteem. And, of course, we're the "future of the profession"--I'm sure if we could all put down our Blackberries and journals long enough and concentrate collectively, we can light the dark corners of our tiny offices everywhere with our bright, shiny futures.

Not to kill the egotistical buzz you've got going, but did it occur to you that the senior colleagues you are so swift to look down your noses at, disregard as unambitious/irrelevant/impotent (or that you even accuse of being jealous of your youthfully-enthusiastic-yet-wise-beyond-your-years presence) may have something to offer, and dare I say, have a thing or two to teach you? I wonder what we'll all look like 30 years from now listening to the Gumdrop Unicorns of the future tell us how much they know, how much better they can do our jobs, all the while not only entertaining, but changing the very being of the students we teach, and, dressing better to boot.

Maybe I'm just lucky. The senior faculty in my department are kind and supportive. They appreciate enthusiasm and innovation. They listen, offer suggestions and feedback, and ultimately step back and let me do my thing. Or maybe it's that I am respectful of their work, appreciative of their help, and know that most of them have worked their asses off and deserve to be where they are. Regardless, for now I'm glad they're there and find it easy to share a work environment with them without feeling resentful that they don't have to worry about every little comment on a teaching evaluation, that they can go to whatever conference they want, and that they pick the best course times, while my future is full of evening classes.

Instead, I am, well, feeling a feeling that rarely gets expressed by the GUs here--grateful. Not just grateful, but thrilled to be doing what I'm doing. Think about it fellow GUs, we get paid to study what we love, to share our knowledge and passion for our scholarship with others, and have a great deal of flexibility and freedom to do so. Maybe you haven't worked as a copy clerk/janitor/fast food service worker/corporate America drone, but quite frankly, work outside the Ivory Tower really sucks. Perhaps, identifying a little appreciation for the opportunities that present to you in your professional life, as well as for those who have been doing it since before you were born, may help you approach your job interviews/first years on the tenure track/networking at your professional conferences with a different perspective. And also, just maybe, you'll find those Silverbacks will be appreciative of you as well.

Random Live Blogs From the AHA.

• The Sheraton lobby is lousy with historians: you can spot them as the badly dressed types with laptops wandering round trying to find a free wireless signal (because travel allowances don’t include $15/day for internet at hotels).




• Overheard: "That guy interviewed me yesterday. He had the biggest cowlick." "What's a cowlick?" "You don't know what a cowlick is? What, are you from Pakistan?"




• And guys, if you’re going to be loud and obnoxious, talking about how drunk you got last night, don’t have your meeting in the restaurant of the conference hotel. We all know who you are.




• Overheard: "Did you hear what [notable Americanist] said at her panel yesterday?" "No, should I care?"




• You, sitting there slumped back in your chair at a session, lifting your flabby arm to ask a question: get the fuck up and introduce yourself. I know you think we all know who you are because you’re so famous: you’re not. I have no idea who you are. I know you’re not wearing your nametag because you think you don’t need to – get over yourself.




• Overheard: "I'm taking everything out of that fucking room that isn't nailed down."




• If you’re going to say ‘it’s not a question so much as a comment’ and then start giving your own presentation – I hate you. And if you FUCKING PULL OUT NOTES to read from, in which you detail how mistaken the presenter was, for not having recognized the significance of dwarves in Peru for their presentation on Imperial Russia, I will kill you one day. And everyone else in the room will thank me.




• Overheard: "Oh my God. That guy at the counter hit on me." "No, he did not." "He did. He actually asked me my name like we were at Applebee's or something." "What did you tell him?" "I said I was Mary McAleese." "No you DIDN'T! You are so bad."

Day 2 for Archie at the AHA.

Day 2 and I am already fucked. Part of it is the weird schedule this year, where the conference started on Friday instead of Thursday. Part of it is the association party at which I am a habitual attendee. It normally features an open bar, but apparently New York prices have driven it to have a cash bar instead. What the fuck? How am I supposed to get the hair of dog that bit the fuck out of me on new year’s if I have to fork over... This is just not right. I want to get bent on someone else’s dime. So day 2 was slightly more eventful. I spent several hours in a hotel suite interviewing candidates, and I gave that paper I groused about yesterday.

Let’s start with the latter. I count it as a victory that there were more people in the audience than presenters on the panel ... barely. I also count it as a victory that I actually got a question from the audience. Bonus! But for the rest, it was an utter defeat.

