The things I used to work on are beautiful and fascinating but I never stopped to enjoy them, really, because from time immemorial I had been employing the efficiency model in the interest of getting things done, making deadlines. Other people may have explored as undergraduates or beginning graduate students but my friends and I … More Du plaisir
It had a quotation about advising people on graduate school that I thought was smart but that bothered me in the end. I killed it by mistake but perhaps that was a good thing. I am going to stop railing about academic advice because in the end it is a personal issue, I am talking … More In which I find I have inadvertently killed a post
One of my great problems is that I was always told it was important, for survival, not to be teaching oriented, and then only ever got jobs where teaching was the most important thing. I am intellectually challenging generally, so I am often considered a “bad” teacher. It has been made more than clear to … More Des étudiants
This article; the syllabi; the LASA2015 abstract; the grading; the parking permit. In the fall: the other article. It is strange no longer to collude in my own oppression but I appear to be achieving this. I will become stronger still. The very worst aspect of working at our place is the way we are … More To do
So it is going now, and I am becoming one with this project. Whole. The image of jumping off into a project does not work for me. I decided it was not a question of jumping off, but of drawing things toward me. You have to think in terms of integration and love, not alienation, … More One
Now everything is beautiful again and it has to do with pleasure. Or the self-love I lost in Reeducation and have difficulty summoning here. It is not this town that is terrible, although it does not suit me; and it is not academia, although I wish I could have done something more interesting. It is … More On getting back to what needs to be done
“If you are not a professor, then you are an uncultured person interested only in money.” “Because you were so selfish as to do the Ph.D, you owe it to the world to be a professor — in any circumstances, and no matter what else you might have to give up.” “If you are not … More It is an ignorant attitude, actually
I think it is so foregrounded now because there is so little of it. In the past research was done in most undergraduate classes but now, instead, select undergraduates undertake supervised research projects while others do not learn research skills. Thus does the neoliberal university say it is doing more when it is in fact … More On undergraduate research
One of my friends points out, in a nonacademic context, that life in limbo is a hard thing to manage. This is a good observation and I think living in limbo is one of the main stressors of academia. Of course you can say that uncertainty is everywhere but I am speaking of the constant … More Limbo
I do not agree that communicative approaches, those methods referred to as grammar-translation, the direct and natural methods, and so on, are merely teaching “styles” — they have different goals and produce different results. Since we as a group do not have a common approach, the de facto departmental method is that used by those … More I should not say this in real life now, but…
coldhearted scientist وداد 