Guide to Conference Attendees Who Have Already Presented

1. It's never too late to mention your research.
   
2. Always wait at least two hours after presenting your research before savaging another presenter. This lessens the likelihood they'll remember the flaws in your presentation.
   
3. Interrupting signals not just how much you care but how important your own work is.
4. Don't worry if they can hear you talking in the hallway.
5. Your cell phone ring is endearing and witty. Please, please, do let it ring a little longer.
   
6. Feel free to generalize about the academic work of people from other schools, genders, or countries. The bigger the generalization, the more insightful.
   
7. Always wait two hours after savaging another presenter before going swimming. You'll get cramps.
   

Things From My Inbox: Big Brother Says Watch Yourself

Haven't done this in ages, but here are a couple of juicy moments to juxtapose about life as a junior faculty member.

First is a call urging me to come up with a paper to help out the friend of a colleague's conference:

...the calll for papers only went out two weeks ago. So there will be a shortage. Its a refereed event - although I don't see it in the call below, that is according to Prof. Z.) and would look good on the Tenure presentation (local; has a prestigious sounding name etc.)...

Who knew local, snazzy sounding names were what tenure committees look for?

And then, there's this, from the office and VP who oversee tenure here at my fine institution, in regards to an upcoming student event that happens before our contract dates begin. This particular sections comes after a long explanation detailing how crucial it is we be at these various events:

...I know it’s a busy time of year, but please mark your calendars and plan to attend. For purposes of planning seating and food for the convocation and dinner, Assistant Hoodoo also will be asking you to RSVP to our office if you are NOT planning to attend either or both events...

You're reading that right - the person who heads tenure decisions wants us to alert them if we're not planning on participating in their event, an event that typically in no way acknowledges the educational aspect of the university (ironic that it's only an aspect, don't you think?). Do you think I could just say that while the event is local, its name doesn't sound prestigious enough?

Academic Brightside

So it might not have been my first choice for how to spend a Friday when there was 70 degree weather and a blue sky for miles, but it was a good one.

Today we took a little field trip, dragging a few of our students to a research conference. Imagine a car filled with your department members, no music (!!!!!), and several undergraduates about to attend a conference where they're going to present their own research. It wasn't the most thrilling spot to put oneself into, but it really went well.

We've put this as a priority for awhile now, though this is the first time we've really tried it. In part, we wanted to get a sense of what other departments in the region are doing and of where are students are sitting at the end of their time here. In both regards, that was comforting - our students did a great job presenting. They handled some tough questions; they had projects that were as well informed or better than similar ones from other schools.

For the students - who we'd not factored into this quite so much - it was good, too, for very similar reasons. The confidence they pulled from it was amazing, and now they not only see that we're not the only ones asking them to understand how to do research, but they see that they can do it well and make it matter to other people. That their research - and their projects - don't just have to be things that play to a class seems really important to me today.

On top of that, I got to see one of my former advisees, now in graduate school, and about to graduate, and they're doing quite well. We managed to get everyone together for dinner and a beer, and we compared notes. My sense with them is that they've outgrown the graduate program they're in - and how awesome is that when they're about to graduate? They'll be doing interesting things soon, and they've got something beyond the job that matters to them that they're pulling into their work.

Today it all feels like a success.

Aren't I Supposed To Be Glad It Is Friday?

To be fair, I woke up in a bad mood: not just the wrong side of the bed, but possibly underneath that side, in another country where I don't speak the language and there's no plumbing.

But it didn't help that my first conversation of the day was my roommate getting upset that my dog got mud on the white bathroom carpet. I mean, first of all: white bathroom carpet? But second, it's a dog, the snows here have all melted but there's been no warmth or sun to evaporate the water, and it just rained. You do what you can - try to dry the dog off for several minutes, cover a towel in mud, walk him on the mats outside the door. But there's a limit.

So you'll understand, I hope, why I was irritated to have the first words spoken to me today be "I'm not going to live in a house like this."

I could go on about that. But the point is really that the day hasn't gotten better. Every conversation - every single one, and I'm now almost 12 hours from when I woke up - has felt like it had (at best) a subtle vibe of combat to it.

Taken together, that means it's probably a bad idea that I designed my entire syllabus today for the course I've been dreaming of teaching since I arrived here in the place recently described as "the godforsaken place you live." There's not really time to go back and redo it, as the deadlines for my third year review have just rolled downhill, and I've got a little over two weeks to do have that completed, plus another course to design and an event to start scheduling for. So at some point in the term, when I'm complaining about the class, you'll all have some context for just how it happened.