Typical AHA panel. Junior person goes all out by giving a thoughtful presentation that meets the time constraints and actually gives a nice synthetic overview of the book project that is still in revisions. In between person (me) who sticks to the limit while trying out some new ideas on leftovers from a completed book project. Then the classic AHA session-killer: the super-senior person who shows up with no paper (no joke), asks the chair/moderator how long he is supposed to talk, and proceeds to eat up 40 minutes (also not a joke I am afraid) of everyone’s time before the moderator actually rips the microphone from his hands. Now that’s scholarship baby!!! A catastrophe of epic proportions that could have been avoided if senior person had taken a second to remember how much text actually works into 20 minutes of speech. This is not hard people! Two minutes per page of double spaced text: a rule of fucking thumb that actually works.

As for the interviews, I’d love to offer some serious smackdown in the spirit of my MLA attending colleagues. But in violation of all my previous experiences, only one candidate self-immolated. Having said that, it was an epic case of self-immolation. Allow me to digress.

Here’s a hint to the grad-flakes in the audience: the first question you will face in every AHA interview (and I mean every single fucking one) is some variation on the old standby, “tell us about your shitty fucking work and its relationship to the boring-ass field.” This is a softball. This is the easiest motherfucking question you can get. You should have a 45 second answer to this question in your back pocket. And when I say 45 second, I mean 45 fucking seconds and not a second more. Practice it in the mirror if you have to. Go to an acting coach if you must. But if you cannot state the importance of your work and its relationship to the field in 45 seconds or less, you are not getting the job. Sometimes candidates can get away with a 90 second answer if they have charm, but your goal should be 45 seconds. I mention this because today the self-immolating candidate took up the entire interview trying to answer this question. And I tried to stop him. My colleagues tried to interrupt. But he was having none of it. He spent 40 minutes trying to answer the question. And when we told him his time was up, he said “I guess what I’m trying to say is that my ideas are really complex.”

Here’s your hint for the day, Fuckstick: if your ideas are so complex that you are incapable of articulating them, you may wish to go back to the proverbial drawing board and start over. Jesus H Fucking Christ on a unicycle, I would like to blame the advisors for this debacle, but the candidate has to share the responsibility here. I could expand on this, but I may leave it for another post. As a secondary matter, I would advise all of you to have something better than “what’s your timetable?” when the committee asks you if you have any questions for their tired asses. Ask about team-teaching, ask about the students, ask any fucking question that shows you have even a moderate interest in the job. It is obviously cool to ask what the timetable is, but don’t let that be your only question. Other than that, the interviewees were all surprisingly competent. Some were pedestrian, to be sure, but no one else decided to flat-out pull down their pants and fuck the dog in front of the whole committee. I count that as a victory. Which is a sad fucking commentary on my life and the profession in general.

Whoo-fucking-Hoo,
Archie.

P.S. of course tomorrow is another day. And another group of interviewees. So stay tuned.

First Pinata of 2009 Is Outsider Otto. Oh, Those Outsiders, They and Their Rose Colored (and Half Full) Glasses.

Even people who write for us fairly regularly think we make shit up here. We can't post anything without someone calling bullshit, often on us, for a made up bit of malarkey. Nobody lately has engendered such flabbergastment than Outsider Otto. Alas, all we can tell you is that we didn't make him up. In fact he wrote us a nice note after we posted his piece, and we know he's a longtime reader of the page. Those folks who wanted to talk back to him, well, we've given them a little space to do so. Please to enjoy. (Oh, and by the way, we've been putting the page up the past couple of days - literally - on about a 1991 Palm Pilot from White Sands, New Mexico, where we dodge missile tests during the day and albino gila monsters the size of surfboards at night. So if there are typos or if the graphics "don't quite pop," just let it go.)

• I know you swear you don't make them up - but Otto is made up. Right? He thinks we want to be liked? Certainly he's noticed that "once a week" someone writes in that they've given up on that. And why should we expect a first day of class lecture on ground rules, and inclusion of said rules in the syllabus, to work on 18 year olds when HAVING SAID THAT WE ALREADY DO THAT apparently has no effect on a guy in his 50's? Otto, if you don't remember the "and it was covered in my syllabus" posts, you're really not the guy to propose a plan to make ground rules memorable to students. We do exactly what you say, and usually preface the indignation with that back-story to intensify the drama. I start every single semester with the ground rules, and those same admonitions are also presented in black and white. Or sometimes black and golden rod. Thinking you had the holy grail for us must be almost as embarrassing as Fleischman and Pons announcing the achievement of "cold fusion."


