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

Congrats! Does that mean it's a teaching post-doc? (My summer is also going to be a music technology cram session.)

I had a Skype interview on Monday for a VAP teaching position and am already seriously questioning whether I would even want to move halfway across the continent for a 4/4 teaching load.

Ha, I actually got called back for another interview this week. It kind of felt good to say "I have accepted another offer." When it rains, it pours, I guess?

yeah it includes a small teaching load. i dont even know what the course(s) will be yet, other than undergraduate. this has been very sudden.

things are happening for me also! but this isn't on 77 so funk dat

but congrats ryan, keeping the game alive

stay of execution! they're gonna have to physically remove me from academia.

yay congrats ryan!

(btw not in academia rn & rn don’t plan to return, for my own reasons; don’t miss it rn but ivory tower will always have (gnawed off) piece of my heart)

Has anyone been following the La C0ur scandal? Interesting stuff.

http://crookedtimber.org/2015/06/08/professors-do-far-less-teaching-than-the-public-imagines/

'ppl we trust to teach' = some grad student who seemed ok and managed not to flunk out by year 3 or 4 and needs an assignment just when the dept needs a slot filled

so much trust

http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2015/07/a-university-without-shared-governance.html

good stuff

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/entitlements-for-education-pension-universities/400820/

on 'coming pension crisis'

yup, yet another reason to get out (of the country, for instance)

you pastry-ass eatin motherfucker

that's cheese-ass eatin motherfucker to you

they got the one in the other over there, i hear

eat em in their little hats, with their little mustaches trimmed so they never get any cheese on em

First lectures of the new semester tomorrow! I've spent most of today and yesterday and, still, things feel a little loose.

Ditto, good luck out there!

Thanks, you too! I'll need it.

First day of class in a liberal arts college: we didn't get through everything because people were caught up in describing how Ligeti made them feel. I could get used to this.

How was yours, bentelec?

First day of class in a liberal arts college: we didn't get through everything because people were caught up in describing how Ligeti made them feel. I could get used to this.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, 25 August 2015 20:41 (15 minutes ago) Permalink

Haha. That's sweet.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/business-executive-named-university-iowa-president-33517754

How was yours, bentelec?

― EveningStar (Sund4r)

Just seeing this now - it was pretty good! It takes a while for those in-class powers of improvisation to come back. I just moved from teaching mostly grads at a mid-sized private university to mostly undergrads at a giant public university, so it's going to take some time to feel out who I'm working with.

Having come out of a highfalutin liberal arts college, Ligeti ~feelings~ are a very warm memory - it's possible but unlikely to get in a comparable situation in my field! Just be sure to sensibly prune back the 2.5 students who eagerly want to turn the class into a private discussion.

Just be sure to sensibly prune back the 2.5 students who eagerly want to turn the class into a private discussion.

This seems wise, yes.

MLA job list time! English is a brutal wasteland again, but this phrase amused me:

"Located approximately 30 minutes from culturally rich downtown Indianapolis..."

uh, if you have to say it...

i've been telling other academics that i plan for this to be my last year on the job market, no matter what. (I have said this before.) but i've noticed that to a man/woman, they unfailing respond with "what will you do?" (i have no idea.) at first i was thinking this might just be natural curiosity but now im starting to detect an amount of real interest, as if i might have figured something out, some hopeful alternative. alas.

that's so generous of them, they're assuming you would only be giving up if you had some actual plan, like a rational actor

i picked up another couple online courses late in the summer, and then just in the past week an emergency fill-in at a school in town here, so now i am adjuncting 3. not a lot at these rates, and no benefits anywhere, but enough to quit my side job that i hated, and maybe have enough money for some much-needed health care this semester. it's nice to think of being in a classroom again, too.

oh nice. congrats on that!

are other fields in the humanities as maddeningly specific as English? like, yes, i know you need to find some poor sucker to teach your undergraduate shakespeare course, but do they really need to specialize as a shakespeare scholar to do that? i find this assumption that you can only effectively teach an undergraduate course in something if you wrote your dissertation (itself highly specialized and probably of no interest to undergrads) about it really bizarre. i guess im saying, whither the generalists?