Just don't feel the need to point it out to me. Especially if it happens to fall on a Friday.

Cerebral jokes...

Why is it, no matter how much I plan, the end of the term always makes me feel a bit like this?

This "Bright Gumdrop Unicorn" is about solutions not just problems

Continuing the thought process about junior faculty looking for other jobs (that began here, and continued here, and summed up nicely as a sort of Hotel Californication by Maggie May, and today blew up with this Rate Your Students post and the beginnings of the responses),
here are a few thoughts that I'd like to see addressed. And at the end, a proposed solution.

Having followed the posts, it's interesting to hear that "senior faculty" (by the way, if "junior faculty" get painted as a single brush, so do you, gramps - this post is going to take the same tone I'm seeing from the "senior faculty" in hopes that by speaking their forked tongue language, they'll get the point a bit better) really are as insular as Abe Simpson. First, because it seems they can no longer distinguish between reasons for leaving. In none of the posts above that brought this up has anyone given any indication they're doing a one year and out situation, and yet this seems to be the assumption made by the "senior faculty" posting in response. Second, because they can't quite imagine that people don't love everything the same way they do, they seem to take someone doing typical job things - trying to find positions that fit better, pay better, etc. - as some sort of personal affront. It's great that you love your town, your university, your country, your 7 pm bedtime after "Matlock" is over, but honestly, hegemon, that doesn't mean everyone has to.

If we're not happy, if we're far from the things we care about, if we're not getting what we need then we have two choices: we can wait for you to finish your victory cabbage, your 40 mile walks through the snow with no shoes, and your stories about how FDR beat Superman in a footrace and help us fix it , or we can do something to fix it ourselves. From the posts thus far, the choice is obvious. And if that's the way we feel, why do you want us there anyway? If we're as selfish and egotistical, why cry when we leave? Wait - that would mean you'd have to teach those intro courses you hate, serve on more committees, do more research, reprep old lectures, stop peddling your cars with your feet and enter the modern world.

Most importantly, recognize that you've got more than a little blame in this, old folks. You've perpetuated a system. You've done job hires the way they've always been done, you've hired junior faculty out from under other departments and been glad to have them. You've passed off the duties you don't want to the person at the wrong end of the career ladder. So change how you hire, change who you hire, or hush up and relax - I'm sure "Lawrence Welk" will be on soon, and then you can take your naps and dream of shooing kids off your lawn.

And you know what? I know why you want me to stay. I've just spent parts of several days watching your poor argumentation - name calling, castigation, the need to resort to profanity and sad stereotypes - to bolster your points. I've seen your weak logic, your reliance on strawmen arguments, your inability to think critically about the system you're in, and your strange assumptions that everything is either/or. The whole point of this post, after all, is designed as both argument against and satire of how you "senior faculty" are coming across. You need me to teach you critical thinking as badly as your students do from the sounds of it. Just because I'm looking for a new job doesn't mean I don't appreciate and want to help students, that I don't like the university, or that I voted against social security or whatever it is that's really got your Depends in a wad.

Oh, and that solution: for all of you more curmudgeonly-than-thous who think junior faculty shouldn't leave one job to go to another, put that in your ads. If you really think that badly of someone trying to find a situtation that is good for them and good for the school and their students, own it. You write the job ads. Because I can tell you, if that's your attitude, I don't want to work with you anyway, you narrowminded, judgemental, sanctimonious windbags.

Of Sesame Street and the Job Process

Two more applications out today (that puts me at 11 so far). It occurs to me that if Sesame Street made a show for young academics, it'd be self-doubt that'd start the show off. So today, self-doubt is brought to you by the job number 11 and the phrase "proof of teaching excellence."

Today I was thinking about quirky the process and fickle the players can be. So, as I was sending off ginormous packet #11, I began to wonder "what if they think I'm trying too hard to demonstrate 'teaching excellence'?"

Rather than complain about the ambiguity of the phrase, instead I'll offer my interpretation of it. If nothing else, there's always catharsis?

First, I haven't won any teaching awards (wow - that sounds harsh). So instead, I opt to share peer reviews of my teaching (that happens pretty regularly here in the early years, thankfully). And then I submit syllabi and evals.

This is also where I wonder if I'm trying too hard.

