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

that i came out of this with any good experiences at all is, i think, my inadvertently following saval's advice and lucking into an advisor who was tolerant of my waywardness, even happy to let me do it. i once asked him if it was "ok" for me to be writing a phd dissertation in English on the sorta weird not really "literature" kind of topic i ended up writing about, and his response was "who cares?"

i think the predominant characteristic was kind of a general acceding to an impersonal disciplinary conception that was no one's own.

yeah this jives with my experience quite a bit. it's really quite sad.

in english i would imagine that would have a lot to do with a long-term malaise about the incorporation of theory into the discipline, the canon wars, etc. the sense that it doesn't matter what you do but you still have to do it in exactly some predetermined way (given the armature of scholarship, professional norms etc).

i don't work on it, but in philosophy one similar example seems to be the work abutting ethics on action theory and the nature of 'reasons', which keeps churning stuff out but which seems to have only slight purchase on reality, especially as far as pedagogy goes. it hasn't led to the kind of framing of the problem space that makes it possible to introduce it to newcomers and say, 'here is what the problems are, here is what needs to be done'. instead it's more like: what is x? we have no idea, there are so many things that could be said! here, start reading the literature about those things. it doesn't trickle back to the discipline's identity, its outward face.

i think it's similar in philosophy of language. they have no picture of the world to place it in. instead they just start out, still, with frege and russell and think that the way to transmit the discipline is by working up a competency at playing with the puzzles so that it's possible to wade through the most recent literature. twin earth, still, guh.

in english i would imagine that would have a lot to do with a long-term malaise about the incorporation of theory into the discipline, the canon wars, etc. the sense that it doesn't matter what you do but you still have to do it in exactly some predetermined way (given the armature of scholarship, professional norms etc).

yeah and i dont think it's any accident that the two from my class that are TT now were pretty much cookie-cutter historicist types. that's a "job" you can prepare yourself for.

so, um, today the Academic Council at my school will vote on my tenure- they might be doing this now, I'm not allowed to know exactly when it all goes down, but it is happening or will happen today

then there is a grace period in which the Provost and the President can either ratify that vote or overturn it (which rarely happens, but sometimes happens- meaning that today's vote both is and is not decisive- it's rare that a vote gets overturned, but it supposedly can happen) and there's no clear information about how long that grace period will last- a week? two weeks? a month?

currently inhabiting this (yes, absurdly privileged and very lucky but nonetheless profoundly anxiogenic) netherzone of unverifiability and uncertainty

the profession has a sadistic side that is structurally built in, all the jocular references to this process as an academic form of hazing are utterly otm but it's not a cute metaphor

i am like 100% certain you will get it! but good luck (even though you don't need it)!

a friend is on the tenure track at a small slac here, and their department has a tradition of subjecting every new tt hire (or past employees once they become tt) to an open-ended grilling session ostensibly related to their subject area, after their status has become official, i guess to see how they stand up.

my guess is that psychologically/socially speaking it is about being able to never have to have a conversation like that again that exposes oneself intellectually, since they seem not to otherwise.

best of luck tune was space

"i don't work on it, but in philosophy one similar example seems to be the work abutting ethics on action theory and the nature of 'reasons', which keeps churning stuff out but which seems to have only slight purchase on reality, especially as far as pedagogy goes. it hasn't led to the kind of framing of the problem space that makes it possible to introduce it to newcomers and say, 'here is what the problems are, here is what needs to be done'. instead it's more like: what is x? we have no idea, there are so many things that could be said! here, start reading the literature about those things. it doesn't trickle back to the discipline's identity, its outward face."

would like to hear more about why you think that work has only "slight purchase on reality" and that "it doesn't trickle back to the discipline's identity, its outward face."

like, do you mean that neo-Anscombians are hard to read/understand?

no simplicity, naturalness. distinctions that seem invented or stipulated more than they are necessary or reflective of the facts.

I'm sympathetic; I think that "the facts" in that area need to be better illustrated, so that the distinctions emerge more naturally. it will help to look at examples that are a bit outside what is the norm in writing in that area

iow I'm on this

my concern is a little more austinian maybe, that the whole normal approach is a little over-eager to use examples to illustrate facts which are secretly the products of poor philosophizing, rather than extending the range of examples in order to maintain a more clearheaded sense for actual facts

but i really don't understand practical reasoning, it sucks actually, keeps me from making sense of a lot of very routine discussions in ethics

yeah the kinds of examples I have in mind are well outside of practical reasoning in the usual sense. think of my username on this message board.

in that area the "facts", such as they are, are a bit more stable than in what's normally considered the domain of practical reasoning

good luck ttws! the academy reflects the hierarchy it's supposed to diffuse like nobody's business

http://chronicle.com/article/TeachingLearning-About/146403/

^ hierarchies within hierarchies within

omg the comments are hilarious
hilarious all around, really

i had a discomfiting experience of a center for teaching and learning, it is reassuring to hear that that is what they are like in general (AS I SUSPECTED)

there is a lot of resistance to the teaching and learning of teaching and learning
your experience is commonly reported on our frequently administered surveys

yet never reflected in your frequently offered workshops

that saval piece is great writing but it feels so alien to me in that it describes professors that seem to pay attention to grad students as anything other than occasional potential reflections of their egos that every now and then surprise you with a neat idea "like watching a dog play the piano."

