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Weird Academic Advice

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Clarissa

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Tanya Golash Boza posted the following on Facebook:

According to Robert Boice’s study of faculty, those who were successful engaged in these behaviors:

*spent three hours or more per week on scholarly writing.

This is obviously true.

*integrated their research into their undergraduate classes.

Yeah, I can just imagine that. “Ser” versus “estar” and the memory wars in Spain. Does this guy knowing anything about actual undergrads? The idea that they have the preparation that enables them to understand my research is really bizarre. And it was the same at every school I worked. The worst course of my life was the course I taught at Cornell on the subject of my research. Since then, I swore never to inflict this suffering on myself and keep my research away from students for good.

*did not spend major amounts of time on course preparation (after their first semester, they averaged 1–1.5 hours of preparation per lecture hour).

If he thinks that 1–1.5 hours of preparation per lecture hour is not a major amount of time, then he’s insane. Does anybody in their right mind spend more on class preparation? Doing what, exactly, especially if they teach their own research? I have no idea how I could spend 9-13,5 hours each week preparing classes.

*lectured at a pace that allowed for active student participation.

There is nothing more difficult and time consuming than getting students to participate. It isn’t about “pace.” It’s about the task being very onerous. If only I could just lecture away, at least once! But no, I can’t because my field doesn’t allow for it.

*regularly sought advice from colleagues, averaging four hours a week on discussions of research and teaching.

Yeah, I can just imagine persecuting my colleagues for hours each week to ask them for advice about my teaching. That would certainly consolidate my position as an authoritative person and a professional who knows what she’s doing.

OK, I don’t like almost any of this advice because it seems completely divorced from the reality of teaching and research.

Jonathan, why did you have to abandon the area of academic advice? You are sorely missed!

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119 responses to “Weird Academic Advice”

Evelina Anville

April 8, 2014

I easily spend 20 hours per week on prep. Well less so now that I have taught my courses before. But by the time, I do all my reading (and it’s a lot of reading!), take notes, brush up on any quick lecture notes (or write mini lectures), generate in -class activites: it’s easily 20 hours for me. When I first started, I would say I spent about 40 hours a week on prep!

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 8, 2014
  
  OK, now I feel like a lazy underachiever. 🙂
  
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  1. Evelina Anville
    
    April 8, 2014
    
    Well that might be a field differece too. You probably can’t assign long novels or formerly difficult poetry to second language learners. I am sure you spend more time on grading than I do. And it’s always a possibility that I’m inefficient. 😉
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 8, 2014
      
      Ok, the goal of this post was not to make us feel bad about ourselves, but this is where we are all headed, it seems. I I actually cancelled my spinning today to come home and prepare classes
      
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  2. Evelina Anville
    
    April 8, 2014
    
    I don’t feel bad. I am actually supremely confident about my teaching. It’s one of the things that I just know about myself. I have more to learn of course but I feel confident in my teaching. 🙂 And can tell you are a good teacher too. I am just interested in different ways to achieve teaching excellence. 🙂
    
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Z

April 8, 2014

Preparation, yes, including reading. But I think he is talking about writing lectures or something. I cannot stand Boice. Apparently his field (Psychology) is very different from ours, though, and this makes a big difference.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 8, 2014
  
  I don’t like his advice. It’s very mechanistic and somehow dead.
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 8, 2014
    
    Yes, precisely. But many like him, typically those who never worked on a schedule and also those who did not do much writing in school. For them he is a revelation.
    
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Jonathan Mayhew

April 8, 2014

I haven’t really abandoned advice. Just I don’t do it all the time any more.

I do four out of those five things.

I write every day. I integrate my research into the classroom. I don’t exceed a 1/1 ration between preparation and class time. I don’t spend four hours engaging with my colleagues.

For a new preparation, and to gather enough materials, I sometimes spend more than an hour preparing an hour’s worth of class, if I include the time I need to re-read a novel, for example.

I don’t lecture, so I don’t know what it means to lecture with a pace to allow for participation. But I do have participation, so I have that covered.

Research and teaching are both simply the communication of scholarship. There are different audiences and expectations, but they are at bottom the same thing. I’m assuming that I might be researching something to write about it, or to teach it in a class.

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1. Z
  
  April 8, 2014
  
  Teaching is *not* the communication of scholarship. It is basic skills building, test preparation, testing, and certifying. Basic skills could be the communication of scholarship, if one were allowed to do it in an interesting way. But teaching is test preparation for purposes of certification, so it cannot be done as communication of scholarship — at least, not if you want tenure, promotion, merit raises, decent treatment by colleagues and superiors, and so on.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    April 8, 2014
    
    Today in class I couldn’t even get to begin to communicate scholarship because I got stuck explaining WWI about which students knew absolutely nothing. There is so much remedial teaching that needs to be done that I don’t even hope to do anything else.
    
    And before anybody concludes that this has something to go with my university, I have to remind about that grad history seminar at Yale where none of the students could say when WWI started or ended and why.
    
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  2. Clarissa
    
    April 8, 2014
    
    And in my other class, students refuse to talk about Evo Morales and Raul Castro and insist they want more grammar exercises, preferably of the fill-in-blanks variety
    
    I’m not complaining because there is a hugely positive side to this: I get a lot of free time for my research because it isn’t like I need to prepare to impart the most basic information on WWI or the subjunctive.
    
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    1. Z
      
      April 8, 2014
      
      We even have faculty wanting to replace upper division courses with this kind of thing. BUT I find preparation for this kind of thing onerous: the online workbooks, the dull exams, and so on.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        April 8, 2014
        
        The e-books are the bane of my existence. People say they are useful because they do all the work for you but all they do is generate ridiculously stupid tests that don’t teach anything to anybody.
        
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Z

April 8, 2014

About integrating research into undergraduate classes, someone I know was asked how he would do this at an MLA interview and he responded: “What? Are you crazy? Do you not see how poorly my research would go over? It is not for undergraduate consumption, at least not required undergraduate consumption!”

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 8, 2014
  
  That’s what I always wanted to answer to this question.
  
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  1. Jonathan Mayhew
    
    April 8, 2014
    
    We often ask candidates how they would teach their research. It is an opportunity for creative thinking. If someone just sd “that’s a crazy question” it would not go over well.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      “We often ask candidates how they would teach their research. It is an opportunity for creative thinking. If someone just sd “that’s a crazy question” it would not go over well.”
      
      – And this is why I never actually gave that answer. 🙂
      
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  2. Jonathan Mayhew
    
    April 8, 2014
    
    … and some only want to teach their exact dissertation project at all levels. This does not go over well either.
    
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  3. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    And, re the candidates Jonathan describes, his department needs to hire me as a consultant to go through the dossiers they get, I will not choose people as callow / green as what he describes here. Wanting to teach dissertation at all levels, you should be able to eliminate those people before the interviews. “Are you crazy?” is not necessarily a bad response — it really depends on what the research is, and the school, and the actual teaching assignment. Also: if you treat job candidates like wayward children — which is what I am getting from your tone here — you are setting up a poor dynamic right from the get-go, bad idea from the point of view of building a department.
    
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Tanya Golash-Boza (@tanyaboza)

April 8, 2014

You may already know this, but this research was done 40 years ago. And, Boice’s advice is based on research. He interviewed faculty, and writes about the work habits of the successful versus the unsuccessful ones. What I find remarkable is that it appears that this study has not been replicated since. Academia has changed since then, and you would need more than one study to say that a method actually works.

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1. Z
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  Yes but he is in psych. They work differently than humanities people, you should see my psych undergrad and his advisor and how they do things right now, today. Also he is talking to people who did not do heavy writing or organization of time in undergraduate and graduate school. The skills he says are necessary, are that, but are not freakin’ news if you have made it through an old style B.A. or passed an old style M.A. exam and taken a couple of graduate seminars. This is why I find him frustrating as an advisor for faculty: can’t he say anything more, spill the real beans, talk about how to combat serious discrimination for example, say something we did not learn in school if we went to an accredited one … ?!?
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    p.s. I am sorry to sound so bitchy but my whole freakin’ blog is about how Boice is no panacea. He is giving advice for lost people who nonetheless have ideal conditions. As such, what he has to say is fine, but most people are not that lost and most conditions are not that ideal.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      “p.s. I am sorry to sound so bitchy but my whole freakin’ blog is about how Boice is no panacea. He is giving advice for lost people who nonetheless have ideal conditions. As such, what he has to say is fine, but most people are not that lost and most conditions are not that ideal.”
      
      – You are not bitchy. You are justifiably and reasonably angry.
      
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      1. Z
        
        April 9, 2014
        
        Well, yes, I secretly agree. 😀
        
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  2. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    It’s like that in other disciplines, too. I keep hearing from mathematicians and physicists that all they do is remediation because students come to them without the most basic math skills.
    
    I am yet to meet a student who’d know that there was a Civil War in Spain. So if I wanted to teach about my research, I’d spend so much time explaining the background that we’d maybe reach the memory wars by the end if semester.
    
    Of course, I can create a pretty little narrative about how I’m totally using my research in teaching, but that would be nothing but a farce. Research and teaching are located on different planets for me. This isn’t bad, it’s just reality.
    
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    1. Z
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      I use research in teaching, as in, I make some effort to find out what current scholarship is on whatever I have been assigned to teach. That is: I don’t use MY research to teach very often, but I DO research so as to teach. If I taught in field and at high enough levels, then sure my teaching would be influenced by my research. I am going to teach in one of my research areas in the fall, but it will be a class for seniors and M.A. students, so will be very basic, more or less like the freshman thematic introductions to world literature I used to teach as a T.A. at a fancier school. So I will not be “incorporating research” in a very serious way, except insofar as what I give to read will be current … just as I would do in a class not in a field I conduct research in.
      
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2. Z
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  Here is some more current research on actual professors’ work habits. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-shows-professors-work-long-hours-and-spend-much-day-meetings
  
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Jonathan Mayhew

April 8, 2014

I guess I don’t understand. If you are a linguistics professor, you are doing research on linguistics, and writing up your findings. In the classroom, you are communicating the results of the scholarship on linguistics, and teaching students to think like linguists. Of course, teaching is more generalist (even at the grad level) so you aren’t presenting, usually, your own, personal research. Instead, you are presenting a more general scholarly consensus, but usually in a way slanted toward your own perspective and expertise.

Why is the teaching of literature so different from other fields, so that people thinks that there is no relation at all between scholarship and teaching? I know my teaching has profoundly influenced my research, and vice-versa.

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1. Z
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  Oh Jonathan and Tanya. You are giving the standard answers given to graduate students, that everyone already knows. These things do not apply in most of the world, i.e. the institutions where most of your students will teach. It is nice work if you can get it but I am trying to channel my elementary school teachers most of the time, and fight against Pearson Higher Education. Integrate research into teaching, I do it every other year or so in one course. Otherwise I can try to incorporate scholarship into teaching but most recently I was told on a merit review that this was “overthinking.” So, lo siento, pero…
  
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2. Z
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  You may be doing research in linguistics or literature but that does not mean you are teaching classes where you are allowed to discuss anything related, and teaching anything current or in a current way may pose a serious threat to your colleagues and serioiusy jeopardize your career. #getreal
  
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3. cliff arroyo
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  The problem is that undergraduates often don’t have the grounding in the basics that would allow them to understand the latest results of the scholarship.
  
  I once had a supposed advanced intro-ish course taught by an excellent and insightful professor but rather than prepare the ground he zoomed right into the very latest hotness and we were all lost.
  
  I ended up dropping the course and taking it later with someone else (who had a similar approach but also had the sense to baby walk us through the initial steps so that we could (just barely) keep up with the more advanced stuff.
  