This is the third university I've taught at, if you include graduate teaching (and I did quite a bit of that and in courses that were sufficiently distinct - they were 10 week courses, for one thing - that I feel like they need to be included). At my second job, as a visiting assistant, let's say that my comfort zone was pushed a little bit. I taught courses "as needed" (advice to anyone applying for that sort of job - if you see that phrase, be aware it can translate to "whatever no one else wanted to teach can be yours regardless of whether you've anything like expertise in it). It was a 4/4 load, so you can imagine that I got quite a bit of variety out of it (because naturally as the department's whipping boy go-to-guy, I did four preps each term). And now I'm at my third job - also (as noted previously) a 4/4. Here, at least, the preps are relatively close to what my areas of expertise and interest are.

But the number of syllabi adds up. If I send them all - as seems possibly appropriate (particularly so for jobs that are written broadly) - that's something like 15 distinct courses I'm sending syllabi for (in most cases, also with detailed assignments). Add a sampling of evals for them, and these packets get out of control. My tendency has been to try and send as much as possible on the syllabi side while giving some meaningful summary of evals (whatever that means - and it's certainly debatable).

On one hand, it seems to me that sending as much as possible is almost what we're conditioned to. Think about all the advice about holding everything aside for tenure packets and such. On the other hand, who could blame a committee member for blanching a little at the prospect of a 200 page packet?

Ay yi yi. Where's Mr. Hooper and Big Bird when I need useful advice?

So glad this isn't the positive thinking week

So I'm proposing a course for my department.

This has become one of the big advancement objectives of late, and the school is all about objectives. Maybe this is happening everywhere. On my syllabi now, I not only have to list my objectives for the course (a good thing), but also the department's overall objectives (a questionable thing), and the university's general education guidelines (much more questionable). My syllabus, on average, has gained a page and a half due to various objects and explanations of objectives and explanations of how thing X satisfies objective C. I remember this from the business world, and I recall from my days managing there that it didn't do much to create the "excellent customer service opportunities" it was meant to because really, who wants to listen to ten minutes of that crap just so you can check your balance.

A syllabus works the same way, kids. I remember in grad school being given a 42 page syllabus from a professor who was teaching a course that I desperately wanted to take. The syllabus though was Exhibit A - in 10 point font and excruciating detail - of this professor's mania. Somewhere around page 13 of our in-depth reading of it, I found myself so disinterested in the course and the topic that I politely excused myself, went to drop the class, and began to rethink whether this was the thing for me to study or not.

Maybe this was the professor's point. And actually I don't have a problem with them designing a syllabus that way if it was their goal. I'm fine with the quick reading I got of the prof and all their issues, faults, and quirks. A good syllabus should probably do exactly that. But I do have a problem with being forced to represent someone else's manias in my syllabus. If I'm going to look crazy, it should at least be an honest representation.

All of which leads me to the course I'm designing for the department. There's been a lot of pressure lately for our department to participate in an interdisciplinary Master's program being toyed with here. Calls have been made, edicts passed down, discomfort has been registered. But I like designing courses, and I want the chance to work with graduate students again, so in I jumped. Thinking that the first course we should have would need to be flexible, I put together a pretty flexible special topics course that would allow whichever of the limited departmental faculty who could find time to teach a course a way to either tie to an existing course (and thus manage an extra prep somewhat more easily) or to do something related to their current research and interests.

As part of the exercise, I had to design a syllabus for this course which isn't on the books (and help me out here, that is the point of this right? To get a course on the books so that someday it might be offered?). And I received the committee's comments and requirements for making the syllabus for this imaginary course. Among the easy to fix but utterly silly gems was a demand for office hours to be listed. Okay, it's silly and nit-picky, but alright. I can make up fake office hours for a course that hasn't been approved in an as-yet undetermined term.

The amusement goes on. One comment says they can't make sense of how grades are tabulated. I work on a points system. All the work in any course is always worth a total number of points (let's say 500). Each assignment has an assigned point value (let's say there are six assignments, two early ones worth 50 points, and the other four 100 points each). Confused yet?

I guess math is hard, Barbie.

But more irritating was the continuing attendance policy question. Out of the eight changes that were requested, three of them have to do with attendance policies. Random people from random departments will call me at least twice a term to ask how Student X's attendance has been. They never ask how their work has been. No one has yet called to ask me how a student was doing with the actual business of a course; they only ask if they've been spotted in a chair in recent memory.

