We have established that many put teaching far ahead of research and/or life far ahead of work, but others want to be virtuosos and put that first, naturally. I am in this group and I thought ours was the standard attitude. But it is not necessarily. Locally, we struggle for tenure or promotion while others … More Now I understand everything.
So tonight, trying to work with a graduate student on the concept for hir paper, I realized ze had not yet read the primary texts in question. Here I have been e-mailing suggestions for the secondary bibliography and the reason the student keeps wavering on hir stand and focus is that ze has not read … More And I can rest my case!
The point is that if you have any form of rational circumstance, all you have to do is put a bit of time into things and they can then be accomplished. I so, so, so dislike academic advice. Don’t spend time on this, or that, or the other, don’t spend any time time time. But … More …y me cago en la leche
As we know, the reason I always felt so at sea with that issue was, I had no idea what our goals or standards were: it was only clear to me that whatever they were, they were unfamiliar and unknown to me. But the reason they were so threatened by our asking what the goals … More Nouveauté du jour
1. We may well be getting a 2% raise next year. That will be the first in five years, although there have been 71 salary adjustments to retain people who got better offers and although some people have gotten the small amounts you get for promotion (if I were promoted I would get $600 more … More In which my university tries to become lovable, and succeeds
Here is the shoe I recommend for this fall. Here is a .pdf of the piece of paper I received almost by chance, and here is the website I found years later. I associate academic advice and verbal abuse. While we are having foreign language wars in Maringouin, some of the sentences I hear in … More Off topic
Here is my theory: it is not that foreign language study is different from the study of other subjects, except to the extent that people do not realize study means practice. It and a few other subjects, are more labor intensive from a teaching point of view, however. And: I have had major trauma around … More Language program news
I got e-mail from blog readers asking whether I were all right, and yes. I had a PTSD episode, which I disliked. I have been researching flashbacks today and realized something fundamental, but not at all new; I had merely forgotten it. Back when I was seriously going to quit academia, a series of events … More Everyone is fine
I am not interested in this, but I need to be. I would be more interested if we did not have a cumbersome textbook and website package to navigate, and if we had a/v that really worked. I am getting more interested because I am getting a part-time TA to whom I need to be … More How can I become more interested than I am in teaching basic Spanish courses, to the language requirement?
I am recovering from a fit of depressive pique I had over a question of academic identity, really. I see this now having pondered that post by Squadromatico, which is not only about what parts of life one gave up, or what parts of one’s ambitions remain unrealized, but more profoundly about what parts of … More On identity, and on a battle line
