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

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.

I like imaging the life of the student who has never met anyone more down-to-earth than Judith Butler

lol

I'm pretty sure I've read letters of rec from Pippin before.

and for Pippin from ratemyprofessors

"Had Pippin for a course on Kant and Rousseau in 2004. AMAZING. He answered my questions in full and moved through the texts very carefully. Very personable. Good number of comment on my paper for a guy that busy. Recommend (if you are //true// Chicago)!"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/01/19/university-president-allegedly-says-struggling-freshmen-are-bunnies-that-should-be-drowned-that-a-glock-should-be-put-to-their-heads/

good url too

so he's looking to use the same technique that charters use to juke their numbers?

interesting idea but I wouldn't have a clue how to weed out bad students after three weeks of classes.
semi-related anecdote: I did my undergrad at a public Euro school where ~5-10% of the students (across the board) paid tuition, but never showed up - no record of them registering for classes or taking exams. those would be easy to "kill off" (but the admin would have to reimburse tuition).

Her res gestae may be understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation, all of which is conterminous with nugatory sesquipedality. Seriously, just master the buzzwords and you'll do well in her class.

surprised this didn't hit the thread before http://annlarson.org/2014/02/22/rhetoric-and-compositions-dead/

thanks for posting that.

"The truth, as more and more people are discovering, is that adjunct teaching is rarely a road to anything other than more adjunct teaching. "

"almost 400 high-quality applicants", "over 400 applicants from a range of disciplines", do i hear 500 applicants for my next postdoc rejection??

at least you actually got a rejection! my partner is on the market and probably 1/3 of her applications have just been completely unanswered (or answered so late that they might as well not have bothered). she's had a little luck getting campus visits, though, so cross yer fingers etc.

one place actually did a skype interview with her and never followed up. (we later learned it was kind of a ruse as the had an inside candidate that was all but promised the position ahead of the search.)

that's really common, apparently.

I've lost the will to apply to anything more this year. the thought of revising my cover letter just feels impossible. thankfully i didnt apply to much before this either so I'm not getting that cascade of pointless rejections around this time of year. apparently it's the worst market in my field since 2009 and i believe it. there's hardly anything out there.

vacillating between massive regret at going to grad school in the first place and an ever-so-slight glimmer of hope that there's a way out of academia.

i think the fact that i'm not on the market at the same time makes it easier. i can support her, help her with applications, and so forth. if we were both doing this at once, it'd be impossibly stressful.

good luck to her! such a brutal process. and good luck to Merdeyeux of course.

i once got a rejection that claimed they had 800 applicants!

i only managed to get a few applications done this year so i'm not quite at the level of resignation of those friends who did 15-20 with no success, but nevertheless it's quite a slog. might focus on my #1 academic plan of finding some eccentric millionaire who is for some reason willing to give me money to work on whatever i want to work on

i'm working on that plan as well.

i haven't applied for more than short-term local work in a long time. i look at the new ads occasionally and it just drives me to despair. meanwhile more and more of my grad school peers are tenured now. when i want to remind myself that the entire system makes no sense i look up their barely-existent publication records.

on the other hand, i'm feeling good about a manuscript that seems to be shaping up by magic after years of pointless toil, so that's nice.

i only managed to get a few applications done this year so i'm not quite at the level of resignation of those friends who did 15-20 with no success

I was sending out 30-40 applications a year for the last few years, in addition to applying for sessional jobs, private teaching, temping etc.

Merdeyeux, you are in a field that is related to musicology iirc?

Rejection really did start losing its sting after I while, I found.