• Otto, my man, you act like they're rational. They're not. Most of them don't know how to think yet. Of course, it's our job to teach them how to think, if they want to learn (that part is important). But just as we expect them to learn to make cost-benefit analyses, we have to make our own when we see them breaking the rules. And sometimes, it's much less effort to pretend you don't see than to watch them cry about their dead grandma or argue like a third-grader. Especially when there are the ones who are taking notes, are nodding and making eye-contact, and come up to you after class to continue the conversation because they're really interested in this point you couldn't get to in class. I'll just teach those kids, thanks, 'cause they want to learn. The texters are not worth my time.


• At the beginning of the quarter, I do, in fact, lay down the ground rules. I tell them the important policies, and took pains to go over the areas students have trouble with ("But professor, I need an A!"). However, since my students are all crack-addled squirrels, they don't pay attention. A person can take "I didn't know that!" only so many times.


• The reason that a simple talking-to will not melt the snowflakes is that they’ve never in their fluffy existences come up against a true deadline or a rule which cannot be circumvented. The next time you see a parent negotiating with a two year-old in public, and losing, be sure to thank them for their contribution to society. The snowflakes would see your speech as just another meaningless bump around which to swerve on the way to the beach, and, lacking the support of administration, they’re right.


• Otto the Outsider doesn't appear to be aware of how post-secondary education functions nowadays. If one were to do as he suggests, namely by laying down the law up front at the start of a course, one might be soon hauled into the office of one's department head or, worse, the dean. The reason? One *intimidated* the little wee snowflakes, creating an "unsafe" learning environment and, thereby, interfering with their success. Let's face it, Otto, the whole system is concerned only with *them* and their comfort. Disciplined learning does occur once in a while, but only by accident. Been there, suffered for it.


• Oh Otto. You want to know why we don't give a preemptive smackdown to common problems? The fact is that we do. Every. Single. Semester. I even do it twice: once on the first day of class, and again on the second for all the little snowflakes who "needed" to extend their vacation, because we aren't going to do anything important on the first day anyway, right? It doesn't work Otto. It goes in one ear and out the other, and no matter how ferocious I am about turning the goddam cell phone off, by week three someone will be texting. And if I dare to remind them of my policy? I'm a horrible bitch who is too strict about things that don't really matter. Did you really think we hadn't tried the preemptive strike, Otto? I mean, isn't that just the obvious first step? Was it too hard for your to imagine that we tried your outsider's advice long ago and found it lacking?


• Otto-man…while I dig where you’re coming from, lemme clue ya in to reality: semester-end grade-grubbing is pandemic, and it’s entirely resistant to the actions you suggest.
  My semesters always begin with yrs. trly., Dr. Mindbender, playing the hardass, and the year’s first class is Scary Syllabus Smackdown Storytime. Essentially, my rap goes like this: “Welcome to class. Turn off your fucking cell phone. If it rings, I get to answer it, and you’ll be marked absent. Same for texting or checking the scores on ESPN.com during class. Your grade is based on the quality of your work. Here’s what will get you an A, a B, et cetera. 89.49% is a B. I don’t round up, so don’t even ask. Every semester, at least one of you idiots plagiarizes something. If you plagiarize, you will fail. Save your work early, and save it often; I don’t give a fuck if your computer crashed. Turn your shit in on time or get docked 10% per day. That’s per CALENDAR day, morons, not per class day. And fer fuck’s sake, you’re in college, so write in complete sentences, use your spellchecker, and at least pretend you know where commas go.” My act usually scares off the more precious of the snowflakes, and over the rest of the course, I follow my policies but generally mellow out and let my humanity show. Ringing cell phones do start to happen a few weeks into the semester, but they’re only answered by embarrassed faces or by yrs. trly., and no arses are ejected nor absences are applied unless studential lips start flapping. Similarly, compulsive texters only start to jones for their Crackberries about the same time, and those students usually fail anyway, so as long as they aren’t being disruptive, I sez fuck ‘em, I sez. And for computer-related woes, I’m willing to be reasonably flexible, given the circumstances. No matter what, though, at semester’s end, there’s always at least two or three whiners who grade-grub and “NEED” that A or B or who email weeks-overdue papers at 1:30 AM, when grades are due at 8 AM the next morning. It just don’t matter none.


