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

i'll be at the 3 year mark this december. and considering how poorly the last few years have gone i think 3 years (4 if you count my ABD year) is plenty.

is there a thread somewhere on ilxor.com that isn't visibel to the public where we can whinge about horribly-conducted job searches and the general awfulness that comes with seeking a faculty position?

it might save everyone a lot of grief if tenure were awarded at birth to rich kids and the children of the already tenured to accept or reject when they come of age, depending on how they want to spend their time as adults. pretending that the extreme unfairness afflicting the rest of the US doesn't apply to the academy doesn't do anyone disadvantaged any favors, much less help fix the unfairness itself

hard not to wonder sometimes, especially regarding the humanities, what scholarship / higher learning might look like if we acted like intelligence were equally distributed among all the classes, instead of conveniently concentrated in rich connected families. but that's silly talk

huh?

i've met much a lower percentage of tenure-track and tenured faculty who come from poor families than i've met people in general who come from poor families. if my experience is not somehow unique, and this is a trend, then I wonder what the academy in general and the humanities in particular would be like if it were less dominated by people who grew up privileged or at least financially secure. if my experience is an exception, and not the rule, how unlucky i am

doesn't it have more to do w/ it being harder for people without family support to begin -- and more important, finish -- graduate school? once you're over that hurdle, i'm not sure if there are any bigger barriers to the tenure track to people from poor or working-class backgrounds..... of course it's nearly impossible for /anyone/ to get tenure-track jobs these days.

maybe i'm naïve though. i honestly don't know the backgrounds of all my professors in any detail. a few of them are following in their parents' footsteps (they were faculty brats), but a few of them definitely had working-class origins (parents were farmers/factory workers).

Well, having family money could help, as it could help in most areas of life, wrt being able to take low-paying part-time positions, being able to go to conferences when you don't get funding, paying for performances and recordings (in the field of music), not going bankrupt if you get sick, etc. Doesn't mean people don't still have to work for it, though; no one gets tenure as a birthright. I agree that the biggest hurdles would come earlier. I know that a couple of my grad school peers who ended up with permanent positions did come from working-class backgrounds but I'm not going to argue that a comfortable background doesn't help.

from an academic friend on FB:

"Look, the only sensible thing, however much one loves teaching, is to get out of a market when it is this bad. Teaching can be a joy and even a bit addictive but at some point one needs to cut one's losses. Leaving academia does not mean the end of intellectual life or activity. One can still attend conferences for example. More than that, one can take the time to read outside one's own academic area and perhaps get a broader view of the world."

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/02/national-survey-sheds-light-previously-ignored-adjunct-faculty-concerns

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/12/29/lawsuit-claims-teaching-assistants-at-amherst-were-told-to-sleep-with-students-to-boost-class-enrollment/

w.h.a.t.

Holy crap

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/11/new-analysis-offers-more-evidence-against-student-evaluations-teaching

first day of class im teaching is tomorrow. it'll be over in april. unless a hail mary comes through (ie, another postdoc) I'm planning for this to be my last semester in academia. half terrified and half relieved.

kicking off the semester tonight with Government and Non-Profit Accounting and Reporting. the icing on the cake of an 8 hour work day

starting to teach another online course, weirdly weightless still, feeling kind of like ryan but still with no real idea about a future

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh-QWKGbm2Q

you know, like caine

YES

you know...meet people, get in adventures.

been doing a lot of self-assessment and more and more it feels like the right decision. im tapped out. there's definitely no passion or excitement for it anymore, and absent a stable paycheck if this work doesn't engage you anymore there's not much at all to recommend it other than a lot of self-directed free time (no small thing).

i think i could do good work, at least publishable work, but not enough of it, and not certainly not fast enough, to make it in academia as it's presently set up. i finished a book 6 months ago and people are like "now what?" and i simply dont have any ideas that aren't really vague at this point, things that are years away from being something i can write up and show to others. I feel like i need time to really immerse myself in some things but you can't go far on vague musings this early in your career.

im not able to simply pump out articles, and frankly the thought of doing so is nauseating to me. it took me forever to write my dissertation. so a slow pace, relative lack of a prestigious institutional association, an inability to really market what im trying to do, and the lack of a flag to fly (or at least a flag that's not simply a non-starter in the humanities) or a group or movement to belong to essentially seals my fate.

