SUNY @ Stony Brook: Where the Story Takes Place (Part III)
That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class takes place predominantly in three venues: a facility for homeless people with psychiatric histories located on the grounds of Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital, a SUNY college campus in nearby Nassau County, and, later, a larger SUNY campus farther out on the island.
In the final third of the story, having graduated from the women's studies program, I move on to become a graduate student seeking a PhD in sociology at the larger SUNY campus.
My books are nonfiction and autobiographical, but I did change all the characters' names, including my own for the sake of consistency, to protect the privacy of a small handful of people. I extended that anonymity to the naming of the two schools involved, which was probably kind of silly...most people familiar with the area are going to suspect that the graduate school in question is actually SUNY / Stony Brook.
Insofar as it's a larger school (one of the biggest in the system), one might expect to find a physical campus of an imposingly self-assured intellectual flavor, with some dignified central buildings attracting the eye. Such was not the impression I got upon first setting foot there. My first impression was that some giant had dropped a random assortment of utterly unrelated buildings into an old pasture and left them there. It isn't classical, it isn't modern, it isn't streamlined and inspiring, nor is it squat and formidable. It has no observable personality, no sense of place or presence whatsoever.
In the years when I attended as a grad student, only about a fifth of the students lived on campus, and the majority of those were first- and second-year undergraduate students. Graduate students, in particular, were likely to live off-campus and commute, and I did likewise, renting a room in a house shared with other grad students and buying myself a decrepit rusty old Toyota to make the daily commute.
I think that, in general, four-year colleges give the impression of existing for the frosh-through-senior student body, while universities that have graduate studies tend to convey that they do more important things than just teach people who are still working towards their bachelor's or associates' degrees. I mean, if you enroll in a four-year college and walk into the classroom, the person who will be teaching you is a professor on the faculty, but if you're a sophomore at a university, the person who greets you and grades your paper, and quite often does all the lectures as well, is likely to be a graduate student. Furthermore, the graduate student probably isn't teaching you because of a love for teaching and the aspiration to teach college classes, although some are and do. Most likely, the grad student intends to use their advanced degree to qualify for a professional career outside of academia, and part of how they pay for their own studies is to accept teaching responsibilities in some form -- teaching assistant, research assistant, or actual teacher of record for the course.
I can still recall the first graders taunting the kindergarteners in the next line over and thinking it made no sense because we'd been in kindergarten ourselves just the year before. And it makes no more sense for grad students to harbor contempt for undergraduates, but I've seen it. Many graduate students seem to think undergraduates are willfully ignorant, that they attend college to acquire credentials, not to learn, and that they're appallingly provincial and unexposed to non-mainstream thought.
Does that imply that university campuses feel like they exist for the graduate students instead, then? That's a tricky question with a complex answer. The professors are likely to consider themselves mentors to the grad students, and they do devote a substantial portion of their time to the projects and papers of their grad students. At the same time, though, the emphasis for a lot of professors is on research and the publication of papers and grant proposals and whatnot. It's not unusual for a professor to regard the teaching part of their profession as ancillary and unimportant, or to give lip service to the importance of teaching but devote their attention to their own professional endeavors. Professors don't get tenure or attain stature in their area of expertise by being good teachers.
There's also a gatekeeping function at play here. The purpose, from the standpoint of the various disciplines and professions, of graduate school is to bring in new people who will be appropriate in skill, attitude, and viewpoint, and that involves not only bringing people in but also weeding people out. And this affects the dynamic. A successful graduate student needs to be innovative and creative, with original ideas and active contributions to the field, but within narrow bounds. As with the grad students' own attitudes to the undergrads, the professors occasionally have the attitude to the grad students that their innovations and original thoughts are to be observed and assessed as signs of future potential, but not as content from which they themselves are likely to learn. To think in this fashion is to underline the difference in status between professor and grad student, and as in most hierarchies there is a tendency for some people to obtain their sense of accomplishment and expertise by doing that kind of underlining.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback. eBook version and hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for GenderQueer now and for Guy in Women's Studies once they come out.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
In the final third of the story, having graduated from the women's studies program, I move on to become a graduate student seeking a PhD in sociology at the larger SUNY campus.
