For reference

Here we are, nearing the last week of July! Before we know it, classes will begin, and we’ll be struggling to make regular progress on those summer research projects that always take longer than we expected.

This week’s project is to clear a reference article off my plate. It is part of a massive reference work with a well-known, respected publisher. Contributors to this installment were solicited using social media, and, to be honest, I’m feeling pretty anxious about the results. When the editors approached me last year, I agreed. What could go wrong? They’re reputable scholars, and I’ve collaborated with them before on conferences and published projects. However, the current project is massive.

Before long, the editors opened it up on that F-word of a database that’s free to all only because it sells the information fools willingly provide to it. To keep up with the project, I was forced to join its closed online group, to learn that only a handful of the other contributors were known to me. In academia, where your reputation is your reality, the unfamiliarity of my potential co-contributors was a red flag. Random Googling (speaking of data-mining our free information) revealed that many, many of the other members, who may or may not be contributors, were students, some barely out of undergrad at places I’ve never heard of—and once you’ve been on the job market a few times, you will have heard of just about every place.

Let’s be clear. Reference articles are never stimulating research projects. In fact, I think of them (as I do book reviews) as service to the profession, rather than research per se. But the revelation of just how egalitarian this project had become changed my perception of it into a chore. Unlike Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary, this reference work of signed articles can’t rely on even crowd-sourcing for a modicum of quality control. The online group is closed, and I have no idea what the editors are doing for quality control. A quick scan of the group’s membership shows that some are going by nicknames like “Snookums ABD” (yet, for example, Salman Rushdie was forced to go by his birth name “Ahmed Rushdie” until he mobilized his Twitter army in protest), and many of these would-be contributors seem not to know how to navigate their (admittedly ever-changing) privacy settings. To be blunt: their self-presentation is unprofessional. If I ran into a job application from some of these folks, I’d hope not to remember them from this project.

I realize I’m coming across as a hardass snob, already inured to my privilege as a tenured faculty member at a garden-variety RU/VH institution. Brilliance is where you find it. Moreover, I routinely teach students I consider more intelligent than I am; it is my honor to push those intelligences to their limits. All they lack is experience. People like me have been studying this area almost as long as they have been alive.

Indeed, I’ve always been puzzled that grad students are so often encouraged to write book reviews and encyclopedia entries as apprentice work in scholarly publishing. Sure, these kinds of publications are shorter, but all they have to recommend them is brevity. Done well, they require context that most very junior apprentice scholars lack. Wouldn’t it be a better use of their effort and time to revise that seminar paper the professor gushed over, soliciting her help in preparing it for PMLA, whose high profile enables it to attract prompt, conscientious readers whose smart, if blunt, reports will teach apprentice scholars much more about academic publishing? And who knows? Maybe that essay will be accepted: no matter what one might think of PMLA, several people in my grad-school cohort managed just such a coup, which certainly commands attention on a CV.

As to lesser accomplishments on a CV, I actually contributed to the first installment of this massive reference work whose current assignment has become a chore. A well-liked human being as well as a remarkable scholar, the editor for that installment personally solicited contributions from his extensive network of colleagues happy to return a favor, and the resulting list of contributors reads like an international who’s who in the field. I mean, I’m staring at the spines of their books, just as they might be staring at mine. The reference work thus commands authority and will endure.

For the current project, those incoming MA students at East Southwest Somewhere State University-Satellite City who just graduated from Modest College may well write terrific essays, but they’re unknown quantities. The point of soliciting established scholars is that they’re, well, established. You already know their work and, in the insular groves of academe, their work habits. If the editors decided to not-quite crowd-source this project because doing so seemed easier than coaxing contributions out of their networks, they’ll probably wind up doing the bulk of their editorial work on the back end, once the contributions come in.

