On being stood up

Undergraduates, take note:

If we have academic business to discuss -- a paper conference, say -- I will go out of my way and be up on campus for you on a day I'm normally not here. I don't have to be, and I don't expect that other faculty members ought to do the same -- this is my choice, after all. But because I have made that choice, I abjure any right to resent you for taking me up on the offer, or to loudly trumpet the sacrifices I'm making. If I voluntarily make an offer, I should follow through with a cheerful mein.

BUT...

If you fail to make that appointment, even once, with no notice, just leaving me cooling my heels in my office when I could be elsewhere, you may expect that I will never again go out of my way for you. I will continue to be as helpful to you as you need me to be, but that help will come only during my regular office hours. Period.

I was the best of students; I was the worst of students

As my most recent post explained, somehow one of the voices talked me into taking a class on a 1200-page Spanish novel. After 5 or 6 weeks (I lose track), I've figured out what sort of student I am: The one who seems really bright, but just isn't performing up to her potential.

We've all had these students in our classes. Chances are, you've got at least one right now. I've got two (in two different classes). They're great in discussion, but don't leave themselves enough time to get the As that your best professor instinct tells you they're capable of. If only they budgeted their time better! By all rights, they should be pulling straight As! How can you get through to them?

Being in the student position myself has been enlightening in this respect. Here's how my semester has gone in this class:

Weeks one and two: knocked it out of the park. Did all the reading. Took conscientious notes. Participated in class -- maybe even a little too much.

Week three: Holy shit. How did so many deadlines pile on at once? I need to finish that article, and there's that performance review that I totally spaced on and it's due tomorrow, and I'm trying to organize conferences and stay on top of the grading for once... And come the evening before the night class, I realize that I haven't done any of the reading, and I won't have time to do it the day of class, because I'm teaching all day, and so I make the decision... to skip class.

Week four: Similar to week three, except I've cleared off two of my three big must-dos, but another one that I had been putting off was due, and it was a hard deadline, so I got about half of the reading done (and no, I didn't do the reading from the week before -- no time for both). So I attended the first half of class, then skipped out at the break.

Week five: back on track. I back-burnered my grading (I'm paying for this now, I'll have you know) and managed to do all the reading again, understand what was going on, and turn in a creditable performance. Again, I probably talked too much -- something I'm acutely conscious of from my own discussion-leading experience. So I tried to shut up. But there are just so many interesting things to discuss!

And here we are at week six. And that grading needs to get done. But I just found out that a dear colleague's husband died suddenly so I'll be attending a memorial service on Saturday, and a housewarming for Voice of Reason on Sunday, and there's a college-level committee meeting tomorrow, and pick up the bike from the shop, and buy and mail off a small birthday gift for my sister. This weekend.

Which is to say: Where before I intellectually knew that my class is not the only thing going on in my students' lives, now I understand. It's been a long time since I've been in that position. Ouch.

On being a student again, part 1: What the hell was I thinking?

I have a problem.

Apparently, when I get a manageable schedule (such as this semester's) with a reasonable and achievable set of goals (such as, again, this semester), I feel compelled to fill up any unused time with more work. Here's how I imagine the internal conversation went, sometime back in January:

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COMMON SENSE BRAIN: Hey! Look at our schedule this semester! We've only got three regular courses and three grad student supervisions! And all the regular courses are the ones we've taught before! And we've only committed to one article! We may actually have a manageable semester on our hands here!

SELF-SABOTAGING BRAIN: I dunno... doesn't that seem a little... off?

CSB: Well, sure: it's not our usual way of doing things. But remember how the usual way was leaving us exhausted and overcommited? I think this is real progress. Let's focus on that.

SSB: I just don't feel right about this. It feels weird.

CSB: Tell you what: why don't we slightly revamp the readings for our upper-division seminar. Remember how that syllabus has about half a dozen articles that neither we nor the students find useful? We could look up new ones, and assign them, and then we'd be reading something new, too.

SSB: Good idea! I'll go do that!

[one week later]

SSB: Hey. I just figured something out.

CSB: [distractedly, looking up from watching latest episode of Justified and once again bemoaning the fate of Deadwood] What?

SSB: That new reading thing? That's only going to keep us occupied one hour of one day out of the week, for about four or five weeks. we've still got loads of spare time.

