I am experiencing now what I experienced for years working in local government: that treadmill feeling in which you struggle to get through every day with enough preparation and performance not to embarass yourself or your organization, and stay up too late all the while craving the escape of sleep, only to wake far too early only to do it all over again.
This for 5 days, then the sweet, sweet release of the weekend. On Friday afternoon you feel great, thinking about all the work you'll achieve in 2 days off. You take Friday night off. On Saturday you try to catch up with some household stuff, and the day flies by. On Sunday you wake up in mild panic and before you know it, it's evening and you are facing piles of stuff that can't possibly be finished, leaving you with the same old catch-up routine in the week to come.
If all I were doing was course prep, my workload would be manageable and even enjoyable, because I love just about everything (except grading) about teaching. I love writing curriculum plans and lesson plans. I love thinking up classroom exercises to make students apply and think about the readings and concepts. I love just talking to students.
But now that I'm on the tenure track, I am trying to do so much more: co-authoring a textbook; writing encyclopedia articles; trying to finish research for a paper to be given in November; trying to write up articles from my dissertation; supervising an independent study project; leading a study trip next spring. It's just TOO MUCH.
I always think that better organization will get me through it. Yet truthfully: the days roll by and mid-December will come, and then what is done is done; what is not done will not be done. The delight of the academic is in starting fresh every 4 months.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
class and achievement
I confess to a certain wistfulness when I read the alumni publications of my undergrad college, especially articles about how undergrads have helped faculty refine and expand their research or develop new research directions. Could that ever happen in my professional life?? It seems we are talking about two parallel universes of higher education.
The majority of my students are in front of me because someone, somewhere, has convinced them that a college degree is a desirable (or necessary) accessory to a better life (usually meaning better-PAYING). This irritates me on two levels.
I am especially irked at the whiney assumption some students have that they are automatically disadvantaged because they go to state college instead of Ivy League. (That idea is being instilled in them by the Marxist element, and it's total bullshit.) (George Bush went to Yale; need I say more??) I believe that my students, if they READ the assignments, and think about them, and engage with their classmates and me in interrogating them, could get just as deep an education as the average student at the Ivy League.
The majority of my students are in front of me because someone, somewhere, has convinced them that a college degree is a desirable (or necessary) accessory to a better life (usually meaning better-PAYING). This irritates me on two levels.
I am especially irked at the whiney assumption some students have that they are automatically disadvantaged because they go to state college instead of Ivy League. (That idea is being instilled in them by the Marxist element, and it's total bullshit.) (George Bush went to Yale; need I say more??) I believe that my students, if they READ the assignments, and think about them, and engage with their classmates and me in interrogating them, could get just as deep an education as the average student at the Ivy League.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
NCLB: creating a new generation of sheep?
Really, I DO want to blog on a daily basis. But I've been a little freaked out lately by the onslaught of work (teaching prep, and the giant lurking shadow of Publish Or Perish) and trying to keep the household together too. B had the flu week before last (he is still sick with a cold) and I had a cold last week (I am still not 100% but a lot better). So the week before last I made some sort of soup every night (he has dental issues too).
Now we are on to solid food. Lobsters tonight!!
My human geog students are working on a demographics project involving retrieval of census data. I give them a little guidance for how to find what they need, but I wonder what would happen if I gave them NOTHING? I've had a couple inquiries along the lines of "could you send me the link to the data, I can't find it with your instructions," to which I gently respond that the goals of the assignment are partly about the skills of info-retrieval without a recipe or step-by step "then click this" type of listing.
It's only a couple of students so I shouldn't generalize, but I have found lack of creative problem-solving and ability to deal with the unknown to be characteristic of today's college students. Sometimes, in my more cynical and paranoiac moments, I theorize that the rationale for standardized testing (like the MCAS in MA) has nothing whatsoever to do with knowledge or learning or competence, and has everything to do with socializing a population to be compliant, fill-in-the-bubble oriented, and totally incapable, by training, of independent, critical, or creative thinking. Just what a repressive, totalitarian, controlling Republican administration would want.
