Mental Health and Grad School
He said that he does not know the historical period in question, and invited me to send my academic material to his boyfriend who is a specialist. If you don’t see that this is not appropriate, you are either incompetent or corrupted. Which one is it?
You say that there is no need for Bailey to apologize?
He referred to the Mother of God as a “symbol” that is not really true. In class, he talked about the “boobs” of the Vigin Mary. What is your field, Barnaby, administration or academics? Do you not know that people can be dismissed for saying this sort of nonsense against other people’s faith? . . .
God comes like a thief in the night for all the corrupted hypocrites of this world. He says so both in the Old and in the New Testament: do you also think that the Word of God is “unprofessional and unacceptable”?
Why don’t you tell Him so when you appear before His Throne, and see how He reacts to that.
Who will save you from your “feeling of grievance” then?
You’d think this is a petulant 11-year-old, firing off angry Facebook status updates, right? You’d be mistaken, though. In a new weird development surrounding my alma mater, a graduate student has been writing numerous long and rude emails to the Assistant Dean of Yale’s graduate school.
I know Dean Barnaby and he always seemed a highly professional and helpful administrator. There were several administrative issues I faced as a grad student (having to do with my visa and financial status) that Dean Barnaby resolved very effectively. I can’t imagine him having any interest in discriminating against anybody because of their Catholicism, which is what this student accuses him off. In my numerous interactions with the Dean, he never addressed my religious affiliation in any way. I always got the impression that he had way too much administrative issues on his plate to care about anything like that. By the way, at my department at Yale, most people were Catholic (for the obvious reasons), and I can’t remember their faith being any sort of an issue for anybody at any point.
In the correspondence with this irate grad student, Dean Barnaby goes out of his way to be helpful. He even states that the student will continue receiving the full stipend in spite of not being able to work as a TA, which is something everybody is required to do at this point of grad school:
Because you have shown no understanding of the inappropriateness of your behavior, you will not be able to continue in your role as a teaching fellow. However, the University will provide you with the standard stipend for a University Fellowship this term.
The student, however, continues to rant in a way that makes one very worried about her mental health.
The reason why I’m posting these excerpts from an extremely weird correspondence between a grad student and an administrator is that people often fail to realize what an enormous emotional and psychological toll grad school can take on them. I’ve known several people who ended up at psychiatric facilities or in alcohol rehab centers because grad school turned out to be too much for them.
Read the entire correspondence, folks. Read it and remember that grad school is very tough. You need to take care of your mental health just like you need to take care of your physical well-being. If you don’t engage in constant and very deliberate psychological hygiene, you might start to unravel. And then, one day, you just might find yourselves firing off completely unhinged emails about Virgin Mary’s boobs.
Thank you, dear fellow Yalie, for sending me this priceless link.
Sloppiness Is Not a Marketable Skill
Out of 41 students (in two sections), 36 lost points on the mini-quiz because they didn’t notice one of the questions. The question was accompanied by a picture that occupied almost a quarter of the page. (This is Spanish Elementary II, we describe pictures a lot.) Mind you, the students knew how to do the assignment because the absolute majority did four very similar tasks perfectly. They just didn’t notice this question. When I asked them why they thought the huge picture was even there if it wasn’t supposed to be addressed as part of the mini-quiz, they just stared at me blankly.
There were several ways of realizing that the question and the picture were part of this mini-quiz. Yet, most students just skipped it. These are very good students, people. They could have all gotten As and Bs if they had done the entire set of assignments. And there was time aplenty. The students rushed out of the classroom at least 10 minutes before the time had run out.
Of course, the students were unhappy about losing points. I, however, think that I was right in reducing their grades. Sloppiness is not a marketable skill. No matter how bright you are, if you can’t be careful and meticulous about your work, you will not be very successful. I say this from personal experience. I don’t find it hard to generate ideas and come up with interesting new readings of the works of literature that I analyze. It’s the sloppiness that often gets me down. Checking all quotes, dates of publication, names, places, spellings – what a drag! I realized, however, that my carelessness was an act of disrespect towards my own work.
Believe me, it is very humiliating to get a response from a reviewer who mentions that I used the word “faucet” instead of “facet” (my written English is very good, so I really know the difference) and that I quoted the title of the novel I analyze incorrectly.
Now that I have learned for myself how detrimental sloppiness can be, I think it’s my duty to transmit this knowledge to the students.
What do you, people, think? Was I right to reduce the grades because of this act of sloppiness?
Why Should My Partner Want to Have Sex With Me?
