When I read the following excerpt, I immediately remembered this brilliant saying, “The best thing parents can do for their children is get a life.” Here is the excerpt in question:

UNCW recently hired an English professor whose previous publications are worrying some parents. Students say although some of the poems are shocking, they do not have a problem with the professor’s risque work, and the university agrees.

Of course, those same parents will then write endless articles and blog posts asking why the younger generation is so helpless and immature. It will never occur them that they infantilize their own adult children by policing not only their reading matter but also every utterance of people their overgrown darlings might come in contact with.

People, if you have started obsessing over publication records of profs on your adult child’s campus, this is an indication that you are in urgent need of a life.

Tire sur la Neige is not just a sweet. It is an experience.

Somebody pours a line of hot maple syrup on the snow and rolls it on a stick:

 

And then you pick it up and eat it fast. It is warm and molten inside:

OK, let’s continue our game that we started last year.

My most favorite novel in Spanish starts with the following words that just slaughtered me the first time I read them:

A. “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

B. “I came to Comala because I had been told that my father, a man named Pedro Páramo, lived there. It was my mother who told me. And I had promised her that after she died I would go see him. I squeezed her hands as a sign I would do it. She was near death, and I would have promised her anything. “Don’t fail to go see him,” she had insisted. “Some call him one thing, some another. I’m sure he will want to know you.”

C. “Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. She was already in the habit of writing down important matters, and afterward, when she was mute, she also recorded trivialities, never suspecting that fifty years later I would use her notebooks to reclaim the past and overcome terrors of my own.”

D. “Augusto appeared at the door of his house and held out his right hand with the palm downward. Turning his eyes towards the sky he remained for a moment fixed in that august and statuesque attitude. This did not signify that he was taking possession of the external world; he was merely looking to see if it was raining.”

E. “harsh homeland, the falsest, most miserable imaginable, I shall never return to you: with eyes still closed, it is there before you, enveloped in the blurry ubiquity of sleep and thus invisible, but nonetheless cleverly and subtly suggested, foreshortened and far in the distance: with even the tiniest details recognizable, outlined, as you yourself admit, with such scrupulous accuracy as to border on the maniacal.”

Bonus points for guessing the second most favorite novel.

Bonus bonus points for naming the one I hate the most.

The answers to the previous rounds are under the fold.

Continue reading “How Well Do You Know Clarissa: My Favorite Book” →

A beautiful defense of idealism: “Idealism is the only mindset which produces change. Without the determination to achieve a higher goal, and the courage to affirm that goal in the face of what exists, no one has ever achieved anything of value. The wet noodle mindset of “good enough” has never produced any value for anyone except exploiters and rulers. The willful acceptance and tolerance of evil generates more evil, and has never generated anything but more evil.” People keep accusing me of being an idealist as if it were something bad. This is a great response to them.

The modern way of placing a woman’s honor in her vagina: “Here in the US we have undoubtedly made progress in divorcing a woman’s virtue from her vagina. That’s why it is very disturbing to find a group of women who continue to insist that women’s honor resides in her vagina, specifically what comes through it. Natural childbirth advocates have located women’s fulfillment and authenticity in her ability to push a baby out through her vagina.”

A great post charting out a blogger’s feminist timeline that I want to write, too.

Is academic freedom slowly slipping away from us?

For my fellow parsnip lovers here is a great recipe of lentil, sausage and parsnip soup.

A boy separated from his sister because of international adoption goes to enormous lengths to be reunited with her. Poland must have gone nuts if it allows to separate siblings through adoption.

A horrible tragedy: “Aaron Swartz, who was a leading and controversial figure in the hacking movement and the push to make journal articles free, committed suicide Friday at the age of 26.”

Good thing we didn’t elect these woman-haters: “Rep. Paul Ryan is once again co-sponsoring the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which would recognize fertilized eggs as people. The personhood movement is extremely unpopular and has yet to garner a single victory in any of the states where it has appeared on a ballot, but that didn’t stop House Republicans, including Ryan, from supporting it, and now they’re going to try again.”

“One of the great political shifts in the past decade has been the move of scientists toward the Democratic Party, a casualty of the Republican Party’s war on reality. It’s not about politics for scientists, it’s about the fact that only one party accepts scientific findings on everything from global warming to evolutionary theory to what does and doesn’t prevent pregnancy. Only 6 percent of scientists identify as Republican, whereas 55 percent identify as Democratic. In October of 2012, 68 Nobel-winning scientists co-signed a strong endorsement of Obama, saying the President “has delivered on his promise to renew our faith in science-based decision making.” Yes, this is true. I still remember the time when every scientist I met voted Republican. And then George W. got elected.

A photo of en extremely polite baby. Some kids have beautiful manners even before they are fully born, it seems!

“Chris Spence, director of education for Toronto’s public school board, has admitted to and apologized for plagiarizing several passages in an article he wrote for the Star about the importance of extracurricular activities.” You have really got to be a massive loser.

Yet another GOP Representative is making insulting remarks about rape. I guess losing the presidential election was not enough to make them legitimately just shut that whole blabbing thing down.

I don’t have an anti-videotaping policy on my syllabi but now I’m wondering if I should. What do you think?

“Academics of my acquaintance often mirror this historical tendency by thinking of themselves as just getting by in the system, when in fact they’re doing much better than a great many of their colleagues elsewhere.”

Ingredients: – shrimp, tomatoes, radishes, scallions, cucumbers, pine nuts, cilantro, sweet red peppers. Dressing: – blood orange olive oil, grapefruit balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, caraway seeds, a little dried basil, pepper, black Hawaiian sea salt. If there is no time to mix a dressing, it is always best to use olive oil and nothing else. Horrible store-bought dressings can destroy any salad.

And this is from my Hispanic Civ course (where I routinely give out very low grades):

Clarissa was amazing!  She is very clear in her teaching & is always objective.  I also highly valued the personal knowledge/experiences she brought to the course.  She made me understand the impact of Spanish/Latin American culture & how it related to me.

Explained it in a way that made it more interesting and easy to understand.  Her personal stories made it feel more real.

She was always excited and enthusiastic about the material.  She had a deep understanding of all material.  She is a very helpful, friendly, and funny person.  I very much enjoyed this class and mostly because of Professor’s methods and attitude.

She’s extremely knowledgeable about the subjects.  She is also very organized, easy to talk to, and explains things well.  I absolutely loved this class and her.

She was very knowledgeable and passionate about the topics.

She was very knowledgeable about the material.

Clarissa was open to questions and responded in a helpful way.

I liked the videos on the blog, it helped me understand the material much more than the book.

Professor does a great job of conveying the information, and she is always very responsive.

Extremely knowledgeable about everything she taught.

The instructor knew her subject material very well.  She provided very good explanations for the current state of affairs to Latin American countries.  The course is very well put together and well run.

The instructor was immensely knowledgeable about Spanish-speaking cultures and their many facets.

She explained all material very clearly.  All lectures (online & in person) were fun and made me want to learn the material.  Even the assignments involving poetry were educational & helped with my overall understanding of the course objectives.  Professor Clarissa is one of the best teachers I’ve had at this university.

She was extremely knowledgeable on the topics & could teach largely from her own experiences.

Clarissa gives all Latin American countries descriptions very well.  Her understanding of the countries & the cultures made it easier to learn.

The course’s main strength was its discussion oriented style, and the instructor was very attached to the subject-matter.

She knew and loved the material.  I gained insight into what the issues [sic] are facing Latin American countries, Spain.  Excellent teacher.

And my favorite:

I loved how Clarissa wove all the information from very early Spain to present day Americas to create an overall understanding of Latin America.  I really enjoyed the learning experience of this class because the information presented was so well put together.  The whole class, online material & in class lectures, was like one long, very interesting conversation.

Aaahh! Also note the number of times the word “knowledgeable” was used. Once again, I’m not editing these statements or picking out the best ones. These are the comments I got in their entirety.

I will not post the evals from my most successful section because I’m a little embarrassed by the outpouring of student love for me in them.

You have to agree that somebody made a brilliant hiring decision when she decided to hire me. Have you noticed that there is not a single even remotely negative evaluation? It is like this every single semester.

I’m good.

Let me go and bask in professional contentment now.

And now let me bore you with my student evaluations. It only happens twice a year, so I feel entitled to some self-aggrandizement.

