It is the topic of this blog, really: I am trying to de-Reeducate myself which means mentor myself, and my education was good but Reeducation was, essentially, bad mentoring. There is this to talk about in my case but it is not all. And yet I am tired of talking. I think I just had … More More on mentoring
1. People keep saying one should not care about money and is vapid if one does, but I think they have what I would consider good academic salaries and benefits, and reasonable support for teaching and research. The amount of time and effort one spends figuring out how to function in the absence of these … More …and, a more condensed discussion of fatuous academic advice and bad academic situations; three things which really irritate me today.
As we know, I was told not to go to graduate school because it would lead to being a professor, which was bad because it was a research job and might be located in a snowy climate. I might have ceased and desisted more easily had I been given better information on the actual disadvantages … More …and again, against fatuous advice: a post for graduate students
That is one of the pieces of advice which it is only safe to take at an R1 and which I wish R1 faculty would stop dispensing at people who will lose their jobs for taking it. Real advice: Learn never to say no. You were once an adult, you were once allowed to say … More Bad advice #1: “Learn to say no.”
I keep thinking: if I just do this, if I just do that, if I just mollify them in this way or stand up to them in that way, if I just improve myself in this direction or that, and so on, they will stop obstructing me and mine and stop making it so hard … More One way you can tell I have an abusive work situation
Evidently I am still considering this question. Tonight at the football game, which was hard fought, I was noticing how much it resembled work at the university. You struggle and struggle to open a space for yourself in which to work. You are paid to get your ball across that line but they have people … More More on renunciation
Well, at my R1s we had those things and in my experience it was freeing, not limiting: you knew exactly what the program was, and then you got to decide what you wanted to do to meet the goals. When I worked at my SLAC, we had vague program goals and courses were more free … More “If we have common syllabi, policies, exam formats and so on, we will have uniformity and will all just be teaching to the tests.”
As we know, I am in a writing group and committed to do research and ideally, writing daily. I always have a few minutes for this, no matter what, but I want to spend more time than that. I need to, if I am to get anything truly significant accomplished. I also deserve to because … More Public Opinion Poll
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.
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