haha 'now what' how about yall read my book and think about it for a minute motherfuckers

there is not a huge call for exegesis of the works of herr W but it was at least a scholarly niche i could have exploited, except that i felt like the people fussing over their interpretive befuddlements were sort of nowhere, no idea what they were about. over time as i've built up more of an interpretation of my own in concert with broader reading in philosophy that i needed, i have started to feel like i could get back into the nuts-and-bolts stuff without it being nauseating, mainly because i would have a sense of standing somewhere, but i still am hampered by a debilitating lack of… belief in any particular thing. like, i can't take others' academic work seriously enough to expend the effort on it to make my the grist for my mill, and i don't have enough / concrete enough things of my own i'm committed to that i can just spin the articles out of myself spider-style.

the funny thing is, i stay readin my philosophy… broke some gadamer out for pleasure the other day, still meeting with some old friends and colleagues to read through j bernstein's book on adorno, tiptoed into reading sein und zeit auf deutsch this fall—my habitus is just all out of whack and the idea of working up a 20-minute conference paper on anything might as well be an ancient babylonian rite as far as i'm concerned

a major pet peeve of mine is so many major academics/intellectuals taking the air out of the room by publishing formulaic iterations of a few key ideas, essentially pushing other voices out of the way. perhaps this is a function of the publishing industry and authorial egos meshing well.

but i still am hampered by a debilitating lack of… belief in any particular thing.

the mark of a lot of mediocre work in my field is essentially the "X academic trend + Y canon" (ie, Environmental Studies and, say, the Harlem Renaissance). but the key is the X part, which often makes sense for grad students, since to expect them to develop an entire critical POV is asking a lot. but the consequence of this seems to be a kind of futures market for ideas: what trend will be in demand when i hit job market?

honestly all that shit is fine. really. i dont see how it could be any other way, but the bigger problem is that that's ALL there is anymore. either you fit a job description which reads like a shopping list or you go back to slinging coffee or whatever. there's very little wiggle room unless you're some kind of self-marketing genius or able to do something different while making it sound like something else that's more in fashion. i think middle of the road academics like myself--who may do interesting left field work or may not--wont really get that chance anymore.

i stay readin my philosophy

i have an ambitious post-academic reading list, and i think i'll be able more or less to continue to read that kind of stuff with pleasure for the rest of my life--which is really nice!

also that bernstein book looks good

since i finished my phd i've applied for one postdoc and haven't been able to work up enough energy to make myself sound interesting enough and smart enough to apply for any more. but my chances of being successful with my first application are pretty high, right?

was it that one i found in Toronto?

yes! evidently i haven't managed to put much effort into this yet

haha. i have an idea of what you work on so if i see anything good for you i'll let you know.

you're not too late for an general humanities postdoc at Emory (in Atlanta) and one at MIT. and if you can tie your ideas to the theme of "information" then there's one at penn state. all three are due Jan 15th though.

thank you for continuing to be my PA

after 4 years on the job market you get pretty organized. it's my most marketable skill now.

i believe the most marketable skill from my decade of philosophical training is a remarkable proficiency in googling stuff

answering a question with a question <---

whenever i read the word 'obsfuscatory' i hear it in the voice of Sylvester; "obfushthcatory"

whoops wrong thread, lol

good luck on the job market :)

wasn't aware that these lectures even existed:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/pedagogy-with-a-hammer-on-the-use-and-abuse-of-nietzsche-for-a-neoliberal-era/

re. how is ethics taught outside usa/uk : in japan right now & hung with someone teaching a few courses here & there & one is intro to ethics & he just teaches the western canon, not even any like confucius b/c he says he doesn't have any background in it. & this is at a big shot tokyo university. his doctorate is american which is sort of a factor but I dunno, in the usa there's pressure to expand the western canon & as I travel I realize how doing that could instigate reclamation in non-western countries &...that's a weird kind of colonial...-ism?, like even your own indigenous works have to be made open to you through the west.

prob wrong thread but it's like 4 of us post on this handful of philo-ish threads so it doesn't really matter which thread I guess

if you wanna run w/ the kantians and utilitarians welp

yeah. I wonder if this is related to the professionalization of philosophy, as discussed in recent days: like suddenly to have a "modern university" you had to have courses in philosophy that fit within the "modern university" and to be a "modern university" meant to be like German and French universities. apparently the main Japanese universities date from the 2nd half of the 19th century. so the tradition for teaching philosophy in this kind of setting doesn't have any particular local tradition. & so naturally the mode of philosophizing in a course won't be organic either.