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Z

April 9, 2014

P.S. it is false that Jonathan does not spend 4 hours a week talking to colleagues about teaching and research. He has a blog for this.

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1. Z
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  And: we only talk to colleagues about it when we have a job candidate in. And they have been heavily coached on how to answer the question above — it is not an opportunity for creative thinking, it is an opportunity to for them to show that they have been correctly brought up for interviews. In reality, what we want to gauge is how well they will take in stride not being allowed to do anything they were trained to do, really.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    “what we want to gauge is how well they will take in stride not being allowed to do anything they were trained to do, really.”
    
    If this isn’t comment of the week……
    
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    1. Z
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      Well, if you had that situation, wouldn’t you want to know? Misjudge and you will get a resignation within months, as we have just done.
      
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  2. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    ” And they have been heavily coached on how to answer the question above — it is not an opportunity for creative thinking, it is an opportunity to for them to show that they have been correctly brought up for interviews.”
    
    – Very true. The only interview where I was completely honest was the one at my current job. I was so not interested in the job that I cut the interview short, announcing that I would not answer any more questions. I was extremely lucky in that the Chair (who is very much like blogger Z in many ways) is a person who was looking for, above all, brutal honesty and sincerity in a candidate.
    
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    1. Z
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      That’s fantastic, in an interview, candidate saying they will not answer more questions. Rocking!
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        April 9, 2014
        
        I also answered a string of questions with just a no.
        
        “Would you be interested in recreating our Russian program?”
        
        “No.”
        
        “Are you interested in doing teacher certification?”
        
        “No.”
        
        “Are you familiar with ACTFL?”
        
        “No.”
        
        I was so tired and I just wanted to get out of there.
        
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2. Jonathan Mayhew
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  Very true. But I only get a few comments a week very often so often it is a one-way street.
  
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3. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  “it is false that Jonathan does not spend 4 hours a week talking to colleagues about teaching and research. He has a blog for this.”
  
  – Ah, if the blog counts, then so do I. I haven’t considered this. Pity I can’t put this into my tenure dossier.
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Neither Boice nor I say talking to colleagues about research or teaching is something that should “count”–just that it is something faculty do, that often helps with work.
    
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  2. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    No, the blogs don’t count — they just help! 😀
    
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  3. David Bellamy
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    “- Ah, if the blog counts, then so do I. I haven’t considered this. Pity I can’t put this into my tenure dossier.”
    
    I think your blog counts as community service, which is important. You cannot put it into your tenure dossier only if you need to maintain your anonymity, I would think. Otherwise, it is important.
    
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Z

April 9, 2014

And also, here is the sad truth I had forgotten: certain people here have Skyped into one of my classes and discovered, precisely, that it was not possible to integrate research into teaching. Don’t say you don’t remember the experience — especially with the Lorca session. It was quite frightening, actually.

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1. Jonathan Mayhew
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  Yes, I believe Clarissa had far better success with skyping into your class. So when you have had success teaching, was it something far removed from any research interest, or did you find a way to get a toe-hold of research into there?
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Clarissa mentioned literary salons and the students thought they were hair salons because they were frequented by women. They had a really hard time with the idea of literary salons in general. I was in the back out of sight, writing things on the board that they could see to follow.
    
    She did not incorporate research into the lecture, really, except to inform the class that she had found more evidence of 18th century cultural activity in BN than what people say about the “weak” Spanish Enlightenment would lead one to believe. Otherwise she spoke at a much more basic level, giving general information.
    
    You were speaking at a higher level, more appropriate (here) for people post M.A. Also note: when Clarissa gave her talk, the students had not yet actually read anything in Spanish: we were reading Jo Labanyi in English. By the time you spoke, they had been trying and mostly failing to read from the antiguos y modernos style anthology, i.e. short pieces heavily annotated for vocabulary, etc., for some months, and were tired … and that duende piece by Lorca is not easy to understand if you have missed my Nick Cave-inflected undergraduate introduction to it, as had happened with some students due to child sickness and so on.
    
    Now, that wasn’t a class in an area where I do any research myself. And most of what I teach, is not / is at a lower level than that / is even further from my research interests than that.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      “Clarissa mentioned literary salons and the students thought they were hair salons because they were frequented by women. They had a really hard time with the idea of literary salons in general.”
      
      – What was funny is that during the lecture Z was trying to force me to step away from the basic stuff and get into something more complex and interesting. I could just feel her pushing me there. And she is very good at that, so she did manage to lead me to slightly more complex stuff. That’s when I started enjoying myself, Z really started enjoying herself, and the students got really confused. 🙂 🙂 Good times.
      
      “short pieces heavily annotated for vocabulary, etc., for some months, and were tired”
      
      – On a side note, we are forced to use these vocabulary annotated textbooks and God, how I hate them. Often every word in a sentence is annotated. It’s impossible to read! Even I start to hate these works of literature.
      
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  2. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    “Yes, I believe Clarissa had far better success with skyping into your class. So when you have had success teaching, was it something far removed from any research interest, or did you find a way to get a toe-hold of research into there?”
    
    – Yes, that Skype lecture was probably the closest I got to discussing my erstwhile research interests in class, actually. 🙂 🙂 It was a very good experience. But Z’s students are not writing my evaluations and it’s up to me whether to include Z’s letter of support into my tenure dossier. So even if she wrote something nasty, I’d have the option to hide her comments from the world.
    
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cliff arroyo

April 9, 2014

For me prep time expands to fill up however much time I give it. A few weeks ago I was going to revise the student notes for a lecture I’d already given and which had gone well.
I thought it might take a half an hour but it ended up filling the three hours I had before class…. Was the class that much better for all that work? Meh…..

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  “I thought it might take a half an hour but it ended up filling the three hours I had before class…. Was the class that much better for all that work? Meh…..”
  
  – I actually find that the most prepared classes are the most boring and weak. I do my best teaching when I run out of prepared activities and begin to improvise.
  
