Musings on Leisure and Productivity

Ok, so as you all know, I had a rockin' - NOT - Friday night in which I worked on syllabi.

But the rest of the weekend was pretty much a wash, work-wise, until about 6:00 tonight. Yesterday, my major accomplishments were going to the gym (which I thought would help with the rage at human beings but it turns out, no, going to the gym just made me more pissed off - I blame the guy who was flying through the parking lot in his pickup truck and almost hit me for the rage not being decreased) and I made one of my favorite meals - haluska, a.k.a. cabbage and noodles. I modified the recipe (for no, I did not use an ENTIRE stick of BUTTER - or even any butter at all - but it still was yummy yummy). I also finally began reading the first in Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy (verdict's still out on how I feel about it) and took a nice relaxing bath. Today, I had many big plans, but when I realized that by noon I would not actually do anything, I called up BFF and moved up our plans to go to see Borat - which is b-r-i-l-l-i-a-n-t and I've not laughed so hard at anything in a very long time. All should go and see it. And we got dinner, and then I came home, fed the cat, called my parents to tell them to go see Borat, talked to my best friend from high school on the phone, and here I am.

Since that point I have:

1. filled out 4 EEOC things and addressed/stamped those that required it.
2. loaded the dishwasher and straightened up in the kitchen.
3. straightened up the living room. (All the straightening was done in a multi-tasking while on the phone fashion.)
4. Took out the trash.
5. Composed a handout for a talk I'm giving at a local library this week.
6. Looked at my to-do list for the coming week and updated it (this list is HUGE).
7. Begun thinking about introducing research writing in my comp. class.
8. Made a cup of tea.

What I think I've managed, which I can't always do, is that I gave myself permission to have quality relaxation time this weekend, and the fact that I gave myself this permission has upped my productivity in a huge way over the past couple of hours. BFF and I talked about this over dinner - the way that one can tell oneself that one "can't" do anything fun because one "has to" work, but then what ends up happening is that one just spends like 18 hours watching a Flavor of Love marathon or something, and thus at the end of it all just ends up feeling vaguely sick and hating oneself. I've known since graduate school that this isn't healthy, but it's very difficult to give oneself permission to take time for oneself when one is in a self-motivated job. (I imagine this is not unlike what it must be for stay-at-home moms or for people who run their own businesses.) One of the most difficult things for me as an academic is allowing myself to be the me who isn't an academic - to allow myself to decompress. But this weekend, I achieved that. And it is an achievement, and it is necessary, in the end, to doing good work.

Also, I think it's necessary to figuring out what one wants in one's life and who one wants in one's life. I may write about this more later, but when I was on the phone with my mom this morning, I think I had a kind of break-through about one aspect of my life that I've been kind of clueless about. My mom is so awesome. I love that I am as close to her as I am and that I can talk about real things with her. So that's me on this sunday night. I don't have the angst-y sunday feeling and I actually am feeling positive about heading into this work-week, even though it promises to kick my butt. But now I need to go and watch the Iron Chef America battle between Giada DeLaurentis and Rachel Ray, in part because I really am hoping to see Rachel Ray crash and burn because I think that she makes nasty food and I want confirmation of this. (I never make her recipes because they all look lame to me, but I do watch her show religiously as it inspires me to cook. I mean, if she can make the crap that she makes - "stoup" anyone? or how about "sammies"? I mean, come on. Giving something a dumb name does not at all make it something edible - I certainly can make something decent in 30 minutes.

(I'm not necessarily a huge fan of Giada, but whatever. Rachel Ray must go down.)

Edited to Add: Ok, the battle is almost complete. First of all, I am disappointed because in the commercials for ICA, they did not adequately communicate to me that RR and GL would be working as a team with Mario Battali and Bobby Flay. First, I am totally annoyed that they didn't just let them have at it on their own. Why did they need the "big boy real chefs" to assist? Throughout the show, I was really annoyed by how both of the "ladies" acted like they were totally out of their depth, with RR acting like she was totally intimidated by being with the "real chefs" and deferring to MB and GL running around like a frazzled beautiful mess. Annoying.

But who will win? Which chef(s) will reign supreme in the battle of the cranberry?

RR and MB. I'm not sure I even care.

On Writing and Time

"Write first."

That's the advice that one always gets when one talks about the struggle to make one's research a priority and to be a productive researcher. It's advice one gets from the time one begins teaching in graduate school, and it's advice that recurs as one enters a position as an assistant professor. The collective wisdom is that one must privilege one's writing time and that the best way to do that is to put writing before all else. If one waits until later in the day, those wise ones might say, the day will get away from one and one will make excuses and the research and the writing won't get done.

At various times, I've tried to follow this advice. In my experience, it does not work. Similarly, the advice to exercise first thing in the morning does not work for me. When I wake up in the morning, I am barely able to get my coffee and get in the shower. If I'm really in a bind, I can grade. Or maybe do a little class prep. But any task that requires significant motivation will not get done and done well first thing in the morning except for on a fluke. (And even then, only if the writing/research work is merely making editing sorts of changes that are pretty mindless.)

So how does one make time for research? Time for writing? If one just can't write first? And if one's course load is such that it's really not easy to work a schedule where one has to teach only two or three days a week?

It was funny: when I was talking to a good friend of mine who has a t-t job at a Very Prestigious University at the Very Fancy Conference I attended this summer, he was astonished at my productivity over the past three years. (That said, he is very productive himself, and he's one of those people I admire and even envy a bit for their productivity and accomplishments.) What this made me think about is how people talk about a 4-4 load as if it's a death sentence for a research agenda. I know I worried that it would be when I got this job. But it hasn't been, even though I can't do the whole "write first" thing. So perhaps this is a good time (as I'm taking a little break from the book proposal) to write about how I work in the research/writing aspect of things in spite of my heavy teaching and service loads.

First of all, I think rather than following prescriptions about how to fit writing in, one has to go with one's natural inclinations. All of my writing life, I've tended to write and to think and to do all of those complex things in the afternoon and at night. If that is one's natural rhythm, trying to go against that can actually hurt productivity. I always tell my writing students that there is no one right way to write a paper - and that's good advice for us as scholars to take as well. Things I know about myself:

1) I tend not to be able to write in silence. (Unless I've already begun writing and the cd ends or something, which of course never happens now that the iPod has been invented. I also tend to write with the TV on, if I'm not listening to music. I need background noise in order to focus.)
2) I often need to start any writing I do long-hand. I think this comes from the fact that I didn't have a computer until I started my PhD program. My process developed with long-hand as the first step of all writing, and so getting going often requires that I start with writing by hand. I can compose on the computer now, but if I get stuck, or if I'm just getting started, I need to bust out a pen and paper.
3) I need to edit on paper, not on the screen.
4) I need to allow myself to write when I feel like writing. That is not the same thing as waiting for inspiration to write, but it does mean that I need to write at night if necessary, even if it means napping for two hours when I get home from work (which I did today).
5) Try as I might, I can't write in the morning. I can teach in the morning. I can grade in the morning. But if I have a schedule where I'm meant to be accomplishing writing things in the morning, it will not happen. and if I teach late in the day, I will not write at night.

Other factors to consider:
I have a 4/4 load. Now, technically this year I've got a 3/3 load, but the course reduction is filled up with the quasi-admin position, which really is as much work as a fourth course. It is not a true 3/3 load. At my institution, teaching is number one, with service coming a close second. Research and publication runs a distant third, in terms of what my institution values. It is very easy to let teaching and service eat away at one's time.

The response of many to this problem is not to do research during the academic year. Research is what happens when one is "free" in the summer. This does not work for me. Unless I have an ongoing research agenda, I don't do crap when I'm "free" when the academic year is done. It's too hard to switch gears. I need to have an ongoing research agenda in order to produce. But how does one have an "ongoing research agenda" when one teaches five days a week?

I do not relegate research to weekends. Often, on weekends, I do no work whatsoever. I may not have a life, but I do have leisure time, and I protect that leisure time.

So how do I do it?

1. I teach in the morning. My teaching day is done at noon. The idea is that I will then (in an ideal world) get the hell out of work by 2 PM at the latest. This doesn't always happen, but it's always the aim. I'd say that I manage to leave by 2 PM or before 2 PM 2-3 days a week.
2. I spend as little time on teaching as I can do while still doing a good job. One thing I've noticed about my colleagues who've never taught at teaching-intensive universities is that they spend FAR more time on grading and preparation than I now spend. I realized very early on in this job that this use of time did not make sense. When I taught in grad school, I spent a HUGE amount of time on grading and prep, and I think it actually was because I taught less. Teaching more, I've learned how to streamline a lot of what I do as a teacher. The thing to remember is that as the professor, one is better prepared than the students by definition. There is no reason to let that suck one's time away. (Now, I care a lot about teaching, and I do spend a lot of time on it. But I'd argue that I spend much less time per student, per course, than many of my peers who teach fewer courses. The point is to make every bit of time that one spends "count.")
3. Service is a time-suck, and I need to learn how better to manage my service load. That said, I do try to do service that is high-visibility/low time-commitment. I think this is good advice for any junior faculty member.
4. I send out proposals for things. And I don't fret too much about them. Without deadlines, it is really hard to motivate oneself, and conferences are a great way to self-motivate. And if something gets rejected, so what? If one never sent something out, then one would never get an acceptance.
5. I make sure that I do new work by doing "variations on a theme" conference proposals, which means that three or four presentations equals roughly one article. Those presentations that are not moving toward an article are still variations on the same theme, and those will be part of the Next Book.
6. I teach what I'm working on research-wise, and I research what I'm teaching. Research is not "my work" separate from my teaching, but rather the two are intimately related. I do not have the luxury of working on things that I do not teach. There are not enough hours in a day.
7. I have no problem letting things like laundry, cleaning the bathroom, etc. go. Luckily, my cat does not mind my filth, and I don't tend to procrastinate by cleaning. (Though clearly I procrastinate by blogging. But at least I'm writing, right?)