• We do say those things. My syllabus says those very things (well, not in those words -- I'm much more succinct) but clearly lays down ground rules. But here you are in class, teaching, and you see Missy pull out her hot pink cell phone under the table and start texting. And you say,"Missy, get out." And she says "WHY?" and you say "you're texting instead of listening, you might as well do it elsewhere," and she says, "But proffie, my puppy is dying and my mommy is giving me updates," and you think Aw, Christ, how many updates can there be on a goddamn puppy's death? but you say "Still, no exceptions," and she leaves crying. Then an hour later you see Jocko texting and you say "get out" and he says "I wasn't texting" and you say "yes you were" and he says "no I wasn't" and you realize you can't prove it -- he could have been playing with his balls for all you know under that desk, or rolling a cigarette with this thumbs, or practicing thumb-wrestling on himself. But eventually he leaves, slamming the door and glaring and then you get a call from the dean and she -- thank God she's reasonable -- says"well, you have to enforce your policies, and whatever he was doing he wasn't paying attention." Then as you're leaving she says "you know, if we have a shooting on campus, it might be good if they have their cell phones." So every time you see that, you weigh your options. Battle with the self-entitled little twits, or let them play while you make sure and give some juicy test answers when they're not paying attention. So you let them text their friends about the "w33k3nd" or whatever and you go on talking about the subject you love in the hopes that one or two of the kids actually writing down notes might get it.

Archie at the AHA. Day One Report.

Can you smell that son? That’s the smell of fear. I love the smell of fear in the morning. It smells of ... the AHA.

OK, so technically it’s the afternoon, but that acrid stench of fear hits me as soon as I get to the other side of the revolving door. I wouldn’t say that I’d forgotten the smell of the AHA. More like I’d suppressed it in the six years since I last attended one. Man I hate the AHA. The desperate expressions on the faces of the job-seekers; the smug turd expressions on the faces of the fat, dusty white guys; the overdressed butt-suckers on the lookout for someone famous to accost; the hyper-competitive grad-flakes trying to humiliate each other with how many interviews they scored this year, even though they all know it means nothing unless they can close the deal at a campus interview; I hate it all. But hey, it’s a new year (at least that’s what I think my two-day hangover is telling me) so I should have a better attitude.

So just to prove that academics shouldn’t even be allowed to plan a cluster fuck, this year’s meeting features an "improved” registration system. If you pre-registered, you wait in line to use one of several laptop computers. You look up your name and press print. Then you go stand in line and wait for one of the graduate student volunteers to call your name and hand you your badge. How this constitutes an improvement over the cardboard box full of alphabetized envelopes is beyond me. In the twenty minutes I stood there, the system crashed twice, and the whole show ground to a screeching halt. Only an asshat academic could have been talked into paying someone for this. On a related note, they made the poor grad student workers wear these red AHA T-Shirts that make them look like they are trying out for Santa’s workshop. Just sad.

While I’m standing in line waiting for the tech support guy to fix the stupid registration computers, I overhear a couple of grad students here for their first job-market experience complaining about how much it costs to register for this shindig. On the one hand, they are right, the AHA ass-rapes members and non-members alike. On the other hand, were they really too fucking stupid to figure out that no one cares if they actually register? I’ve been to more AHAs than I care to remember, and this is only the second time I’ve ever registered. And let me tell you, if my department hadn’t paid both times, there was no way I was doing it. When I had no job I would crash on a friend’s couch, go to my interviews, and then go get bent at some cheap dive. No badge required for that, just a legal form of ID and a couple of Andrew Jacksons. The only area in the whole conference where they check your badge is at the book exhibit, and when I had no money for books I saw no reason to go there. The way I figured things, the library had the same books for free. Anyway, anybody without a job who forks over the registration fee for this thing is an idiot. Or a goodie-goodie, which so often amounts to the same thing. Did I mention I hate sanctimonious goodie-goodies? Which raises the inevitable question of how the fuck I wound up in a profession full of them? But that’s a story for another day.

So it’s day one, and I have nothing to do. Should I go to a panel? In my experience, most AHA panels are a mixed bag. Some junior person really goes all out to impress, while the senior people on the same panel just throw some bullshit together at the last minute and expect everyone to swallow it. Then there is the fact that the AHA program always features a good number of sponsored panels—the Catholic History Association sponsors something like six every year, for example. These papers and panels are automatic acceptances. They aren’t vetted by anyone. Some junior faculty schmo, who didn’t have the good sense to stare intently at the floor when they were looking for volunteers at some other conference, gets tasked with roping a few willing idiots into a panel. And did I mention that this year I am one of the willing idiots? In a moment of weakness for which I may never forgive myself, I allowed a total stranger to sweet-talk me into giving a paper. What was I thinking? OK, I know what I was thinking: I have piles of material left over from a recently completed book that I should be working into articles, provided I can find a fresh angle that doesn’t just needlessly repeat the arguments from the book. So foolishly I thought I could use this as an excuse to jump start the process. But what’s the point? No one will come, as they will all be either scurrying from interview to interview; sitting in a hotel suite conducting said interviews; watching porn on the hotel’s pay-per-view; or sitting in the bar getting hammered. I know that it ain’t the size of the audience that matters (or at least so I’m told), but I would still rather have more than five people in attendance. I mean if the point is to get some useful feedback to help me get my thoughts in order for an article, then I’ve really come to the wrong place. It doesn’t help that I am geographically and chronologically an outlier in the field that the panel addresses. I predict the other presenters will get all the questions and I will sit there like a dumb-ass until it the clock mercifully strikes ninety minutes.