My books are nonfiction and autobiographical, but I did change all the characters' names, including my own for the sake of consistency, to protect the privacy of a small handful of people. I extended that anonymity to the naming of the two schools involved, which was probably kind of silly...most people familiar with the area are going to suspect that the graduate school in question is actually SUNY / Stony Brook.
Insofar as it's a larger school (one of the biggest in the system), one might expect to find a physical campus of an imposingly self-assured intellectual flavor, with some dignified central buildings attracting the eye. Such was not the impression I got upon first setting foot there. My first impression was that some giant had dropped a random assortment of utterly unrelated buildings into an old pasture and left them there. It isn't classical, it isn't modern, it isn't streamlined and inspiring, nor is it squat and formidable. It has no observable personality, no sense of place or presence whatsoever.
In the years when I attended as a grad student, only about a fifth of the students lived on campus, and the majority of those were first- and second-year undergraduate students. Graduate students, in particular, were likely to live off-campus and commute, and I did likewise, renting a room in a house shared with other grad students and buying myself a decrepit rusty old Toyota to make the daily commute.
I think that, in general, four-year colleges give the impression of existing for the frosh-through-senior student body, while universities that have graduate studies tend to convey that they do more important things than just teach people who are still working towards their bachelor's or associates' degrees. I mean, if you enroll in a four-year college and walk into the classroom, the person who will be teaching you is a professor on the faculty, but if you're a sophomore at a university, the person who greets you and grades your paper, and quite often does all the lectures as well, is likely to be a graduate student. Furthermore, the graduate student probably isn't teaching you because of a love for teaching and the aspiration to teach college classes, although some are and do. Most likely, the grad student intends to use their advanced degree to qualify for a professional career outside of academia, and part of how they pay for their own studies is to accept teaching responsibilities in some form -- teaching assistant, research assistant, or actual teacher of record for the course.
I can still recall the first graders taunting the kindergarteners in the next line over and thinking it made no sense because we'd been in kindergarten ourselves just the year before. And it makes no more sense for grad students to harbor contempt for undergraduates, but I've seen it. Many graduate students seem to think undergraduates are willfully ignorant, that they attend college to acquire credentials, not to learn, and that they're appallingly provincial and unexposed to non-mainstream thought.
Does that imply that university campuses feel like they exist for the graduate students instead, then? That's a tricky question with a complex answer. The professors are likely to consider themselves mentors to the grad students, and they do devote a substantial portion of their time to the projects and papers of their grad students. At the same time, though, the emphasis for a lot of professors is on research and the publication of papers and grant proposals and whatnot. It's not unusual for a professor to regard the teaching part of their profession as ancillary and unimportant, or to give lip service to the importance of teaching but devote their attention to their own professional endeavors. Professors don't get tenure or attain stature in their area of expertise by being good teachers.
There's also a gatekeeping function at play here. The purpose, from the standpoint of the various disciplines and professions, of graduate school is to bring in new people who will be appropriate in skill, attitude, and viewpoint, and that involves not only bringing people in but also weeding people out. And this affects the dynamic. A successful graduate student needs to be innovative and creative, with original ideas and active contributions to the field, but within narrow bounds. As with the grad students' own attitudes to the undergrads, the professors occasionally have the attitude to the grad students that their innovations and original thoughts are to be observed and assessed as signs of future potential, but not as content from which they themselves are likely to learn. To think in this fashion is to underline the difference in status between professor and grad student, and as in most hierarchies there is a tendency for some people to obtain their sense of accomplishment and expertise by doing that kind of underlining.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback. eBook version and hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for GenderQueer now and for Guy in Women's Studies once they come out.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts