on the principal stresses of my life, and the things that distract me from them
1. Grading is FINISHED!!!!!!!!! Well, not entirely, but the exam marking is finished, and that's the part that has been making my brains leak out my ears the past few days. Note to self: next time you think "oh, exams go quickly, even when they're essays," remember that THIS IS NOT TRUE when there are 120 of them. Next time, I will include multiple choice questions or something.
2. mapmyrun.com!!!!!!! Where have you been all my life???? This site is completely addicting, it solves all of my "so I went for a run outside because it is FINALLY SPRINGTIME, but I have no idea how far that was" needs, and I don't know how I didn't know it was here before. Probably all of you runners and cyclists have already figured this (or equivalent) out, but in case there are a few who need to have their days made better by this knowledge, well, now you can go map your runs! Or rides. Or walks. Etc.
3. BONES!!!!!!! Yes, I'm still loving Bones quite a lot!!! I completely adore Brennan, Booth, and Cam (though the others have yet to grow on me, I confess), Booth/Brennan is totally my shiny new OTP du jour (how are they SO ADORKABLE, Y'ALL?!?!). Plus, it's all a bit silly and relishes the silliness, and this show passes the Bechdel test pretty much every episode (women talking about science!).
Not so cool is all the excessive blood-and-guts, or the fact that despite the Bechdel test-passing, there are also an awful lot of refrigerator women. I've only seen a random handful of episodes so far, but among these, female victims outnumber male victims rather notably.
So not perfect by any stretch, but it's still making me very happy right now!
4. This NY Times op-ed about the future of the university has been making the rounds in my circles. And I think the situation he describes is dead-on (welcome to my life!), but his proposed solutions are rather disconnected from the real problem.
For instance, interdisciplinarity is great; I'm a big fan and predominantly do interdisciplinary work myself. But interdisiciplinarity works best within the framework of existing disciplines, and I think eradicating that framework to build something new would be a mistake. Defined disciplines create rigor; rigor creates good scholarship. I agree that defined disciplines can also create complacency and compartmentalization, but there are ways to mitigate against that that don't involve eradicating departments wholesale. Interdisciplinarity works best when people from within different rigorous disciplines have productive intellectual conversation and collaboration. Get rid of the framework, and what's are the bases for the conversation?
I also bristle pretty quickly whenever people start talking about the university having a role in solving "real world problems." Now, I'm a good little activist who believes firmly in the solving of problems, and the idea of doing so is one of the merits of whatever career path I may take if when I don't get an academic job. But I also firmly believe that the university requires the intellectual autonomy to be "useless"; in fact, I believe that part of the university's contribution to society is an essential "uselessness." The scare quotes are intentional: I don't mean that there's no point to what the university does. I do mean that much of the work of the university cannot and should not be quantified or commodified. The university (and particularly fields like the humanities, though I think this framework is applicable to certain branches of the social sciences and hard sciences, as well) exists to add complexity to the world, and to find ways to explore and discuss that complexity. The goal of the humanities, in particular, is to remind us all that we don't fit into boxes, that our assumptions are not everyone's assumptions. This is essential "real world" work, but you can't put a price tag on it, and it isn't "useful." If the solving of "real world problems" is a byproduct of the work of the university (or even the purpose of some academic departments in, say, the applied sciences), that's fabulous. But utility should not be the university's measuring stick.
The solution Taylor mentions that most closely accords with the actual problem he's describing (ie, the droves of unemployed recent PhDs) is the abolition of tenure. And I agree with him that tenure has a number of problems and as a system probably needs to be overhauled--but abolished only with the most careful consideration. It comes down to money (all of these problems come down to money): an assistant professor will always be cheaper than a full professor, and in smaller colleges and universities where the primary goal is simply to have people to teach classes and research pedigrees are relatively meaningless, what's to prevent suddenly tenure-less full professors from being fired wholesale to be replaced with their younger and cheaper colleagues? Abolishing tenure would most likely just shift the problem of unemployed academics up to people who are even less employable outside the academy than those of us who are just finishing and can't find work. Plus, getting rid of tenure glosses over the fact that there was a very good reason tenure was instituted in the first place: intellectual freedom.
My own proposed solution to the current problem of the overpopulated academic marketplace is to severely curtail graduate admissions. It's not particularly in a department's long-term interest to have a miniscule placement rate (placement rate = percentage of PhD grads who get tenure track jobs within three years; when I came in, my department's was around 70%, and that was pretty good--but it has gone down in the past few years and shows no sign of going back up again), but it's certainly in a department's short-term interest to have a lot of grad students. As Taylor points out, grad student labor runs universities: where else are they going to find well-qualified trainees to do a great deal of highly technical work for what is barely a living wage? Even with stipends and fellowships, grad students tend to save universities more money than they cost. So as much as a university might, theoretically, agree that graduate admission rates should be cut (and my own university doesn't even agree with this in theory; they're on a campaign to raise graduate admissions), they need someone to teach all those intro undergrad classes and put in all those lab hours, preferably for as little pay as possible.
Ultimately, I suppose the market will just determine it--the jobs exist or they don't, and a few people will get them, and a lot of people will not, and that sucks tremendously for all of us who won't, but what do we expect anyone to do about it? Will this eventually mean that fewer people go into academia in the first place? I doubt it. When you're 23 and were great at English in undergrad and loved it a lot and can think of nothing else you want to do more than more English, perhaps more English forever, the idea that eight or so years down the road you will be heartbroken and unemployable never occurs to you. And even if someone told you this, you wouldn't believe them. We all think we'll be the exception. And a few people, here and there, are, and this keeps up the myth.