My university loves attendance policies. It seems to have a passion for attendance policies that I can only compare with my love for my bed on a Sunday morning.

To be clear, attendance policies irritate the hell out of me. As I tell my students - in my syllabus and in the opening day lecture - attendance is assumed. You'd be stupid not to come to every class, mine included, at every available opportunity. You're paying enough for it, after all - and that's what you're paying for: not a grade, not a good grade, not for me to listen to your problems and solve them, not for me to give you warm and fuzzy feedback, not for me to agree with your views or to hide my own. You're paying an entrance fee to be exposed to ideas, to have me help you evaluate and use those ideas, and to have me use those ideas in the evaluation of your work.

Let me repeat (as I do in that opening lecture): I'm not here to be your mommy. I don't care if you attend. In fact, if you can't show up interested and prepared, I'd rather you didn't so that the students who were smart enough to take advantage of what they're paying for don't have to suffer your disruptions.

How do I grade on attendance? I grade your assignments. If you're not attending, it will absolutely affect your grade. I'm not going to give you points for your ability to sit in a chair. And I'm not going to waste my time taking points off if you come in late or leave early. My time is worth more than that, honestly, and deserves to be better spent. It will come out on its own, thee I do assure.

What could be clearer than that?

Cosmetic changes, the academic version of "seat up/seat down", and a long weekend

Just a quick note. I've added a few new folks to the fold under the Summer Vacation reading list, in part to welcome some of the lurkers. That's also meant alphabetizing the list - the order while distressing to me seems best since the list is growing.

I'm also thinking about this quote from a recent Tenured Radical post on the what-to-do's of the academic job market (the post is excellent, by the way):

And do not send anything by email unless invited to do so: this is incredibly lazy and annoying, and invites someone to screw up your file by not printing things out properly. While first impressions are by no means decisive, you do not want to convey that you are a confidence man from Nigeria, or that you are desperate.

While I can't fault the logic, it does seem a bit to me like a fight I had back in the day with a live-in-girlfriend about leaving the toilet seat up. At the heart of both debates is the question about whose life gets made easier and why. Certainly saving something as a PDF would seem to eliminate most of the problems of printing error, but the real question is do you want to make someone work even a little bit harder? Obviously, no. I'd send them cake and would open the letter for them if it'd give me a slightly better chance at getting the interview.

And yet, I bristle at this as I did with the girlfriend. Why am I the party in the process who has to go the extra- extra-mile? Aren't you courting me? Don't you want me to think you're active, interesting, considerate people to work for and with? Aren't we shooting to be colleagues rather than superior and subordinate? Do academic committees feel any guilt over asking for 200 page packets which they likely don't look through for each candidate? Ever been on a committee where there was remorse about the cost a graduate student had to pay for transcripts and reference letters and printing? I'm wagering no (at least it hasn't happened on any of the committees I've served on). Shouldn't something that makes it easier for both sides, at least, be considered?

Of course, part of what we're dealing with is the unfamiliar and an established power dynamic. Nothing is so frowned upon as treading on tradition. It wouldn't be unheard of to suggest that older academics might be nervous at being asked to use technology.

And part of what we're dealing with is a ritual of hazing. I think if you ask anyone who's ever gone through this process, they can tell you a story that feels like academic hazing. During my first round of job interviews, I didn't blink when one of the schools interviewed me at 6 a.m. my time. I don't think they were being malicious; I just think they didn't pause to consider time differences. But it didn't feel like I was in any position to point out just how inconsiderate that really was. I needed the job after all, and as my grandmother would've said, had she been an academic, "I know from power dynamics." But wouldn't it be something if the process recognized this too?

In any case, I'm not really as concerned about it as this post might seem. And I don't fault the Tenured Radical's advice - I'm just feeling, well, curmudgeonly today. I've already decided to cater to that level of fear that might hypothetically be living in the hearts of my search committees, so why ruin a long weekend worrying about that? Besides, there's plenty of grading to be done, and two movies from Netflix that I've had for months that need to be watched.

Oh, and for anyone wondering, the girlfriend and I compromised. I put the seat down, but she had to put it up when she was done.

Doctor, doctor, give me the news...

So earlier this week my seniors had a bit of a meltdown. They're graduating soon, you see, and that carries big implications. As one of them put it, so sadly and sweet, "Don't you think I'm sad for having four years of college and still not knowing what's next?"

No, obviously, I don't. I've got a lot more education than that, and a quick scroll through the rantings here will let you know that I don't know quite what's next.