But all that lies in the future. Right now it’s Friday night (ok, technically it’s late afternoon) and I’m heading for the bar. Maybe some other degenerate of my acquaintance will be there and I won’t have to suffer the silent shame of drinking alone in a room full of nerds. This also may mean the end of my blogging for today, if all goes according to plan.

OK, what the fuck? I can’t find a single friendly face in the hotel bar at the AH-fucking-A? Guess I will be drinking alone in a room full of nerds, at least for a while. This will give me time to scan the room and view the rich variety of academic wildlife. You can spot the job-seekers a mile away. They are the ones with the tense jaws and looks of grim determination. Occasionally they remember that they are supposed to look friendly, so they break out into these utterly fake smiles. Who knows what these people are really like in their daily lives. The AHA warps them beyond recognition, into paranoid schizophrenics with a mild homicidal streak. I read somewhere that something like 80% of academics are on some kind of mood stabilizing medication. Some of these kids should have doubled up on their dosage for this event. At any rate, I think that’s what I hate most about this conference: the way it leads people to behave in fucked up ways. In fact, if I don’t find a drinking buddy soon, I may have to go to a strip-club. It would be less demeaning, and the strippers are probably behaving more authentically than the people in this room. Man, now that’s a depressing thought. Then there are the aca-mullett sporting, grade A weirdos. They are congregating in a corner, drinking the house plonk, and laughing just a little too loud at some seriously lame jokes. Must be medievalists. There’s a couple of graybeards sitting at the corner of the bar opposite me. I have no idea who they are, but every younger person who passes by slows down and does that weird neck-craning thing trying to get a look at these guys’ nametags to see if they are someone whose ass could use a good licking. Yeah baby, just one more thing to hate about this conference.

Most of the conversations I am overhearing are about the number of searches that got cancelled because of the stock market crash. I have to say, I would not want to be a freshly-minted Ph.D. looking for a job this year. There are a lot of things I could say about the cutbacks, but I will just quote Marc Bousquet (if you don’t know him, check out his blog—how the university works), who wisely observed that “administrators love austerity” because it gives them the excuse they have long been looking for to cut back on the number of tt faculty and hire more adjuncts. For example, my spouse’s institution (I know, academic couples are more disgusting than week-old dog-puke) saw its endowment triple in the last sixteen years or so. They’ve recently lost a third of those gains so they’ve cancelled everything for this year and probably next as well. Their endowment is still more than double what it was in the 90s and they’re pleading poverty? Give me a fucking break. They still have plenty of money to hire new faculty. They just don’t want to, because they see this as an incremental step towards getting rid of the tenure-track altogether. It’s Total Quality Management baby. My institution has yet to freeze anything, but I won’t be surprised if the search I am on gets the axe before January is out. On that depressing note, I’m going to call it a blogging day. A couple of grad students from my department just walked in, and noblesse oblige dictates that they drink on my dime today. See, I do try to be kind to them in my own fucked up way, because that’s just the way I fucking roll.

Hasta la mañana RYSers.

Archie out.

Otto the Outsider With a New Year's Plan For Those of Us Overwhelmed and Ornery.

I'm one of those outsiders who read RYS addictively because the posts make my jaw drop with astonishment (it's good to still be astonishable in one's fifties) and because they confirm that I made a good choice in not becoming an academic (I'd have reached my limit and killed a puling student or annoying colleague long ago). I'm sure a lot of your readers check out the blog so they can say, "What's wrong with kids these days?" and I do a lot of that myself. But sometimes all I can think is "What the hell is wrong with professors these days?"

At least once a week during grading season, it seems, one of your contributors describes being cornered by a desperate student who whines,"But I NEED an A in this course." And fairly regularly, throughout the semester, profs complain about students texting or answering calls during class.

Given the predictability of both scenarios, why don't professors start off the semester with a pre-emptive semi-smackdown that addresses these problems before they occur? What's wrong with saying something like:

"Before you sit down in my class, turn your cell phones off. No, don't put them on vibrate - turn them off. Because if you get a call and answer it in class or I see you texting when you're supposed to be listening, you'll be out the door and marked as absent, and that will affect your grade and your GPA and so on and so forth, so let's just not even go there. Cell phones off, no exceptions.