OMG music is not like that. With a composition PhD, I've taught so many popular music and world music (and popular music of the world) courses. I've seen theory classes taught by clarinettists or percussionists. This is the first year that I'm teaching what I did specialize in in my doctoral work, actually, unless you count post-tonal theory, which I've taught twice.

they tend to apply that attitude in philosophy, although they just as often take any warm body in a pinch (so we're all assumed equally competent to teach intro, ethics and political, some ancient and modern, logic, with all of those assumptions actually ill founded). might apply more with upper-division courses.

woe to all generalists. : (

Yeah, what I said mostly applied to sessional/adjunct teaching or to more undergrad teaching-oriented f/t positions, especially with lower-level courses. For TT jobs at high-ranking or research-oriented places, you'd need to be very specialized. And, even then, music used to be more of a field for generalists, I think.

so we're all assumed equally competent to teach intro, ethics and political, some ancient and modern, logic, with all of those assumptions actually ill founded

c'mon we're talking undergrad here. if you can't teach all of those competently then you shouldn't have a phd in philosophy. but I think I've said this here before.

anyway I'd love to hire generalists. to get through a relatively open-area search though there have to be some upper level courses that the search committee can tag you as covering, courses already on the books (since adding courses is often pretty complex and time-consuming). the easiest thing to do is just to pick some pretty standard course that's relatively close to your dissertation topic / current projects.

anyway I have just climbed into an ivory tower made of cheese and it is weird kinda starting all over again wrt knowing how things work

shoulds and realities are different. i've had credentialed colleagues who could have only taught logic under duress, if at all.

i don't think i complained about being passed over for not being able to teach upper-level courses.

humblebrag hall of fame xp

humblebrag? nah it kicks ass, but it's weird going into a different academic system, in a different language to boot. like I guess going to/from oxford/usa is weird b/c of the tutorial system, but at least it's all in english. maybe I can get a slate pub out of this or something.

did we do this one http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/09/how_do_professors_get_hired_the_academic_job_search_explained.html

“Well,” you soldier on, “have you ever thought of moving to [ major metropolitan area ] and working at [ world-renowned institution ]?"

I was once visiting the campus of [world-renowned institution] for reasons totally unrelated to a job and my dad, bless his heart, suggested i go to the english department and introduce myself and let them know i was looking for a job.

your dad knew it would brighten their day with a good hearty laugh

dad

dad, dad, dad

no

i feel bad for him because this whole thing, from studying literature (and even worse now, "theory") to now he's been totally supportive despite not understanding a whit of what im doing or why.

it would be kinda fun if jobs in academia worked that way. just hanging around campus, waiting for a "help wanted" sign to pop up.

'just coming in to fill out an application'

these highly specific topics for postdocs are always so weird to me:

The Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto seeks 4 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows for a two-year appointment 2016-2018 with research relevant to the 2016-17 theme:

Time, Rhythm, and Pace
The modern experience of time is often characterized by its increasing speed, its linearity, and its emphasis on now. But time does not have to be regarded as the flight of an arrow, a race track, or a forking path. If we consider the body, the planet, or the longue durée of history, it becomes clear that rhythm, cycle, pace and temporality pervade the human condition, now as they have always done. Occurring at multiple scales (neuronal firing, diurnal habits, menses, calendars, life cycles, the rise and fall of civilizations), rhythm is concrete, existential, and profound. How do rhythm and cycle, rather than velocity, characterize human life? What are the politics of chronology? How can a deeper understanding of time, rhythm, and pace -- from literary theorists, historians, phenomenologists, political scientists, and diverse other sectors of the academy -- provide us with guidance in an increasingly frantic and fast-paced world?

rhythm is concrete, existential, and profound

classic case of "uh i need a third word here...uh, profound! yeah that's it."

i should apply for that, pleased that ilx is doing my job-hunting for me

good luck! it seems like a really nice one. I was trying to think if i could spin my own work to fit that topic and was then hit with a wave of exhaustion that basically wiped my mind clear of any thoughts at all.

I did an undergrad fellowship there, and my supervisor is a current fellow, so I can attest it is in fact a very nice position.

It's not a department but an autonomous humanities institute, hence the themes, which aren't specific to the postdocs but structure the entire year's programming. That said, I'm really hoping whatever the subsequent year's theme will be at least marginally relevant enough for me to apply.

Canadian haemorrhoid Rex Murphy on the uselessness of the Arts and Humanities, complete with a healthy dollop of transphobia.