But how nice that they thought I would know - that they'd actually ask for a day of class to talk about these things. And of course, I'm going to give it to them. I'm pretty sure at this point they've earned the right to demand my perspective now and then. The hitch in the matter is the question they've asked is so big, I'm not quite sure what to tell them. In finest academic form (here's what I've learned from my work on University committees), since I don't know what to tell them, I've put off the discussion.

But what I'm hoping is that some of you able-bodied, employed readers will step up with some practical advice to offer my poor, stressed, soon to be grown up monkeys. Looking back at that moment before you were kicked out into student loan debt and nine-to-fives and what-not, what do you wish someone would have said to you? What strategies worked and what didn't?

And now, back to our program...

Thanks to A. of Pop Tart fame, a few more tales of academic woe: professors unable to make it on their salaries. Not a new theme here - in fact, it's the theme that got us going - but the cases here are particularly distressing to hear about because they do a better job of giving real numbers.

It's interesting, sad and frightening to hear that average wages for professors have only come up .25% - yeah, you're reading that right - over the last 20 years when inflation is accounted for. There are very few careers that can match (and obviously, people in those careers should be glad they don't) that atrocious number. What the article doesn't discuss as it offers these tales is what the average cost of education is. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average student at a publicly funded school has $13,000 per year to cover for school attendance (note that doesn't include actual living expenses), which means just educational costs for someone getting a 4 year Bachelor's, a 2 year masters, and a 4 year Ph.D. would run $130,000 before they paid for food, rent, etc. The other interesting point in those stories is the number of times people were able to go to their families for help. I do wonder what happens to those students who don't have parents who can give them $100,000?

I've not gone so far as to work a second job, though I've considered it (teaching a 4/4, I'm not sure how it would work), I've not done it. And one thing I have decided is that if I can't find a job that puts me in a better position, then it won't be long before I have to leave this career behind.

Big noise in the sky

So here in the land of nodding off, there's big storms tonight, and big things in the air. The afternoon was spent in a two and a half hour department meeting that attempted to map out the next five years of the program course-wise as we shift from our current teaching load to a more realistic one (except that there's not a coherent explanation of how sections currently taught will be dealt with university-wide). It was, in spite of being hella long, a good meeting.

I like this department. I want to carry it in my pocket to someplace I'd like to live. But I like this department. As a model of how things can run, this place isn't bad (see above about long meetings). There are big dreams that are a bit frustrating, but there's a level of respect and consideration that has been sometimes lacking in previous departments.

And tonight I got a proposal off for a book chapter which, as such things go, feels like one of the best and most coherent proposals I've written in ages.

And now there's a wicked thunderstorm which I've missed for years. Today's been good.

Random 10 for Academics Hiding Out in their Offices Doing Research on A Friday Afternoon

Tucked away in the office, lights out, door closed, reading articles in preparation of a new project. To make the isolation (and hopefully, focus) more complete, here's the random 10 from the .mp3 player.

Now I guess we'll know why this project lives or dies...

"Working Class Hero" - Green Day
"Here I Am" - Lyle Lovett
"Stella By Starlight" - Miles Davis
"Epilogue" - Bill Evans
"(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" - R.E.M.
"Bunk Trunk Skunk" - Be Your Own Pet
"Shake Your Rump" - Beastie Boys
"Pure" - Golden Palominos
"Baby Hold On" - Foo Fighters
"Southtown Girls" - The Hold Steady

Blame Canada

For a little bit, after I'd complained in a previous post on the blog and with friends about the low pay of faculty members, I began to think I was off my nut. Years of swallowing the rhetoric of a pure market economy had me a little dazed. If I wasn't making good money and couldn't afford to rent an apartment as a new faculty member because I was saddled with debt, wasn't that my problem? How could I even think that the market might be weighted unfairly.

"Time to move on to other issues," I thought. I almost faltered.

Until I saw this article about assistance to new professors working at Canadian universities. Briefly, momentarily, I'm given hope. Now I see that it's possible that an employer recognizes all those costs and actually wants to help. What an interesting model helping with housing suggests to American universities. Here's something small schools might try to think about when they're wondering about the third year bleed of good faculty who've been there but won't stay.

Now if I could only get a job in Canada....

Teachers who make a difference

Fair warning: this post could also be titled "One More Reason I Should Get Out of Here" or, after reading my last post, "Nothing Goes Up That Does Not Come Down".