2. mapmyrun.com!!!!!!! Where have you been all my life???? This site is completely addicting, it solves all of my "so I went for a run outside because it is FINALLY SPRINGTIME, but I have no idea how far that was" needs, and I don't know how I didn't know it was here before. Probably all of you runners and cyclists have already figured this (or equivalent) out, but in case there are a few who need to have their days made better by this knowledge, well, now you can go map your runs! Or rides. Or walks. Etc.
3. BONES!!!!!!! Yes, I'm still loving Bones quite a lot!!! I completely adore Brennan, Booth, and Cam (though the others have yet to grow on me, I confess), Booth/Brennan is totally my shiny new OTP du jour (how are they SO ADORKABLE, Y'ALL?!?!). Plus, it's all a bit silly and relishes the silliness, and this show passes the Bechdel test pretty much every episode (women talking about science!).
Not so cool is all the excessive blood-and-guts, or the fact that despite the Bechdel test-passing, there are also an awful lot of refrigerator women. I've only seen a random handful of episodes so far, but among these, female victims outnumber male victims rather notably.
So not perfect by any stretch, but it's still making me very happy right now!
4. This NY Times op-ed about the future of the university has been making the rounds in my circles. And I think the situation he describes is dead-on (welcome to my life!), but his proposed solutions are rather disconnected from the real problem.
For instance, interdisciplinarity is great; I'm a big fan and predominantly do interdisciplinary work myself. But interdisiciplinarity works best within the framework of existing disciplines, and I think eradicating that framework to build something new would be a mistake. Defined disciplines create rigor; rigor creates good scholarship. I agree that defined disciplines can also create complacency and compartmentalization, but there are ways to mitigate against that that don't involve eradicating departments wholesale. Interdisciplinarity works best when people from within different rigorous disciplines have productive intellectual conversation and collaboration. Get rid of the framework, and what's are the bases for the conversation?
I also bristle pretty quickly whenever people start talking about the university having a role in solving "real world problems." Now, I'm a good little activist who believes firmly in the solving of problems, and the idea of doing so is one of the merits of whatever career path I may take if when I don't get an academic job. But I also firmly believe that the university requires the intellectual autonomy to be "useless"; in fact, I believe that part of the university's contribution to society is an essential "uselessness." The scare quotes are intentional: I don't mean that there's no point to what the university does. I do mean that much of the work of the university cannot and should not be quantified or commodified. The university (and particularly fields like the humanities, though I think this framework is applicable to certain branches of the social sciences and hard sciences, as well) exists to add complexity to the world, and to find ways to explore and discuss that complexity. The goal of the humanities, in particular, is to remind us all that we don't fit into boxes, that our assumptions are not everyone's assumptions. This is essential "real world" work, but you can't put a price tag on it, and it isn't "useful." If the solving of "real world problems" is a byproduct of the work of the university (or even the purpose of some academic departments in, say, the applied sciences), that's fabulous. But utility should not be the university's measuring stick.
The solution Taylor mentions that most closely accords with the actual problem he's describing (ie, the droves of unemployed recent PhDs) is the abolition of tenure. And I agree with him that tenure has a number of problems and as a system probably needs to be overhauled--but abolished only with the most careful consideration. It comes down to money (all of these problems come down to money): an assistant professor will always be cheaper than a full professor, and in smaller colleges and universities where the primary goal is simply to have people to teach classes and research pedigrees are relatively meaningless, what's to prevent suddenly tenure-less full professors from being fired wholesale to be replaced with their younger and cheaper colleagues? Abolishing tenure would most likely just shift the problem of unemployed academics up to people who are even less employable outside the academy than those of us who are just finishing and can't find work. Plus, getting rid of tenure glosses over the fact that there was a very good reason tenure was instituted in the first place: intellectual freedom.
My own proposed solution to the current problem of the overpopulated academic marketplace is to severely curtail graduate admissions. It's not particularly in a department's long-term interest to have a miniscule placement rate (placement rate = percentage of PhD grads who get tenure track jobs within three years; when I came in, my department's was around 70%, and that was pretty good--but it has gone down in the past few years and shows no sign of going back up again), but it's certainly in a department's short-term interest to have a lot of grad students. As Taylor points out, grad student labor runs universities: where else are they going to find well-qualified trainees to do a great deal of highly technical work for what is barely a living wage? Even with stipends and fellowships, grad students tend to save universities more money than they cost. So as much as a university might, theoretically, agree that graduate admission rates should be cut (and my own university doesn't even agree with this in theory; they're on a campaign to raise graduate admissions), they need someone to teach all those intro undergrad classes and put in all those lab hours, preferably for as little pay as possible.
Ultimately, I suppose the market will just determine it--the jobs exist or they don't, and a few people will get them, and a lot of people will not, and that sucks tremendously for all of us who won't, but what do we expect anyone to do about it? Will this eventually mean that fewer people go into academia in the first place? I doubt it. When you're 23 and were great at English in undergrad and loved it a lot and can think of nothing else you want to do more than more English, perhaps more English forever, the idea that eight or so years down the road you will be heartbroken and unemployable never occurs to you. And even if someone told you this, you wouldn't believe them. We all think we'll be the exception. And a few people, here and there, are, and this keeps up the myth.