Of course, the most dismaying aspect of very early scholars seeking to publish is the ratcheting up of expectations, the hyperprofessionalization through publication of a profession that is being deprofessionalized by adjunctification. In that fabled age when academic hiring meant that one Old Boy called up another Old Boy to suggest the Promising Young Man he was advising, publications weren’t expected of candidates. (I suppose it could be argued that my whining about the need to recruit established scholars is analogous to reaffirming the Old Boy’s network, but what makes a scholar “established” is her work, not the nod of an Old Boy.) Now they’re not unusual among applicants to grad school. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those incoming MA students were looking to parlay this publication into a spot in the PhD program at Berkeley or Duke. In a moment of sincere excitement, I’ve even encouraged particularly accomplished undergrads to submit parts of their theses for publication. In the most instance, we’ve succeeded, and she’s off to the dark side, with a generous stipend. If only she were one of my co-contributors.

Suing for tenure

This post isn’t about me. In fact, today is my eighteenth day as a tenured associate professor at Jumbo Public University. I had a white-knuckle ride up the administrative food chain, even though the votes and other approvals were unanimous for my reputedly slam-dunk, knockout, bulletproof, surefire case.  Invoking these reassuringly violent figures of speech, colleagues would raise their eyebrows out of equally reassuring incredulity whenever I’d muse aloud about getting shitcanned. After I received my official letter, but before its contents became official, I still believed some freak accident would befall me. Can’t be too careful, ya know.

As I was saying, this post isn’t about me. Nor is it about Albert Romkes, the scholar of computational fluid dynamics whose lawsuit challenging his tenure denial at the University of Kansas last year has become a cause célèbre among his students and the KU community. Those in his field say his was a textbook denial. He had failed to secure grants, to publish sufficiently as first or last author, or to provide publishing opportunities to his grad students—in other words, he had failed to establish himself as an independent scholar, let alone the nationally recognized leader in his field a tenured professor at a research university ostensibly is. Add to this the credentials creep at KU and humbler institutions, and you wonder why he bothered, especially since the common wisdom is that those who sue for tenure are not just ending their careers, but making sure those careers can’t be resuscitated. As the common wisdom goes, suing for tenure

• gets you tarred as a troublemaker,
• distracts you from producing scholarship and securing another job, and
• costs you money a soon-to-be unemployed person shouldn’t be spending.

And that’s if you could get a lawyer to take your case. There is no lucrative settlement at stake, because what you’re suing for is a job. Courts also tend to defer to academic procedures, so overturning a denial is unlikely. Even if you prevailed, would you want to continue your career among people who’d so publicly already decided they didn’t want to be around you for the next 30 years?

One of my grad school professors didn’t sue for tenure, but got her denial overturned, as did one of my colleagues at JPU. Both have now had long, distinguished careers. Both, not coincidentally, are also women who were producing feminist scholarship when the academy was (more) hostile to it. While I was there, my grad department denied tenure with great regularity—perhaps U.S. News awards points for tenure denials—and with somewhat less regularity has tenured people with bafflingly thin publication records and apparently indifferent teaching, which doesn’t count. Those who’ve been denied seem to have made decent careers elsewhere, in and out of the academy. By contrast, my current department hires to tenure: people arrive with a book in print or under contract. Tenure requirements are specific, but with enough loopholes to make plausible arguments for keeping people we regard as assets to the department and the university. The last person to be denied tenure left before I arrived, but continues to be discussed in hushed tones, like some kind of mythical being. Part of this mythology is that this person was dreadfully unhappy here (much like I was when I began), so it must have been a relief to be denied, as that person left willingly, with no question about a lawsuit.

That person, coincidentally, is now tenured in the same sprawling state university system as a former professor of mine from undergrad.

In 2003 I Googled (may have been Yahoo) this professor when I was a grad student considering teaching Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I had read for his course in literature and philosophy. My undergrad career occurred in the first half of the 1990s (when most of today’s undergrads were born), yet I still remember that class vividly, because it was a seminar of only eight students. It was also the only class in which I regularly fell asleep. I may have enrolled in it because it met only once a week. Back in the day, when students could actually work our way through college, we squeezed classes around our minimum-wage adventures. For perhaps this reason, the class sessions were characterized by arid stretches of awkward silence, punctuated by the professor’s serenely sententious pronouncements that make no sense to me. I use the present tense because, in deciding whether or not to teach Zen back in 2003, I dug out my notes from “Philosophy in Literature.” I don’t imagine most people’s sleepwriting would make much sense, but I wasn’t always asleep in class. When I’m awake, I can be a pretty great stenographer, and my notes recorded many pages quoting the professor verbatim, followed by “wtf?” It was apt preparation for committee work, come to think of it.