These are from the section that I kept complaining about:

Her extensive knowledge helped us understand difficult subjects.

Knew what she taught, was very thorough on how she wanted things to be done so no confusion.

Clarissa teaches w/ a lot of enthusiasm and understands the material she taught us very well.

She knew the material, has a friendly demeanor, grades fair.

She’s very friendly and approachable and did her best to ensure we understood the material.

She knew the material well and was very helpful in learning to understand the material.

She is very helpful & speaks at a speed that I can understand.  I liked the variety of lecture, group work, & movies that were used.  It’s nice to not have only lecture every day.  Overall I like this course & I believe she is a great professor.

The teacher had a good understanding of the life, culture, and other issues in Spain.

I learned about the culture of Spain and the instructor was great about helping outside the class.

–Very knowledgeable.  -Very understanding.  -Answered questions thoroughly.  -Course well organized and clear syllabus.

Professor made the course interesting and memorable.  She did not provide an overload of information and because of this, I learned a lot from her.  The book was not very effective and bored me to death, but Clarissa’s handouts and stories were fantastic.

The instructor is always pleasant, cheerful, and explains things well and multiple times; I can tell she wants us to do well in the course.

And the best one:

She is SO fun, outgoing, & understanding.  All of us really felt she wanted the best for us.  She never yelled or got mad.  She was always helping & nice.

Yeah, I never yelled. Was that a possibility, I now wonder?

Once again, these are the evaluations from my worst section last semester. I didn’t pre-select them in any way but just copy-pasted them from the file I was given (removing my real name, of course).

I just got my student evals and I’m weeping. I knew they were going to be good, but I did not expect anything of the kind.

I will post them tomorrow and you will see how much today’s young people love learning and appreciate good teaching.

What I like the most is how students correctly identify the reasons for their low grades. They never blame me for not succeeding but recognize that if they don’t do well, that’s because they haven’t worked enough or did all the assigned readings on time.

OK, I have tears dropping on the keyboard so I need to step away from the computer now.

What is this, folks? The week of anti-causality articles? Yet another completely idiotic bit of fluff has been published in Inside Higher Ed whose contributors seem to be on a warpath against formal logic. The article claims that marriage somehow slows down the progress of female academics’ careers:

Marriage appears to speed up the advancement of male historians but slow down that of female historians, according to new data from the American Historical Association. . . One of the issues debated in many disciplines has been the slow path of promotion from associate to full professor for women as compared to men. The new data from the AHA suggest that marriage has a different impact on men and women in the history profession.

Once you read the entire article, however, you realize that this is yet another case of “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. The article fails to list any ways in which getting married could conceivably hamper a female academic’s career as opposed to, say, living together without formalizing the union, having a boyfriend or girlfriend, or being in a long-distance relationship. What the article does instead is enumerating the ways in which child-birth slows down a female academic’s career progress. Unless the authors of this strange article are living in the XVIIIth century, I’m sure they have noticed by now that marriage and child-birth are very different concepts that might or might not overlap.

Of course, after the article’s authors engage in this scandal-mongering and sensationalist bit of data manipulation, I wouldn’t trust them to tell me what the weather is today. In my opinion, this stupid article is part of the push to keep women down by telling us lies about the supposed sacrifices we need to make at every turn of the way. Marriage itself is in no way detrimental to female profs’ careers. But such alarmist, dishonest articles are in that they contribute to the perception that being a female scholar is an insurmountably hard task that should probably not even be attempted.

To offer a bit of anecdotal evidence, I got married in my first year on the tenure track. Obviously, I didn’t get married to improve my career but marriage did have that effect. I now have somebody to share the burden of paying bills and doing the household chores, I feel happy and energized, my personal life is blissful, and that makes it easier to concentrate on work. At the same time, I’m sure that people who live together without formalizing their relationship can have the exact same experiences.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find this anti-women piece of idiocy published in the trashy NY Times, but to see it appear in an academic publication really rankles. Haven’t we had enough of the stupid and sensationalist garbage telling us lies about the horrible price women are supposed to pay for having personal lives, for getting married and having children? Such articles are nothing but projections of the diseased minds of their authors who want to see women punished for having lives.