I don't know I'm just thinking about "authenticity of local philosophical traditions" & its relation to diversity concerns in the west

totally the rong thread but while we're here, i guess... is the european tradition treated differently in and out- of the states, or the same? i would think that maybe certain more anglo- notions of where the earlier european tradition _led_ would color that?

also on reflection why the heck would you teach confucius especially in japan anyway? from what little i know that's arguably less "indigenous" in terms of tradition than the euro tradition anyway...

if that isn't the case, that would be an interesting argument to make.

Def wrong thread but dunno what the right one is

The indigenous philosophical or really ethical tradition here was Confusian but after Meiji and the advent of modern universities that didn't have a place in higher ed here, I am told. Kids still learn that ethical tradition in school. But then if they take philo at university that ethical training isn't part of their further work. Weird

Also I saw somewhere that Japan is ending philo as a major but I haven't heard about that here this visit

there's not much at all to recommend it other than a lot of self-directed free time

That I imagined this to be the case but found it to be the opposite has really been bumming me out lately actually. It's my third semester of a faculty job and I really don't know how much longer I want to keep doing this.

In 15 years of office jobs, there were times that were useless and boring but I usually had one primary job that I tended to enjoy and spent most of my time doing it; when I walked out at the end of the day I didn't have to give it another thought until the next day. Weekends were totally open and I could do whatever I wanted to without guilt.

Now I always, ALWAYS, have something to do that I don't want to - grading, prepping, dealing with bureaucracy, politics, inept and insane people, letters of recommendation, tons of email, a service component of my appointment that could probably be an actual job on its own, etc. I'm always pulled in a hundred directions and am never good at anything when I can't give it my full attention so I find myself having to sort and prioritize all sorts of tasks I have no interest in doing. I love teaching and interacting with students but that's maybe 10 hours a week total, or a quarter of what would be a full-time job. I can't really remember the last time I did anything that could remotely be considered "research" (though I am non-tenure-track so this isn't a huge part of my position).

Granted I have a kid now that eats up enourmous amounts of time, but I was kind of getting this vibe before he came along and it feels much worse now.

i think the vast, vast majority of faculty positions are like yours, sadly. there's a handful of pretty posh "teach a class or two a semester and fly around giving talks" type jobs--i know, because i've seen them--but unless you *already* have one of those i dont think they'll be making more any time soon.

the pre-tenure part of a tenure-track research job does sound like 5-7 years of hell.

even the "pretty posh "teach a class or two a semester and fly around giving talks" type jobs" involve a whole lotta "grading, prepping, dealing with bureaucracy, politics, inept and insane people, letters of recommendation, tons of email". but isn't this just par for the course for a bureaucratic job?

Yeah there is no academic job so posh that you're not spending your evenings and weekends answering email, writing letters, putting out bureaucratic fires.

it is amusing to imagine like Judith Butler or Robert Pippin responding to a grammatically challenged undergraduate's email with "well, if you had read the syllabus you would already know the answer to your question..."

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, you would ask her what would be on the final, and she would reply, “All manner of things shall be on the exam.”

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, you could drop by with a question anytime, and she would be in her office. There would be rumours that she actually lived in her office. Even on the rare occasions that her door was closed, you would occasionally still hear the whistle of the teakettle.

...

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would be good friends with Judith Butler. Sometimes you would hear their uproarious laughter coming from Julian’s office. You’d peek in and find both of them in front of the computer, watching cat videos together.

http://the-toast.net/2015/08/05/if-julian-of-norwich-were-your-professor/

it is amusing to imagine like Judith Butler or Robert Pippin responding to a grammatically challenged undergraduate's email with "well, if you had read the syllabus you would already know the answer to your question..."

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=179605

"Professor Butler is the best! Don't be intimidated by her fame like I was. She's the most humble and down-to-earth person I have ever met. She genuinely cares about her students and is always willing to help you during office hours or in class. She will make you feel comfortable and at ease. Her grading is fair and she's extremely approachable."

lol

. Needs to stop talking about the Middle East.