Tag: Yale

Yet Another Debacle at Yale

~ Clarissa ~ 33 Comments

A popular professor at Yale moved his course to a smaller auditorium. He made this decision because the smaller facility has no Wi-Fi and the students will not be distracting by Internet browsing and texting. As a result, only 250 (as opposed to the regular 500) students managed to enroll.

Immediately, outrage ensued. Here is an example of what the opponents of Professor’s Nemerov are saying:

As an alum with a child currently at Yale, this is very disappointing news. One of the hallmarks of the Yale College academic experience used to be free access to almost any class. Courses offered in lecture format were never capped; only college seminars had limited enrollments, and these were advertised in the Blue Book in advance. In short, one was guaranteed a spot in any lecture class that struck one’s interest. . . A grounding in Art History is essential to the formation of a well educated person. By all accounts Prof. Nemerov is an inspiring lecturer; I fear that, in seeking the comforts and superior technology of the YUAG auditorium, he is forsaking the opportunity to shape hundreds of minds over the years. I hope that he will reconsider.

The discussion of this story has its participants split into the “Wi-Fi good /  prof bad” versus “”Wi-Fi bad /  prof good” camps. Now, notice that the easiest solution to the entire issue is not even occurring to anybody. Two thirds of all undergrad courses at Yale are not taught by professors. They are taught by contingent faculty and graduate students. As a result, students jump at every opportunity to see an actual specialist with an actual PhD diploma and a record of publications in the field. This is how classes end up with such huge enrollments.

Why not just start hiring more people into tenure-track positions, you’ll ask. I’m asking myself the same question. Sadly, Yale’s administration is not.

Mental Health and Grad School

~ Clarissa ~ 29 Comments

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.