I suppose my point here is that a research agenda is possible when one has a job like mine. No, you won't produce as much as people at research universities. My book is not already under contract, and I've only done two full-length articles, two shorter articles, and about two (sometimes three) conference presentations per year. I say "only" but I think that's actually probably a lot, considering.

This is one of the reasons that I'm on the market. I wonder what I could do, with the experience I now have behind me, if I were at an institution that valued research more. (But then I also fear that I'm one of those people who does better when she doesn't have adequate time to do things.) I also know that I can't keep up this pace if I stay in this job. I'll need to make a choice: research or a more vibrant personal life, as research is the least valued thing that I do, so obviously it will have to be the first thing to go. I suppose as I hear back from places to which I've applied, I'm both motivated to do research right now, and I'm afraid of how things will change, whether I get an offer or not. I know how to do this thing in this job as things now stand. How will I do if I'm somewhere else? How will I do if I need to cut back in the service of other important things (like someday having a family)? And if I have to cut back, is that a compromise I really can make, as research and writing is really the primary thing that made me choose this profession - more than teaching, more than anything else?

But for now, I'll start doing my research work around 9 PM. And I'll keep juggling all of my projects, and I'll keep hoping for the best.

"Following Your Bliss"

It's that time of year. The time of year that students - some promising, some less so - start wanting to talk in earnest about going to graduate school. Now, I'd never suggest that a student should make this decision based on the "bliss" that he or she feels in the study of literature. Others would disagree with me on this. But once again I find myself thinking about how I do approach this issue - in part because I did the radical thing of actually suggesting the idea of grad school to a student (something that I normally would never do) and in part because I've heard from a student of mine who began grad school in English this fall. Also, I attended an event that a colleague puts together every fall to talk about going to grad school with majors in our department. So once again I'm thinking about the ethics of encouraging students to pursue graduate degrees in English (given the glutted market, the years lost to graduate education, the havoc that grad school can wreak on one's personal life), and I'm thinking about my own position on such things, and whether I'm really doing it any better than those that I would criticize.

Now, my general position includes the following tenets:

1) I think that professors need to be very careful about suggesting to any student that he or she should consider graduate school. We have a lot of influence, and to make that suggestion to a student who isn't otherwise thinking about it is a very big deal. We've got to take that seriously.
2) If a student is considering graduate school, it is our responsibility to try to educate them about the realities of the profession and graduate education generally - including the negative aspects.
3) If after getting all of the information a student remains interested in pursuing the grad school path, and if we feel that this student has promise, I do think that it is important that we give the student strong support and good advice toward making the best decisions in this process possible.

As a professor at my current institution, I believe that these things take on even greater significance because of the student population that I teach. Many of my students are in the first generation of their families to go to college. If they choose graduate school they will not necessarily have the understanding and support of their families, and they will face a significant learning curve when it comes to being acculturated into academic discourse and culture. My students tend to think that going to grad school is a "safe" choice - one that will guarantee them stable employment. They also tend to think that the higher the degree that one attains the more money that one will make. They also tend to think that grad school will just be an extension of undergrad, and this is somewhat problematic, especially given their undergraduate experience at my current institution.* Part of the reason that I am sensitive to these issues is because when I started on the path toward this profession as an undergraduate, I suffered similar delusions.

I'd also say, though, that I think that it's important that students from this kind of background do have support in entering the academy if they have the ability and want to do so. One reason that I think that this is important is because students need mentors who understand where they're coming from - if all professors come from professor-families, moneyed backgrounds, etc., then undergraduates can have difficulty finding role models for exceeding the expectations of their families and social circles. I also think that it's important to bringing new perspectives to the research that is produced in various fields.**

But. The important thing here is that the student can't come second to a desire to bring a certain kind of diversity to the profession. And it's important that we don't do a bait-and-switch with students - emphasizing all of the positive aspects of the profession and/or graduate study for them to get a rude awakening when it's too late. Now, students are still going to delude themselves, no matter how much information we give them, otherwise nobody would ever go to graduate school. And yet I do think that being honest about the realities of the choices that they are making will help them once the scales fall from their eyes a few years down the road. At least that's what I hope.

So. As I mentioned, I made the radical decision (not without some angst) to present a current student with the idea that he could consider graduate school. This student is currently an English Ed student, but he's not the typical English Ed student. He is the one student in my survey who chose to write on the "literary criticism" topic for the first paper. In class, he's fairly quiet, but every time he comments, he produces insightful and incisive analyses of the texts under discussion. His first paper demonstrated a considerable aptitude for beautiful academic prose (though he's clearly dazzled his professors before me without really revising, and so he does have some work to do with his writing if he does choose to go on). He earned the highest grade I've ever given on a midterm. In fact, it was the midterm that sealed it for me. This is not a student who is just going through the motions. Nor is this a student who appears to be the typical over-achiever who gives the "right" answers but doesn't really care about what answers he's giving and only cares about the grade. No, this is a student who has a spark of something that tells me he'd really shine if he were able to study literature at a more advanced level.

But. I was worried. If I suggest this to this student, who clearly has a plan to teach high school, am I doing harm? What I decided was that I would give it to him straight. I'd tell him that I do think it's an option for him, but also I'd tell him that it's a risk. I'd give it to him straight, and I'd tell him to come and talk to me about his options. Part of the reason that I felt comfortable doing this, honestly, is because he's an English Ed major. I figured that he does have a back-up plan, which is one of the things that I encourage ALL of my students who talk to me about grad school to have. But I still might have done the wrong thing. I don't know.

Anyway, he (shyly) came to talk to me about it yesterday. It's the first real conversation I'd had with him. He's in the first generation of his family to go to college. He's very concerned that his family will not have the resources to help him, and he was most interested at first in just finding out whether it could really be possible for him to even think about doing this thing. He then expressed concern about how his family would take the decision. (I remember this was something that plagued me, too. I was really concerned that my family not think I had "wasted" my education and think of me as a "lifetime student." They thought those things anyway, but I had to come to terms with it before I changed my major to English. I remember a particularly emotional conversation with my mom, and I remember worrying that she'd be disappointed that I wanted to keep going to school.) I talked to him about my own background, and I talked to him about the fact that I did not think anyone should pursue grad school unfunded. I talked to him about the length of time that it would take, and I talked to him about the horrible job market. I directed him to my website, where I have links to things about making the decision to go to grad school. And that's where the conversation ended. So for now, it's up in the air. I wonder what he will do. But I think all in all I'm glad I put the idea in his head. Even if he chooses not to pursue it, I think that it was a nice compliment to pay him, to give him the option. I think that if it were me, I would like that someone had expressed that kind of confidence in me, even if I chose not to pursue the option.

Now today I heard from my Favorite Student Ever, who began a very good MA program this fall. This student has kept in touch since graduating in the Spring, and I have really high hopes for her. That said, it's been interesting seeing her transition into grad school. I don't know a whole lot about what's happening with her, but I do sense that she's going through a bit of culture shock. First, she's young. And she's been thrown right into teaching. (Again, not unlike my own experience.) I heard from her at the beginning of the semester, and she emailed to ask me why people in her teacher-training program "couldn't just spit it out" when they had questions or comments, but rather went on and on using a bunch of jargon. This is something I'd forgotten about: learning the language of performing one's intelligence; demonstrating that one "belongs in the club" by refusing to speak plain English. At other kinds of institutions, students begin to learn this as undergraduates. Not so here. So this has been a challenge for methodical, straight-forward FSE. (Aside: FSE refuses to call me by my first name, even though I tried to explain to her that she's my colleague now :) I wonder if she'll ever do it, though I did tell her that when she gets her Ph.D. if she still persists in calling me Dr. Crazy that I will insist on calling her Dr. FSE.) In her email today, she expressed concern about her comp. class. First of all, she's really been thrown to the dogs. She's got a 7:30 AM class, at least 75% of the students are male, and those students are primarily engineering majors. Oof. They're not coming to class; they're pissed off that she's not using rubrics for papers; basically (though she didn't say this) I sense that they are totally challenging her authority. Nothing prepares you for that. And in some ways it's just something you have to get through. I tried to give her some advice that I thought might help. (Actually, I wondered whether I should reveal my blog to her, as I think she might find it helpful, but I ended up not doing it. Maybe I'll tell her someday? Or just direct her to some other blogs in our little circle?) So it sounds like she's having a bit of a rough entry, but it also sounds like she's doing well. I'm trying to encourage her to go to her first conference this summer. We'll see if she's up for it.