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  1. Jonathan Mayhew
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Yes. I love improvising. By the way: best comment thread ever!
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      “Yes. I love improvising. By the way: best comment thread ever!”
      
      – I was sure I wouldn’t get more than a couple lukewarm comments. You just never know with blogging. 🙂
      
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  2. cliff arroyo
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    “I do my best teaching when I run out of prepared activities and begin to improvise.”
    
    Very early on I spent a lot of time prepping for four hours with one group of students. Imagine my horror when I opened up the folder I’d put everything in for class and realized it was the wrong one.
    
    I actually got through it (somehow) which was probably not the best lesson for me to learn at that time. I’ve since figured out I do best when I have a good general idea of what I want to do but don’t have it planned out too exactly.
    
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David Bellamy

April 9, 2014

The needs are different in my field also. I often need to work for months to solve a problem which will end up as a seven to ten page paper. Writing every day is absurd when you have nothing to write. Also, there is so much vertical development in the language that a student often would need several years of mathematical study to have even a vague understanding of the problems I work on. For example, one of the problems I work on sometimes is: Can every finite-dimensional hereditarily indecomposable continuum be embedded into a finite product of pseudo-arcs? I doubt very much that I could explain this problem to anyone who has not studied topology at the graduate level. I certainly could not explain why it is important to such a person.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  “Also, there is so much vertical development in the language that a student often would need several years of mathematical study to have even a vague understanding of the problems I work on.”
  
  – This is exactly what I’m talking about.
  
  “I certainly could not explain why it is important to such a person.”
  
  – Yes! If a person doesn’t know about the Civil War, explaining why I care so much about the debates over whether there is need to keep discussing the Civil War in 2014 is impossible. Students don’t even know what fascism is! I tried mentioning the memory wars a couple of times because I just can’t help myself, but the students look bored and confused. Just as bored and confused as I’d look if somebody started discussing this in class when I was 20 years old.
  
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Evelina Anville

April 9, 2014

For me, in some ways it depends on how narrowly or expansively you define your research. I teach at a very small school. And so, I rarely teach my research narrowly defined. But more expansively defined, I’m _always_ finding ways to bring in my research to my classes.

For instance, my field of research is pre- 20th century literature and, because of the small size of the school, I need to teach various classes (mostly in the Gen Ed) in 20th century literature and/or critical theory. But as a literary critic, I largely focus on issues of gender and nationhood. So those are the lens and critical approaches I introduce in my 20th century classes. Another example: I take a historical approach to literary studies and I always teach my students the joys of situating literature–from any period- in its rich historical moment. So I do think I’m teaching my research. I’m not necessarily teaching the very narrow topic (and the admittedly obscure novel) I’m writing about the present moment for instance, but my research and my various scholarly passions inform everything I do in my teaching.

In another vein, my teaching has led me to a new field of research. As a graduate student, I never considered publishing in the field of scholarly pedagogy. But—because teaching does take up a lot of my time—I have recently started publishing and presenting on different methodologies for teaching undergraduates in my field. Pedagogy will never become my primary field of research or scholarly endeavor but I am finding that I really enjoy writing in this field—and that’s a direct outgrowth of my teaching.

At any rate, I just wanted to chime in. I do see my research and my teaching as linked and I’m a pretty seasoned faculty member at this point in my career. So I don’t think it’s just a graduate student thing to say or think. 🙂

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1. Z
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  It is not a graduate student thing to say or think, it is a more elite school thing to say or think. I repeat: I am downgraded on merit evaluations any time I teach from any perspective dating from the later 20th century or the 21st, since the h.s. teachers, the parents, and my superiors are all from early to mid 20th century.
  
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  1. Evelina Anville
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    I certainly don’t teach at an elite school!
    
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    1. Z
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      More than ours, though, I can tell. If you are allowed to do anything current, you are given more autonomy than we are, and are in a more modern place. And as my colleagues with K-12 experience keep saying, we must keep in mind that most students need a middle school education, not a college one. It is possible to teach at a bi-level, give both at the same time, BUT only if your colleagues/supervisors will allow it.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        April 9, 2014
        
        “And as my colleagues with K-12 experience keep saying, we must keep in mind that most students need a middle school education, not a college one.”
        
        – Very true. And very sad.
        
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  2. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    “I am downgraded on merit evaluations any time I teach from any perspective dating from the later 20th century or the 21st, since the h.s. teachers, the parents, and my superiors are all from early to mid 20th century.”
    
    – No, THIS is the comment of the week. I never thought about it this way, but it’s a brilliant insight. BRILLIANT.
    
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  3. Jonathan Mayhew
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    I forget I teach at an elite school, because it doesn’t feel like that always, but I do. For example, I have almost complete autonomy and can teach from my own perspective.
    
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  4. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    @Jonathan, below: imagine a place where some of those in power have foreign degrees due to not having been able to get into US PhD programs, and/or who hold the Ed.D. or other non research doctorates, or no doctorate. Think of what it is to be supervised by someone like that, and to have someone like that be the one to whom students go when they and their parents/pastors are upset with your teaching something in too sophisticated a way, or asking that they develop a higher level of academic skills. For starters…
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      Also, at my university students’ evaluations of teaching are the most important thing EVER. Everybody is obsessed with these evaluations. tenured people are terrified that a bad evaluation or two will give the administration the chance to fire them (which is quite possible according to our operational papers.) I know how to keep students happy and get glowing evaluations. Students are happiest when all we read are short stories with happy endings and weddings and poetry by JRJ. If I give them that, I get the best evals in the world. They don’t want to hear about the Civil War because that’s upsetting and “heavy.”
      
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  5. Jonathan Mayhew
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    No me lo puedo imaginar. I thought it was horrible at Ohio State because people weren’t theoretically sophisticated, but at least they had PhDs.
    
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  6. Evelina Anville
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Yes. I will admit. I have almost complete autonomy in the classroom. I do teach at a private school also (which is another mark in the “elite category.) But my students are almost exclusively first generation college students, and most of them finance their educations through a combination of schoalrships, working 20-40 hours a week and stdent loans. So it’s not elite in any traditional sense. But even pre-tenure, I was able to teach and organize my classes as I saw fit.
    