By 2003 I wasn’t going to ask him for clarification, but I was curious what had become of him. Google (or more likely Yahoo) revealed he had left my land-grant R1 alma mater for a SLAC I had never heard of, which had denied him tenure for concerns about his teaching. He had sued and, after a lawsuit spanning three years, the SLAC prevailed. In the process, his tenure file became inevitably embarrassing public record. He said what to students? At a SLAC? O no he di’nt. Oh yes he did, he confirmed under oath. Amazingly, he had managed to become an assistant professor at a place in the sprawling state university system I mentioned above, where he (like me!) is a tenured associate professor. His posted CV is thin and so esoteric that I’d describe it as weird. After all these years, still: “wtf?” I imagine people say the same about my publications.

I’ve still never taught Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is just as famous for having been rejected by 121 publishers as it is for its navel-gazing philosophical syntheses, and I doubt I ever will. But if its example—like life after tenure denials—teaches us anything, it’s about that Beckettian chestnut about failing better. Academia isn’t that different from other lines of work. Those who sue over being terminated in industry are just as ostracized. But academic life is special for being organized around rejection. As one of my grad-school buddies (who, significantly, had the excellent sense to quit grad school) puts it, academics are approval junkies—those who always got the gold stars and wrecked the curve and bested 90+% of the other applicants for a spot in some prestigious program and then 399 other applicants for a job. What is tenure but Approval for Life? As the common wisdom goes, you can’t sue for approval.

You know you’re spent when. . .

You’re making a pot of coffee to fuel your evening grading marathon, and you pour your freshly ground beans straight into your coffee cup, instead of into your French press. . . and then seriously contemplate somehow eating the grounds straight.

With four weeks to go before finals week, I am delirious with fatigue. This three-prep, five-day-a-week teaching schedule is kicking my ass. It’s not the work per se, but the face time, which can really get to an introvert.

But then it is the work, as well. My marathon tonight involves essay exams for my bullshit gen-ed course, an offering my department has precipitously palmed off onto contingent labor: VAPs, adjuncts, graduate students. (I call it a “bullshit course” because the enrollment is too large to make assigning formal papers feasible, so I have to settle for essay exams and regular reading responses in what is allegedly a course in English lit.) But, yeah.

Way to go, JPU. Way to show we care about gen ed. So, unlike the overworked VAPs, adjuncts, and grad students, whose jobs aren’t nearly so cushy, I split the grading evenly with my TAs, not least so I know what the students’ strengths and needs are. Boy howdy are there needs. And boy howdy is the setup of this course ill suited to meeting those needs. While I am proud of what I’ve gotten most of these students to accomplish, there is also an alarming proportion of them who have disappeared from the class, but not from my roster, taking their Fs just to stay eligible for student loans. Most often these young people leave without a degree, less likely to be able to pay off those loans, which, through the magic of compound interest, do not stop bloating, and can be discharged only in death.

I guess I’m not the only one who’s spent. But I don’t know what this post is about. I’m exhausted. I wanted to say “hey” to the internets. And I’ll get back to grading now.

Junky

Fifteen minutes ago, I was ten yards away from the building that houses my office. I had walked there in the driving rain. Although it was already 8 a.m., the sky looked like it could have been 5 a.m.

But something had been bugging me, and, ten yards away from the building that houses my office, I figured out what it was: the 32-ounce thermos of coffee that has been keeping me upright (and running to the bathroom every hour) since August.

No, I don’t buy coffee on campus unless I’m doing so socially (e.g., an extra-long meeting with the TAs or advisees). I’m too cheap, plus I don’t appreciate the monopoly Starbucks has over the food service conglomerates that contract to universities.

So I sprinted home in the waterproof stiletto boots that I’ve been having to wear too many times in the past two weeks. (You’d think JPU were in Seattle.) People gawked at the person headed furiously in the wrong direction.