(perhaps this is a disciplinary distinction)

the description of mannerisms and the contrast to office life is spot on though.

the way you know saval is truly out is that he would say that shit about arcade - a truly horrifying blog hosted and preened over by his own dept

yeah I read that piece & it just made me glad I only took one English class in college. it sounds nothing like my daily lived experience.

but I am "doing ok" in the academy so I guess it wouldn't sound right to me.

i should say that, though i was an english phd, my own department was also far more chill (though not totally foreign to what he's talking about). but it was also far less prestigious and competitive.

we had a guy in my class who was an MA from uchicago, and i was really struck by how different his approach was. if you asked him what his final seminar paper was about, he wouldn't tell you because you might steal the idea! and of course the coda to this story is that he is currently employed as tenure-track faculty at a pretty good school.

i'll be interviewing (over skype) for a 1 year visiting assistant professor position this week. they are actually hiring for 3 of these positions (though i imagine they are targeting each position for different needs). still kind of surprising they have so many spots to fill. apparently there was a "early retirement" program which led to some vacancies. don't think my odds of getting it are terribly good in any case.

did i ever complain that in a skype interview once i was bushwhacked by a request to spontaneously teach my interviewers something?

because apparently they will do that. just say, hey, how bout teach something, right now. you know, just a little, real quick. into the leetle window dere.

ask whose house you would be staying in when you visit.

I've done i dunno forty of these as an interviewer and one as an interviewee. When people move up in the rankings on account of these ime it's because the research convos were more fun than we'd expected. You don't grok depth or trajectory very well from a one page research blurb, so a good convo can open things up.

that's pretty funny, j. no idea what I'd say to that! "ok everyone open your books to page 200..."

that's another weird thing about this. It's a one year 4/4 teaching load, and you're only allowed to teach courses already offered. so they said the interview will be mainly about teaching (another reason I probably won't get it). on the other hand, they've already said they will be hiring 3 (!) tenure track positions next year so whoever does get these will, I should think, be considered for those as well.

I had a phone interview for a postdoc and their bushwack question was 'what scientific discovery do you wish you'd made'. Sat in silence for nearly 20 minutes thinking about it, occasionally letting them know I was still on the line. They didn't pressure me to hurry up at all. It was a tough question but I knew there was an answer that wasn't Charles Darwin or whatever

ha! that's just bonkers. maybe they'll ask what book i wish i'd written. i'll make a list.

this will only be my third interview for an academic position. they said it'll be 30 minutes and focus on teaching. and they are looking for someone to teach upper division english courses. which is strange considering that my teaching experience thus far has been limited to introductory composition courses and some intro to literature courses. im strong on research and publications, not so much teaching (which would make this a great opportunity to beef up my cv). so i feel like they may see me as a risk. hope i can say the right things.

i looked again at the email they sent me and it talks about wanting to add faculty in areas "deemed vital to the 21st century university." anyone know what this is code for? digital humanities?

it means u flip ur classroom, become video producer, make dean feel dean erection over toutable blended course offerins, huge gains in efficiency, HUGE

should i allow the phrase "student centered" to pass my lips or is that passe now.

they luvvvv it. but they also love PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES. you may have to do some recon to get a feel for how into faddish b.s./the wave of all future education they are.

i did use the phrase "the future of the humanities" in my cover letter. i knew that would pay off eventually.

BIG TEXT

damn I think I'm gonna be near the last of 14 to be interviewed.

my theory about this has always been that they already have their favorites picked out and just making sure they're not total weirdos in the interview.

Yup
Also if you're appealing to their teaching side, mention your commitment to student persistence (if you have one).

your persistence re their persistence

if they're interviewing you, they think you can do the job. this has more to do with their weird intangibles. someone must have liked what they imagine to be your intangibles.

thanks for the advice, guys. this feels like my last best shot at a foot in the door, so im a little frenetic about it.

committees usually don't have collective favs so interviews are a way to make a good impression on the collective, make the committees' convos about you. in a good way. there's usually some who blows it in a noteworthy way and gets a silly nickname to make it easy for the committee to explain what they're NOT getting "thank goodness"

o yeah remember poopface, lol what were we thinking srsly

p much

interview went....ok. it's funny, i spent so much time preparing for questions about teaching that when they asked about my research i blanked a little! ha.

no poop on face but my hair looked a little funny.

as expected, did not get the visiting prof gig. back to plotting my escape...

aaaaaaaaaaaa

probably didn't have ENOUGH poop on your face

ha!

the rejection letter was pretty boilerplate. "specific needs" cited and all that. (ironic that that phrase so often used vaguely.)

it's complimenting myself WAY too much to conclude that i dont have a home in the academic world, that im doing my own thing and it's just not gonna fit into the career molds provided, but that's what i like to tell myself.

i don't think that's implausible at all. i have lots of friends who got jobs primarily on the basis of (it seems) fitting in. just did a thing the boring-ass way one is expected to do it, when someone wanted it done without any questions.

everyone i know who got good jobs came from family money. undermines the entire value system of the humanities, but such is life in america

yeah, same here (re: doing things the boring-ass way leading to jobs). there's something about the endless factory-like production of (new or old) historicist literary criticism that depresses the hell out of me. it's not that the work is totally value-less (though let's be real about its relative value) but it's just lifeless at this point.

the "values" are 100% undermined by the class system that keeps funneling the well-to-do into lit-crit while keeping everyone else out

when they talk marx it's like schizophrenics talking freud. entertaining, but not helping