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    1. Z
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      Yes, they believe in your training and treat you with respect, i.e., they treat you as the elite are treated. Here, it is more like working in a service industry, like working retail or at a downscale restaurant, in terms of how one is treated by management.
      
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    2. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      I also have autonomy over what I do, in the sense that nobody tells me what to teach and when. But the student evaluations are still paramount. I wouldn’t care that much about them, but I have seen the terror of even the tenured Full Professors, so now I started to care.
      
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  7. Evelina Anville
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Student evaluations do count a good deal at my school too. But I also think that faculty are much more scared of them then they need to be. I don’t think my school is atypical in that student evaluations have to be _really_ bad before one is fired or let go. I never–or rarely– teach with my evals in mind. I try to teach to produce the best classes I can and while I generally get very strong evals, I also get a clunker or two in there. But a bad eval doesn’t make me rethink my approach to teaching. I actually think some of my bad evals attest to my good teaching.
    
    Anyway, I know faculty that bend over backwards and change their whole approach to teaching in order to get “good evals.” And in most cases, they do indeed get good evals– but at the expense of education. I think the eval obsession is more about wanting praise (from students and adminstrators) that it is about being fearful of job loss.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      The problem with these evals is that an administrator can easily use them to get rid of an inconvenient academic.
      
      Say you have 500 amazing evals and 3 really negative ones. An administrator plucks out just the 3 negative ones, sticks them into a report, and reports that you are a bad teacher. The 500 good evals don’t even make it onto the report.
      
      I have seen this happen more than once. And I’m not ready to give anybody this weapon against myself because I do speak out a lot and administration might wish to get rid of me at some point because I’m too loud.
      
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2. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  “But as a literary critic, I largely focus on issues of gender and nationhood. So those are the lens and critical approaches I introduce in my 20th century classes. Another example: I take a historical approach to literary studies and I always teach my students the joys of situating literature–from any period- in its rich historical moment.”
  
  – Yes, do that, too. And it’s always gender and nationhood, as well. 🙂 Plus I always find myself veering off into Marxist readings of works of literature. So in this sense, one could say that my research informs my teaching. Of course, I also teach how to do research, access the MLA database, analyze the sources, create a bibliography, write a research paper, so in that sense one could also say I’m teaching my research.
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Yes, I could say the same, and it *is* true and must be remembered — because efectivamente I do know how to use the library, can do all these things, and am one of the few in my department who can (most do not have research degree and did not do research in their MA programs). But, I tend to think of this as using my *education* in my teaching, not my *research.*
    
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Z

April 9, 2014

Clarissa: Also, at my university students’ evaluations of teaching are the most important thing EVER. Everybody is obsessed with these evaluations. tenured people are terrified that a bad evaluation or two will give the administration the chance to fire them (which is quite possible according to our operational papers.) I know how to keep students happy and get glowing evaluations. Students are happiest when all we read are short stories with happy endings and weddings and poetry by JRJ. If I give them that, I get the best evals in the world. They don’t want to hear about the Civil War because that’s upsetting and “heavy.”

YES. And said firing is also possible according to our operational papers, as well.

Jonathan: No me lo puedo imaginar. I thought it was horrible at Ohio State because people weren’t theoretically sophisticated, but at least they had PhDs.

WELL THEN, you should not be excoriating the rest of us about how it is the best profession in the world, or how if we think of other things we are pikers. And I interviewed at OSU the year before you did, and it seemed terrible stepping off a plane from California in February, and I was glad not to get an offer and have to think about it; and I was there a summer much later on some NEH institute and was still horrified at it, but look: it at least had a PhD program and an NEH institute, and it has some truly great faculty at this moment. If you have only worked at OSU and KU you have absolutely *no* idea of what most of this profession is like — you just can’t, it has to be experienced (not just seen) to be believed.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  Jonathan is not excoriating, he is wonderful, and we all love Jonathan. My career would have been in the toilet had it not been for Jonathan and Z’s inspirational posts about research.
  
  Going back to teaching, I now need to plan my next highest-level literature seminar. And what I’m considering is making it a course on poetry. I have never taken a single class on poetry and the way I read poetry is the most primitive and amateurish ever. But this is precisely why I think it will be my most successful course. Students and I will be on the same low level and it will work.
  
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  1. Evelina Anville
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Z: I’m not sure your situtation n is typical of most academic jobs. I think Jonathan is at a 2-2 research intensive university. I am not. I teach at a little school in a Midwestern state. I have a fairly heavy teaching load and a _very_ heavy service load. And I still think this profession is amazing. Most days are truly a joy. So I’m not sure that your unhappy situation defines “most of the profession.”
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      I think this is the first such long thread where I agree with pretty much everything everybody is saying. 🙂
      
      I love this profession and I dig my current job because with very little service and easy teaching, I get tons of free time to do my research and enjoy life. Yes, teaching about my research interests would be very special. But that would be a cherry on top of what is already a pretty amazing cake. And since almost nobody gets that cherry anyway, I’m fine without it. If teaching Spanish prepositions for the rest of my life is the price I have to pay for this freedom and enjoyment, then I’m very happy to pay it.
      
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  2. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Jonathan does not have the authority to say it is the best profession in the world, as he keeps doing, or that people who think about other possibilities are crass materialists interested in “shiny things”, as he also keeps doing. I don’t think he would say the things he does if he had more experience. I do envy anyone who does not have to know the things I know about working in this field.
    
    Teaching, yes. That is why I am better at teaching literature, it is like a foreign language to me, and worse at FL, since that is second nature … I am only a good FL teacher, really, for people who have the same gift as I have. And in lit, I am worst at teaching poetry, because I “get” it.
    