But it’s all good. I am reunited with my constant friend, my thirty-two ounces of Peet’s. O Major Dickason, how I’ve missed you.

x

How it worked out

As it turned out, yesterday was a good day. Awesome Colleague won Something Important, and a bunch of us professional nerds went out to celebrate. Doesn’t it make you all warm and fuzzy inside when good things happen to good people? Now I’m reasonably certain the terrorists won’t win.

On Flavia’s suggestion, I had my martini or two with cheap gin in glasses that had not been wiped with a lint-free cloth (even when I was tending bar in a cheap dive, we had a dessicator-type thing to make sure drinks didn’t come with bonus fiber, so c’mon), but as long as the alcohol was sterilizing the little floaty bits, all was good.

Really, what’s going on is Exploding Head Syndrome, which according to the internets is a real disease, as we all slouch toward fall break, with our to-do lists bearing a dismaying resemblance to Kerouac’s notorious manuscript to On the Road.

Professional nerds of the world, stay brave!

Why I started drinking at 2 in the afternoon

I woke at 4 this morning to prep for my big-ass lecture.

The reason I had to do so was that I spent yesterday evening with one of the most pointless, narcissistic people I’ve ever met, who kept posting pictures of our dinner to Facebook all evening via iPhone. Yes, the iPhone is new. How did you know?

The other reason is that I’ve been grading stuff all week, and had fallen behind in my class prep.

I had to walk the long way to the office, because there was an incident involving a paddy wagon, and Barney Fife said so.

In my morning class, I accidentally did Monday’s lesson plan. So I have no lesson for Monday in that class.

That big-ass lecture I woke at 4 to prep? It kept getting interrupted by students who weren’t paying attention. See, they knew I would be returning exams at the end of the session, so what did they care about the course material? Even the usually conscientious students up front were indiscreetly looking at the clock, with nary a sheet of paper or writing implement in sight.  I’m not posting my slides to Blackboard.

(On Monday I am repeating the lecture. There will be a quiz afterward.)

Oh, and those exams for which they were jonesing so rudely? They depressed me. The average grade was short of 70/100, though that includes ten students who couldn’t be arsed to turn in an exam. At 74, the median wasn’t all that much better. When that sort of thing happens, you wonder what you’re doing wrong.

Two students turned in the same exam, and I brought them up on Honor charges, as per my university’s policy. Because I like to be up front about things, I told the alleged cheaters what I was alleging. Their (feigned?) shock actually rattled me.

It rained.

I forgot my umbrella this morning.

Then I lent my spare to a colleague.

It continued to rain.

When I returned to my office, I read an email from a student, reading:

I know it is your policy not to discuss exams by email, but I am VERY UNHAPPY with my grade. I will definitely be at your office hours on Monday. See you then.

No salutation or signature: nice. This is why my syllabi stipulate a 72-hour cooling off period before discussing grades.

Nevertheless, I replied:

Dear Student,

I, too, am unhappy with your grade. Let’s discuss what can be done to improve it. See you Monday.

Have a good weekend.

Professor Lucky Jane

(Why is it always women students who compel me thus to be passive-aggressively nice?)

That class sucked, despite my frantic efforts grading and prepping. And now I have all weekend to think about it.

* * *

Oh, and here’s what I drank:

Martha Stewart’s Hot Cocoa with Almond Milk

• 4 cups unsweetened almond milk
• 2 cinnamon sticks, split lengthwise (I also added cardamom pods, too)
• 1/4 cup unsweetened natural cocoa powder
• 2 ounces dark chocolate (preferably at least 70 percent cacao), finely chopped (all I had was Ghirardelli: don’t judge, chocolate snobs)
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

1. Bring milk and cinnamon sticks to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat, and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Remove cinnamon sticks, rinse, and reserve.
2. Whisk in cocoa, chocolate, sugar, and salt, whisking vigorously until mixture is foamy, 1 to 2 minutes. Divide among mugs. Garnish with cinnamon sticks.

Amen, sister!

In my large, gen-ed, bullshit lecture class, I’ve dispensed with reading quizzes and instead have been having students write short papers. Centers for Teaching Awesomeness around this great nation recommend such assessments, called “minute papers,” to encourage active learning, as well as to determine informally whether students are learning what we have intended to teach. For weeks, I was skeptical of the efficacy of this practice, especially given the investment of class time required. (In classroom time, a minute is never a minute.) Then today, one of my TAs showed me the following response to some variation of “what did you learn from [this group activity]?”:

Some people shouldn’t be in college.

