Amazing what a deadline will do for your productivity. I mentioned the project I had committed to? An article-length piece for a special issue of a journal? I committed in a qualified way, meaning that I reserved the right for the damn thing to run a bit short. I may or may not come in short (I think of "article-length" as around 8,000 words), but I like to have that bit of pressure taken off.
Anyway, the review-ready draft is due on July first. But I am going to be out of the country for most of the month of June. So guess what that means for my deadline.
Eeep!
But... This week, spring break started. And in the Hallelujah! spirit, I feel like my writing program is being resurrected from the dead. But maybe with less miracle and more zombie-revenant, because I'm pulling lots and lots from other places, slapping it together, and worrying about sculpting and polishing later.
Not too much later, though, because: deadline.
Welcome to day two.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Loving and hating the independent study
One of the things that has been making my life nuts and my blogging light this semester is the fact that, in addition to my regular course load (10 units) and my undergraduate advising, I'm teaching two independent studies this semester. And honestly, I can't settle on how I feel about that.
Let me give you the context: For those of you just tuning in, I teach at a regional M.A. comprehensive university, which means that we have a large undergraduate population, a small cohort of M.A. students, and no Ph.D. program. We teach anywhere from three to four regular courses a semester, the majority of these in the undergraduate program, and our per-semester student load per tenure-track faculty member [1] can range from 60-120, depending on the particular courses, and the fields. With a load like this, independent studies are rare, except for M.A. students preparing for their exams or working on their theses.
And, like everywhere else (I think): these classes are taught as an overload, don't count towards our contractual obligations, and are strictly unpaid.
Yet this semester, I find myself teaching two of them.
Here's the situation: one is for a graduate student. Due to a combination of poor planning and circumstance, she finds herself near the end of her program, but needing one more content course in the field to graduate. And the fact is that I don't *have* more courses in the field. So we're doing an independent study. The other is one of our rare undergraduates who has been accepted into our departmental honors program. Part of the "honor" is that you get to take three extra content courses *and* write a 40-page senior thesis. And this last bit is done at the end of two semesters of one-on-one coursework with a faculty adviser. And I have to admit, this one I asked for -- literally: I asked the student to apply, because he was (a) very talented, and (b) interested in my area of research.
So, here's the bad part: instead of working on my own reading for my own research, I'm adding an extra 100-200 pages (give or take) a week for these two classes. And we haven't even got to the bit where I have to grade stuff. It's a lot of work. In fact, even as I type this, there's a book on my coffee table that I need to finish today.
But -- and here's the cool thing -- the reading is fascinating. In one case, it's in an area very closely related to what I do, and something that I really should know more about, but in fact only have the most basic textbook knowledge. In the other, it has nothing at all to do with my work, but it's stuff that I've always wanted to know more about.
You know how sometimes you develop a seminar syllabus and add in two books you haven't read yet but want to, on the principle that assigning them will force you to read them? Yes, well: multiply that by two entire syllabi, and you've got my situation, for both good and for ill.
In the end, I'm still not sure if this was a good idea. It's a huge challenge, especially with two in a single semester. But dang, I am learning a lot.
Now, If you'll excuse me, I have a book to read.
[1] Lecturer student-loads are eye-poppingly huge, of course.
Let me give you the context: For those of you just tuning in, I teach at a regional M.A. comprehensive university, which means that we have a large undergraduate population, a small cohort of M.A. students, and no Ph.D. program. We teach anywhere from three to four regular courses a semester, the majority of these in the undergraduate program, and our per-semester student load per tenure-track faculty member [1] can range from 60-120, depending on the particular courses, and the fields. With a load like this, independent studies are rare, except for M.A. students preparing for their exams or working on their theses.
And, like everywhere else (I think): these classes are taught as an overload, don't count towards our contractual obligations, and are strictly unpaid.
Yet this semester, I find myself teaching two of them.
Here's the situation: one is for a graduate student. Due to a combination of poor planning and circumstance, she finds herself near the end of her program, but needing one more content course in the field to graduate. And the fact is that I don't *have* more courses in the field. So we're doing an independent study. The other is one of our rare undergraduates who has been accepted into our departmental honors program. Part of the "honor" is that you get to take three extra content courses *and* write a 40-page senior thesis. And this last bit is done at the end of two semesters of one-on-one coursework with a faculty adviser. And I have to admit, this one I asked for -- literally: I asked the student to apply, because he was (a) very talented, and (b) interested in my area of research.