So I don't know. Am I doing the right thing by these students? Should I be more discouraging? More encouraging? It's easy to figure out what to do with students who don't seem like they could make it. What's hardest for me is figuring out what to do with those students who seem like they maybe could.

But in any case, choosing this path is not, as far as I'm concerned, about "following your bliss." It's work. It's hard. It separates you from your origins, and it really can fuck with your sense of yourself. If things go well, yes, you get to pursue ideas that are interesting to you; you get to spend your life doing something that is meaningful to you. That's a pretty big pay-off. But that's if things go well, and we all know that things don't always go well for people who take this path. And so it's hard, as a professor for whom things have gone well, to know how best to help one's students navigate these dangerous waters.






*I do believe that students get a decent education here, but it isn't as rigorous as the education they might receive at other institutions. They don't tend to read as much as students at other institutions; they don't tend to have the experience with research writing or with critical theory. This doesn't mean it's impossible for them to do well in graduate school, but it does mean that it will challenge them in a way that students in other departments may not be as challenged.

** But part of these views may be my own narcissism. I feel like I add something to this profession because of my decidedly outside-the-intelligentsia upbringing, so I'm not sure how much validity my claims here have.

Rereading

As I think I've posted here before, in my reading-for-pleasure life I'm a compulsive rereader - and generally what I reread is not particularly amazing writing. I reread for pleasure precisely because if I'm reading something new - whatever its quality or lack thereof - I find it very difficult to close up shop for the night and to go to sleep at a sensible bedtime. I read in great big gulps - hours at a stretch, through meals, through whatever. I find it difficult, when reading something new, to put a book down.

That said, when it comes to work reading, I don't tend to reread very much. I'm not sure if this makes me unique among people who work on literature or not, nor am I sure if this is an entirely positive thing. I suspect that more of my colleagues in my discipline probably do reread more than I do for work. Part of the reason that I don't tend to reread is because of the compulsive fashion in which I take notes on things that I use for teaching or research. While of course I could reread things in their entirety anyway, I generally don't, as with all of the notes it's just not necessary. In some respects, this habit has served me particularly well, especially given my teaching load. It's an efficient way to work - to spend a bunch of time in the first and maybe second go-arounds annotating, and then to just do a quick skim when one picks up a book to teach it again or just to read relevent sections closely for one's research. If I had to read every single thing that I teach in its entirety every time that I teach it - or to read every single thing that I write about in its entirety every time that I do research on it - I probably would have died of exhaustion long ago. (Though, of course, perhaps that has to do with the compulsive note-taking, too, so maybe this doesn't kill other people.)

But so I've been rereading To the Lighthouse, because my original copy is hiding from me or lost forever (hard to know which), and this has been a revelation. It is very strange to read something with which one is very familiar and which at one point had compulsively annotated and yet to read it clean, as if it had never been touched by me or read by me before. (This is not the same thing as buying a new copy of a book when one has the old copy as well, for even if one does reread, one can turn back to the "original" and either copy in notes from it or enter into conversation with those notes.)

The experience is bizarre for so many reasons. It's bizarre when I hit upon a passage that stood out to me in the past and I can remember what I thought about it (and wrote about it) but where now my interpretation is slightly different, and so I find myself transcribing notes from memory and then adding nuances to those semi-remembered ideas. It's bizarre when I hit upon a passage or image that is so clearly crucial to me now but to which I didn't give a second thought on previous readings - as if I'm reading a different book, at some points. It's also bizarre to read this in preparation to teach it - this is a book that I read as a student, and on which I wrote as a student, and coming to it from this vantage point seems foreign. I find myself anticipating student responses - trying to connect the text to other texts we're covering this semester - and so I can't get lost in the book in the way that I remember getting lost in it as a student. Finally, it's bizarre that I don't find the book at all difficult, which was one of the key attractions of it for me when I first read it. I wanted to figure out the puzzle with which I felt it presented me. Now, I no longer feel like it's a puzzle. Now, it just makes sense.

I don't know. It's odd, because one might trace my path to becoming an academic directly back to my experience with this book as an 18-year-old college freshman. And after I wrote on it as a graduate student, I pretty consciously chose to abandon it because I loved it too much and I didn't want to spoil it for myself with working on it more. (This, at least in my experience, has been a key consideration in choosing what to teach and what to do research on. I find that if I love something too much, I feel like the experience of taking it apart does a violence not to the book but to my love for it. I also have a hard time getting outside of my own perspective enough to do any truly good critical work on those books that I love wholeheartedly. This is not to say that I've not written on or taught books that I love wholeheartedly, but doing so changes them for me in ways that I sometimes resist and resent.) But so on this reading, I am in love with this book again, but I'm in love with a different book from the one that I first fell in love with, if that makes any sense.

I remember, on first reading To the Lighthouse, being very preoccupied with the parent-characters - Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay. I remember also being very preoccupied with Charles Tansley, whom I despised. I was intrigued by Lily Briscoe, and I tried very hard to figure her out, but I didn't really "get" what Woolf was doing with her.

On this reading, though, at 32 years old to the single Lily Briscoe's 33, this novel is making much more sense to me. I'm noticing the children more, noticing William Bankes more. I'm seeing why it matters that Lily sees Mrs. Ramsay as a dark violet wedge of paint. I'm seeing why it matters that Lily is trying to paint but can't allow herself to think of herself as a "painter" or an "artist" (and I'm seeing that this is not only because she is an oppressed woman). I'm seeing this novel and its characters more fully in part because of my own life experiences but perhaps more importantly because I don't have all of the marginal voices - of my younger self, of my teachers, of my classmates - shouting in the background. I can still hear those voices in whispers, but I don't feel like I have to answer them unless I want to. And this time around, this novel is not so dark or so dense to me. It is not nearly so earnest.

So perhaps the novel that I loved so much that I put it to the side was not, in fact, the novel that I'm reading now or even the novel that it is. Maybe I should do a bit more rereading that has nothing to do with wanting to be able to go to sleep at a reasonable time. Who knows what I might find?

Break-time's Over

So far today I have:

1. Taught a class.
2. Printed out stuff related to the book proposal, ordered stuff via interlibrary loan for the polishing of the sample chapter, printed out a couple of journal articles related to the sample chapter.
3. Forgot to "apply" for my reassigned time for spring. Must put that on my to-do list for tomorrow.
4. Scheduled two advising appointments with students; rescheduled a meeting related to my quasi-admin. position.
5. Worked out.
6. Officially scheduled lunch with my department chair.

#6 is the thing I really want to talk about in this post. I have yet to tell my chair that I'm going on the market, and that's the main reason why I asked him to meet. I had intended to tell him at the end of the summer - after I told Very Supportive Colleague, who is writing me a letter. The problem was, the end of the summer kind of ended before I got around to making my Grand Confession. A lot was going on. My department chair was dealing with some health stuff, the university appropriated some money that the department had been depending on, the university approved two t-t searches, I was getting acclimated to the quasi-admin position, there have been some new administrative things that I along with the entire department have had to deal with.... So yes, rather than force the issue about going on the market when all of that was happening, I allowed myself to put it off. Now, this isn't a big deal in some respects, in that I've got a letter from a VIP in the department. And it's entirely possible that the VIP told my chair about my intentions. But as I got stuff ready to send out, I realized that it was really important for me to tell my chair about what I'm up to.

My relationship with my chair is a really good one. He has been nothing but supportive of me, and I really do trust him to understand my situation when I explain it to him. The reason I'm a little anxious is because I don't want him to be upset by what I'm doing. I don't want him to fear that I "hate" my job or something. Because I don't. But so yes. I'm going to be having lunch with my chair. And while I'm sure it will be fine, I'm also kind of nervous.

[Aside: we're going to the same place for lunch that I went to with my other colleague in the summer, and this gives me a weird sense of deja vu like when I was in grad school and went on two consecutive first dates at the same restaurant. Maybe some locations just inspire certain kinds of meetings. Jae's in Boston? Apparently the place to go on a first date. Restaurant Here? Apparently the place to tell senior colleagues that you're looking for another job. Who knew?]

But so now, I need to turn off the computer and work for two hours on stuff for my book proposal. My aim is to send the thing out by Oct. 31, so I've got some pretty substantial work to accomplish between now and then. In other news, a panel that I proposed for a conference in the summer was officially accepted, so now I need to begin doing some things related to the paper that I will present in earnest (like actually reading one of the novels I claim that I will discuss) as well as to ask a few different sources for some money to go. And then I've got to come up with an abstract for another conference, but that will be related to something I'm teaching in the next couple of weeks, so that's kind of on the back-burner at the moment.

