Hosting a Writing Group?

[Check out the UPDATE, below]

A special note out there for academic writers in the Humanities:

I'm thinking of hosting a once-a-week writing group here on the blog, based on the idea of a dissertation writing group. The idea, just as a starting place (with possible expansions) would be to check in once a week and discuss how we're progressing towards medium-term goals, which we could set per-semester -summer. These posts (maybe Fridays?) would essentially become a writing-focused open thread for people who commit to participating for any given work period.

It wouldn't be a true writing group, because we wouldn't be sharing our actual writing (though that could change, if we decided it ought to). But it might be a way for us -- especially those of us who are lone-whatevers in our departments, and especially those of us at teaching-focused institutions -- to get back to thinking of writing as something we do, and even something that's vaguely fun.

Yes, we're heading into silly season. But we also have a summer coming up so we could get a real running start at this: Plan now; start (say) June 1.

Any interest?


UPDATE: Okay, so Another Damned Medievalist and I are hatching a plan to co-host this little venture. Tentatively, the first "term" is set for the 12-week period for May 27 - August 12. We will alternate blogs for hosting the group's Friday meetings. May 27 will likely be given over to introducing yourselves and your 12-week projects, so be thinking about that.

More details forthcoming after ADM & I get a chance to hatch our plans at the 'zoo.

Bloggers go to the 'zoo

Just wondering: if anyone's organizing a blogger meetup at Kalamazoo yet?

UPDATE: Another Damned Medievalist has totally got it covered, here.

A Nice Teaching Moment

I've been teaching our undergraduate research methods course this year. It is grueling and frustrating, for reasons that anyone who has taught a course like this in any discipline will know.

And today, they brought in their paper drafts for peer review. As I flipped through them while deciding who would get which couple of papers to review, I noted that (with one exception) they had all followed the instructions. They were all complete papers, with footnotes and bibliography. They had all submitted an electronic version as well. And when I broke them up into their peer review groups for them to introduce their papers to the people who would be reviewing them, I heard lots of excited conversation about their own topics. I heard one student telling another about a great source that she could add to her paper that she hadn't previously known about. And when I told them that, even though they still had a major revision and a presentation ahead of them, the hardest part was over, and they should be proud of themselves, there were nods and smiles.

This, from a group of students who, in our individual conferences two weeks ago, were by and large still finding their way.

There are likely to be bumps in the road once I start reading them, but that can wait until later. Tonight, I'm going to focus on the fact that my students got to leave class tonight with a real sense of accomplishment, and I'll go to bed happy.

Curse you, Blargistan!

...for having no fewer than three holidays (national or regional) in the month that I can come research. And for having them all fall mid-week this year.

On the other hand: this may force me to actually take a few days off and enjoy my time in Blargistan, which really is a beautiful place when you step outside the archives.


UPDATE: okay, so I looked at the calendar wrong. There are only two holidays, and only one falls mid-week. And the good news is that this has forced me to take some time off. I'll be spending the days in question (and the weekends attached to them) hanging out with friends. And those of you who know me (or who have been reading this blog long enough) know that enforced relaxation is a very good thing for me.

Presenting in Blarg

Ain't that just the way? Finish one presentation (/book/semester), and you've just got to start the next one.

But this one's different: This one is to be delivered in early June at one of the oldest universities in the country of Blargistan. In Blarg.**

In Blargistan, they know how to build a university.
(central heating = optional; beauty = essential)

I've "presented" at one conference in Blargistan before, but the papers were precirculated, and I just had to give a 10-minute précis. This one is a guest lecture for a university class (two classes, actually: I'm playing a double-header). It's on the book, so I know the material, which is good. I've been told it should be fairly casual (as lectures are), and "only" about 40 minutes long.

Ha!

I'm approaching the thing differently than I did the last one. Last time, I straight-up translated the most intriguing chapter of my book MS (still in progress at the time), then submitted it to a native speaker of Blarg for (numerous) corrections. But part of the problem was that academic writing tends to be dense and formal and use a lot of big words -- in other words, translating my own work stretches my knowledge of Blarg past its natural limits.

This time, I'm doing something different: I'm just writing off the top of my head (and with occasional glances at the book), making reference to a dictionary only in dire cases. If I know a simple way to express a complex concept, I'm going to use it. I'll submit it to the same friend for corrections, but I have a feeling that what I come up with will be less full of errors, and I'll have fewer problems reading it.***

Anyone else have foreign-language conference paper/guest lecture experience you want to share?


**My new name for my research country and its language, inaugurated with little fanfare on this post.

***And before anyone asks: No, I will not be attempting to vamp for 40 minutes in a language that I didn't start to learn until age 24 -- nay, not even for material I know well. Yes, it will be less engaging. But the risk of freezing up or being nearly incomprehensible is just too high.

Best Grad School Memory

Oh, I've been such a downer. Seriously.