I have to confess, folks, the following line of argument scares the living bejeesus out of me:
The great sex therapist, David Schnarch, writes in his Passionate Marriage (the best sex advice book for couples in long-term relationships I’ve ever seen) that we do well to avoid the question “Why doesn’t my wife (or my husband, or my bf, gf, what-have-you) want to have sex with me?” The whole structure of the question, Schnarch says, misses the point. It assumes a strong libido is the default setting in any romantic relationship. Rather, we should ask “Why should my partner want to have sex with me?” And also “Why do I really want to have sex with him or her?”
I know there are huge fans of Schnarch hanging around this blog (wink, wink), but, with all due respect, seriously? To me, this entire paragraph sounds like all shades of crazy. What is this “strong libido” thing even supposed to mean?
The way I see it, the only possibility of coexisting happily, joyfully and peacefully with another person is predicated on a profound mutual sexual attraction. If that overpowering physical desire is not there, people will just eat each other alive because of their small quirks and differences. (Or will become so emotionally distanced as to turn into de facto roommates.)
I know I’m super annoying as a partner. I blab on the phone with my sister for hours every day, I’m messy, I cover every area of the apartment with cups of unfinished beverages, I overspend and go on and on about how guilty it makes me feel. Probably, one could see N. as annoying, too. He plays Call of Duty until very late at night every night and then he is cranky and exhausted on the next day.
We never get annoyed with each other, though. Everything he does looks indescribably attractive to me. And he feels the same about me, of course. The reason why we cherish every aspect of each other’s being is our boundless sexual passion for each other. There hasn’t been a single moment in our relationship when I did not passionately desire him.
Desiring a person doesn’t, of course, mean being able to perform sexually at every point. Everybody is human. People get sick, exhausted, whatever. But incapacity to perform right at this very moment does not translate into an absence of desire.
So to answer the title question of this post, “Why should my partner want to have sex with me?”: because if he doesn’t, this means he doesn’t love me. If this ever happens to me in my relationship, I will know that it’s time to move on and let him find a person he will really love.
I believe that if it comes to the point of “Why doesn’t my wife (or my husband, or my bf, gf, what-have-you) want to have sex with me?” (emphasis mine), as opposed to “Of course, he desires me passionately but just can’t perform a traditional, full-blown sex act right now because of health / exhaustion / whatever else”, this is the end of a romantic relationship as I see it.
If you want a really stupid piece of writing on the subject from one Amanda Marcotte, however, here is an excerpt:
It’s an indicator of how male-dominated our society is that the fact that women have diminishing libidos and don’t seem to care that much about it is treated as the problem, when in fact it’s merely the symptom of a larger problem–that women feel overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, understimulated, and shamed about their bodies. If we treated the actual problems that women face, higher libidos would be the happy result, I’m sure.
Got it? Women feel sexual desire in response to being paid more money and being given more help, encouragement, and compliments. From men, as far as I can gather. This is what passes for mainstream feminism this days, folks. Give her a huge cash gift, pay for a nanny and a housekeeper, praise her, and her desire for you – or for somebody – will shoot straight up. The possibility of women experiencing sexual desire as a basic human need is not even discussed. Just substitute any other basic physiological necessity for sexual desire in this paragraph (eating, sleeping, excreting, etc.) and see how much sense it makes to analyze one’s hunger or need for sleep in terms if one has been “appreciated” enough.
As I said before, I’m yet to meet a male chauvinist pig who can manage to make me feel as humiliated as some feminists do.
Article Accepted, Happiness Ensues
OK, folks, I know you will laugh but I just had an article accepted for publication in a very good journal. A very good journal. It’s my third accepted article in two months. I’m on a roll here.
When I got the acceptance email, I thought I wasn’t reading it right because I never thought this journal would accept me. I’d had a glass of wine just before, so I suspected that maybe I was imagining it. So I called N. and had him read the email. And he confirmed that it was an acceptance.
“I just realized,” I told him, “that you are married to a brilliant woman.”
“I’ve always known that,” he responded.
“Well, I haven’t,” I said.
It is very good to know that I’m not an intellectual failure.
I’m too emotional now to say anything intelligent but in my next post I will share what I did to turn myself from a slacker into a publishing machine. 
I feel very very happy.
A Meme: Stranded
I’m really into memes nowadays. Here is a cool one from Shakesville:
Were you to be stranded for an indefinite period of time, which one book, one album, and one film would you want to have with you?
My book is Benito Perez Galdos’s Fortunata and Jacinta. Oh, the joy of spending my entire life reading and rereading it! It’s also very long, which is an added bonus.
My album is Pavarotti’s Greatest Hits. It’s more or less all I ever listen to anyways.
And my film is actually a collection of films by Nikita Mikhalkov. Yes, he is a total jerk. But he is (or used to be) a fantastic movie director. And I want no more arguments about that! All I want is help with not buying the collection because I’m now sorely tempted.