"Also, at the end of every semester [quarter], I can count on a certain number of students emailing me or showing up in my office to say, 'But professor, I NEED an A in this course.' So let me clue you all in right now:if you need an A, come to class and participate in the discussions, do the assignments, take the tests, and do an above-average job with all of these things. That's how you earn an above-average grade. That's right - I don't give you grades, you EARN them." (If you're of a certain age, you can put a little John Houseman spin on the word "earn" - won't mean a damn thing to your snowflakes, but it may provide a tiny moment of auto-amusement for those who remember the Smith-Barney commercials of yester-decade.)

Really, what's the deal here? Why are so many professors afraid to set ground rules regarding classroom deportment? Why are so many willing to explain in the syllabus that x percent of the grade will be based on papers and y percent will be based on tests, but unwilling to explain the whole giving vs. earning thing?

Even if you're afraid of not being liked, it's better to be a hardass on the very first day and *then* show them your friendly, good-guy side as the semester wears on. They might leave the class liking you. The alternative is trolling spinelessly for their affection from the start and then being dismissed as an asshole at the end of the class because they thought you were their pal and then it turns out you had this crazy policy about grading according to the quality of the work they do.

Grow a spine and save yourselves some tsuris.

Schenectady Skeptinautika Sexed Up San Fran In A Suit and a Smile.

It's taken a day and a half for me to process the results of the interviews. Some highlights:

1. Damn, I look good in a suit. Sarah Palin's got nuthin' on me.


2. Whether or not you need them, glasses always look good in an interview, particularly when accompanied by a smile. (Glasses = smart, smile = nonthreatening. Very good combination.)


3. If you ask questions about resources for connecting with other female faculty on campus, and the institution likes you at all, they will bend over backwards to assure you that they are "sensitive, inclusive, and respectful of gender issues" at every possible opportunity. Gee, thanks -- you've now completely creeped me out.


4. Interviewers can botch an interview even worse than interviewees can. (So yeah, space cadet ADHD dude in my last interview? I'm not impressed. Ask me a question that actually makes sense, if you're going to pull a Rainman for most of the interview.)


5. The only way to properly finish a long day of interviews is with a pint of Guinness.


6. Thank you notes? To *each* interviewer individually? Seriously, placement director? Do people actually do this?


7. I had exactly 5 hours between my last interviews, and placement director's first mention of my job talk. No rest for the weary, eh?


8. The interviews were fun. FUN! Yes, I was an overcaffeinated wreck before each of them. Yes, I chattered on like a hyperactive chihuahua for the first five minutes of each one. But once I relaxed, listened to the promptings of the interviewers, and started thinking of this as a unique opportunity to talk about my life's work, it was pretty stimulating. I have a whole lot of fun teaching onanistic thinking, and I like talking about it. It was a pleasant surprise that not only do other people like talking about it, but they like listening to me talk about it, too! (Either that, or they did a damn good job faking it.)

So yes, I will write thank you notes. I will prep my job talk. I will wait neurotically by the phone for my Favorite Beau to call. But even if no one calls me, I'm still pretty happy with the whole thing. It's not every day that you get to sit around with a bunch of really smart people whose entire purpose for conversing with you is to talk about the stuff you've been devoting your life to. So thanks for your time, interviewers. Thanks for not being assholes, and for taking me seriously. Even if you don't pick me, I owe you one.

Skeptinautika signing off.

Olivier from Ottawa Serves Up A Review Of Who Gets the Shit Kicked Out of Them on RYS.

As a long-time reader, I know what I come looking for from RYS. There's just nothing like reading a little righteous smackdown on some entitled s.o.b. (or d.o.b. as the case may be) who really has it coming. After all, who doesn't hate entitlement? And who doesn't believe that over-entitled people have "it" (and more) coming to them?

But as I try to keep track of the various sides and causes in evidence around here (the recent Diaper Dave thing caught my attention) I've realized that the varieties of entitlement in evidence and under discussion have become all-encompassing. We've literally covered everyone.

Of course it started with undergrads who all think the sun shines out of their collective asses. We always knew they were funny. Then it was the grad-flakes. Not surprising, since they're only a year or three older than the undergrads anyway. The slightly less dense among them rise to the top and make it into graduate programs but that doesn't imply a whole new species. Offer a minimally new theory on Milton and they figure they deserve to be called "doctor" now. Plenty of entitlement there.

Then it's the junior faculty. Gumdrop unicorns in abundance. My research, my ambition, what I have to show them all about teaching. Obviously the academy needs new blood sometimes (though not nearly the sea of it that washes up every year hoping for a crevice to drain into) but this attitude is ridiculous. Only matriculated grad-flakes who think they're actually the first people to fully understand Milton could be so deluded about their role in the academy - if indeed they should be lucky enough to find a role. The next generation on the rise? Sure, maybe. But you think you know more than your elders already and expect them to kiss your asses for it? That's just fucking arrogant.

