Writer, Professor, and Everything Else
I’ve seen versions of this video in many other places– just do a search for “Hitler downfall meme” on YouTube to see what I mean— though this one is kind of field specific:
I found this via John Walters, though I’m told it’s going to be in the next issue of Kairos. And just to be clear, this does not even remotely resemble the search process we have had here at EMU so far.
I was checking some Google analytics stuff this morning (mostly as a way of procrastinating on actually doing the mountain of work I pretty much absolutely and positively finish in the next 48 hours or so) and that including perusing the hits on my (defunct, free, and/or web-based) textbook project, The Process of Research Writing. Two little fun-facts: In the last year, my textbook site has had about 1200 or so “visits,” and in the last month, six of them have been from Tehran, Iran.
This was on my mind a bit at the gym in part because I learned the other day that I will indeed be presenting about this at the upcoming Computers and Writing Conference in Davis “right next to wine country” California in late June 2009. (Actually, I’ll be giving two presentations: the other one is going to be about “ending” and/or giving up on blogging.) This is the panel on alternatives to traditional publishing that I originally proposed for the CCCCs and that I wrote about some time ago here, and my spiel is going to be about my “do it yourself” approach with this project.
At the end of my McGraw-Hill experience in 2006, when it was officially “dead” to them and when they didn’t want to give me back the rights, I kind of felt like my book was being packed away into a crate to be deposited into that same warehouse that’s at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark: gone forever, and I wasn’t exactly expecting a sequel (ala Crystal Skull) to change the situation. So, my theory was that in publishing the project online, I would automatically receive some version of an audience, certainly more than if I had just shelved it entirely. And this has turned out to be very true.
Now, 1200 visits in a year is not a lot– this blog received ten times that many in the same time-frame, and technorati ranks this site 278,352– and I don’t have a lot of evidence as to what those 1200 or so visitors did with the site. But that is about 1200 more people doing something with this project– even if it is just glancing at the main page– than would have seen it otherwise. And I’m pretty sure that no one in Tehran would have thought about it much.
When I was at the gym this morning, I was reading Clay Shirky’s book and the chapter “Publish, then Filter,” and one of the point he makes in there is about the difference between an “audience” and “friends.” I don’t quite agree with what he’s getting at there, but he is kind of saying something that a lot of other theorist have said about audience and internet technologies: you don’t have to have a big audience to be a “success.” I’m thinking here in particular to something that Chris “The Long Tail” Anderson said in an interview someplace about how an audience of 100 is a good thing if it is the right 100 people. For me, it turns out that at least a few of them are in Iran.
Now, it’s easy for Shirky and Anderson to say these things of course, especially when they are saying them in books that have reached very large audience and which have undoubtedly made each of them a lot of money. In fact, the cynic in me says that this is all part of some twisted con, kind of like one of those “get rich” books where the advice really ought to be to write a book about getting rich quick, only the pitch here is a little different: “Buy my book about how big audiences or big organizations don’t matter, and pay no attention to the fact that you are joining a big audience and contributing dollars to a big organization.”
Still, it’s pretty cool that by forgoing dead tree print and the money that could have come from it (had I been able to convince McGraw-Hill, of course), I’ve been able to produce a resource that is at least kind of interesting to someone somewhere. That doesn’t pay the bills, but it is satisfying in a small way.
This is one of those entries that falls into the category of “probably only useful to me/reminder:” “Thomson Reuters vs. George Mason University (or EndNote vs. Zotero): the Business End of Citation Management Software.” The short version is that EndNote (which is a citation software that costs money) is suing Zotero (which is free) claiming trademark infringement and the like.
I include this here because I think it would be worthwhile to introduce this stuff into the discussion in English 516 this coming winter, though this prompts two other thoughts for now. First, I really gotta get on the stick and figure out what I’m doing in that course in a couple of months. Second, perhaps I should make some use of these kinds of resources. I am more or less “old school” when it comes to this stuff, preferring instead to just keep track of stuff in MS Word files or Scrivener or something. What I don’t like particularly about EndNote or Zotero is that they aren’t portable. Perhaps more useful for me would be to revive my citeulike account, and since there is a “group” function with this site, maybe it’d be a good route to take in 516 for the research project. Or English 121 for that matter….
I was not going to post about this at all since this article, “I’m Leaving” by John “not his real name” Smith, was in Inside Higher Ed almost a month ago and because I just am not that interested in the thoughts of yet another disgruntled college professor. But somehow, my holiday travels brought it up again for me.
We went to Iowa to be with my extended family of parents, sisters, their spouses, and their kids for Thanksgiving and an abbreviated Christmas. A good time was had by one and all, though at one point, the Republicans in the group went to another room to commiserate over the recent election.
