This blog is about getting over Reeducation, which had several elements – one of which was the academic advice given advanced graduate students and assistant professors, advice I misunderstood because it didn’t really apply to me. In the same period I had a psychotherapist who, unbeknownst to me, was also an AA sponsor; in AA, … More On Academic Advice
I know the reasons why there should be breadth requirements, but when I was in college there were not nearly so many as now, and there were many more courses allowed to fulfill them. And in the end, I do not like required courses beyond prerequisites and corequisites for the major. Am I terribly left … More On Required Courses
The students are desperate to know if they can pass the course and how much work it will or will not take. What easier work can they substitute for the required work, they ask. The instructors are desperate to teach in as expedient a way as they can. This is so they can avoid considering … More High Stakes
Remember as you read this: all of my stories are mixed in terms of place and time, and my characters are distorted composites created as types; you do not know for sure how many universities I work for or have worked for, or from whose traits my composite characters have been built; I am a … More Still More on Why I So Dislike Teaching Foreign Languages
I am overworked and I know it is a crime, but that has not been the point of the last two months of posts. My small point is, do not overdramatize because I can show you overwork and this person can show you still more. My larger and real point, and this is an individual’s … More Rainbow Sign
Remember, you may find a cathartic post here at any time. I realize how Gothic these sound but I have absorbed many decades of dire warnings and discouraging words. Every post in which I repel those who say you cannot do it makes me stronger and I am going for that, full on. Y’all don’t … More Advertencia al lector
Ça va, man? I asked, running into one of our newer hires; evidently ça n’allait pas, because of social life. I may place a manifesto on my door: dear assistant professor, dear instructor, the reason the other instructors and assistant professors are not hanging out with you is not that they are mean, but that you … More Mais yeah, cher
I was at a reading the other day by a famous writer with a good vita who is writing every day but declared he would not rush his book. He also said he had never submitted for publication anything he thought he could still improve upon. This attitude has not kept him from publishing but … More High Degrees of Perfection
I have spent weeks on this weblog telling some assistant and associate professors with lots of research time and resources to stop trying to discourage the rest of us by telling us we must suffer in solidarity with the suffering they allege to be undergoing due to the challenge of writing, and in case the … More Martin Seligman
“Think of yourself as a prison warden or as a dog trainer,” said someone who has just made Full and who is an enthusiastic teacher of freshmen. “I have absolutely no interest in identifying, even for a moment, with either of those roles,” said I, and therein lies my defect. I am far more pitiless. … More Freshmen…