And finally there's the senior faculty. So sure of their superiority and natural right to the perks and status they enjoy that they're blithely unconcerned about the teetering edifice they stand on. It's mildly annoying, I agree, to expect a bright young person to be thrilled about 4/4 at third-tier U in the middle of nowhere. To expect someone to be willing to do it, sure. There's nothing wrong with working for a living. But to expect a song and dance about how wonderful it is might be pushing it. And beyond that, it's frankly offensive when they turn a blind eye to the struggling contract faculty, whose term-to-term existences directly subsidize the privileges of "better" academics who as often as not haven't done anything in a decade to even justify the distinction. And that's before we get into the deeper questions.

So that's everyone, right? Except maybe the anonymous editors of RYS who, being anonymous, can't be easily categorized. Yet that very anonymity is a privilege! And you kompound kats, to give you your due, give folks a chance to slag you off for it also. You figure you're entitled to sit in judgment, eh? Entitlement all around.

No one is left standing. We've got mutually assured denigration going on here. Who ever knew that an innocent inquiry into the entitlement of undergrads would lead so far down a hole of self-loathing? Where the fuck did the white rabbit go, anyway?

I still like seeing the entitlement smacked down, but I miss having someone to cheer for. It seems like we're out of good guys. So rather than nominate someone based on position alone, I'm going to suggest who I like in general terms. I like people who are really fucking good at what they do but prove it to the nth before expecting any kudos. I like kick-ass scholars who know more than anyone else in a room but listen anyway, to find out what others have to say. I like young people who respect their elders not because they necessarily deserve it but just because it's fucking polite. And I like older people who return that respect instead of abusing it.

In short, I like anyone (even undergrads!) who pony up a little humility. It's in really short supply. When it's combined with any degree of ability it's almost miraculous. So here's your challenge, RYS. Please, find me someone to cheer for again. I love seeing everyone get clobbered, but when there's no one left over it makes me wonder why we bother.

Layla from Lounsberry Wraps Up Her MLA Experience.

Already home, having missed the travel nightmares that seemed to plague most of the attendees from the horror stories I heard -- everything from missed connections to missing luggage (one pal woefully regaled being re-routed to Vegas, reunited with one of the AWOL suitcases only to have it go missing again by the time she got to SF. No word yet on whether any of them caught up with her on the return trip. Perhaps the best case scenario is that they never left the original departure point.

In our interviews, we had two superstars, i.e. candidates who not only met every expectation but in person proved to be all they were on paper and more, and some reasonable folks as well. That's the thing to remember about MLA interviews: if you've got that far, we already feel you're competent to have the job (or at least trust you'll *probably* prove to be so). What you need to show is that you would be a great colleague, that you'd be terrific in the classroom of our SLAC and you won't have delusions of grandeur immediately upon arrival. A sense of humor is a plus, particularly when it demonstrates how you can deal with a stressful situation with aplomb.

I cringe at the word collegiality. When I worked as an admin at an Ivy League Med School, it was a smokescreen word that meant we want this guy (and yes, it was almost always a guy -- I demonstrated the powers of a new database by running off a bar chart of senior faculty divided by gender, AKA the redwood and the bush, and was asked to take it down from my office door). Along with terms like "career trajectory" and "research potential" it was a weasel word that allowed rhetoric to cover old boy networking.

It probably seems like that to candidates. Maybe it should; but the truth is we do know if your secondary interest overlaps too neatly with another colleague, or if you seem far too timid to stand up to our ex-Marine dept chair. Far more often, however, the things that make us move you to the second or third tier of candidates (or strike you as the dread group four, "no way!") are your own damn fault. So let me mention a couple things to augment other lists here:

Don't tell us how we should be doing things. You don't know why things are the way they are at our college.

Look at our website! We may have a really crap website (we do, oh, we do) but there is important information there that you ought to know before we ask you if you have any questions. One of our faboo candidates asked about a course that my colleague was teaching in the fall and had clearly looked at the course description on line. Another great response came from a candidate who knew that a large per cent of our students went on to become teachers, and had a brilliant suggestion about how to address that specific population.