CSB: [gesturing] Hence this fine scripted entertainment. Pull up a chair. I think we have one last diet coke in the fridge.

SSB: You're missing the point. This is time we could be filling up with Doing All the Things. [pulls up weekly calendar] See this unclaimed block here Monday nights?

CSB: [reluctantly, hitting "pause" on the video] At the end of our 9-3:30 teaching day? That one?

SSB: Yeah, that's the one. Now listen: it just so happens that La Professora -- you remember her, right? Lots of fun; keeps trying to set us up with men we're too busy to hang out with?

CSB: I like her.

SSB: Good. Because she's teaching a class Monday nights on... wait for it... Don Quixote.

CSB: We've always wanted to read that!

SSB: [excitedly] I know, right!?

CSB: But wait a minute: That's a 1200-page novel.

SSB: But it's a novel. And we want to read it. And this will give us structure and accountability.

CSB: But... it'll mean that we're on campus Mondays from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

SSB: We can get more grading done!

CSB: I think we should give this more...

SSB: I signed us up. Here are the books. [sets down two volumes] We'll get to be talking about ideas! Hooray!

CSB: [glancing through them] These are in Spanish! And not even modern Spanish! And the syllabus says we'll be reading 100 pages a week!

SSB: Plus the critical articles... did I mention those? And the seminar is conducted in Spanish, too, so the whole thing will be great practice, dontcha think? This is gonna be awesome! [exit]

CSB: ::sigh::

Self-Interest Disguised as Professorial Generosity

Grad student e-mail (paraphrased): Here's my outline for our meeting/discussion today. It's not what I'd like for it to be, and I apologize: I've been very sick this past week. But I'll do my best in our meeting today. Thanks.

Me, thinking about my to-do list for today (in order):

• Read and comment grad student thesis chapter
• Read and rank 20 potential award files
• Reread materials for seminar tonight
• Read/grade a dozen short (@ 3 pp.) reading reviews for same seminar and return to students by 6 p.m.
• Read above student submission and meet with student
• Meet with thesis student
• Hold office hours 
• Lead evening seminar
• IF TIME PERMITS: grade 5-8 short student writing projects (@ 3-4 pp) from survey course; eat something; remember to put on pants.

My reply to student (again, paraphrased): Oh, you poor dear! I want you to get better, and I'd like not to get sick myself. Would it be better for you if we rescheduled later in the week?

There. With one e-mail I just crossed one item off my to-do list.

How late is too late?

::whew!::

Well, I'm pleased to report that today, I sent of a manuscript of an article I've been working on. Great, right? Here's the catch: the article was due in January. Towards the end of that month, I told the editor that I'd be about a week late. Wrong: it turned out to be two weeks. Granted, that's not a huge amount of time. But still.

I'm glad to have this not hanging over my head. But I know enough people who have taken on the task of editing volumes of essays and special issues of journals to know that the M.I.A. author is the bane of the editor's existence. A very common bane.

Being past-due on a promised piece is a great motivator: I've written faster in the last six weeks than I have, possibly, in the last six years. No one sets out to be the author who makes the editor tear their hair out. Getting a reputation for that sort of thing can create problems down the road. Yet somehow, many of us find ourselves in that position.

I guess this post doesn't really have a thesis statement. But I thought I'd throw it out there, in case any of the six readers who still check in here now and then have any stories from either side of the process that they'd like to share.

Here's the post I decided to break my three-months' silence with:

Oh, Right. I have a blog.

So here's the e-mail I got from my chair this morning:

"I write to inquire if any of you have a need for a small grant (~ less than $400 or so) for either travel (must be complete by 5/15), equipment, or research requirements (ie, indexing, translation, student assistance)?"

I asked for an exorcist for my printer, which eats paper, but only when I'm rushing to print something out in the five minutes before class.

Two hours later, I receive the following e-mail from the College of Liberal Arts' research liason:

"The Chancellor’s Office has asked our University to complete a survey regarding the use of aircraft or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) by any of our research programs.  If you are using any type of aircraft or UAV in your research, please e-mail  B-- N--."

I'm pretty sure I need to put in another funding request with my chair. There has got to be a way I can incorporate an unmanned drone into my research, right?