Our kids is learning. I’m so proud.

Lecture notes

I teach a gigantic gen-ed lecture for students who will never take another lit class again, ever. If the class is a joke to them, then more so is it to me: I mean, why even bother offering a “literature” course in which papers cannot be assigned, given the sheer size and the small number of personnel assigned to the course?

Because it is our duty to the University’s mission to educate the masses. That’s why. And I am just doin’ my job, ma’am.

And I’ve been making a go of the circumstances. I require biweekly reading responses that prompt these non-majors to insights that surprise and genuinely impress me. I manage to elicit intelligent discussion in a classroom bursting with 300 restless bodies that would rather be elsewhere. I encourage students to respect each other by not distracting others who have come to learn. Yet, in quieting side discussions, in gesturing at people to lower their phones if they absolutely must text, and in suggesting to the student who eats lunch in class because he absolutely has no other time to eat that he try something other than tuna fish, I am more than reasonable with people who think their professors are the TV, which of course cannot see them. And even if it could, who cares?

But I digress. Under the circumstances, this class has been going surprisingly well. Students stop me on the street to tell me how much they enjoy the class, and, in an age of peremptory emails from snowflakes, their correspondence with me is polite and enthusiastic, regularly declaring their “enjoyment” (and don’t get me started on that assessment as a criterion for teaching) of the class. Perhaps young folks have become particularly adept sycophants since the last time I taught a gen-ed lecture three years ago, but I don’t recall receiving these sorts of spontaneous testimonials then.

Then, too, yesterday I gave an awesome lecture. It was witty and well contextualized. A dozen or so students volunteered genuinely insightful comments and questions. They laughed at all my jokes. It was a splendid achievement, especially for a Friday afternoon.

And then, for shits and giggles, this morning I checked out that professor-rating site that shall not be named, not least because I do not want this little blog to be defiled by hits for it, and guess what I found, dated yesterday?

Yes, I can guess who wrote the review—a rant, really, about my pointless, boring lectures. That will teach me for kicking students out for having side conversations, about which their peers have complained, and which they would not discontinue after two warnings for which I had to interrupt my lecture.

And maybe it will “teach” me. For all the oft-rehearsed, well-documented shortcomings of the site I will not name, the descriptions the students (if they are students) leave do resonate, in the aggregate, with my own impressions of the person being rated.

So, maybe my perceptions of this class have been all wrong. Maybe my lectures really are pointless and boring, despite following an outline and explicitly telling students what I’d recommend they mark in their texts. Maybe I should change the way I run this class entirely. Or maybe I should stop looking at that site.

A little self-flagellation never hurt any. . . never mind

Like many a campus across this here great land, JPU has been operating under a hiring freeze for the past two years. This has meant faculty retirements without replacements, leaving tenure lines vacant. Meanwhile, the economy has sent older folks back to school, and “traditional”-age students to more affordable, public universities like mine, rather than private ones that have seen their endowments—and financial-aid largesse—go poof. JPU has weathered this perfect storm by hiring an army of Visiting Assistant Professors.

Having held such a position not once, but twice, I had resolved to check in on each of them, to lead whatever cheers for them and answer what questions I can. Being a VAP can be isolating: you’re guaranteed a job for only a year; as soon as you arrive, it’s time to start looking for another job, beginning. . . today, when the MLA Job List goes live and crashes. As far as I know, most of my untenured tenure-track colleagues haven’t even met this year’s VAPs, who are busy enough without being barged in upon by a patronizing colleague that they feel obligated to tolerate. After all, their “only” nominal duty is teaching, which my department shovels onto them. They get the gen ed classes, the classes meeting at funky hours, only the scarcest brush with our best majors, and not even the time of day from the grad students.