On the other hand, there were the candidates who thought we had a whole program in their content area (nope) or asked what they ought to tell us in response to one of the primary questions. If rule number one is know who we are, rule number two is know who YOU are. If we ask what kind of classes you'd like to teach in your primary area, HAVE answers. And no, I don't mean syllabuses you can hand to us and then leave it at that. We're not going to do more than glance at them that minute. We want to hear how excited you are about your field, how full of ideas you are and (because teaching is our primary measure of tenure) what kind of a think-on-your-feet instructor you would be in the classroom. If you seem totally cowed by talking to us, how can we imagine you in front of a class? Sit up! Speak loudly. Practice your interview techniques. It will help.

Without becoming bizarre, try to be a bit original. Our eyes were glazing over when we got precisely identical responses to one of the standard questions from several candidates in a row. Keep up with the latest developments, and if you need to talk about surveys or staple classes, at least interrogate notions of canon or have some original way to link things together. Anybody can teach from a Norton edition, but WHY would you?

I found it amazing that not all the candidates even asked about the timeline for decisions. It's all right to ask.

And don't assume getting the job will solve all your problems. A friend who recently accepted a tenure-track job at a small rural southern college has found a mentor who likes to fondle her thighs, to make suggestive remarks her clothes and to inform her that she will never get tenure anyway because she's the wrong race and a woman to boot. Needless to say, she's back on the job market.

Academia is great, but it's not worth selling your soul. There are less than wonderful jobs, but you can survive them (she says having hung out at MLA with colleagues from the previous job). Sometimes a first job is a terrific learning experience, which is to say painful, uncomfortable and grueling, but it shouldn't be degrading. That's why we have professional organizations. Don't suffer in silence.

I saw all of two panels the whole of MLA. I missed seeing people I know or writers I admire because after spending all day doing interviews, I didn't want to sit in a panel and instead sampled the fine restaurants of SF and drank copious amounts of beer at an Irish pub. MLA is stressful, snarky, pretentious and massively overblown. It's full of a surprising number of crap papers given by people who got in on titles alone. Why oh why is there always a paper in my tiny field given by someone who knows nothing about the field and can't be bothered to do any real research and ends up summarizing a text everyone in the audience already knows? This year's bonus included the panelist using a childish euphemism for sexual parts, too, whoo hoo.

At least my outfit was complimented by an SF drag queen, so I came home happy. And we do have high hopes for hiring -- fingers crossed and a race to the finish line. If all goes well, maybe next year will be the last MLA I have to attend for a good long while. Oh god, I hope so.

Cricket Has Come to Ruin Everything!

Happy New Year everyone.

As 2009 chugs around the corner, we here at the compound want to welcome our newest head moderator, the compund-ite who will lead us into the new year - and if things go REALLY well, the next century!

Since "The Professor" turned the site over to three former RYS readers in February of 2006, almost a dozen different folks have "lived" in the mythical compound, drinking the margaritas, shooting the lemurs with a bow, etc.

Great folks have come and gone, and only rarely has any one of us been in charge. Compound Carl was really the first post-Professor leader of things. Compound Chronos was the longest-lived of all the moderators, but when he left in November of this year, the RYS staff was temporarily down to one. Compound Calico took the reins - who the fuck else was there - and since November we've added 2 more folks to the family, one of whom will officially take charge of the site starting today, er, tomorrow, because she tells us she's hungover. (Which, of course, is one of the pre-reqs for the gig in the first place.)

But Compound Cricket is who we bow down to now, and with a full sabbatical year ahead of her, she promises to put in the hours necessary to completely ruin RYS and kill the page off for good. (May the gods be with her in her mission.)

Cricket has appeared on our pages more than a dozen times in the past year, and was a grad school friend of an earlier moderator. Her knowledge of the site and its special "history" is deep. (Not that it matters. History is, like, old news, or so our snowflakes tell us.) She has a teaching history in two different humanities departments (OH GOD!) at a large (but NOT especially football-friendly) state uni in one of the great rectangle states in the middle of the country. She tells us it's about an hour outside New York and about 90 minutes east of LA. She has tenure, abuses and eats junior faculty for fun, is a breeder of at least two kids, one actually in college (an "A" student, we're told [yeah, we bet]), and someone who'd rather run over a cat with her car than own one.

She writes today: "I am honored and flustered at the flustering honor of this great honor. I pledge to read portions of every email, often cutting out the real point and focusing on the minutiae, misrepresenting everyone I can, making fools of otherwise wonderful people. I will not stop until RYS is a wicked burp on the lips of every besotted and Birkenstocked college prof from Vermont to New Hampshire, and all points between."

We don't understand it either. But, shit, she's going to do most of the work, so who cares?

We don't actually think much will change. The site will still be what it is, a towering, stinky spire of academic discourse (with blurry photos).

Meet the new boss, kids, (pretty much) the same as the old boss.