So that's the research stuff going on.

And then with teaching, we're moving into the modernist period in the Survey and we're finishing up with a Novel Many of My Students Do Not Like in my upper division class tomorrow. In my writing class, we're edging ever closer to their second formal paper.

In other words, I'm wicked-busy. But I'm feeling pretty energized about it all after the four days off, so maybe fall break has done its job?

Productivity Resumes - While Slackerdom Continues... As Impossible As It May Seem

Well, today is my last day of freedom, and then it's back to the grind. For most of the day, I allowed myself to continue in relaxation mode. I slept in, I read some Potter, I took a nap with my kitty-cat. Yet, I also did some things that needed doing.

1. I went to the grocery store to buy milk. I cannot drink coffee black, so this was imperative. I also bought a few odds and ends so that I could chef up some healthy meals that will get me through the next week or so of lunches and dinners. Since being back on the healthy eating bandwagon, I've found that it's KEY to make some things in large portions that I can then put into individual serving-size containers so that I don't fall into the "I don't want to cook/pack my lunch" trap and eat garbage. So I've started making things - big pots of chili, casseroles with whole wheat pasta, etc. - that would feed a large family, and then I freeze most of it, so I can have variety throughout a given week, eat things that taste delicious, and yet also don't have to cook. Which leads to #2
2. I cooked myself up two casseroles - one tuna-fish, and one a sort of modified cheeseburger casserole. Now, I know what you're saying: How can these seeming comfort foods be healthy? Well, first, there's the whole wheat pasta. Let's say that you have a package of whole wheat macaroni, and it's supposed to be the equivalent of eight servings. Well, instead you make that pasta stretch to be like 12 servings, and you supplement it instead with a TON of vegetables. You use lean meats. You use lowfat cheese (not nonfat, because the texture is like plastic). And yes, I do use the condensed "cream of" soup, which isn't ideal, but it's easy, and for the little of it that one eats per portion, I feel like it's ok. At any rate, I suppose I'm eating like people who don't have a lot of money but who try to make pasta/meat (the expensive stuff) "stretch" by using lots of veggies, but it gets the job done. Not as delicious as a full-fat casserole, but delicious nonetheless. I do miss butter, though. I love butter.
3. I ordered 2/3 of the books I need to order for fall, as the book order deadline just passed. I can't order the books for one class yet as I'm still deciding whether it would be wise to do a custom text-book thing. On the one hand I like the idea (will make things cheaper for my students, the one I'm considering has 99% of what I'd want it to have for the class, excepting the novels) but on the other I feel like it's risky - what if somebody buys the book, drops the class, and then doesn't return the book? They only will order as many as needed for the class. Hmm. Must consider what to do.
4. I dealt with some email stuff, and thought a bit about the class that I will teach tomorrow.
5. I'm continuing to reread To the Lighthouse, which is just lovely. I ended up buying a new copy because it seems that I lost my old one somewhere along the way (or it's hiding behind a bookshelf or something). In some ways this is good, as I really did need to reread, and to make teaching-style notes. On the other hand, I'm kind of wistful about the seeming loss of the old copy, as it was the copy I used for my first research paper in college, the copy I used for the paper that I wrote and used as my PhD application writing sample, the copy that I used for my very first ever publication. I do hope it's not lost and gone forever.

So yes, I am both productive and lazy. I wish I could have this balance all the time. Sadly, this is not to be. Things will continue to be crazy over the next couple of weeks with meetings, and things promise to be pretty intense in each of my classes in terms of the material that I'm teaching. Then, when that couple of weeks is over, more grading. Sigh.

But for now - the riveting conclusion of Flavor of Love. That New York, she doesn't know what time it is.

Mentoring

I've been thinking a lot about mentoring lately, in no small part because so many people have been posting about it lately. (I'm sure there are links I'm missing, too, but those are the ones that immediately jump to mind. Edited to add: Here's another link that I think participates in this conversation that seems to be cropping up all around.) Oh, and I also read something about mentoring on the CHE forums in the context of junior faculty needing mentors. (My long-dormant obsession with the forums has been rekindled by the job search. And it's not even that they're that interesting, but still I can't stop myself from reading them. In some cases I'll read the same threads over and over again. It's a sickness.)

But so I want to write about mentoring because I've been thinking so much about it lately.

First, I should say that I have since college most often been in situations where I've had to seek out mentors as opposed to having people volunteer mentorship. Luckily, I did have the good fortune to get unasked for mentorship in how to seek out mentors (if that makes any sense), and so I wasn't just left to flounder not knowing how to go about doing so. But still, my undergraduate and graduate experiences generally included a great deal of benign neglect. I was never really "the chosen student" whom a teacher took under his/her wing without me asking to be taken under. I think that this has a great deal to do with how I view mentorship now that I'm actually in a position to do some mentoring myself.

So what do I think makes a good mentor?

1. Good mentors push you to do things that you believe you're not capable of doing.

My best example of this relates to the encouragement that I got from my undergrad thesis advisor to submit an abstract for a conference - a "real" conference, not a student one. Yes, it was a small conference, but at the same time, it wasn't just "practice" for when I became a scholar if I got accepted. And I did get accepted. And my thesis advisor also attended the conference, and she introduced me to people, and she made my first conference experience one that was about interacting with professionals as a professional. It was not filled with intense anxiety. This experience was terribly important in my development as a scholar and as a professional, in no small part because it gave me the confidence to put myself out there even if I was afraid of rejection. What I learned from that experience was that even if you think you might not be accepted or that you might not be good enough, there is no way to know that unless you try. And often when you try you will be successful.

2. Good mentors guide you, and while they may critique your work, they do not impose certain kinds of authority over you.

The truth is, my greatest mentors have not been my teachers. As a teacher, one must exert certain kinds of authority. A power differential is built into the teacher-student relationship, which in no small part has to do with grading. I'm not saying that teachers can't be good mentors, but I do think that the mentoring relationship can only happen when your mentor relates to you as a kind of "junior peer," if that makes any sense. My undergrad thesis advisor whom I mentioned above? She never taught me in a traditional course setting. I was directed to her when my undergrad advisor (who would have been the logical choice for a faculty member to direct my thesis) denied my request that she be my director. She just handed me the name and contact info, and sent me on my way. And so I was directed to my thesis advisor, who was not a t-t or tenured faculty member in my department but rather in an admin. position, but I think that perhaps she ended up being able to be such a great mentor in part because I went to her as an adult with a request, and she was interested in what I wanted to do, and so she said yes. From the beginning, the power differential that was omnipresent in my relationship with my faculty advisor had nothing to do with my relationship with my thesis advisor. Similarly, the mentors I've acquired since starting on the t-t are my peers. Yes, they have wisdom to offer me, and yes, they have more experience than I have, but when they help me, it's help freely given and has nothing to do with a service obligation or whatever. I think that's key.

3. Good mentors really respond to your ideas and to your work.

This goes for teaching or service or anything in the profession, really, but I'm going to focus on research here. A good mentoring relationship seems to depend on the ability of the mentee to trust the advice of the mentor, and that can only happen if the mentor offers you real critique while at the same time offering positive feedback to your work. Now, my diss advisor wasn't a particularly... attentive kind of guy in many ways. But you know what? I have never had anyone read my work with the kind of focus with which he read it. And he never sugar-coated his criticisms, and that only made me value his praise more. (And the praise was not frequent - he often began our meetings about chapters with the statement, "I'm not going to tell you what's good about this because that won't help you and that will just waste our time." But even with that statement, there was an indication that anything we didn't discuss was pretty fucking good. And when he offered real praise? It was always very specific. I never doubted that he read every word that I submitted to him. Even all of the crappy words in those two chapters that are not in my dissertation.)

4. Good mentors honor their commitments to you.

They meet when they say that they will meet. If they agree to read something for you, they actually read it by an agreed upon date. If they can't do something that they've said that they'll do, they let you know, and they help you to get what you need, either from them at a later time or from someone else. This is another instance where I think mentoring is to some extent distinct from teaching. I know, I know, good teachers should do these things, too. And I think that for the most part, they (we) try. But how many of you have ever taken more than a week to get a set of papers back? Maybe even lied and said you left them at home but that they wer already graded and you're just scatterbrained? How many of you have had to reschedule a meeting with a student at the last minute because something else came up? How many of you have been unable to help a student and didn't direct them to somebody else who could? I think as teachers that we've all done at least one of these things, and while it's not good to make such actions a habit, when you're dealing with 70 or 80 students in a semester, sometimes these things are going to happen. And the bottom line is that because the teacher has the power of the grade, the teacher has the power to do those sorts of things. If that kind of thing comes into a mentoring relationship, however, it entirely undermines it. The mentee can no longer count on the mentor, trust the mentor, and since the mentoring relationship is informal, why should it even continue at that point?

5. Good mentors are genuinely excited when good things happen for you, and they support your endeavors and positively reinforce those endeavors.

