I have to talk about this at some point. My good colleague is not wrong and I would love to be in her department. But she is quite a different person from me. I am going off to my Monday meeting of terror, prelude to my Tuesday of horror, after which we will be home … More Lundi

Last night at the football game, where I was because of my exchange student, one of the important guests was a very trailblazing and high achieving alumna, the highlights of whose resumé were read. “Who cares,” chanted the crowd, “Who cares.” This alumna is a Black woman. The chants of “Who cares” turned to boos … More Southern hospitality

In Reeducation, one was not supposed to be able to handle the stress of adult life. To be able to do so was “denial” of how difficult it “must really be” and, more frighteningly, indicated an absence of “feeling”. If one lacked this “feeling” one might have a very severe problem and need very severe treatment. In … More More on Reeducation

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

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.”