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  3. Evelina Anville
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    I think this is the best profession in the world. And I think I have perfect authority to say so. One of my sisters has her own business and she thinks that is the best profession in the world and she has the authority to say that too. I’m not sure why it should anger you that some people are delighted to be in academia.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      I don’t think Z is angered that people love the profession. She also loves it. But her situation is really bad. And it’s wrong that people should work in such conditions.
      
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  4. Jonathan Mayhew
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Thanks, but there is no need to defend me. I have a thick skin and Z and I are friends. If I come off as insensitive I count on her to correct me.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      “Thanks, but there is no need to defend me.”
      
      – I’m not defending, I’m just using an opportunity to declare how much you have helped and how I adore you for that. I’m a little hysterical these days, so I need to let the emotions out as they come. You’ll just have to bear it! 🙂 🙂
      
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  5. Jonathan Mayhew
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Yes, I am wonderful. Thanks for that!
    
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2. Jonathan Mayhew
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  I believe what I’m on record as saying many times is that I have the best job in the world. I stand by that.
  
  I would never say that it is the best profession in the world. It is, that, for the few of us who have jobs like I do.
  
  I think the gap between what it should be (and is for me) and what it is for a lot of people causes a lot of suffering. I think that you really should go to law school by hook or crook because I don’t know how you survive the conditions you describe. Have I ever told you you should just enjoy your job and Vichy State?
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    I still insist it’s the best profession in the world and I will continue to do so until anybody names any other professions where people can have this much free time and get the same salary and benefits. There is nothing more valuable than time, in my opinion. Nothing. I can do so many things that none of my peers in other professions can’t simply because they have to be at work all day and every day. My husband literally only sees sunlight on weekends. And he has a PhD, too.
    
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  2. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Re me:
    
    Jonathan, attempts to do those things involve too much denial. Life is a lot less stressful if you allow yourself to name what is not pleasant rather than tell yourself you should be enjoying it. Ask some other faculty and graduate students around here, they will tell you the same.
    
    Others, it ain’t dat bad — another $10K per year, so as to get out of town to research libraries more weekends, and a move to a department with less oppressive leadership would make huge differences, for example.
    
    But:
    
    The thread is not about me, it is about that Boicean advice. Which I still say is odd. It is not that what he observes is false, it is what Clarissa said, the mechanistic and dead feeling it has. The other things I have to say about him, I have said before, namely that he’s fine as far as he goes, but very basic; he is talking about college level organization skills, which is fine and it is nice to be reminded that those are the answer later on as well, but this having been said, the issue is finding out how to remove institutional obstacles to actually following his advice, and he acts as though that were not a problem, so it irritates me when his advice is cited as the answer to problems he does not address.
    The acdemic advice book I still like is The Compleat Academic, because it talks about skills you need to acquire as faculty, not skills you should have already acquired in school.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      “The acdemic advice book I still like is The Compleat Academic, because it talks about skills you need to acquire as faculty, not skills you should have already acquired in school.”
      
      – OK, I think I need to read it. I gave up on books of academic advice years ago because the suggestions seemed to have nothing to do with my life. They were all from a different planet. But if you say it’s good, I’ll read it.
      
      And as for you, Z, I think you should write a memoir.
      
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  3. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    I needed to go to the doctor’s today and I just did. Without having to beg for time off or inform anybody. And I’m kind of depressed these days, so after the doctor I’m going to a sauna and to get a pedicure. In which other profession can I do this without risking anything? And to me, this is absolutely the most important thing in the world.
    
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  4. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Oh, now I understand the last question. No, you have not.
    
    Law school, should have done, but that is just so over, I have looked at it every which way and especially now, can simply not afford. Also no longer have time to develop what I wanted to. Someone from my high school has, though, although is more straight academic than I would have been (this is her: http://www.law.emory.edu/about-emory-law/news-article/article/mary-dudziak-joins-emory-law-faculty-this-fall.html) — I’d have gone that far but with much more activist wing re decarceration and also borders/trade. If I started now, I’d only get as far as I have in academia and the difference between me and many others is that I am voraciously urban, incredibly ambitious even in comparison to other highly ambitious people, and from one of the world’s top ten spots in terms of natural beauty; I have to satisfy at least one of these things and academia is not allowing me access to any of them. I am also a lot more neutral on the flexible schedule that so many really value in academia.
    
    If I cared more about the flexible schedule and less about location, for instance, things would be different. If I were only slightly less ambitious, or if I had not discovered one or two other fields and career paths I really love; if my family had less bitterness and conflict over my intellectual orientation and career focus; if my first job and this one had not been so oddly oppressive (I have also worked at 3 R1s, liked them all, and there are various non R1s I am sure I would like, and even at this place there are niches that would be nice although we are dropping like flies here, 25% of my department has resigned this semester already) … if any of these things, then I would be less traumatized.
    
    But at this point, just getting heavily into my research projects, something I had also renounced, is the thing to do. I used to want other things as well but now I am becoming like your colleague VU when she started at your place: “It is not interesting, but I have my work.” It is also utterly clear to me now, just this semester actually, how to name the toxic elements in my department. Right there I can remove myself without even moving, although this semester’s revelations have made it clear that moving really would help.
    I
    
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Z

April 9, 2014

Evelina: Z: I’m not sure your situtation n is typical of most academic jobs. I think Jonathan is at a 2-2 research intensive university. I am not. I teach at a little school in a Midwestern state. I have a fairly heavy teaching load and a _very_ heavy service load. And I still think this profession is amazing. Most days are truly a joy. So I’m not sure that your unhappy situation defines “most of the profession.”

–I am describing the same kind of job as Clarissa’s. I like it less because I care a lot more about geography than one is supposed to do, and because I have a lot of other interests and can easily see myself doing other things, and gave up the career I really wanted for the sake of academia. BUT it is not that different from Clarissa’s job and if you look at the ads, or your job, you will see that there are many jobs like this one, although it sounds as though yours is at a more seriously congenial place and as though you have negotiated what they call a “fit” (ugh, I don’t like that expression, but there it is). You should see one of the departments I am applying to as a chair-rescuer, too: their very ad cries out in pain, they need someone to articulate a clear vision for them to use to defend themselves against the administration. This is very typical at STEM dominated R&D schools (as opposed to R1).

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  We were looking for a chair-rescuer 3 years ago. But I don’t think you would have wanted to come. Besides, I don’t believe a woman would have been hired. Even if she were Labanyi.
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    No, would not go to your dept. and at the one I refer to above, I do not think they will hire a woman, either.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      Well, I’ll still have my little fantasy, though. 🙂
      
      You’d totally whip us into being a heavy hitting research department.
      
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      1. Z
        
        April 9, 2014
        
        That is not the way to do it, though — chairs who come in with that agenda usually just create division and get programs shut down. I could increase research productivity and emphasize research focus, yes.
        
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Z

April 9, 2014

Evelina: I’m not sure why it should anger you that some people are delighted to be in academia.

I am angry at those who have yelled at and abused me for years about having other interests and career goals. You can do what you want, just don’t be on my case demanding 100% loyalty all the time.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  If some of those people yelled at administrators at least once instead, this would help the profession a lot more than centuries of yelling at you.
  
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2. Evelina Anville
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  I agree that adminstrators are the single biggest problem facing academia today. And I don’t want to paint an overly rosey picture of my school. Our adminstrators (many of whom make 5-7 times my salary) are making some truly horrible decisions. The issue is that administration have become an indeible part of our system–at any school. We can potentially rise up and give votes of no confidence to our current crop of adminstrators–but they would only be repalced by another crop–one that is potentially worse than our current adminstration. I agree with Clarissa that academics–especially tenured ones–need to stand up to adminstrators. But that won’t make them go away.
  
  And I’m certainly not “yelling” at anybody for not liking their job. And I know that some academic jobs are truly horrible. But, as I have commented on this blog before, the unrelenting atacks on a profession that I dearly love are wearing thin for me. EVERY profession has issues. Adminstration is academia’s issue. But that doesn’t mean the profession isn’t beautiful. Personally, I appreciate that Jonathan Mayhew says positive things about academia. 🙂
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    “And I’m certainly not “yelling” at anybody for not liking their job. ”
    
    – I couldn’t imagine you doing it if I tried. 🙂
    
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  2. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    I do not not like my job, but the type of job I have always gotten does not actually like me.
    If you have to work with people for whom your PhD is an affront, and they make you suffer for it daily, it is not pleasant.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      You are producing strings of aphorisms today. 🙂
      
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good enough professor

April 9, 2014

So many comment threads in higher ed seem to founder on the “three blind men and the elephant problem.” We all tend to assume that what we’ve encountered in a handful of institutions is typical, but if you’ve got hold of the tail of the elephant what you’re describing is incomprehensible to someone touching the leg.

It’s possible to recognize that academic life is wonderful at the same time that one acknowledges and fights back against the forces that are working to eviscerate it. Those are probably more apparent at public institutions than at private ones, and more apparent at some private institutions than others.

For a variety of reasons I gave up on an active research program (as it’s understood in my field and institution–the writing of a highly specialized monograph) and even though there was little overlap between my research on eighteenth-century Anglophone women poets and my “bread and butter” gen ed courses, my teaching suffered. Working on a book brought me into dialogue (if only in my head) with other voices in my field, expanded my sense of what was out there, kept me aware of the things I teach as part of a changing and developing whole. Things started to stagnate and I got grumpy. I’ve ended up developing my own idiosyncratic sense of “research” (breadth, rather than the narrow depth needed for publication and prized at my institution) in order to be the teacher I want to be. Not trying to write a book frees me up to do that. But my situation is weird and possibly unsustainable–I too am looking into admin.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  “It’s possible to recognize that academic life is wonderful at the same time that one acknowledges and fights back against the forces that are working to eviscerate it. ”
  
  – This is precisely what my position is.
  
  “Not trying to write a book frees me up to do that.”
  
  – I believe we would all be better served by giving up the fixation on “THE BOOK” and just choose to do what you did if that’s what we prefer. It’s an absolutely legitimate way of working and being a scholar.
  
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  1. Evelina Anville
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    “I believe we would all be better served by giving up the fixation on “THE BOOK” and just choose to do what you did if that’s what we prefer. It’s an absolutely legitimate way of working and being a scholar.”
    
    EXACTLY! Especially since this obsession leads some to publish with completely dubious presses like Lang or Mellen and then they crow about having a book. Drives me nuts. Far better to have a series of well placed article than a book with a vanity press.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      April 9, 2014
      
      “EXACTLY! Especially since this obsession leads some to publish with completely dubious presses like Lang or Mellen and then they crow about having a book.”
      
      – I was told at my university that if the tenure committee sees words “Lang” and “Mellen” on a tenure dossier, that’s the immediate end of the conversation right there. 🙂 I guess it must have been tried many times and people thought a warning was in order for all entering TTs.
      
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  2. good enough professor
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    “It’s an absolutely legitimate way of working and being a scholar” but it’s, at best, a source of bafflement and uncertainty to my colleagues and, at worst, professional suicide.
    
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Z

April 9, 2014

Evelina and Good Enough: but this, you see, is precisely why I do not like Boice. He is not interested in academia and seems to think it is painful, and seems to deal with people who are incompetent, so gives advice that seems dead/mechanistic even if/when it is good. He seems true to the letter and not the spirit.

That is why I do not like *him.* But I also do not like the way he is used — cited as panacea for every academic problem, when there are many problems he does not cover and when many of us like writing and have long experience in it. So one gets beaten over the head with Boice when one asked a question that would better be answered with reference to some other book or rulebook.

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1. Jonathan Mayhew
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  I have never even read Boice. It seems rather outdated, no? I just saw Tanya’s Facebook post first and then saw that Clarissa had blogged about it and was surprised I did four out of five things, and maybe all five.
  
