The university of vanity, said my friend, treats everyone like a child. As everyone is assumed to be a denizen of vanity, nobody is trusted to know what they are doing. No decision can be made without interference, sometimes known as “mentoring.” Standard advice abounds, and is reiterated whether or not it actually fits. It is often proferred by persons who do not fully understand it – because the university of vanity works at a remove from intellectual life and values simulacra.
It has often seemed paradoxical to me in universities that you are to produce original, groundbreaking research, and yet also be pliant and conformist to the core. You are to accept childlike status on a permanent basis, when your situation requires higher than average levels of adult fortitude. I have not yet figured out whether it is my issues which have made it difficult to synthesize these theses and antitheses, or whether they are a general problem. It was interesting to hear someone else discuss it.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I always reread what I write and when I do, I find that I made fundamental errors. They make me seem illiterate if not completely retarded. My voice makes me seem younger than 23 and a half.
How was Mardi Gras weekend? I heard that the jazz musicians were hard to find post Katrina.
Hi CO! I was ill/depressed for Mardi Gras and hid in the house, thinking I should at least get some work done! This event was either a cause of my downfall, or an effect of already being sick:
https://profacero.wordpress.com/2007/02/16/eurydice/
I was going to go to a ball Saturday, to New Orleans parades Sunday, and to country Mardi Gras yesterday, but I flaked out on all of it. There are Indian marches for St. Joseph’s Day, and Jazzfest, however.
Did not get enough done but improved slightly. Jazz musicians, that is a general problem now, not just for Mardi Gras.
–Z
dichotomy is working at a university…
sorry to hear about jazz musicians being scarce…they are here in town — all over the place
AZ, they are all over the place, that is wild / fantastic!
Working at a university, yes, it is dichotomy. This is something I had some grasp of before – and then got confused by the dichotomy, or by not thinking there should be one, or perhaps (and now maybe I am getting somewhere) by the fact that other people did not seem to feel it. I think I got eaten up by the machine.
But you always have to be in a position to escape to the other side of life and I do not just mean private life, I mean another identity – or at least, also be writing non academic things.
Losing sight of this was one of the ways I got eaten up – or maybe, when I got eaten up, I lost sight of this.
Have you heard of my super duper recipes to heal the sick people? Well. Ok. It’s just vegetable soup with big white beans. It’s quite soothing and the spices in it help and warm up the body. I will email you the recipe soon. Gosh I wish I were there. Mardi Gras seems so exciting. I’m sorry you missed it 😦
I read the ealier post and liked it 😀
Anyway. I shall find the recipe now.
*leaves a chatroom*
Oh good, a real Mediterranean/Middle Eastern recipe, exactly the food I like :-)! Mardi Gras is nice but I’ve seen Mardi Gras many times before, and last year was great, hard to beat, actually, so in part I actually wanted to just meditate and get some things done. And there is St. Joseph’s day coming, as I say, and Jazzfest. 🙂 –Z
I suppose I can see your point here, but I think you are sort of … ignoring the point that even though there is the pressure of mentoring, you do have choices there, and ultimately you do, as an independent scholar, decide where and when stuff goes out, how you craft questions, etc. And while people will try to influence that, good mentors don’t try to take away your voice.
Frankly, I have the opposite problem. Nobody tries to mentor me in any way. I feel like that is a way of keeping me on the margins instead of letting me in on the conversation, the inside dope. Yeah, I think you are right in that much of what I write about and say is very original as a result, but that gets beat up more by the peer review process.
Chaser – yes, ultimately one does decide, but I de-learned this somewhere along the way. I am re-learning it just now. A lot of that has to do with the particular, odd situations I have been in.
And yet I still think it is something more than just my own weird story, which is why the conversation with this friend interested me. I notice disempowerment sweeping like a virus through university hallways all the time … and peoples’ varied reactions to it.
Actually collegial advice, as opposed to condescending advice crafted out of projection and threats, is hard to find, yes.
Original writing, beat up more by peer review, I have that ‘problem’ but then I always have … it is all right.
P.S. Actually I should write a post entitled something like “On How I Overdosed On Advice, and on the Lack Thereof, All at the Same Time.”
But I am not actually talking about direct mentoring of newer faculty as much as about institutional structures and attitudes in general, and the ‘wisdom’ that spreads in a viral sort of way, and the forms in which power and ideology permeate things.
Or in a more personal way, I am trying to figure out by what mechanisms the knowledge that one gets to make one’s own decisions, WENT. Maybe a way to put it concisely is: all of the “professionalizing” advice about expedience … which often seemed to preclude decisions based on substance …
I got *massively* alienated from my own research and indeed, professional identity due in good measure to extreme indoctrination about expedience: do not consider your own interests at all, only those of the university and your career. Bad move because I was not erring on the overly wild, overly creative or overly slow side. In other words: “the professional thing to do is not to make your own decisions, even if they are well advised – go for pure careerism and obedience to authority, it is the only way to remain marginally safe.” This self-alienation, all in the interest of going faster and satisfying yet more people, in fact slowed me way down.
Ok, I get ya now–especially on this last paragraph. I so totally frakking hear you on that, my friend. Amen amen.
(And can you tell I have a similar feeling?)
Yes but you are doing better than I, I do believe.
Now I’ve shortened the post because I am trying to boil down these ideas, and write an actual article on these matters … it seems I have enough theories on weirdnesses and vicissitudes of academic life that I should start sending things to the Chronicle or somewhere. I think the things about *me* – *my* reactions and so on, came about better in the comments thread.