In a comment last summer, the Emeritus Professor said:
Scholars have to be educated in some fundamental way, educated as opposed to trained, though they can and perhaps should be trained also. […]
I said:
I would add that the emphasis on ‘professionalization’ and ‘training’ over actual education undermines integrity. […]
My own confusion in the world comes largely from dealing with venues in which ‘professionalization’ and ‘training’ do in fact take precedence over actual education. The week’s committee meetings have reminded me once again of this. The world goes awry not only when “training” and “professionalization” take precedence over academics, but also when academics, narrowly defined, take precedence over education and scholarship, or over intellectual life.
It seems to me that one must know one’s métier, but that intellectual life must still stand above and around the métier. To leave intellectual life behind, and to cleave only to the rules of the métier, leaves one rudderless.
Finally, and in a somewhat different key, it appears to me that one must be centered in one’s work. This is elementary but many forces conspire to sabotage such centeredness, or to make it seem illegitimate.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
The professor I am working with seems to have found a balance. Whenever I question her about some things, she sort of whispers “that’s just part of it, you have to wade through the bullshit in order to get to the good stuff.” She has told me this several times throughout the last three years. Once when we discussed the impact of student evaluations, once when we discussed getting into graduated school. I think I said something like “why should this have to be done, who would apply if they were not interested” and she replied with something about weeding out the “freaks.” Now that may sound harsh but in another vein I had such an experience. I was a work study at a nursing school, and one boy who was accepted told me when I called to tell him, that he was no longer interested, that he was selling cars now, and that he only applied to get his parents off his back. I was really pissed and got fired behind that whole mess. Because the director had said to call all the men and I did not think it was fair. For one because it was women who was calling every day to find out if they were accepted or not and then this Bozo along with a few others had forgotten they even applied. Quite a digression I know.
Anyway, I think to make it work it has to do with compartmentalization.
i would add that ‘education not necessarily of the school kind but also of the life kind’
nice thoughts — got me thinking
…one must be centered in one’s work. This is elementary but many forces conspire to sabotage such centeredness, or to make it seem illegitimate.
bang.
I agree that there is a difference between professionalization and becoming educated. Right now, my U is trying very hard to address grad students’ worries that five years is not long enough to get through the program and land a job by addressing professionalization earlier — in fact, right out of the starting gate. While there are good aspects of this approach, what this does not address is that people explore and change throughout their grad school lives. I changed subfields in grad school – a big shift that I think is highly worthwhile. I’ve also been lucky enough to get a visiting job right after graduation, which many people do not. While there are aspects of professionalization that are important to address (such as the collegiality of being part of a profession that values, however slightly, peer review) that I think do not get addressed in favor of focusing on publishing, focusing too much on professionalization too often robs people of the intellectual work that makes this life worthwhile, valuable, and life-changing. Okay, clearly I’ve gone on too long and have a blogpost to write.
CM – Whenever I question her about some things, she sort of whispers “that’s just part of it, you have to wade through the bullshit in order to get to the good stuff.” Yes – I keep telling that to students and new faculty, too! However, I think there is certain BS that I never realized was BS, or wasn’t meant seriously, and also, I think that there are some venues in which the BS, like a cancer, has actually eaten up that good stuff.
Azgoddess – yes, of the life kind, agreed! I actually had that phrase in here and then decided it made the sentence too long and broadened the post too much…maybe I’ll put it back.
Earnest – yes!
Nezua – double yes!
I am glad to know that I am at least somewhat on the right track about what you write here when you discuss the academic environment. For a while with a series of your posts I was totally lost because all I could think of was “I just want to be a professor.” I knew there had to be more or it would not bother so many professors so much, but because of a lack of experience, I simply was not able to imagine myself in the role. This is what I attempt to do in order to experience the empathy. There is a professor that I know who is on track to be a provost, or the provost, I’m not sure if there is more than one. Anyway, in my opinion she is losing sight with what I think first drew her to being a professor. She is down to teaching on one class. Supposedly each committee or duty or maybe for some and not for others it counts as a point or so many points. Depending on the amount of points one has determines how many classes that professor teaches. So as I said, she is down to one class. I don’t see how one class can keep the spirit alive, not the spirit of teaching anyway. More like the spirit of administration or even power, I suspect. I realize how ignorant and naive I could and can be regarding the whole situation.
my ten month old daughter is a professor! holy shit. but don’t tell her about the provost. it would confuse her.
Nez, at that age I was also a professor, already – very concerned with the intellect.
CM – the whole thing is really hard to explain until you start doing it. Graduate school is fun. Professor jobs really vary.
Part of why I am hard to understand is that I write about it very allegorically, so as not to reveal identities.
The other part of it is that part of what I struggle with does not have to do with academia but with Reeducation.
I used to think that my academic struggles were strictly about my idiosyncracies, but I have recently figured out that both the academic struggles, and the Reeducation struggle, have a lot to do with sexism and verbal abuse / manipulation (especially the Reeducation), and that they are linked in that way. What parts of my malaise in academia are about academia per se and what parts are not is something I am trying to figure out.
Ahh, the reeducation. It makes one wish you can sue. However, knowing that women do not routinely get justice in cases where the abuse is obvious, then she would more than likely not get justice in a case that many in our population would not see anything wrong.
“‘…one must be centered in one’s work. This is elementary but many forces conspire to sabotage such centeredness, or to make it seem illegitimate.’
bang.”
Much later, reading in Anne Waldman’s book OUTRIDER, I have come across some comments on poetry and careers/careerism which reminded me of the “What Is A Scholar?” posts – in which a major theme is the replacement of education / scholarship with training / careerism. I am too tired right now to formulate a post about it but it has to do with the general situation of academics in which:
– one needs a LIFE WORK in order to be centered, but the practical need to think in terms of CAREER can become antithetical to the development of a sense of LIFE WORK. The career, one would have thought, should support the life work, but in reality much work ends up being produced in service of career rather than of consciousness or knowledge; and
– the question of a JOB can then be antithetical to the the development of a LIFE WORK. Although one needs a job.
– But one needs a LIFE WORK, or a sense thereof, not only (and not even primarily) because one should have one or more MAGNUM OPUS because it is one’s job to have them, but more fundamentally for purposes of maintaining integrity and growth, so that
– how to have a LIFE WORK in many practical situations is not actually obvious, although it is supposed and expected that one has one and that this sustains one, so that
– one is, in the end, expected to live on air, and
– the myth of the suffering poet, so to speak, remains intact.
I am not sure if this makes sense or if it has any brilliance, or if, on the other hand, it is moronic.
Waldman (page 29): “A course or progress through life or history; an occupation or profession engaged in as a life-work; a way of making a livelihood and advancing oneself. / Should poets be paid for what they do? Should they be housed and fed for their dulcet sound? Sing for their supper?”
Hmmm…I often think of the Melodians’ “Rivers of Babylon” in relation to the calls for ‘productivity’ (although on the other hand, I realize that we have JOBS, and are supposed to produce therefore). The relevant motifs are having been carried away … captivity … and then being required to sing. But “how can we sing King Alfa Song in a strange land?” Places which colonize and drain energy, but also expect more energy to be forthcoming. ***All of this has to do with the ways in which the current academic system robs autonomy and agency (aligned with education) and replaces them with System.***
I need to separate wheat from chaff in these ideas, but I think they may lead somewhere. Right now, I discern, the remarks next to the dashes might distill themselves into a Stein-style or Waldman-style talking poem. 😉