So yesterday, I was out hobnobbing with other faculty around a field throwing things to each other. And during a break, we did what faculty often do: we began to talk about students in classes, comparing notes, horror stories, and the all-too-rare success story. Somebody was telling us about a student who from day one of his very difficult class - and I say this with a twinge of envy: I want my class to be as difficult as his is reputed to be - just got it. The student could offer a good definition off the top of her head, could argue a point, and most importantly, felt not one iota of shame for being smart and liking it.

Incidentally, feminist friends, this is the next mission. Body image aside, let's start to deal with the fear of being seen as smart.

It was at this point that another faculty member chimed in.

"You've got to shut that down," he laughed. And we weren't - or at least I wasn't - quite sure what he meant.

"You've got to shut that down," he repeated. "I had a student once who had their hand up at every question. They answered them all, 10 for 10, perfectly correct. So I said to him 'Man, you've got to get a social life.'"

Awkward laughter and a bit of stunned silence.

"He got up and left the class, and never came back. Never saw him again." And he was beaming proudly. Proudly! He thought he'd done a good thing. Why is it that if a dog craps on my carpet, I can smack it, but when a colleague does it, we're forced to be polite? I can only hope he recognized the sarcasm and bitterness in my voice when I said "Yes, teachers who make a difference" and walked away to get some water.

Argh.

And now it's Miller time...

Today I got to dig in a bit more deeply with classes. Part of that was a sort of improptu manifesto on education and its merits to a group of mostly freshmen. I explained to them a bit about my own educational background - I was the first person in my family to get a degree. I'm the only one with a graduate degree. I did it on student loans and a whim. It was that sort of deal.

And part of what I told them - maybe I should have held over the "Heresy 101" title - was that I believe in Education the way some people feel about Religion. Now note - and I'm sure most of them didn't get this impression - I didn't pick out a particular religion. I didn't compare education to any savior, philosopher, or writer of a tome that attracts tons of Hollywood money. Instead, I told them something personal. Education, I told them, has brought me more than tons of debt, and even if that were it, then every dollar I'll be paying back till my 70s was worth it. That feeling, I said, is what I hope to help them come away with four years from now. I told them that what you get out of education is about what you're willing to risk. I said that they're only going to get out what they put into it. And that to get the most out of it, they have to confront things they don't like, things they fear, things nobody thought they'd ever possibly care about. You have to be okay with being wrong sometimes. I told them I'm not out to shock them or convert them. They don't have to agree with me because, among other things, I'm wrong almost as often as I'm right. I told them going to college to get a job is like going to the pool to only play in the shallow end. I told them I hoped they'd find some way to enjoy their education, and that I'd help them if I could.

It was, I think, the best lecture I've ever given, and I barely said a thing about the subject at hand. It was one of those moments where I felt like if they took even one thing I said out of the lecture, I'll have succeeded for the entire term.

Heresy 101?

Remember that faculty breakfast and dog and pony show? Well there was more to it. One other interesting point in the recent faculty breakfast and cattle show was the address by the university president Without giving too much away, the University president is among other things, a fairly good natured person, concerned with faculty ideas (or at least that's the sense I get based on his regular invitations to take faculty and students to lunch or dinner), and a Catholic priest. And in his address to the incoming and old faculty, he did something not so surprising, all things considered: he suggested that it wouldn't be a bad idea for faculty to begin classes with a moment of prayer.

Now this prompted all the usual responses:

• you can't make us pray, we take public money
• you don't have to pray, you can have a moment of silence
• we're at an institution with a religious bent - and with a priest as president - so you can't really be surprised at this
• etc, etc, etc.
  

Part of the president's point was that it wouldn't be strange to ask one part of a university to support another part of the university's mission. My thought, choked down as so many of them have to be considering my own views on religion, was "Great. I'll pray at the start of class when you spend 5 minutes at the beginning of each mass talking about proper grammar and punctuation."

But in the interest of charity, Christian or otherwise, I want to try and avoid the usual negative rant that this might inspire. After all, in some ways the sort of debate discussed in this New York Times article becomes so strangely polarizing as to be useless. So instead, let me set the stage with a bit of background.

Like many people I know, I've got a distrust of religion that's deep and glaring. I'm not comfortable saying it is because I'm liberal - I think it would be interesting to see what a liberal religious movement would be capable of politically. I've even debated tackling a book that would play with some of those ideas. And I don't think it's because I'm well-educated. I know plenty of well educated people who have some strong faith or other.