Please tell me I am wrong about this. Please?
Now we are on to solid food. Lobsters tonight!!
My human geog students are working on a demographics project involving retrieval of census data. I give them a little guidance for how to find what they need, but I wonder what would happen if I gave them NOTHING? I've had a couple inquiries along the lines of "could you send me the link to the data, I can't find it with your instructions," to which I gently respond that the goals of the assignment are partly about the skills of info-retrieval without a recipe or step-by step "then click this" type of listing.
It's only a couple of students so I shouldn't generalize, but I have found lack of creative problem-solving and ability to deal with the unknown to be characteristic of today's college students. Sometimes, in my more cynical and paranoiac moments, I theorize that the rationale for standardized testing (like the MCAS in MA) has nothing whatsoever to do with knowledge or learning or competence, and has everything to do with socializing a population to be compliant, fill-in-the-bubble oriented, and totally incapable, by training, of independent, critical, or creative thinking. Just what a repressive, totalitarian, controlling Republican administration would want.
Please tell me I am wrong about this. Please?
Saturday, September 12, 2009
odds and ends of my life - the orts, so to speak
"Ort" is a commonly-occurring crossword puzzle answer. We have started to use it in normal conversation for the bits and pieces of "whatever" - refrigerator leftovers; useless parts of the Sunday paper; bits of clean laundry that fall out of the handful en route to Laundry Mountain.
So here are some orts of my brain:
1.Man, this day job business really gets in the way of regular blogging!
2.People in my immediate circle known to have the 'flu: my husband; 3 of my students; the father of one of my colleagues. My sister-in-law has a really bad cold.
3.Fourth-grade-playground attacks on Obama's health care plan (death squads etc., oh, hi, Sarah, didn't see you there, how ya doin'?) get on my nerves not because the Republican operatives are acting like assholes (which they are) but because evidently there are people in this country stupid enough to buy their propaganda.
4.The only child of one of my childhood friends died last week in Iraq. I can't stop thinking about it. In fact, every other trouble I can think of pales in comparison to her heartbreak.
5.Classes are going well: students seem motivated and cheerful. I am in a much better mood about teaching than ever before.
I am going to try to post more often, even though there is a lot going on...
So here are some orts of my brain:
1.Man, this day job business really gets in the way of regular blogging!
2.People in my immediate circle known to have the 'flu: my husband; 3 of my students; the father of one of my colleagues. My sister-in-law has a really bad cold.
3.Fourth-grade-playground attacks on Obama's health care plan (death squads etc., oh, hi, Sarah, didn't see you there, how ya doin'?) get on my nerves not because the Republican operatives are acting like assholes (which they are) but because evidently there are people in this country stupid enough to buy their propaganda.
4.The only child of one of my childhood friends died last week in Iraq. I can't stop thinking about it. In fact, every other trouble I can think of pales in comparison to her heartbreak.
5.Classes are going well: students seem motivated and cheerful. I am in a much better mood about teaching than ever before.
I am going to try to post more often, even though there is a lot going on...
Thursday, September 3, 2009
defining difference (and distance) in virtual space
P.M. Forni, whose old-fashioned ideas about civility and the erosion of it I've quoted before, has an interesting observation about the "flattening" of space online.
"Recognizing and accepting difference is the premise of our recognizing and accepting value. Unfortunately one major aspect of their experience with the Net inclines our students not to perceive difference. On the Net every single thing is equidistant from every other thing and from the person at the keyboard. It takes the same amount of time and the same effort to access anything you wish. [He's incorrect about that, but ok, let's provisionally accept the bigger point...] When everything comes from the same source - the mysteriously endless and spaceless warehouses of the Net - everything reveals itself under a varnish of equivalence."