So, here's the bad part: instead of working on my own reading for my own research, I'm adding an extra 100-200 pages (give or take) a week for these two classes. And we haven't even got to the bit where I have to grade stuff. It's a lot of work. In fact, even as I type this, there's a book on my coffee table that I need to finish today.
But -- and here's the cool thing -- the reading is fascinating. In one case, it's in an area very closely related to what I do, and something that I really should know more about, but in fact only have the most basic textbook knowledge. In the other, it has nothing at all to do with my work, but it's stuff that I've always wanted to know more about.
You know how sometimes you develop a seminar syllabus and add in two books you haven't read yet but want to, on the principle that assigning them will force you to read them? Yes, well: multiply that by two entire syllabi, and you've got my situation, for both good and for ill.
In the end, I'm still not sure if this was a good idea. It's a huge challenge, especially with two in a single semester. But dang, I am learning a lot.
Now, If you'll excuse me, I have a book to read.
[1] Lecturer student-loads are eye-poppingly huge, of course.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Well, crap -- this is enough to make me post something
Sound the bells!
Okay, so as I noted, this semester I have three regular courses, two independent studies, and am acting undergraduate advisor. Plus I committed to write an article. I'm dumb. And also not blogging.
Not that there haven't been blogworthy things. Oh my, yes. This semester I have:
But... the Steubenville verdict. And, more importantly, the media reaction to it.
There is no shortage of commentary flying about the internets about this one, so perhaps you won't want to read my thoughts on this. I'll keep it short:
Okay, so as I noted, this semester I have three regular courses, two independent studies, and am acting undergraduate advisor. Plus I committed to write an article. I'm dumb. And also not blogging.
Not that there haven't been blogworthy things. Oh my, yes. This semester I have:
- ...gotten verging-on-shouty with a colleague. In the hall. In front of students.
- ...refused to sign off on a thesis before some revisions were made, and gotten into it with the thesis chair about that.
- ...been on the receiving end of a couple of really weird personal interactions that have formerly comfortable situations suddenly awkward.
- ...sprained my ankle.
- ...gotten my credit card hacked
But... the Steubenville verdict. And, more importantly, the media reaction to it.
There is no shortage of commentary flying about the internets about this one, so perhaps you won't want to read my thoughts on this. I'll keep it short:
- Ew. Gross. Beyond gross.
- I've seen this movie before. Like, 600 years ago.
- Patriarchy exists. Boo.
- Patriarchal gender system sorts you into two categories, and if you're in the "female" category, then your sexuality is closely monitored and heavily regulated -- sometimes by your parents, sometimes by your spouse. If you're an adult single woman, then technically you're supposed to do it yourself, but in reality, you're in for some heavier-than-usual scrutiny by your entire community.
- If you're going to be sexually active outside of marriage, you need to keep it under control -- limited partners, and preferably one that you're going to marry, and soon. This means you are a Good Girl, and entitled to protection when someone commits a crime against your property or person. You are also entitled to Special Protections for your Vulnerable Femaleness.
- Step outside those boundaries, though (Where were those boundaries, precisely? Yeah, we don't really have a firm consensus on that, but we'll let you know), and you've in essentially done an opt-out on being a woman. This means that if you are beaten, raped, or otherwise harmed, you really don't have a case, because, by opting out of the gendered limitations on your behavior, you've also opted out of the gendered protections. You did this to yourself, missy.
- And no, you can't opt for "human" protections; that would mean that there is an "outside" of patriarchy, and that's just plain silly.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Damn, but I can be rash sometimes.
I just volunteered/agreed to submit an essay to an online "collected volume" -- a cluster of papers, in other words, peer-reviewed, but not blind.
Pros:
Cons:
Hm. Fear = motivation?
Pros:
- It's going to be an interesting collection
- It'll be fast, since it's online.
- It'll be my first publication on the new material, and I really need to stop dinking around and start publishing.
Cons:
- It's ground-up work: I haven't done a conference paper or anything. Just a bunch of transcribed documents and a three-quarters-baked abstract.
- The piece is due July 1.
- I am out of the country the entire month of June.
Hm. Fear = motivation?
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Why I'm Never Lecturing on the Norman Conquest Again (an accidental defense of the lecture format)
Yesterday, I lectured on the Norman conquests of England and southern Italy, and I will never be doing that again.
Let's set aside all the glaring factual errors I had in that lecture (I actually had to post an entire page of corrections on the class' blackboard page). Let's also set aside the fact that the English part of it is the one thing that my handful of fanboys know about in obsessive detail, and delight in asking questions that begin with "But isn't it true that...?"