The roots of my distrust that I'm willing to point to come from direct experience with religion. I spent some time in a middle school affiliated and run by members of a particular religion, and the experiences there were more than enough to make me shudder at all manner of things. It's because of my time there that I don't trust big groups clapping at the same time. It's because of my time there that I feel a little nervous any time a large group of people does anything in unison. And there are later experiences that have only deepened this distrust. And I would be remiss to ignore that I do feel like I benefited from being dragged to church as a child when the choice was still my parents. There were moral lessons that I take from there that I think were quite valuable. And there were communal lessons as well.

But sniping aside, there's a big question that wouldn't hurt to play with. Let's assume for a moment religion isn't going away. Not here, not in the larger culture. If that's the case, sooner or later, those of us who are liberal, well-educated folks are going to have to offer some notion of how to integrate religion of all varieties into education (in the same way that I think the left must sooner or later claim some religious space as well).

Part of the difficulty seems to be the assumption that the only way to be sensitive to religious beliefs is to facilitate religious practice. Why is it that the notion of appropriateness of timing seems to fly out the window in the American context (perhaps it does this elsewhere, but I couldn't say)?

I suppose, as a colleague of mine noted, we could do simple things to bridge the gap. In his case, it was designing a syllabus that was so frightening even non-believers would hope for divine mercy. That's one solution.

Education on the clock...

I'd never thought about it before reading this article from the New York Times, but education in America serves, as much as anything, as a sort of calendar marking time. I didn't think about it when, as an undergrad, I mentioned to my interim advisor that I didn't have a plan for my electives - at least not a plan that he'd agree involved any forethought. Instead, I told him, I was going to take the courses that sounded interesting. This was clearly a foolish, wasteful idea in his eyes: the sign of a student set to drift along through college and probably not even make it out.

Why did I do it? In high school, I'd been assured by guidance counselors, by well-meaning teachers, even by friends with the same concerns that college was to be different from high school: we'd all get to do what we were interested in, not what the state or school board or our parents told us we needed. No more Calculus if I didn't want it, no more Government and Economics. College was about my desires. And though college wasn't the land of milk, honey and free academic choices I'd been promised it wasn't so far from it either. And so, I spent electives on things like World Literature courses, a First Amendment law course, a Jazz history course, even a feminist theory course (not because I thought I'd meet chicks there, either). When it was time to graduate, my school only allowed you to have one minor. But I'd jumped around enough without ever abandoning my major to have had five.

A lot of the same thought drives my views on education today. I'm happier because I got to explore. I even wound up taking more of those pesky Government and Economics courses than my high school career (largely spent drawing pictures of my Econ teacher in various embarrassing costumes) would have suggested. Along the way, I learned not just about cultural anthropology, not just about media history, or even about the practice of experimental psychology but also about smart decision making, about how differently people I thought I understood viewed the world, and even a bit about where I needed to be in the world. It was, as college is often assumed to be, my first real taste of freedom.

But it also took me five years and a summer session to graduate, and today I've got the student loan debt that reflects that particular desire. Even looking at that debt didn't spur me to this new thought: education is a form of Taylorism (if you're not sure what that means, see the definition offered here). What my first advisor had been trying to tell me was that taking longer than four years in college intentionally was a waste of time. It was unproductive.

What that article made me think about was a sort of cultural norm about when we become adults and what it means to be an adult in this society (look: a term from my cultural anthropology course!). At the end of high school, we assume people become adults: they're ready to make decisions, to serve their country, to pay taxes, etc, etc. But most importantly, they're ready to contribute in the most basic way: by getting a job. And if you're not ready to get a job, then the only excuse is to go to college. Why? So that when you're done, you can get a better job (huh - that course in sociological theory doesn't seem so crazy now...).

These are assumptions, of course (okay, so that logic course did pay some dividends). And perhaps unfortunately, we've normalized them - we've made rules based on those assumptions. And the modern academic system is built around them - it even penalizes "bad" decision making. A college education is assumed to take four years. If it takes more, you can find your access to financial aid diminished, you're guaranteed to have to answer in interviews why it took you so long to get out, and you may even take a hit to your reputation with friends and family ("Oh, you know he just drifted about awhile. I always thought he had more direction...").

But what if, as the New York Times article suggests about high school, a longer time spent in college might offer a different set of benefits than simple productivity?

