Help, I'm trapped in an ivory tower! Or "what the fuck am i getting myself into with this academia stuff"

http://erinbartram.com/uncategorized/the-sublimated-grief-of-the-left-behind/

:(

She hasn't even arrived at the worst part yet.

Leaving academia isn't so bad. It's very leave-able and there's a lot about it that's good to be done with. I imagine that most who leave academia are pretty happy about it in the long run.

But the problem is that not everyone can really leave (given their employment records, skills, etc.), and so they remain forever on the bubble of "contingent faculty"--with no real purpose or motivation to be an engaged "scholar" and also no real hope of any other kind of career.

another tenured friend

and another one

Mabna Institute?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/23/politics/iranian-hackers-indicted-universities-government/index.html

I gave notice this morning that I will not renew my contract this fall, in order to attend to a personal matter. Walking away from a dream job: classic or dud?

Having just completed a PhD that has predictably led nowhere (for now…) I'm inclined to say 'dud', but it may turn out to be classic in the long run. Here's to hoping…

Oh, and good luck with whatever comes next.

Thanks. In short, my partner has been going through a health crisis and I can't justify continuing to live away from her most of the year, nor does it make sense for her to move. It was still a wrenching decision to make. I realize that I'm nudging the door to a permanent academic position a little more closed by walking out on a full-time position that it took years of struggle to get in the first place. In the end, though, I didn't go into music because I wanted to put 'a job' above all else, nor because I wanted my life choices dictated by a marketplace of ruthless bureaucracies.

huzzah

trapped in adjunct hell. they're giving me an award next week and i'm supposed to sign a contract to teach a summer course sometime in the next few days. typical situation where they continue to throw me crumbs and i continue to greedily eat them because most of the other jobs around here are worse, if better paying.

anyway, hi everyone, been a long time.

I'm really sorry to hear that, Sund4r. It's of little comfort, but you most certainly made the right decision.

It definitely feels like the right thing to do but, yeah, wasn't easy.

http://www.nea.org/grants/teacherday.html

writing prelims in 3 weeks pray for me

Good luck! Economics?

prayers sent! a prelims horror story: we started a half hour late on day 1 of 2 because someone in my cohort got stuck in the elevator

xp- yes. and thanks :)

congrats flopson??

thx man :)

first year was pretty awesome, i gotta say. material was mostly boring but 2 terrific stats profs and one excellent theory prof kept me going. the real salvation, though, was falling so hard in love with the friends i've made in the program. the only bad part is being so far from my family; my mother and i keep in touch, but it's painful to miss seeing my 8 and 15 year old cousins grow up

a year in sounds pretty early for prelims but i guess i don't know from prelims

our prelims were after the first year

our dept calls them comps even though we don’t have quals

Congrats dude!

thanks :)

Congrats!

thx :)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homeless-crisis-is-getting-worse-in-america-s-richest-cities

L., who asked to go by her middle initial for fear of losing her job, couldn’t afford her apartment earlier this year after failing to cobble together enough teaching assignments at two community colleges. By July she’d exhausted her savings and turned to a local nonprofit called Safe Parking L.A., which outfits a handful of lots around the city with security guards, port-a-potties, Wi-Fi, and solar-powered electrical chargers. Sleeping in her car would allow her to save for a deposit on an apartment. On that night in late September, under basketball hoops owned by an Episcopal church in Koreatown, she was one of 16 people in 12 vehicles. Ten of them were female, two were children, and half were employed.

one of my students accidentally uploaded his IT homework to me instead of his philosophy homework - basic concepts about variables and assignment operators in python

so i graded it anyway and gave helpful comments

from this episode i have learned that i should probably be able to teach a freshman course in that department, sadly i lack the appropriate credential to be able to snag the work

idk reach out informally, philosophy is a better background for programming than computer science imo

lol i was doing that stuff when i was 12, i just gave up on it for a 'more meaningful' career path

ironically i took more credits in comp sci when i was an undergrad than i did on film (0), which is what i'm teaching about at the moment

Philosophy of film? What kind of stuff are you assigning?

no it's a thematic intro, meaning of life style stuff, as is the fashion, but half films half philosophy. just did some prepping last night for our last film, IKIRU, probably the most traditional on-subject choice of the semester.

had a kid say MISE EN SCENE in his homework the other week. can you believe that. mise en scene. i certainly didn't teach him to say it!

http://erinbartram.com/uncategorized/the-sublimated-grief-of-the-left-behind/

― ? (seandalai), Tuesday, February 13, 2018 5:45 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

:(

― pomenitul, Tuesday, February 13, 2018 6:14 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

She hasn't even arrived at the worst part yet.

: )

she has since founded a history magazine powered by NTT historians (who are paid for their work)

http://erinbartram.com/uncategorized/contingent-magazine/

:)))

i have grad cohort peers who quit, and grad cohort peers who graduated then quit, and loads now who have since been tenured, some deservedly so, some unaccountably so, and one who it must be said played the game with all due ambition and toil and can't nobody tell them nothing, and still, it's nice to see them signing up for workshops for stimulating lost creativity and for figuring out how to write and overcome blocks and be productive again, because even having all the comforts and advantages of a secure place within the ivory tower's walls means nothing, that shit just comes and goes for all too elusive reasons.

<gif of yosemite sam doing dance-rabbit etc, pistols blazing>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDr42dzsbAQ

A year and change out of academia, I feel a lot more relaxed and am better at my instrument(s) but also sometimes feel like I'm getting dumber, spend way too much time online, and actively seek out work in my second language to keep from getting bored. My carbon footprint is definitely worse.

naw dawg i'm getting dumber too and i'm still on the inside, pretty sure it's trump's fault

I've managed to get a hefty amount of stuff done since the beginning of my postdoc yet have never felt dumber or less in tune with my work.

after four years and change I'm finally getting as good at teaching in my third language as I was in my first, or maybe in some ways better because I can't rely on jokes and have to be sensitive to how to express things that I would brush over in English.

yeah things like that make me feel for my international students, what are they even getting if the jokes don't get through the native-fluency filter

yeah. I have so much more sympathy now for my non-native-speaker profs too (tbh most of them through undergrad & grad). they weren't usually funny but now I see why.

tbh now at least my masters courses are full of non-native-speaker students, so we're all working in our third or fourth languages. somehow it works?

naw dawg i'm getting dumber too and i'm still on the inside, pretty sure it's trump's fault

― j., mardi 15 octobre 2019 11:00 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Could just be age then

i'm on the inside and i'm dying

This was posted on the 00s tracks thread and, although my life isn't this adventurous, I think it goes some way towards explaining my overwhelming lack of motivation to apply for the five good tenure-track jobs that are currently advertised by the College Music Society: https://www.theonion.com/temp-hides-fun-fulfilling-life-from-rest-of-office-1819566599

Is there anyone ITT who got a PhD, left academia (couldn't get a job or other reasons), and now feels that going to grad school in the first place was a big waste of time?

On second thought I guess that is unlikely to have happened to anybody here, but I'd also be interested to hear anecdotes about other people it happened to (interested in knowing whether that sort of experience is possible/common, and what it feels like).