My major disagreement with Forni is that he equates "difference" with "difference in quality." He is an aesthete, and he is looking to develop habits of discrimination: we recognize masterpieces, for example, and in so doing, we recognize that other works are NOT masterpieces. Fair enough.
Yet much of difference does not equate to lesser or greater value, and of course geographers in recent decades have theorized extensively about differences that do NOT imply greater or lesser value - race, gender, etc. etc. Much of what we teach in World Regional Geography is implicitly underlaid with a goal of getting students to appreciate diversity WITHOUT making a value judgment. Thus Americans are not better than some other nationality because we are richer or have more stuff or have more freedoms or supposedly more equality, for example. We are trying to teach a culturally-situated appreciation of other ways that will help students to live in a world of difference and to understand and appreciate the lifeways of others.
"Recognizing and accepting difference is the premise of our recognizing and accepting value. Unfortunately one major aspect of their experience with the Net inclines our students not to perceive difference. On the Net every single thing is equidistant from every other thing and from the person at the keyboard. It takes the same amount of time and the same effort to access anything you wish. [He's incorrect about that, but ok, let's provisionally accept the bigger point...] When everything comes from the same source - the mysteriously endless and spaceless warehouses of the Net - everything reveals itself under a varnish of equivalence."
My major disagreement with Forni is that he equates "difference" with "difference in quality." He is an aesthete, and he is looking to develop habits of discrimination: we recognize masterpieces, for example, and in so doing, we recognize that other works are NOT masterpieces. Fair enough.
Yet much of difference does not equate to lesser or greater value, and of course geographers in recent decades have theorized extensively about differences that do NOT imply greater or lesser value - race, gender, etc. etc. Much of what we teach in World Regional Geography is implicitly underlaid with a goal of getting students to appreciate diversity WITHOUT making a value judgment. Thus Americans are not better than some other nationality because we are richer or have more stuff or have more freedoms or supposedly more equality, for example. We are trying to teach a culturally-situated appreciation of other ways that will help students to live in a world of difference and to understand and appreciate the lifeways of others.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Curmudgeon Girl asks...
...when did it start to be normal for boys (and no, I don't think I mean young men) to wear caps indoors? I sat in Convocation this morning and looked out at a sea of baseball caps.
Seriously. I talk about this in my segment on cultural geography, and the class is shocked (shocked, I tell you!) to learn that there was a time in the not-so-distant past when males did NOT EVER wear hats in buildings (unless they were in academic regalia at Convocation, ha ha). Sometimes I tell the story of traveling through Europe with student groups, and nudging some boy to remove his cap IN A CHURCH. Some semesters, I think they think I am making this all up.
It was worse in the construction management class (duh) but still. Convocation?? My college convocation, more than 30 years ago now, was quite solemn, and as I recall, we dressed up a bit. There were solemn dedications to our shared purpose, some honorary degrees, non-denominational hymns perhaps - and in the august setting of a wood-paneled, stuffy auditorium that had probably seen 75 convocations or more. The state schools like to ape the Ivy ways, but it just doesn't have the same impact. Call me a snob if you like.
Seriously. I talk about this in my segment on cultural geography, and the class is shocked (shocked, I tell you!) to learn that there was a time in the not-so-distant past when males did NOT EVER wear hats in buildings (unless they were in academic regalia at Convocation, ha ha). Sometimes I tell the story of traveling through Europe with student groups, and nudging some boy to remove his cap IN A CHURCH. Some semesters, I think they think I am making this all up.
It was worse in the construction management class (duh) but still. Convocation?? My college convocation, more than 30 years ago now, was quite solemn, and as I recall, we dressed up a bit. There were solemn dedications to our shared purpose, some honorary degrees, non-denominational hymns perhaps - and in the august setting of a wood-paneled, stuffy auditorium that had probably seen 75 convocations or more. The state schools like to ape the Ivy ways, but it just doesn't have the same impact. Call me a snob if you like.
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