This last one may seem obvious, but from what I've heard from so many people, this is something that many people don't experience from senior people involved in their work. Rather, I've heard a lot of stories about how supposed mentors respond to good news with derision or to a new project with disdain. This is so fucked up. I can't think of anything more to say about this one than that.

***

Looking at that list, it becomes clear to me that I've been very lucky to find mentors who embody most, if not all, of these qualities. Looking at myself, I think that I have been a good mentor to some students, though I am not always as good a mentor as I could be to others (but who is?). I suppose my point in writing this post, though, is that I really don't think that those who need mentorship are passive in the mentor-mentee relationship. Yes, good mentoring has certain characteristics. But I also think that it is up to those who need mentorship to seek out the kind of mentoring that they need. The characteristics of what you need in a mentor for the relationship to work may change over time, and those characteristics are not the same for all people. Or we may need different kinds of mentors in different contexts. For example, in terms of my research, I tend to work best with people whom others might find a bit harsh in the way that they respond to my work, but when it comes to mentoring at my job, I would rather have more smiley, positive, happy mentors. And maybe that will change if I get a new job, or as I am in the profession longer. But the point here is that whatever the differences are, all of the people whom I count as mentors respect me and I respect them.

I think that when we try to impose certain edicts about how faculty are supposed to mentor students or how senior faculty are supposed to mentor junior faculty or whatever, that we're kind of missing the point. The thing that has been so valuable to me about the mentoring relationships that I've had is that there weren't any rules. Those who've agreed to mentor me do it because they want to, because they think that I'm worth mentoring. And I have chosen them because I want their input, because I think they have things to say that are worth listening to. I play a role in defining the relationship. I'm not saying that we shouldn't talk about mentoring, or that it's not important to shine a light on bad mentoring practices. But I also think that if we try to regulate it too much, it ultimately infantilizes the mentee and takes away the mentee's power.

RBOC: Rate My Professor, and Other Assorted items

I don't think I've ever done a "random bullets of crap" post, but I have a number of potential full posts that I don't want actually to write, so here we go:

• I went to my Wine Store today, and I went up to the counter to buy a bottle of Pinot Grigio. I always buy the same one (Mezzacorona, 2004 - regarded as a nice economical bottle by those who know about wine and such). So I was digging in my purse for my wallet, and my Wine Store Person says, after ringing up my purchase, "so I know you know how much this costs," or something like that. I'm a blusher, and so I blushed. My internal dialogue was, "Oh God, what does it mean that my Wine Store Person is saying this? Am I a wino? I don't buy that much wine, but I'm a creature of habit! Is that so wrong?" But then I realized he didn't think a thing of it - he was just being friendly. I think this is much like how the Walgreens Pharmacist announced when my dept. BFF went to pick up her prescription, "Hey, we were able to get your Brand-Named-Anti-Depressant in generic!" very loudly in front of other customers. She called me up right after and was horrified. I think I live in a place where people have no censor button for Socially Inappropriate Enunciations.
  
• Speaking of Walgreens, I have this thing where I don't let myself go to the drugstore except for when I get paid. Why is there this prohibition? I can't get out of the place without spending $50-$100 bucks. Is this a problem for everybody or just me?
• So Flavia posted a couple of days ago about getting her first rating on Rate My Professor and being excited about getting a chili pepper. I've been burned by RMP since I've been at this new job, to the point where I'd decided that I'd never look at my ratings again, and so while reading her post made me consider looking, I refrained. Now enter the fact that I've begun looking at the CHE job search experience boards obsessively again since I decided to go back on the market. And somebody mentioned looking people up through Google Scholar, and I did that to myself, and then I decided to just regular google myself, and there was my RMP page. (Hey, they changed the interface - how weird.) So anyway, I looked at all my ratings. Only 17 have rated me (To put this into perspective, I've had a minimum of 420 students in classes since I've been at my current job.) No chili peppers, which on the one hand makes me feel quite lame, but on the other hand I know relates to my persona in the classroom. And I've got a blank face - neither a smile nor a frown, the greenn straight line mouth - as my overall signifier for my rating. This made me a little concerned at first. But then I created an account and looked at all the ratings that left comments. A) Most of the ratings come from my writing classes. B) I actually feel like the "negative" ones are ok. One is from an upper-div person from last year who attacked me in the regular evaluation, and he just didn't like me as a teacher. His comment on RMP reflected his issues with the set-up of my courses and to that, I say, I can't be all thing to all people. The other negative comments tended to be from students in the Writing Class that I Think Shouldn't Exist at My University, and the comments were really more about them hating the fact that it's a university requirement than about me specifically. And there was one comment about me being "vague" on assignments in writing courses, an issue I addressed in this post. But at the end of the day, I read those RMP ratings, and I felt like they were reflective of how students would respond to me. I didn't feel threatened, and I didn't feel like there was a misrepresentation. Yes, I expect students to come ask me for help. When they do, I do what I can to help them to be successful. No, I don't spell out "exactly what I'm looking for" because, to me, it's important that they have the opportunity to surprise me, to have their own ideas. For the first time, I'm ok with the idea of RMP. Should departments to which I apply in my job search look me up, I'd be ok with it. That's a good thing to know.
• So yesterday I did a "writing about literature" day in my upper-div class. I felt, as I was teaching and after, slightly uncomfortable about it. I worried that I was babying them too much or that they would feel like I was being too directive for upper-level students or for an upper-level class. (note: I would not have felt this anxiety if we had a writing-intensive requirement at my university. We don't, though I think that would be more effective than the current set-up. So I run my upper-level classes as writing-intensive classes, to some extent, even though that is not something we do.) Early returns say that the class was a success. In spite of my insecurities as a teacher, students seemed to have felt that a) even if I didn't talk about anything that was new to them, the way that I talked about writing about literature made them feel less anxious about the research paper b) I got them into the "mode" of research writing earlier than they otherwise would have and c) what I had to say made my expectations clear, which has not been the case in many other courses they've taken in my department. What this tells me is that I should trust my instincts about such things, even if I feel like I'm not necessarily compelling as I bring this stuff to my students. On a related note, one of the students on my class noted that she'd never written a research paper for an English class "because there was always a creative alternative to the research paper and that seemed easier." While I offer the opportunity to do a creative project, which I note on the first day of class, she chose not to take that opportunity with me because, "it seems like you would actually expect something equivalent out of a creative project, so I might as well just learn how to do a research paper in an English class." Incidentally, the student who said this had actually heard about me before enrolling in a class with me when she was in high school, because one of her cohort had taken a general studies sort of course with me with special permission to do so as a high school student. As I was giving my spiel on writing about literature, and about how students who have taken lit courses are usually able at the art of BS and that's not what I want, my current student piped up that when I had my former-student-who-is-her-friend in class and the friend came to high school after I graded her first paper, she reported, "You know how you can just write anything as long as it sounds smart and is long in high school? You totally can't do that in college. They actually read what you write and they see through that." This report makes me feel entirely validated in how I approach student writing in the literature classroom.
• That Lacey Chabert? You know, Claudia, from Party of Five? She's an awesome actress, as evidenced in tonight's episode of The Ghost Whisperer.

As I was writing this post what was I listening to?


Ipod Shuffle:

• The Healing Room - Sinead O'Connor
• Somedays - Regina Spektor
• I'm With You - Avril Levigne (I know, I know, but it's a great song!)
• No. 13 Baby - The Pixies
• Trigger Happy Jack - Poe
• Seether - Veruca Salt
• Sweet Thing - Van Morrison
• Come Back From San Francisco - Magnetic Fields
• How Soon Is Now - The Smiths
• 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten - Lucinda Williams
  

More on Students and Analysis

In this post, I will whine and moan not about my freshmen but rather about my sophomore-through-senior students in my literature courses.

As somebody said in the comments to yesterday's post, one has to cut freshmen a bit of slack on the analysis thing because coming out of high school they don't necessarily have experience with the kind of analysis that is expected at the college level. I agree.

So what is the excuse for my upper-division class, filled mostly with juniors and seniors - and most of those English majors?

The assignment, in a nutshell, is this: For each unit (there are four in the semester), students complete a 1-page (it can be 10 pt., single-spaced if necessary, but I only will accept the one piece of paper) response-analysis paper. (I do the one sheet of paper thing because I had a professor when I was a senior give basically this same assignment, and I remember how challenged I was by it as a writer - for as English majors we learn early to write lengthy tomes that say nothing (as you all know from reading my blog, I've not totally broken myself of this habit)- and how much I learned about argument and structure by being forced into concision. The one page is symbolic of that: if you say two pages, somebody is always going to go those two or three lines over onto the third page, you know?) The assignment is the same for each of the four papers. They are to choose a pivotal moment in one text from the unit. They are to choose something that they believe is a crucial aspect (theme, tendency, formal element, whatever) through which to read that scene. The paper then should make an argument about how that crucial aspect comes through in the pivotal moment, and then they should relate that reading to the text as a whole and to the unit that we are studying.

To me, this assignment is great because it forces them to practice all of the analytical skills they need for more extended literary analysis papers - whether the traditional 3-5 page topic-driven paper with no sources or a longer paper with research. It's also great because it forces the crap out of their writing. There's just not room for all of the cliches and the passive voice and mixed metaphors.

And most of the time, students do quite well with it once they do the first one. Often, one of these papers will be the jumping off point from which they develop their topic for the research paper.

But this time, well, things aren't so good. Well, that's unfair. Most of them are doing fine with it. But I've got a couple who submitted papers that just don't follow the assignment. Papers that are all over the place and don't really demonstrate the ability to carefully analyze a passage in a literary text. Both students have taken many English courses. Both students seem fairly alert in class, and they come to class.

So what's the deal? Am I asking too much? Are the students just incapable of the kind of analysis I expect? Are my colleagues to blame, for not requiring similar kinds of analysis in their courses? (Answer to that last question: to some extent, yes they are, and I hate that I've got to deal with seniors who don't have the skills to perform identical tasks to those that I expect of my second-semester freshmen in introduction to literature.)

Won't you all be glad when I'm done with all of this grading on Thursday? I know I will be.

Using Online Discussion Boards

A long time ago, Bardiac asked me to post about how I use discussion boards in some of my classes, and so I figured today is as good a time as any, as I've just finished reading my students' weekly posts. Before I get into the whys and hows of it, though, let me give you an idea of context. I only use the online discussion board in my upper-division courses (and as I only teach one of those per semester, that means that I only use them in one course per semester). Part of this is because I feel like it is a substantial obligation for students to fulfill, and part of it is because I can't handle keeping track of more than one class doing this.

1. Why is it useful to use an online discussion board?
Well, where to begin? I suppose the first thing I'd say is that I like that students are forced to write about pretty much every text in the class. While my department does not have an upper-level writing intensive requirement, I run my upper-level courses as writing intensive courses. To me, writing about literature is crucial to our understanding of it, and by the time that students are in an upper level class, they should be committed to learning how to become literary critics. Quizzes are not going to turn them into critics, and I don't want to take class time to have them writing at length in there. Thus, the online discussion board is a good way to get students writing (and thus thinking in an analytical way) about the texts of the course.

Next, the weekly posts that they do on the discussion board constitute an "in-between" writing step in terms of formality. The least formal writing that students do in my course is to hand in an index card each class period with jotted down ideas/questions about the reading for that day. Next, comes the slightly more formal responses on the online discussion board. I do not evaluate either of these kinds of writing for grammar or punctuation, nor is their grade lowered for them getting something wrong. Rather, they get credit just for doing the assignment. (This also makes my life easier because I just have to check off that they've posted by the deadline each week in order to tabulate their grade.) Next, I have students complete four short analysis/response papers - one for each unit. These are obviously more formal, though they do not require any research component. Next come student presentations (with a small research component) and then finally a research paper. By building the assignments in the course in this way, students get a range of writing and critical experiences that each tie into the other, which I think is a good way to demystify the process of literary analysis for them.

It's useful to use the discussion board because it allows people who might be more quiet in class a forum in which to contribute to the discussion of the texts of the course. This is especially useful in smaller classes where group work seems weird to do. (In my larger lower-level classes, I tend to rely on group work to tackle this shy-people-need-to-participate-too problem.)

Finally, it's also useful for me as an instructor, because the responses on the discussion board show me what students are getting in class and what I need to spend more time on. A lot of the time, it's less easy to glean this information from conventional class discussion.

2. How can I make an online discussion board work?
I first tried to use one of these a few years ago, and it was not an altogether successful experiment. What can go wrong? 1) Students don't write anything of substance each week; 2) Students don't engage with other students' comments; 3) It's a pain in the ass to grade the posts.

I've already addressed how I've handled the grading issue, which is to grade the students on completing the assignment and not trying to grade for quality. That said, it is not worth having students do the discussion board assignment if they do not post in substantive ways and if they do not engage with one another. So what I learned is that I had to give students a prompt for each week. A specific prompt that asks for specific questions. It is not enough, I learned, to ask them to "respond" to the reading for that week or to what is happening in class. Rather, I come up with what basically amounts to 12 or 13 paper topics, and these serve as the prompts for their responses. Yes, this is a lot of work on the front end. BUT it's worth it. Why? Well, first of all, students have a clear idea of the sorts of things I expect them to think about when they read each assignment (they get the prompts on the first day of class) and so the in-class discussion tends to be stronger. Second, the prompts give students an idea of the sorts of issues that are appropriate to explore in their critical writing, so when I ask them to develop their own topics for the more formal writing assignments in the class, they have a little bit of help in determining what constitutes a solid topic. Third, and perhaps this is most important, the prompts help students respond to the discussion board as a "real" assignment - not just busy-work.

Getting the students to engage with the comments of other students is still a struggle for me, but I try to model this by responding to at least one person's comment per week, or to respond by bringing together multiple comments in my response. I also try to encourage students to respond to each other by praising those who do this. This is the one aspect of using the discussion board that is most frustrating for me, but I think it's also a particular problem for me because so many of my students work and so are very regimented in the way that they choose to do their assignments - they are not checking the discussion board multiple times, but rather they alot themselves 15 minutes (or whatever) to do their post and that's it. I've decided not to beat myself up over this. I'm just happy they're writing about everything that we're reading in the semester.

So what are your experiences with using discussion boards? How do you use them? I'd love to hear what other people do with this medium.

My Freshman Year - A Response to Bardiac's Post

Last week, Bardiac posted about Rebekah Nathan's My Freshman Year *What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student (NY: Penguin, 2006; first published by Cornell UP, 2005), and since I just recently read the book as well (I'm involved with first year programs at my university and it was recommended, and Nathan is going to be speaking in the coming months at some sort of event, and I was trying to decide whether I should bother with it), I wanted to respond with a full-length post. But before I do respond to the specific things that Bardiac brings up, I've got to put it out there: While some of what Nathan writes about is compelling, a lot of it felt like I'd heard it before or figured it out myself. She doesn't exactly get it wrong, but at the same time she doesn't entirely get it right, either. Middle-aged women don't live in dorms. Traditionally aged college students don't make real friends with non-trads. She acts as if she has some kind of insider perspective, but she doesn't, just as an ethnographer doesn't really have inside perspective when he/she goes off to observe another culture. So while reading the book was ok, it really didn't set my world on fire. But to respond to Bardiac's post...

Office Hours
Bardiac's first question is about how to schedule office hours better to accommodate students' schedules. As she notes, "Nathan talks a lot about how students manage their experience at AnyU, especially how they choose general education classes, how they fit in working for money, classwork, and the other things they do, and how they think about their management. [. . .] Nathan points out that she'd typically set up office hours during the middle of the day, before or after the lecture classes she taught (136). As a student, however, she discovered that she almost inevitably had another class to attend during her professors' office hours. She also points out rightly that more students work more hours these days than in previous decades."

Bardiac then goes on to describe her schedule and to ask readers for their suggestions about how she might arrange her schedule to accommodate students. (She is required to have 3 office hours per week and to make appointments.)

Now, my take on this may not be the nicest, but I really don't think that it makes a difference when one schedules office hours. There will always, particularly when students work as much as my students do, be conflicts between the hours that I choose and when students are available. (Incidentally, on the information sheet I ask students in each of my classes to fill out, I ask about their work-and-other commitments that might affect their work in my course. From freshmen through seniors, all but a handful work, and even those who aren't working now are planning to get a job. Most students work part-time, but many often work part-time at two different jobs, thus coming in at around 30-40 hours a week even though they don't work "full time." On top of this, more than a few also have children or other family members that they care for. With all of these commitments, when I schedule my three office hours doesn't matter much.)

So, if when one schedules the office hours doesn't really make much of a difference, what does?

1. Offering students a range of ways to get into contact with you if they have a question about something, and encouraging students to use those means of communication. A student may be more likely to use a class discussion board online than to come to office hours, or to send an email. For some kinds of questions, I think those can be effective.
2. Really being available to meet by appointment, and even offering to do so. I would say a good 60% of my meetings with students do not happen during my stated office hours. They happen after I negotiate with the student for a time that is convenient for us both. In some ways, I'd rather do all meetings with students this way because they are sure to show up if they schedule an appointment, whereas office hours are often empty.
3. I think it's important to impress upon students that meeting individually with the professor is a good strategy for improving in the course, and to instill in them a belief that it is "worth" their time. If students think meeting with a professor will help, they will either tweak their schedule or schedule an appointment in order to do so. If students think it won't make a difference, they won't, whatever time the instructor schedules his/her office hours.

Reading Assignments
Next, Bardiac considers the issue of reading assignments. She writes, "Nathan talks about how students choose which reading assignments to do for a given class, and crassly, the choice comes down to which assignments they'll be quizzed on, or they'll need for homework, or for which they'll be a discussion, especially if they're likely to have to participate (137-139). Now, I KNOW that deep down, and tend to give quizzes a lot in my lower level classes. But Nathan brings out the point that more experienced students are even MORE likely to skip readings they don't think they'll REALLY need. " From this, Bardiac considers whether she should be quizzing her students in upper-division classes, or frequent papers to make sure students are keeping up with the reading. She also wonders about whether these strategies would be appropriate for graduate classes.

Now, at my institution this issue of students doing/not doing the reading is huge at all levels. My thoughts are these:

1. Whatever you do, some students will not read. Period.
   
2. I don't quiz in upper-division classes because I think it's infantilizing. (I think it's infantilizing in lower-division classes, too, but with 25 students, it's the only time-efficient way for me to monitor that they read. My upper-div classes are smaller, so I don't want to fall back on quizzing.)
3. I think that the best way to keep students reading is to show them that it's meaningful to the day-to-day work of the class. If on a given day they may be doing an activity that assumes they've completed the reading, or if I ask the class to get things started with discussion, they are much more likely to be on top of the reading than if I'm running the show all of the time with lecturing and leading discussion.
   
4. In terms of assignments, I like to offer a range of assignments that keep them participating. In upper division classes, my students have to participate in a blackboard discussion thread once a week, they have to come in with three questions/insights for each class period, and they write four short analysis/response papers (one for each unit of the course). Between each of these assignments, they will have to write about most texts on the syllabus and they will have to at least consider those they don't write about. Only the short papers are graded, though I do check to see that they are doing the other things, as well as reading what they write.

Library
Next, Bardiac wonders how to get students to begin research earlier and to encourage students to take advantage of the full range of services at the library, like ILL. Now, this has been a question I've considered at length, and so here are some examples of things that I do.

1. In my writing class that focuses on the research paper, I require an annotated bibliography. I do not require this in lit classes, just because I find it kind of tiresome to read them, but I do...
2. Require students in my literature classes to submit a proposal for their final paper about 5 weeks from its deadline, and on that proposal they also have to include five potential sources that they might use on the assignment, including at least one scholarly book and at least one scholarly journal article (though with the advent of databases, they are MUCH less afraid of articles than, say, I was when I was a student and finding an article meant that one had to go through like four steps to get the actual article you wanted). This gives me the opportunity to see what they're looking at, to give suggestions, and to give them ideas about potential ways to do research on their topic.
3. For the past few upper-div lit courses I've taught, I have students do presentations, and this semester, I've incorporated a research component into the presentation assignment, to get them thinking about research from about week 3 onward. Also, they are allowed to develop their research paper topic out of their presentation if they wish, and so this means that they are encouraged to begin doing real research quite early on.
   
4. I also make sure to take students in all classes where I have them doing substantial research to the library for instruction on how to use things. One thing that drives me crazy is the way that some will insist that "these kids today" are so savvy with technology that they don't need to be taught how to navigate things on the computer. This is a lie. Yes, they can text and they can IM and they can google until they turn blue, but they don't know what a boolean search is, and they certainly don't understand how to find reputable sources or to tell what sources are reputable. We need to teach them that stuff.

Finally, Bardiac asks about diversity, but I don't really have the answer to her questions, so I will leave off here.

It's a rainy day, and I'm going home to hang out with my cat. I should go to the gym, but right now I think a nap is in order.

Things Are Improving....

Since last I wrote (whined), I have checked a bunch of things off of my to-do list, and I'm about to check off some more. Yippee! Maybe I was just in a cranky mood before because I was looking at all of my overwhelming work instead of doing it? I'll update this post when I've done a couple more things.

On an unrelated note, I'm going to try to finish Londonstani for RfP Wednesday - I'm totally enjoying it, and I'm about half-way through. Will Jas and Samira be able to get together? This is what I'm dying to find out. I so should have spent the day reading instead of taking care of business....

Update:
Things are, in fact, much improved. The syllabi are done (or as done as I am willing to make them) and I've put in requests to get them copied, as well as to get my first two assignments in the writing classes and all of the non-test assignments in the upper div. class copied. (Lest you hate me for having all writing assignments done for the upper-div. course, I always do a version of the same basic assignments in upper-div courses, so this isn't that great of an accomplishment, and I was only motivated to get it done because we're going to the library for instruction VERY early in the semester, and I think they need to know what kind of research I'll be asking for before they actually go to the library. You see.) At any rate, I've been VERY busy. Now I need to finish crapping this article together to submit to a thing (deadline today) that will probably reject it, and then I think I'll be ready to begin celebrating the end of my 31st year. All in all, this wasn't the worst year of my life or anything, but I'm kind of glad to see the backside of it, nonetheless. Will do a contemplative birthday post in the coming days, but I need to do some actual contemplating before I can do the post.

Deja Vu All Over Again (a post about going on the market)

Last night I began working on my cover letter. I dusted off my letter from the last time around, and I set about trying to turn it into something that actually shows who I am now. See, this is the weird thing about academic job searching. As you compile the materials, and as you look at old versions of the materials from searches of yesteryear, you're really looking at a version of your self, and you're attempting to construct a self to send out into the world. I suppose this isn't unique to academic searches, but because the materials required of us are so detailed, because one can be eliminated from consideration for the smallest misstep, it's a rhetorical situation that is incredibly fraught from even the moment of deciding to go on the market.

And perhaps the worst part of it is the cover letter. It inspires you to tell lies (like that one about the "next book project" - not that you won't have a next book but that at least if you're me you haven't really thought about the work you're doing right now in those terms until you were forced to do so by the letter) and to have a big crazy rush of productivity so as to be able to put things in the letter. The CV doesn't inspire the same kind of fretting - does my personality come through in the letter? How can I make this thing shorter? How do I include the most possible information without boring the committee to tears? And at this point, the writing sample doesn't inspire the same kind of fretting, or even the statement of teaching philosophy or of research plans. But the cover letter? Well, sure, I do know how to write one now, but it's still tricky.

I suppose that's the strange thing about embarking on this process right now. It's that I know how to do it because I've done it all before, but at the same time I don't entirely know how to do it in light of who I've become as a scholar in the past three years. I'm not the same person who was finishing up her dissertation in 2002, on the market for the first time. My research has moved beyond the tiny little area on which my dissertation focused; I've taught like 7 different literature courses when then I hadn't taught a one on my own; I've done so much service you'd think that I never say no to anything, even though I do, except for when I'm too flattered to remember about the saying no. In other words, I'm a very different candidate than I was then, even though looking back over the past three years I see how I grew out of that candidate that I was.

I'm not entirely sure how to conclude this post. I suppose suffice it to say that this decision to go on the market has really made me look carefully at how I've developed since getting a tenure track job as a member of this profession, and I think that even if nothing comes of this search, going through the rigamarole of putting together the materials has made me acknowledge what I'm achieving as a professional. That's a good thing. Feeling like a professional - instead of feeling like somebody who's knocking on doors and begging to be allowed to become a professional - at this point in the process is a really good thing.

Teaching As a Job - What I Wish I'd Learned in Grad School

Well, George just sent out the call for us to dust off our posting-about-teaching fingers, as summer vacation is coming to an end, and the Teaching Carnival schedule for Fall is all lined up, and so I thought, since I'm procrastinating, that I'd do a post related to one of the suggested topics that George mentioned.

George asks:
"What kind of preparation for teaching did you get in grad school? Was it adequate? What should have been done differently? How are you preparing the next generation of grad students for the classroom? How does the way you were taught affect the way you teach?"

These are all interesting questions, and ones that I've thought about a great deal since landing in a tenure-track job at a regional comprehensive university right out of graduate school at a prestigious sort of research university. Well, not the part about "preparing" the next generation of graduate students, as I don't have any to prepare. But the rest of it? Yes. So here it goes.

What kind of preparation for teaching did you get in grad school?
Well, I actually got quite a bit of preparation. First, in my MA program, I took a course (worth actual graduate credit toward the degree and required of all who wanted to teach in the program) that was all about teaching college writing. It was both theoretical and practical; it included doing things like constructing assignment sequences and syllabi as well as reading about theories behind why we teach writing in particular ways. It also required that we tutor in the writing center at the university, and that we "shadow" another instructor for much of the semester, and that instructor (also a grad student who'd been through the course) would allow us to run certain section meetings, would xerox the papers that students submitted so we could practice grading and get feedback on it, etc. This was a really, really excellent experience for me and an excellent introduction to teaching in the composition classroom.

In my PhD program, we were required to take a course (for which we got no credit, and which only lasted like half a semester or something) that was supposed to do the same thing that the course I took in my MA did. It was much more heavily theoretical, and I felt like it wasn't particularly enlightening.

Then, in my PhD program, we also TA'd. This was the only "training" in teaching literature that we received, and experiences varied widely depending upon what professor one TA'd for. In some cases, one was pretty much there to grade and to take attendance and to show movies that were scheduled outside of class time. In other cases, there was more "training" in things like leading discussion, lecturing, developing assignments, etc. It really just depended. Oh, and there was no guarantee that you would actually get the chance to TA in your field of specialization. None of my three TA-ships were in my specialty. Oh, and there was no opportunity for grad students to teach literature classes at my PhD-granting university. And according to our contracts, we weren't to teach outside of the program - or even work outside of the program - so most people did not adjunct elsewhere during the term of their funding (4-5 years).

Was it adequate? What should have been done differently?
Well, see, this is where it gets sticky. Was it adequate? Well, I left graduate school with teaching experience. I wasn't entirely clueless about how to run a classroom. I had a "teaching philosophy." I had a commitment to good teaching and to developing as a teacher. I'm not entirely sure whether one can expect to come out with anything more than that, really.

But. Being a "teacher" at my current institution bears little resemblance to much of what I learned about "teaching" in graduate school. Why?

1. It is a very different thing to teach one or two classes in a semester, with no other obligations, really, other than a couple of classes and/or one's own research, than to teach four classes in a semester, with many other obligations in addition to one's own research (ha!). I did not learn in graduate school how to manage my time as a teacher. I did not learn how to budget my time in order to use it where it would be most effective.
2. The practice of having TA's give one lecture a semester, as if this will "prepare" graduate students for what it is to get up EVERY SINGLE DAY in class, is just silly. And this is what they did in my grad program. I'm not sure what else can be done, really, if one doesn't allow grad students to teach lit classes, and commit to evaluating how they do in those lit classes, but the reality is that I pretty much lecture in each course only one or two days in the course of an entire semester. I don't teach huge classes (because the rooms at my institution are too small, so class sizes are small as well) and lecturing feels ridiculous when you're in a tiny, crummy room with only 25 people.
   
3. No one really taught me in graduate school how to combine my teaching obligations with my research interests. I guess this goes along with the time management thing. This was something I had to figure out how to do once I got here, and luckily I did. If all of one's mentors view research as "their own work" that is entirely distinct from teaching, it gives a person who ends up in a place with a less than fabulous teaching load very little preparation for how to squeeze in one's "own work" without dying.
   
4. I have no idea what my "teaching philosophy" was in my job applications a few years ago (though I will need to dust that document off) but my real life teaching philosophy now (and not what is in The Notebook, thank you very much) is something along the lines of That Which Does Not Kill You Makes You Stronger combined with Sometimes It's Ok to Half-Ass It. In other words, I'm just trying to get by a lot of the time, and I've had to learn how to put things like eating a decent meal and having some down time for myself ahead of any fancy philosophical notions that I had about teaching in grad school. That isn't to say that I don't care about my teaching. I do. But to care about it in the way that I learned to care about it in grad school would pretty much kill me if I tried it now.
5. I don't think I realized how much PR was involved in teaching as a grad student. Now I've got to advertise my courses, send my students subliminal messages so as to get good evaluations, etc. I think that perhaps a bit of training in that area would be a good thing, as it is the reality at many institutions. I realize that's not technically "teaching," but it is related to the teaching part of the job.

How does the way you were taught affect the way you teach?
You may think that the way I was taught doesn't affect the way that I teach, from what I've written above. But I actually see the influence of the teachers I've admired all over my teaching. The difficulty of the texts that I assign, the level of responsibility I expect of my students for their work, the kinds of tests and assignments that I design - all of this goes back to the way that I was taught. And then there is the way that I respond to students who are off the wall and just plain wrong, which apparently I inherited directly from my dissertation director. But you'll notice that these influences are mostly models for teaching - not actual teaching about teaching. And I wonder whether it really can be much different from that. Yes, it's helpful to have someone walk you through your first syllabus, through your first exam that you design. It's helpful to get feedback. But honestly the most feedback I got was in the "shadow-teacher" experience as an MA student. I didn't really learn how to teach from my teachers as a grad student. Oh, sure, I attended some retreat things. Peter Elbow was at one of them. It was awesome, I guess. I suppose that at the end of the day I'd say the biggest problem with the way that graduate schools train English Literature PhDs to teach is that they don't train them to do the jobs that they will be hired to do. They train them to do the work that the PhD-granting institution needs them to do. That's not about training the next generation of professors - that's about training the current generation of exploited and contingent labor.

On the Market - The Why of It

I just finished having a conversation with Job Search Mentor (JSM), and it was good. I want to write about this decision of mine, to go on the market, and I want to write about it in relation to what I've experienced in three years on the tenure-track at a regional comprehensive university in a metropolitan area. I'm not sure how to do this. I had toyed with the idea of starting a separate blog for posts related to the job search, but I'm not sure that a) I want to compartmentalize in that way or b) that I could compartmentalize in that way if I tried. The truth of the matter is that this decision to look - and that's exactly what it is, a decision to look, not necessarily one to leave - feels like it's imbedded in my professional life at this institution, and it doesn't make sense to separate it out.

So I think that this will be the first in a series of posts in which I try to be reflective about all of this crap.

Why Go on the Market?
A lot of people would say that I should be happy in my current position. And you know what I'd say? I'd say that I am. I am not in any way "unhappy" with my current job. Dissatisfied in some respects, yes, but that's not the same thing as "unhappiness." Let's list the positives of this job, just to show you that I'm not delusional in claiming happiness:

1. I am in a small-medium city. This means that I have good libraries (research and public), good museums, and good restaurants.
2. I am paid a good salary for my field and my area of the country. Since leaving graduate school, I have been able to live like a grown-up and to buy things without thinking about it first.
   
3. I have a great deal autonomy in all areas of my job. This can be annoying sometimes, but for the most part I would rather have complete control over things like the courses I teach, classroom practices, research agenda, service I choose to do, etc.
4. My department is collegial and friendly, without too many weird factions or points of tension between people.
5. People seem to think that I'm doing a good job, and I've received a number of opportunities that confirm the high opinion of my colleagues.
6. I've been able to maintain an active research agenda, in no small part because I've had good support in the form of travel money, as well as some awards from the institution that have helped.
7. I like teaching first-generation college students.
   

I could list more, but these are the main things. And so, those of you who have been on the market multiple times with no luck, or those of you who are stuck in horrible departments or geographical locations or both, or those of you who are in long-distance relationships, etc. might want to tell me to fuck off and to be happy with what I've got.

Part of me thinks that I should fuck off and be happy with what I've got. I feel guilty for wanting more or better or different or whatever. But here are the reasons why I don't listen to those nagging voices of negativity in my head.

1. Whatever good things there are about my job, it's a job with a 4-4 load which includes 2 composition classes each semester.* I have absolutely no passion for teaching composition, and what passion I have for teaching literature is sapped both by teaching composition and by the sheer amount of teaching that I do.
2. Socially, this is a very hard place for a single person to live. People my age in this location are married. Shit, people 10 years younger than me in this location are married. I feel like a freak. At nearly-32, I should not feel like a freak and like I'll be barren at any second, and intellectually I know this, but emotionally it's hard to remember.
3. While I feel appreciated at this job, I don't feel like real value is ascribed to some of the activities that are most important to me.
4. There is no reason for me to stay here. No reason for me to leave, but no reason for me to stay.
   
5. I am ambitious. I believe that I could do better. I'm not saying that I am so awesome or anything, or that there wouldn't be trade-offs, but ambition tends to make one a bit restless, tends to make it tough to settle for the "ok" thing when the "great" thing might be around the corner if you try.
   
6. I don't like when people judge me negatively based on my institutional affiliation. I don't like when people pity me because of my institutional affiliation.
7. As much as I like the kind of students I teach and believe that teaching them is really important work, I also wish, sometimes, that the level of preparedness of my students was just a little, teeny bit higher. I'd like to teach students who have read an entire novel at least once in their lives before they find their way into my class.

And so today I talked to JSM about all this and more. She was totally great, and she seems to think that I'm in as good a position as anybody to try to do this thing, although, of course, a lot will depend on the job list (in a discipline where job pickings are slim generally, I'm in a specialty that's pretty small, as things go), and a lot depends on things beyond my control. But you know, I don't want to look back and wonder whether I could have ended up someplace else if only I'd tried. And I don't want to lock myself into tenure at this institution without making sure that I wouldn't rather be someplace else. It's so hard, though, because one of the things that attracted me to this profession is the security of tenure, so why does it now feel like a life sentence? And will it always?

So, now that I've listed all of my reasons, for and against, you may still think that I should fuck off and be happy with what I've got. Or you may think that this is the "problem" with kids coming out of grad school today, that we don't commit to a job and an institution for the long haul, that we're always looking for something better. Or you may think that the "negatives" or reasons for wanting to go on the market are bunk. But you know, it irks me that people only grant legitimacy to the decision to go on the market if candidates are in some way miserable (unemployed, away from spouse/family, in horrible location, at horrible institution). Maybe complete misery shouldn't be the only thing that drives us to make changes in our lives or situations.





*I realize that with the new Administrative Gig I'll have just one writing class a semester and a 3-3 load, but I'll also have to do the Administrative Gig, right? And what I'd really like more would be a lesser load without an added administrative responsibility. I'd like the lesser load to equate to a heavier commitment to research, which isn't really what I'm signing on for with the Administrative Gig.