And at one point, there was more interest than usual from my brothers-in-law about hiring in academia and this thing called “tenure.” I should point out that no one in my family (other than my wife, of course) knows anything about academia beyond their own experiences as college students 20 or more years ago, and all of these folks have had more immediate connections with the current economic downturn than I have. From their point of view, tenure was nothing more than a gimmick where people like me were guaranteed jobs. It was an interesting discussion for a variety of different reasons, but the one that struck me at the time was that this topic never came up when the economy was good. Suddenly, these (comparably) lower-paying academic/state government jobs look like a pretty good deal.
Anyway, I didn’t go into it all while watching Detroit lose again and family cheer, but I did point out the free speech aspect of it and that it was more complicated than that. In brief and in no particular order, here’s a few things I would have/should have said:
Anyway, on the 9 hour drive home yesterday, Annette and I were talking about all kinds of things, including work and including students who were not doing great. Were we failing these students? Were they failing themselves? It’s not a new discussion, though it’s one that tends to come up at this time of the school year where the realization that some students really will fail the term is extremely immediate.
The other side of this coin is that these students and the system are more or less failing us. Basically, the main reason why Smith quit his job is because of these sorts of failing students:
Professors and administrators seek to “nurture” and “engage” and they are doing so at the expense of teaching. The result: a discernable [sic] and precipitous decline in the quality of college students. More of them come to campus with dreadful study habits. Too few of them read for pleasure. Too many drink and smoke excessively. They are terribly ill-prepared for four years of hard work, and most dangerously, they do not think that college should be arduous. Instead they perceive college as an overnight recreation center in which they exercise, eat, and in between playing extracurricular sports, they carry books around. If a professor is lucky, the books are being skimmed hours before class.
It’s not just the students that are going to hell either. A little later in Smith’s article:
Today’s faculty and administrators capitulate to students’ demands in innumerable ways. They hold classes outside on sunny days, not really caring if there is no blackboard, or if the students are admiring each other instead of the texts to be dissected. They encourage students to think of college as a “comfortable” and “supportive” community, not as a means to acquire necessary skills. Far too many of my colleagues are dialing in – showing up late, popping in videos during class, assigning group projects, or sitting in a circle and asking students how they feel. Why they have abandoned classroom rigor is something that only they can answer. But one answer is simple – students flock to these popular classes, probably because they cater to the students’ worst sensibilities. Homework is minimal, or sometimes optional. Surprise quizzes are considered unfair. Late assignments are not failed. Some grades are even negotiable.
Not surprisingly, I think Smith is exaggerating both our students’ laziness and the faculty/administration’s response. I have lots of students who are working their asses off. I still give lots of homework, lower grades on late assignments, believe in rigor, etc., etc. It is a problem that universities are perhaps letting in more students than they ought to in an effort to make money. “Opportunity-granting” universities like EMU are always faced with a dilemma: what is the line between giving under-prepared students a chance to succeed and simply taking their money because they were never capable of doing the work in the first place?
Still, I think complaining about students (not to mention faculty, universities, and tenure) are kind of old news. I never tire of this passage from Isocrates’ Antidosis written 2400 years ago:
Yes, and you have brought it about that the most promising of our young men are wasting their youth in drinking-bouts, in parties, in soft living and childish folly, to the neglect of all efforts to improve themselves; while those of grosser nature are engaged from morning until night in extremes of dissipation which in former days an honest slave would have despised. You see some of them chilling their wine at the “Nine-fountains”; others, drinking in taverns; others, tossing dice in gambling dens; and many, hanging about the training-schools of the flute-girls.And as for those who encourage them in these things, no one of those who profess to be concerned for our youth has ever haled them before you for trial, but instead they persecute me, who, whatever else I may deserve, do at any rate deserve thanks for this, that I discourage such habits in my pupils.
Somehow, professors like Smith and Isocrates keep teaching these students year after year, and, even after teaching these students the same thing over and over and OVER, they still don’t get it. They still are interested in nothing but drinking, partying, and sex. Go figure.
Anyway, I’m not sure how this is all connected, but it somehow feels that way to me. There are certainly parts of the current economic downturn and the current state of academia as articulated by Smith and his ilk that are unique; but there is certainly also a feeling in the critique of tenure, the economy, and the sorry state of our students that feel a lot like something I’ve seen before.
Okay, one more post from Johndan (who said he got it from someplace else) and then I gotta get to work: Power Moby-Dick, which is a heavily annotated version of the book, one that I was assigned to read in two different classes in graduate school and one I have yet to open. Yes, I was and remain a bad person. But perhaps this will be all I need to get the motivation to give that book a try. Besides showing this to my American Lit colleagues, this might be fun to look at in 516 or 444.
