Escape the Ivory Tower » Uncategorized

Monday roundup: Double edition

Julie — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:00:34 +0000

A weekly collection of the interesting, intriguing, and otherwise notable stuff I find around the web. If you have something to add, comment!

(Aside: Sorry for the disappearing act. My father-in-law died a week and a half ago and it’s taken me this long to get myself back on track. I’ll tack a week on to the calling thread into September….)

The New York Times wonders if the hiring debacle is the fault of tenured profs who just won’t retire. A panel of academics weighs in.

Has your ability to do simple things (addition! division!) disintegrated under the weight of academia? Now I know I’m not alone.

The AAUP and the New Faculty Majority both submitted statements advocating for tenure for adjuncts and the dismantling of tiered academic labor. Favorite dissenter/pragmatist/whipping-boy Dean Dad weighs in and then again a few days later.

How to avoid being a jerk in the classroom. Really, the title says it all.

U.S. academics don’t really understand the systems abroad, and vice versa.

A faculty member in psychology considers the social trap of both being responsible for graduate students (and their job prospects) and needing to admit and graduate lots of grad students to be deemed “successful.”

One woman’s story of being a trailing spouse.

Editing to fix that last link — thanks Cate!

Open Office Hours Tonight!

Julie — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:00:40 +0000

Just a reminder that our first set of Open Office Hours is tonight, 7:30-9pm ET.

If you’ve got a question, a problem, a story you want to tell, or you just want to check in with someone who understands, give me a call. I really want to hear what you’ve got to say.

More information and the number to call is here.

Looking forward to talking with you!

What do you need?

Julie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:00:56 +0000

I spend a lot of time listening to unhappy academics and thinking about ways to help unhappy academics — but I know that my experience, even with my clients, is always limited. There will always be questions or situations I haven’t encountered directly. But I don’t want to leave them — or you — out.

So this post is an opportunity for you to tell me what you want to hear about — no matter where you are in the academic process, no matter what kind of unhappiness you’re experiencing.

Are you a grad student wanting to find ways to make graduate school less painful? Tell me what you need.

Are you looking for a job and finding the experience demoralizing? Tell me what you need.

Do you have a tenure-track job but you’re struggling with your research? Tell me what you need.

Feel free to comment anonymously, making up a name and an email address. That’s always okay around here.

Not quite right

Julie — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:00:46 +0000

If academia were just out and out exploitative, abusing people with no reward whatsoever, leaving would be easy.

If the work were completely unbearable, leaving would be easy.

If the administration were uniformly awful and crazy, leaving would be easy.

If academia’s sense of itself were unrelated to what we really want from our lives, leaving would be easy.

If the purpose of higher education didn’t matter, leaving would be easy.

But leaving is not easy, and it’s not easy partially because, for many people, their experience of academia is so very close to being right.

The work is meaningful at the big-picture level — but too often at the everyday level, it’s rote and repetitive and soul-sucking.

There’s a lot of freedom in research and teaching — but sometimes, depending on the institution, the discipline, the needs of the students, not enough.

There’s plenty of room to challenge ourselves, to engage our own needs for mastery and improvement — but often not enough time in between the things that “have to get done.”

Often, our experience of academia is so close to being right that we can go along for years telling ourselves that it is right. And when we realize that it’s not, part of the pain is how very, very close we came to having what would have fed us.

The sad case of Amy Bishop

Julie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:01:13 +0000

I’m sure you’ve all heard about Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama biology professor who, on Friday, opened fire during a faculty meeting, killing three of her colleagues and wounding two more professors and a staff person. (I would say “allegedly,” innocent-until-proven-guilty, etc., but there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that she did it.)

While there are clearly many different things going on here (for example, she apparently shot and killed her brother some twenty-odd years ago), the one that keeps playing in the media is this: She was turned down for tenure the previous year, had filed appeals, and had recently found out her appeals were denied.

In other words, tenure denial made her do it.

Now, I’m not the person to look towards for defenses of tenure. It’s too weighty, too all-or-nothing, too vague and subject to the personalities at hand, and too overly identified with “academic freedom” when that either means 1) “I reject all communal governance and say fuck you when you want me to teach to some departmental goals”; or 2) everyone who doesn’t have tenure is getting exploited even more than before.

So yeah, I’m not actually a big fan of tenure, especially as it’s now practiced. But using this tragedy as an “object lesson” in “why we need to rethink tenure” is making my stomach turn.

People are denied tenure all the time, unfortunate and problematic as that is. They don’t turn around and shoot their colleagues. So, while I would argue we do need to rethink tenure, it’s not because it makes people snap and shoot their department chair. It’s because it’s part and parcel of a system that is unsustainable and which sacrifices excellent scholars on the altar of unreasonable expectations.

Struggling with academia? Sign up for this teleclass!

Julie — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:02:57 +0000

When we struggle with something as huge and all-encompassing as our career, it’s all too easy to get paralyzed — and thus we stay in the very situation that’s making us unhappy.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. On Wednesday, November 4th, I’m offering a 90-minute teleclass that will give you three tools to help you get centered, get clarity, and get moving — whereever it is you’re supposed to go.

It’s happening on Wednesday, November 4, 8pm ET / 7pm CT / 6pm MT / 5pm PT — and since it’s on the phone, location is immaterial. Interested? Sign up here.

If you’d interested but can’t make the call, sign up anyway — I’ll send a recording of the call to everyone who’s signed up.

Questions? Put ‘em in the comments.

Survey!

Julie — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:29:59 +0000

I’m trying to collect information about other people’s experience leaving academia (or considering it) and what kinds of support would be helpful in that process.

If that describes, you, please take a minute to give me your insights by clicking right here!