Thing is, my schedule looks a lot like theirs, a lot like mine did as a VAP. I’ve got a gen ed class and two considerably smaller undergrad classes. To my astonishment, we’re in week 5, my 300 students are still working hard for me, and I still adore them all. I teach every frakkin day. I’ve even got my clothes on color-coded hangers, so that I don’t mistakenly wear the same outfit on Monday and Friday. It goes without saying that the shoes follow the outfit. This routine is actually an ordeal, since for someone who goes on about clothes as I do on this blog, I don’t really own that many of them, since my place has only one closet.

Where was I? No, not yammering on about clothes.

Oh, yes. Right. I am an asshole. The other day I learned that most of the VAPs had multiple days “off” during the week. I was momentarily indignant. I’m on the “standing” faculty, I thought, only barely perceptibly. (Of course, I was also thinking of what other adverbs I could tack onto that sentence.)  Shouldn’t they be teaching schedules just as onerous as mine? Or more so?

Of course not. They’re pursuing research agendas off the clock, probably on their own dimes, if I know my university. And as of today, they are on the market, yet again. Good luck, all. Sorry I was an ass.

Irritating thoughts about books

So. Seven weeks have passed since my last post. I missed the third anniversary (Tuesday) of this blog. Can I still even say I’m blogging, therefore?

To make matters worse, now that I finally have a bloggable thought, I open up this here WordPress thing and am reminded that the last time I blogged, I did so on sort of the same topic. But I’ll proceed, anyhow.

I don’t know about you, but I am possessive of books. Not so much of the one I’ve been revising ad nauseam: I’m possessive of books as, um, possessions. At the moment, there are two books I’d really like to refresh my memory about, but like a fool I’ve lent them out.

The first was to a grad student, a possibly brilliant, though high-maintenance, grad student who seems to think I’m interested in every emendation. I lent this student one of my books, and now that I need it, student is out of town and is sorry not to be able to return my book.

I’m irked, though I’ve certainly been that student. One of my first classes in grad school was with an ancient scholar—I mean, he was in his eighties—with multiple endowed professorships and books translated into a squillion languages. I later learned that he was hardly a household name, but nevertheless, the department seemed to quake before him, allowing him his own annex in a cramped building where newbie tenure-track faculty were sharing offices.

Anyhow, that semester I was one of only three students to sign up for the ancient scholar’s advanced seminar. After experiencing two hours of his teaching style (i.e., lecture, to three people) and perusing his one-page syllabus, the other two students dropped. The graduate administrator informed me that, congratulations!, I was now the class’s only student, and, in order for the ancient scholar to be paid for teaching, we’d have to reclassify the course as an independent study. I should have dropped right then, but I felt sorry for the guy. And so began the longest semester ever. (Note to self: don’t feel sorry for people; you’ll be sorry.) At least he lent me books. One of these I forgot to return, and during the crunch of finals week there I am in the Writing Center, minding my (and a student’s) business and earning my $8/hour, a comma splice at a time, when a hush falls over the place as the ancient scholar points at me, and states, “You have my book.” Then he turns on his heel and departs. But while he was having his J’accuse moment, he reminded me of nothing so much as this:

Sorry, dude. I forgot. I returned the book and never heard from him again. Can I pull off a similar performance with my grad student, complete with the turning-on-the-heel bit? I like my shoes much better. I can’t even remember the ancient scholar’s shoes. Besides, I seem to be directing this student’s thesis, so there will be lots of evil pointing in the offing.

Where was I? Right. The other errant volume was lent to an emeritus colleague two years ago. But now it’s summer! And colleague is emeritus! It would be so uncollegial to rouse him from his emeriting, to drag him to campus, just so that I can have a peek at a so-so book from which I only think I want a verbatim quotation. (I did try Google Books, but the preview cuts off just before the sentence I vaguely remember I want to quote.) I don’t know the etiquette of dealing with emeriti folk. And there’s also the library. In any case, I have to stop writing about him, because that rule about italicizing “foreign” words is getting really tiresome.

Since the woodspurge has a cup of three, here’s a third irritating thought about books: last night I was refreshing my memory about a monograph I had read last year. It’s an important monograph, but I just couldn’t concentrate on it. Instead, I kept getting distracted by my marginal comments, which were a lot more astute than I’ve been feeling lately. It must be summer. And I must get back to that book.