Also on the possible 505 reading list for Fall 2009: via Johndan’s blog, I came across Working Through Screens, which is a site/book/set of flashcards put together by some kind of online design firm out west called Flashbulb Interaction. It might be cool, it might not be; it’s something that I’ll have to take a look at later. But right now, I need to read some of the readings for tonight on interaction and usability, a unit where this stuff would probably fit next year.
I don’t mean to be on a John Hodgman kick as of late (though I am thinking I need to go and buy a book of his soon), but while looking for something else, I came across this old Hodgman piece at McSweeney’s, “Fire: The Next Sharp Stick?” For English 505 next year, I think I’m going to include all or some of Foucault’s lecture “The Discourse on Language” because this is where he talks about how before Mendel’s breakthroughs in plant genetics, to speak of traits being passed down from plant to plant was crazy; after Mendel, it was crazy to do any different. Or something to that effect.
In any event, Hodgman’s “Fire: The Next Sharp Stick?” could be an interesting and amusing counter-balance to that more complex work that oddly says about the same thing.
Via the NCTE Inbox comes “The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education,” which is a resource published on the Center for Social Media at American University. This includes a long article and this six or so minute movie:
The timing of this is good for me because these are topics that are coming up right now in English 328 as my students work on short collaborative movies and as I think about English 516 for the winter term. And there seems to be some good stuff at this AU center. For example, another resource to look at when I get a free minute: Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video. This one seems to be particularly about mashups and remixes and how they “could” be legal under certain circumstances.
Of course, the timing on this is also bad since I have no time right now. All I can do yet this morning with these things is post some links. I have a mid-semester “to-do” list that could choke a horse….
Last year, I was on quasi-sabbatical, meaning that between my administrative release and my research release, I taught one class the entire year. The year before that, I was doing two administrative jobs at once, which meant I taught a whole lot less. And before that, I had been receiving one kind of release or another for administrative this or that.
So this is the first term in a long time since I’ve taught a full load, and also the first time in a long time where I’ve taught all of my classes on campus. And, just to add to the adventure, the graduate course I am teaching is new for me, and, because it’s a theory course called “the rhetoric of science and technology,” it involves a BOATLOAD of new reading. AND I’ve added/modified English 328 (the class I teach all the time) to include a collaborative video project. I have no idea how this is going to translate into the online version of this class.
Anyway, I’m not complaining exactly because I know lots of academics– especially at regional/undergrad-oriented institutions like EMU– teach a 3-3 load along with doing a lot of stuff I don’t have to do, my classes are quite small (I have fewer students in these three different classes than some of my literature colleagues have in one of their three sections), and, as always the case with academic jobs, it’s better than shoveling coal. But it does make me think of a couple of things.
First, I have yet to get my “grading mojo” back. The worst part of the job is reading, commenting on, and grading student essay projects. I don’t say that as a slam to my students at all; they do good things, they’re trying hard, etc., etc. I’m not going to lie and say that they all do really interesting and great work, but enough of them do that I can honestly say that the problem here really isn’t them. I think the problem is it’s just kind of hard work to do that can sometimes be boring and often can be easy to put off. Grading is certainly a lot less “fun” than actually being in class (or online, for that matter) and “teaching,” or planning a class, or just talking with students.
So, the first couple of batches of essays for student projects have just taken me way WAY too long to comment on. It vaguely reminds me of when I started teaching 20 years ago, or, much more recently, when I mentored a bunch of new grad students through their first semester of first year writing here at EMU when I was the temp WPA for a year: I used to (and my recent grad students used to) spend just HOURS on these things, mainly because I didn’t quite know what I was doing in the broadest possible sense. This is what I mean by my “grading mojo:” I am not back to the place where I can sit down with a batch of student projects and give them decent/useful feedback in a reasonable amount of time.
Second, I am reminded once again of how much of the job of being a professor has almost nothing to do with teaching, and that includes people (like me right now) who are teaching “full loads” with no release time to do anything else. This state of affairs has been obvious to me for a long time I suppose, but I do remember how when I started down the tenure-track at Southern Oregon 12 years ago that I was quite surprised by this. I suppose also that I am in the stage of my career where I could blow off a lot of this stuff and become one of those “dead wood” professors, but retirement is still about 25 years off for me and I’ve seen the sort of bad things/bitterness that can happen with senior folks who take the easy road and opt-out of the operations/politics of a department.
And third, I’m not sure which is the better lot in faculty life, the position I was in recently of teaching two and getting a course release to attend to a fair amount of administrative things, or teaching three, doing a few non-teaching things here and there, and largely staying out of the administrative heavy-lifting. There are some quasi-administrative things coming up that I can imagine wanting to do and/or being told that I really need to do, so we’ll see how that works out.
But if I start talking about becoming a full-time administrator, you know that a) I really want the money, and/or b) I’ve gone off the deep end.
These are things I was going to link to yesterday, but I went to bed instead. So here they are now: