The Light is Waxing
I have four more classes to teach.
That may be all for a long time.
I have mixed feelings about leaving the academy. On the one hand, I think I've done some good there -- challenged some assumptions, asked some hard questions, and even touched the odd life. It's been a good activist role for me,and I can't entirely regret the last eight years of doing it.
On the other hand, the academy is changing. More students, less funding, more emphasis on results rather than inquiry, more quantification of performance. Every departmental meeting looks at how we can cut costs, how we can make our program more 'attractive', how we can improve student retention (which is often a subtle hint from the higher ups to inflate grades). This is not the kind of intellectual climate I thought I was signing on for.
Not that the universities are entirely to blame. Universities were conceived of as elite education, serving only a small proportion of the graduating high school class. If you wanted to enter a profession, or if you were truly inspired to learn, and your family had the means to indulge you, you went to university. Now university is trying to stretch that model to deliver mass education, and like mass production in capitalism, when you are driven by volume and the bottom line, quality suffers. Universities have not been given the public funding they require to deliver on their mandates.
My house sold in less than a week. My contractor is putting in 50 hour weeks trying to get the renovations to my new home ready by my move date.
Twenty-five years ago, I ran away from a person I didn't want to be anymore, leaving southern Ontario for Ottawa. Now I'm moving back. I've long outgrown the skin that I had then (in more ways than one, I note, grimacing at the scale) but there are also people and parts of that life that it is time to come back to.
It never fails -- after the darkest times, the light begins to wax again.
That may be all for a long time.
I have mixed feelings about leaving the academy. On the one hand, I think I've done some good there -- challenged some assumptions, asked some hard questions, and even touched the odd life. It's been a good activist role for me,and I can't entirely regret the last eight years of doing it.
On the other hand, the academy is changing. More students, less funding, more emphasis on results rather than inquiry, more quantification of performance. Every departmental meeting looks at how we can cut costs, how we can make our program more 'attractive', how we can improve student retention (which is often a subtle hint from the higher ups to inflate grades). This is not the kind of intellectual climate I thought I was signing on for.
Not that the universities are entirely to blame. Universities were conceived of as elite education, serving only a small proportion of the graduating high school class. If you wanted to enter a profession, or if you were truly inspired to learn, and your family had the means to indulge you, you went to university. Now university is trying to stretch that model to deliver mass education, and like mass production in capitalism, when you are driven by volume and the bottom line, quality suffers. Universities have not been given the public funding they require to deliver on their mandates.
My house sold in less than a week. My contractor is putting in 50 hour weeks trying to get the renovations to my new home ready by my move date.
Twenty-five years ago, I ran away from a person I didn't want to be anymore, leaving southern Ontario for Ottawa. Now I'm moving back. I've long outgrown the skin that I had then (in more ways than one, I note, grimacing at the scale) but there are also people and parts of that life that it is time to come back to.
It never fails -- after the darkest times, the light begins to wax again.