What really went wrong was that the lecture was a dumb idea from the git-go. Don't get me wrong: I don't think the Normans are unimportant. They're actually pretty damn interesting. But lecturing about their eleventh-century conquests? Dumb, dumb, dumb.*
This brings me to a rumination about the lecture format itself. "They" are constantly telling us that the lecture is dead, boring, droning, and on and on. Only crusty old farts give lectures. Students don't learn. It's too passive.
I agree with that last one, which is why my "lectures" are mish-mashes of me talking and us diving into the primary sources to have the students dig out how they illustrate a point we were just talking about (or, in some cases, are about to talk about). And as far as my end of it, I'm a damn good talker. I know, everyone thinks they're a good lecturer. but organizing a talk and holding an audience is actually something I'm really good at. If you haven't met me, you'll just have to believe me.
Lecturing also plays to another one of my skills (and the skills of academics in general), and that's drawing connections between seemingly disparate ideas, in a way that a first-year student can see it. Granted, a nice monograph will do the same thing, but when I'm talking about lecturing, I'm talking about an intro-level course. By the time we get to the level where we're reading monographs, I've ditched the lecture format. But for those survey students, the important point about a good lecture is that it provides students with something that they couldn't get from reading a textbook or looking it up on Wikipedia.
And that was where this lecture went wrong. It was basically "some stuff about the Normans." When I finished it and was analyzing the problems, I realized that students could have gotten almost the same thing on Wikipedia. Actually, they could have gotten better from Wikipedia, because my lecture was riddled with inaccuracies, conflations, and was just a freaking mess.
And I gave that lecture because... well, because somewhere along the way, we decided that the Norman Conquest was Very Important, and therefore deserved one of the limited-number lecture slots in a survey course. I've got no problems with the first half of that statement, but the second part is problematic. There are more Very Important Things in my field than fit into a semester or two, especially now that I've given over 20% of my course to one-on-one tutorials. But I'm still making some of my selections based on some idea that you can't have a lecture course on the Middle Ages without talking about the Normans, but the lectures on sex, or poison, or children, or foodways are "only if there's time." Yet those latter things are precisely the things that most textbooks don't spend a lot of time on.
In any case, I'm starting a rethinking process, one where my decision-making process starts with "Can I add something to the textbook account here?" If not, I'm just being redundant. And I've become that dead, boring, droning crusty old lecturer, the straw-professor that all the MOOC-heads are talking about.
*At least for me. Your lecture on the Normans may be riveting.
Let's set aside all the glaring factual errors I had in that lecture (I actually had to post an entire page of corrections on the class' blackboard page). Let's also set aside the fact that the English part of it is the one thing that my handful of fanboys know about in obsessive detail, and delight in asking questions that begin with "But isn't it true that...?"
What really went wrong was that the lecture was a dumb idea from the git-go. Don't get me wrong: I don't think the Normans are unimportant. They're actually pretty damn interesting. But lecturing about their eleventh-century conquests? Dumb, dumb, dumb.*
This brings me to a rumination about the lecture format itself. "They" are constantly telling us that the lecture is dead, boring, droning, and on and on. Only crusty old farts give lectures. Students don't learn. It's too passive.
I agree with that last one, which is why my "lectures" are mish-mashes of me talking and us diving into the primary sources to have the students dig out how they illustrate a point we were just talking about (or, in some cases, are about to talk about). And as far as my end of it, I'm a damn good talker. I know, everyone thinks they're a good lecturer. but organizing a talk and holding an audience is actually something I'm really good at. If you haven't met me, you'll just have to believe me.
Lecturing also plays to another one of my skills (and the skills of academics in general), and that's drawing connections between seemingly disparate ideas, in a way that a first-year student can see it. Granted, a nice monograph will do the same thing, but when I'm talking about lecturing, I'm talking about an intro-level course. By the time we get to the level where we're reading monographs, I've ditched the lecture format. But for those survey students, the important point about a good lecture is that it provides students with something that they couldn't get from reading a textbook or looking it up on Wikipedia.
And that was where this lecture went wrong. It was basically "some stuff about the Normans." When I finished it and was analyzing the problems, I realized that students could have gotten almost the same thing on Wikipedia. Actually, they could have gotten better from Wikipedia, because my lecture was riddled with inaccuracies, conflations, and was just a freaking mess.