Yes, I’m weird.
What would you choose?
Gender Equity
So I just looked at the gender distribution of faculty members at my College of Arts and Sciences. We have had more women than men in Assistant Professor positions for several years now. However, there are almost three times fewer Full Professors who are women than those who are men. It seems like as many women as men get tenure and advance to Associate Professor. But the numbers for women getting Full Professorships drop off a cliff after that. It’s getting better, though, because 12 years ago there were 4 times as many male Full profs as female.
And, of course, the number of tenure-track faculty members has become smaller and the number of contingent instructors has grown. What is interesting, though, is that the number of female Assistant Profs has remained pretty much the same for several years. It’s male Assistant Professors who have become fewer and have been substituted by instructors.
Romney Calculators
Have you seen these Romney Calculators that seem to be the latest fad on Liberal websites? My blogroll is filled to the brim with them, articles about them, and calculations based on them.
I so hope that this “Romney is rich which is why you shouldn’t vote for him” spiel will not become the axis of the Liberal Presidential elections campaign. There are very few things that Obama’s supporters can do to lose him the election. This, however, is one of them. Trying to milk class resentments of the Americans? Really? This strategy is going to be extremely counterproductive.
I’ve been living in this country since 2003 and I have not seen a widespread hatred of wealth. People hate the government, the IRS, the bureaucrats, the “elitist intellectuals”, etc. But they don’t hate the rich. Everybody hopes to strike it rich which turns people who make a lot of money into role models. If Romney were a jet-setting heir to a fortune who hasn’t worked a day in his life, then there is a slight chance one could successfully invoke class resentment toward him. But he isn’t.
Remember 2004? That was the moment when the entirety of the Liberal discourse on President Bush was reduced to the supremely ineffective “Bush lied!” mantra. Every time I heard it, I’d whisper, “What are they doing? This is a guaranteed way to lose the elections!” And that was exactly what happened. Of course, the Dems also had no candidate to run a against Bush, just like the Republicans don’t have a viable candidate right now. If the “Romney Calculator” type of strategy continues, though, Romney is likely to become such a candidate.
Take me, for example. I don’t like Romney and I’d never support him for President. Still, after I saw the Romney Calculator, I’m less opposed to him than before.
Of course, if people who have been living in this country for a longer time than I have tell me that there are massive class resentments against high earners that can be successfully exploited in the US, I’ll believe you. If I’m not seeing something, this doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
What do you, folks, think? Is the Romney Calculator a winning strategy?
Who Is a Real Abortion-Promoter?
Yes!
Note how it’s the “abortion-promoting Liberals” who celebrate this decision. A decision that will help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. And the supposedly anti-abortion Conservatives, where are they? Are they cheering as well?
I guess not.
Need Help With Stupid Outlook
I hate stupid Microsoft Outlook and never use it. I don’t know which enemy of humanity invented the stupid thing and I have no idea why anybody would want to use it. It ties you to one computer and then you can’t even check your emails if you are at the library, traveling, at an Internet cafe, etc. That stupid, stupid thing.
The only reason why I configured this vile Outlook is that I needed to email my class and our wonderfully helpful system at my university only allows us to do that through the stupid Outlook, may God punish it and its mother, father, and siblings. Whose genius idea was it to force faculty members to use the stupid Outlook, anyways?
So I configured it and you know what it did? It stole all of the emails I had in my work account. It just took them out and transferred them all into the Outlook mailbox (marking them all ‘Unread’, which is a disaster in itself.) And now my university email account is empty.
Does anybody know what I should do now? Is there a way to transfer my messages back to my university email account from the stupid Outlook? There are 657 messages. They are all crucial and I want them all in my email account, not in some stupid Outlook box. Or should I just resign myself to using Outlook for work?
Do you, people, use Outlook? Are there any bonuses to using it? Is there a reason why it is even in existence?
I don’t respond well to change, especially when I haven’t chosen this change, so this is really freaking me out. I think I will go and throw up now.
I’m a Token Slav
A colleague contacted to invite me to join the meetings of academics who specialize in Slavic Studies.
“You know that I don’t do Slavic Studies,” I told him. “I’m a Hispanist.”
“Yes,” he said, “of course. But we are inviting you as a Slavic person. It’s good to run one’s research by somebody who is actually from a Eastern European country.”
I never get any mileage out of my Slav identity, so, of course, I agreed. For once, somebody wants a token Slav around. Usually, my intensely Slavic appearance and last name get me negatively stereotyped from the get-go. And here there are people who have dedicated their lives to Slavic Studies, which must mean they actually like our culture.
My debut as a token Slav is scheduled for tomorrow.
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