Just a few days ago, I was in advising a student, and I found myself making the assumption for them that they need to be done in four years. And the student, not surprisingly for someone just entering college after years of having older authorities pass down unexplained proclamations, accepted it. Maybe I should have asked what she wanted to get out of her college career? Was she in it for a job? Or was their something more? And if she answered that she wanted something more than the quickest route to a slightly better job, how would the system have to work differently?

As I prepare for the first week of classes, I think I may have just hit on the first essay for my freshmen. I'll let you know how they answer.

Son of Shameless Self-Promotion

So this morning, I attended the annual welcome back faculty breakfast where we get to briefly gawk at new faculty who're made to pirouette while the higher-ups get attempt to use their vitas as part of a comedy routine. Meanwhile, while we - the entrenched, bored, on-our-best behavior old faculty - stuff our faces with free cafeteria food (I am increasingly convinced there is nothing more enticing to academics than the notion of a free lunch). Also this is where the University president traditionally exhorts us to some grand "moral" goal (the quotes are there because I don't necessarily equate the morals the president espouses with my own). And over the last two years, they've also started introducing us to the university's new marketing plan. That's right, kids, greasy bacon and academic commercials!

Oddly enough, most of us don't ever think about how universities market themselves. I'd imagine if you wanted to sell a university, you'd have to choose the best way to reach your ideal demographic. You'd probably edit your information to appeal to a 19 year old. Or maybe you'd even suggest, in addition to the official information, that someone try to figure a way to make the kids who're already at your university make their own commercials.

First, you target them, then you infect them. Viral marketing has come to the university.

Pause a moment and think about what that would look like. Would it say much about education, amidst all those fast edits and off-center camera angles? Would you even want to? Ever search for your university's name on YouTube? Could be worth looking at whatever turns up.

Off to the races?

Just for the sake of completion, I should mention that today I let both my Dean and department chair know that I'm planning to apply for jobs this school year. I'm hoping that both will contribute a letter of reference for me - of course, if they for some reason say no, then I'm in a bit of a quandary.

Last year I did a very small job search, mostly in hopes of landing someplace near my aging parents. And there was some oddness with my department chair over the matter of reference letters. It wound up being something of a semantic game: "You asked if I'd be willing to write a letter; you didn't actually ask if I would write one." that ultimately worked out, but that gave me a scare about the whole process. For a moment, it felt like my battleship was in a wading pool and someone just dropped a torpedo in the water with it. My career - where I lived, what I did, and all the things that extend from that: happiness, a social life, health - could be tanked because I forgot to say "Mother, may I?"

Life in academia carries with it a continuing sense of indebtedness in a way that I've never experienced as acutely anywhere else, even in my several years in the kiss-ass or die corporate banking area. Obviously there's intellectual indebtedness - that's why we cite things so religiously. And certainly I owe a lot to the various faculty and colleagues who've asked me to read something, who've challenged what I asked them to read, who argued with me over drinks at the bar on Thursday nights. But it goes beyond that. Having done both hiring in both and firing in the corporate world, I remember all too well how references worked there. When I was at the bank, checking references was essentially limited to calling an employer and asking "Did Person X work there?" There can be all sorts of legal hassles if they try to tell you that Person X was a bad employee, plus most people find someone who isn't going to hang them anyway.

In academia, the reference can be everything. You don't have to look far to find someone in academia who owes their career (or their lack of it) to the person who chaired their dissertation committee. When I first looked for an academic job, one of the interviews I had owes no small debt to the friendship between my undergraduate advisor and someone working at the school in question. Academics aren't afraid to call someone they know where you worked and asked for all the dirt. And they're not afraid to share with anyone and everyone who'll listen.

Increasingly (at least in my experience) potential employers want detailed reference letters at the outset of an application process. It used to be - or so I'm told - fairly common to just list contact information, and if an employer wanted more details, they'd contact references. But in the years I've been jumping from place to place and job to job, the majority have wanted letters.

Where this really becomes problematic is when you're casting a wide net. My first year of job searching, when I was A.B.D., I applied to 108 jobs. Imagine if even a quarter of them wanted a full letter (and I'm fairly certain it was more than that). Now imagine that you've somehow done someone wrong (or that they think you have).

Scary, huh?

So presently, there are four jobs out that I'm interested in. The theory is that since I've got a couple of publications and a book contract plus good teaching evaluations, that this is my best year to jump to a new ship. I'll keep you posted how it goes.

Wish me luck.