And I gave that lecture because... well, because somewhere along the way, we decided that the Norman Conquest was Very Important, and therefore deserved one of the limited-number lecture slots in a survey course. I've got no problems with the first half of that statement, but the second part is problematic. There are more Very Important Things in my field than fit into a semester or two, especially now that I've given over 20% of my course to one-on-one tutorials. But I'm still making some of my selections based on some idea that you can't have a lecture course on the Middle Ages without talking about the Normans, but the lectures on sex, or poison, or children, or foodways are "only if there's time." Yet those latter things are precisely the things that most textbooks don't spend a lot of time on.
In any case, I'm starting a rethinking process, one where my decision-making process starts with "Can I add something to the textbook account here?" If not, I'm just being redundant. And I've become that dead, boring, droning crusty old lecturer, the straw-professor that all the MOOC-heads are talking about.
*At least for me. Your lecture on the Normans may be riveting.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
How to have a completely stress-free semester
Ha ha!! Just kidding! I have no idea how to do this. Do you?
Did you know that iCal (a mac thing) actually has a function in which it color-codes your calendar in year-view based on how much you've scheduled yourself to do? Yellow is "You've got some stuff to do," orange-y is, "Hey, this is a pretty busy day," and red is apparently, "Honey... are you gonna be okay?"
Here's what last spring semester looked like:
But, anyway... even if I don't know how to have a stress-free semester, I know what can make it better, and what makes it worse. In that spirit, I'm back to my once-a-month resolutions. January is, as always, "clear the decks." In that spirit, this week has been devoted to syllabus preparation, returning long-overdue library books, and getting the home and work offices cleaned and organized (the latter takes place twice a year), and the e-mail inbox cleared out.
Is it working? Am I more organized and prepared? Well, I think one good indication is the fact that I'm only posting my January resolution when the month is half-done. Yeah. But every day is a new opportunity and all that.
But enough about me: How is your new semester going? Any intentions you've set up to help keep yourself from being in the weeds, come March and April?
Did you know that iCal (a mac thing) actually has a function in which it color-codes your calendar in year-view based on how much you've scheduled yourself to do? Yellow is "You've got some stuff to do," orange-y is, "Hey, this is a pretty busy day," and red is apparently, "Honey... are you gonna be okay?"
Here's what last spring semester looked like:
But, anyway... even if I don't know how to have a stress-free semester, I know what can make it better, and what makes it worse. In that spirit, I'm back to my once-a-month resolutions. January is, as always, "clear the decks." In that spirit, this week has been devoted to syllabus preparation, returning long-overdue library books, and getting the home and work offices cleaned and organized (the latter takes place twice a year), and the e-mail inbox cleared out.
Is it working? Am I more organized and prepared? Well, I think one good indication is the fact that I'm only posting my January resolution when the month is half-done. Yeah. But every day is a new opportunity and all that.
But enough about me: How is your new semester going? Any intentions you've set up to help keep yourself from being in the weeds, come March and April?
Thursday, January 10, 2013
An Excellent Start
Now that's the way to start the year! Here are excerpts from an e-mail in my inbox this morning, regarding a grant I was awarded in 2011:
Ha! Because you know, just yesterday I had resolved to give up on this grant. The money was spent, so... whatever. And now? It's like money fallen from the sky!
Also: I recently found out that my book (its story to be found here) got a prize. So, that's also nice.
No... it's better than nice. Blogger doesn't support GIFs, so I invite you to click here to see a truly excellent happy dance.
Here are a couple of pictures from what I was doing in between panels at the AHA. As you can see, I need to go back with more time, and more lenses.
Happy 2013!
I am happy to be able to report to you that the grant you were awarded in 2011 will be sent out today. [...] We are sorry that this took so long, and appreciate your patience. I am sure you are all aware of the economic situation in [funding country]; I imagine that many of you may had given up hope that you would ever see your grants, so I hope this news brings a bit of good cheer to your new year.
Ha! Because you know, just yesterday I had resolved to give up on this grant. The money was spent, so... whatever. And now? It's like money fallen from the sky!
Also: I recently found out that my book (its story to be found here) got a prize. So, that's also nice.
No... it's better than nice. Blogger doesn't support GIFs, so I invite you to click here to see a truly excellent happy dance.
Here are a couple of pictures from what I was doing in between panels at the AHA. As you can see, I need to go back with more time, and more lenses.
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| French Quarter, 7:15 a.m. |
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| Portrait of frequent commenter "Susan" |
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| New Orleans has the world's coolest cemeteries. |
Happy 2013!
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