The Daily Mail's "History Girls," or: Do I have to wear stilettos to the archive now?

By now, the internets are all abuzz with links and reactions to the Daily Mail’s Sunday article, “The History Girls,”[1] profiling seven young female historians who “have rescued studying the past from the clutches of fusty academia and changed our view of yesteryear for ever.” Atop the article is a fashion-style shoot of the historians in question, impeccably styled (including some serious stilettos all around) and posed like the ad for a new reality show. Most have PhDs, all are under 40, all are slim and attractive. In the body of the article, each deals with the same questionnaire: “Why topic X?”; “If you could travel back in time…?”; “Who would you resurrect for a dinner date?”

 

My first reaction? Oh, barf.

Yes, there are second and third reactions, but let’s get to the first one first. No, even before that, let’s get to a pre-reaction: Even in my initial revulsion at the piece, I am not interested in shaming the women themselves. They’re not betraying anyone or anyone’s cause. Chances are that the Mail called them up and pitched this as a piece on young women historians in the UK. If someone had called me up with that, chances are that I would have jumped at the chance to publicly counter the typical image of the old, white, bearded, tweed-jacketed history professor (times ten, since I’m a medievalist). By the time we got to the questionnaire and the photo shoot, I probably would have felt that it was too late to back out gracefully, and hoped that some shred of my original purpose (promote women in the profession!) would have remained.  And stilettos aside, I wouldn’t mind having someone dress me up all high-fashion, just to see what I would like if I were the kind of person who put more than five-minutes' effort into my appearance. 

So, I’m convinced of the good intentions of the historians in question until it can be proven otherwise. Nevertheless, I’m still pretty squicked out at this piece. What are the criteria for being a woman who is making boring old history (::sigh::) interesting again? Well, according to the Daily Mail's selection, you'll want to be young, white (I'm including the one of hispanic heritage), thin, and conventionally pretty. There’s nothing wrong with being any or even all of those things. But historians are not TV presenters (except for the ones that are); our effectiveness in bringing our work to our students and to the public should no more be predicated on broad physical appeal than would apply to a male historian in the same situation.

That, in a nutshell, is my first reaction. Now, let's get the strawmen out of the way. HERE'S WHAT I'M NOT SAYING:

• That academics shouldn’t be attractive
• That women shouldn’t be attractive
• That attractive women aren’t real historians
• That dressing up fancy is bad
• That the article is racist
• That only middle-aged and old historians should be taken seriously 

 Any of these things might be argued to be true, but none of them are what I'm saying. So don't bother arguing against them in the comments, lest you see mine eyes give a mighty roll.

We good there? Alrighty, then; moving on to my reconsideration (second, third, and fourth thoughts about the article):

1. The questionnaires are dumb, no doubt. But the women’s responses aren’t. Some participants seem to have refused to answer the “who would you date” question.[2] One of them straight-up challenges the idea that women write a different kind of history than men. One of them answers the time-machine question in the same way that I would: by clearly stipulating that she’d first think of loading up on immunizations; another notes that being a European woman in pretty much any past time period would have been much less preferable to being one now.
2. Some of these women are actually TV presenters on history shows. So for them, looking good and dressing up are part of the job description (whether it should have to be is another kettle of fish). 
3.  In my opinion, we (not just women) could learn a lot from people whose historical work appears on TV and in the general-readership press. I’m starting to think that we, as academic historians, are part of the problem when it comes to a general lack of historical literacy. If a potential reader needs to be halfway to a graduate degree before they can really “get” something we’ve written, then perhaps it’s time to rethink how we’re presenting our work. Or, at the very least, to think about having a couple of publication tracks going at the same time. And finally... 
4. It's the friggin' Daily Mail. What did we expect?

I’m still on the whole skeeved out by the piece. I’d have thought that “academic historian” would be one place where I wouldn’t have to be hot or face irrelevance. But beyond the obvious idiocy and pandering, there are some things in this piece worth thinking about.

But don’t worry: You won’t see me posing draped across my desk in stilettos anytime soon.

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[1] Title is likely a take on the film "The History Boys." So I'm gonna give the "girls" thing a pass. 
[2] Or perhaps one or more of the "dates" were editorially excluded for being too boring or obscure or even -- saints preserve us! -- not men.