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  1. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    It is not so much outdated as oriented toward people in disciplines where you do not learn to write the way one does in literature/other humanities.
    
    You will not have read it if you have never claimed to have writer’s block. If you claim that, you will get Boice thrown at you.
    
    I originally learned about Boice because people wondered how I was getting things done and I told them, and it turned out I was doing all the Boicean things, and they marveled.
    
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2. Evelina Anville
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  I confess that I never hear of Boice until this thread. Maybe I’m out of touch. 🙂
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    I heard of Boyce through Z’s blog.
    
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Z

April 9, 2014

My writing groups adore Boyce, adore him.

He is just a complete sore point for me because (a) I learned to work the way he says to work in about the sixth grade, and find it insulting when people push him at me as a revelation, and (b) when I had a serious question about manuscript content and also how to negotiate with editors and presses, all I could get as answers was Boyce, “just write half an hour or more a day,” people used him to stonewall and the idea that I would have other questions was considered rebellion. So people used Boyce to torture me and this torture ruined my career, and then they guilt tripped me about wanting another career since this one had been ruined. As a result, I consider Boyce, and professors who think only academia is valid or is the most valid life, to be quite provincial and mean.

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Z

April 9, 2014

Also: Evelina Anville: Z: I’m not sure your situtation n is typical of most academic jobs. I think Jonathan is at a 2-2 research intensive university. I am not. I teach at a little school in a Midwestern state. I have a fairly heavy teaching load and a _very_ heavy service load. And I still think this profession is amazing. Most days are truly a joy. So I’m not sure that your unhappy situation defines “most of the profession.”

***Most of the profession is high teaching high service in little schools in provincial states. I am not saying people with that kind of job are not honorable.***

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  Yes, we are the absolute majority of the profession. And I hate it when people pretend that the only jobs that exist or matter are 2:1 positions at Harvard. I know people like that and they are very obnoxious to be around. They have no idea that the schools where they so lament not getting jobs are vipers’ nests of nastiness.
  
  I’m not talking about anybody on this blog. I’m just venting about people I know.
  
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2. Evelina Anville
  
  April 9, 2014
  
  ***Most of the profession is high teaching high service in little schools in provincial states. I am not saying people with that kind of job are not honorable.***
  
  Exactly. I guess my point was that that there are many of us who don’t have 2/2 research positions and who are still quite happy with their jobs. 2/2 and low service are not the only type of jobs that are fulfilling.
  
  And it’s possible to have a good life in many parts of the country. I’m from a coast originally and at one point turned my nose up at the Midwest but now I love where I live. I still miss home of course (and admittedly, I live in a fairly big metropolitan area) but there are some great things about this region. I often find that sometimes people romanticize the coasts and demonize the Midwest and south and I think that’s unfortunate: there are many wonderful things about the “noncoastal” areas of the country.
  
  So I think that people who are holding out for a “coastal job at a research school with a 2/2 teaching load” are indeed doomed to disappointment. (Not saying that Z is doing that. But I know plenty of people who live their lives bemonaing that they didn’t get that sort of position.) And if that’s the only way someone can find fulfillment or happiness in this profession, then happiness will be elusive indeed.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    I have grown to love this region. I didn’t like it at first, but now I’m really into it. If only it weren’t for the deathly climate, it would be perfect. But since every climate but the subarctic is deathly to me, I can’t complain.
    
    The conditions here are good enough for me to concentrate on the positives. So I’m very happy.
    
    Z’s situation, to the contrary, is very harsh (sorry for the 3rd person). She was cheated out of her promotion and has to make do on a very small salary that is incommensurate with the work she does and her level if expertise. It’s a shameful thing, really.
    
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  2. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    This is just the standard CHE-type rap on how you should be open to living different places and open to different schools. We hear this so much, and I have noticed that the people who say it are also those who turn their noses up at where I live and shudder at where I am willing to go. I would have done well to be less accepting of the idea of living just anywhere, and less dismissive of my own needs, than I have been.
    
    This thread was about Boice though, not me, and I didn’t mean to turn it into one about me. Still there is an odd parallel between Boice and the standard CHE-type rap on openness to different places and schools. Both assume someone really inexperienced and without a lot of self-knowledge or skills.
    
    Boice assumes that if you have a manuscript problem it is basic skills and discipline you lack; the CHE assumes that if you have quality of life or quality of research needs, it is out of ignorance, snobbishness, entitlement and prejudice.
    
    Neither the Boice nor the CHE repeaters will normally admit that people could have good academic skills and discipline and still have some other problem not reducible to those, or that they could have enough self knowledge to know how far they are productively able to compromise on places to live and types of school to work for.
    
    Mostly, for me, it is a question of how to claim rights. Also note that in departments like mine, and I have worked in two such, at very different schools and in very different states, what I am (someone who got into a certain kind of graduate program and finished that degree) is already an offense. I can be as accepting as I want to of the place, its conditions and its people but that does not mean they will ever be comfortable with me, or what I am, or what I signify. Peace of mind is hard to come by when you are dealing with a lot of sabotage and projection, and so on.
    
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  3. Z
    
    April 9, 2014
    
    Well, I always assumed I would have to work in the Midwest, and I like it, too, for its own self and not just because I got myself used to the idea of working there from early on. The south is romantic and very interesting, but I have a few things to say about some problems with the ways some institutions are run here, that are cultural; Midwest is a better bet in a whole lot of ways.
    
    Anyway we were talking about our jobs in the car tonight as we drove home; my friend said the issue was not the geography or the material we teach or the degree of prestige or not; it was the politics, the draining nature of working in a place so plagued with needs, and the lack of resources. You have to still be able to nourish the person you are, and the person you need to be to do the job.
    
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Z

April 9, 2014

[By *this, I refer Evelina’s comment, not Clarissa’s just above mine.]

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Tanya Golash-Boza (@tanyaboza)

April 9, 2014

With this thread, Clarissa, I’d say you may have spent your four hours talking to colleagues! 😉

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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