So here, I'd like to share with you one of my favorite grad school memories. Technically, it didn't take place "in" grad school, but it did happen (frequently) during those years, and it involved a fellow grad student.

No, not that.

It was grocery shopping.

When I was in grad school, a major part of “fun outings” for my best friend and I would be our weekly grocery shopping trip. The joint trips started out, I think, because I didn't have a car and she did. And we both needed to eat at least now and then. And because taking classes & TA duties took up our days, these trips usually happened late at night, around 9 or 10. We started out at Big Discount Grocery, but eventually upscaled now and then to Target (which had a big grocery section in Collegeville). And since we couldn’t afford many other kinds of outings, it was a way to get out of the apartment and spend some time together, all while accomplishing a necessary errand. But the fact that we always went down every damn aisle sort of tells you that these were not just functional errand trips.

I should mention here that my friend and I were (and often continue to be) complete goofballs. So these shopping trips included:

• running jokes that were funny only to us
• contests at the checkout to see who could think of a historical event closest to the date represented by the four-digit number on her final checkout receipt. Rules allowed us to substitute a "1" for the first digit or drop it altogether. (My friend tended to win this one)
  
• a seasonal improvisational joust where, at the holidays, we would make up songs about the products we were buying, set to Christmas carols, trying to trade off lines back and forth without a pause. The lyrics had to be product-relevant, have internal logic, as well as rhyme and scan properly. (This one was my forté.)
  
• a mutual prank where we tried to sneak highly improbable products into the other's shopping cart to see if the other would get all the way to checkout before noticing.
• and once, during the Olympics: my friend did several cartwheels in the aisle (she may have even yelled "And she sticks the landing!", but my memory on that part of it is fuzzy), which was fortunately empty at around 10 p.m.

That's my best grad school memory.

Your turn.

Grades in Grad School

[UPDATE 12/2015: This still remains my all-time most-visited post. So if you're here for the first time, whether to have your fears assuaged, confirmed, or even to hate-read, I encourage you to read the comments thread as well. My commenters are not all in agreement with me, and many of them make good counter-arguments, or at least do a lot to nuance what I said in my own opening remarks. And, as always, YMMV.] 

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"I would like to know more about why anything less than an A- is disaster. I am a first-year MA student in English studies at a small, regional public university, and I made one B last semester(we do not have the +/- grading system). Does this mean I'm being gently told to give up?"

The above came from a recent comment on an old post. And this is one of those questions that I probably really shouldn't answer, because those kind of answers tend to result in lots of my readers telling me I'm wrong, either in content, or in spirit. I hate that.

But hey, it's a legitimate question. And it's one of those things that it never hurts to know. So I'll answer it, with the caveat that it's based on my experience, and so Your Mileage May Vary: If you're in a program not in the U.S., your experience will likely be different. If you are in a program not in the humanities, your experience may be different. Hells, your experience may differ just because experiences tend to do that. I'm just telling you what I saw in my own mid-tier Ph.D. institution, and what I've heard from other people from other Ph.D. programs in my field. Here goes: 


My first semester in grad school, my M.A. advisor laid it out for to me: "If you get a B in a grad school class, you should ask the professor whether you should consider dropping out of the program. If you get a C, don't bother asking."

That sounds harsh, even to my mean-professor ears. But it had the virtue of being an unambiguous and unvarnished introduction to the new reality: in grad school, anything less than demonstrable excellence was not going to cut it.

If you're aiming for a terminal M.A., a couple of B's aren't going to kill you. But a B can hurt your chances of getting into a Ph.D. program, where faculty reviewing files have enough applicants that they can say, "Okay, straight A's, fine... what else have you got?" An M.A. advisor who is sufficiently impressed by your record, talent, and initiative otherwise can help finesse one measly little B. But that B may mean that your margin for error has disappeared.

Now, that's not saying that one B in a grad program means you should get the hell out. But it might be a warning sign, or an indication that you should make an appointment with the professor or the grad advisor to determine how you can do better (and then, of course, you will implement those changes). You will not engage in complaining or grade-grubbing, because this semester is done. Practice saying it this way: "I'm concerned that this grade suggests that I'm not performing up to standard. What do I need to do to improve on this in the future?" By definition, if you got a B, you ought to be interested in improving. Because grad students are aiming for excellence.

If the above paragraph suggests a level of masochism or self-flagellation that you're not comfortable with, that's fine. And it's good you know that early on. Because believe me, this is a large part of the life of most professional academics: we're never satisfied. We're usually worried that we're not doing well enough. And the culture of grad school replicates this. If you can be satisfied with a B (which is, by most objective standards, a perfectly respectable grade), then you have a healthier ego than most academics, and you will likely lead a happier life on a day-to-day basis than those of us who are plagued by intellectual insecurities. But that happier life probably won't be in a Ph.D. program. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

There you go. Let the naysaying begin...