You know what, folks?

I'm tired.

Teaching eleven units, plus chairing two department committees, plus editing a national org's newsletter, plus grad students, plus grant and conference applications, plus the big university research council, plus plus plus...

I'm teaching all night classes this semester. I generally get home around 10 p.m., and to bed around midnight or later. Yet my best writing time is between 6:30 and 10 a.m. This is not working well for me.

I agreed (before getting hit with the teaching schedule from hell) to give my first-ever presentation (approx. 40 min.) to the department research seminar on the new project. Yeah, I'm sure that's gonna go great.

Sleep is a thing of the past. As are walks with friends, photography, and anything else that I used to enjoy. Even grocery shopping has become hard to fit in. I'm exhausted, I'm feeling like I'm on a fucking hamster wheel, and frankly, this semester has me ready to throw in the towel.

That's me, for today.

Still doing it wrong, after all these years.

UPDATED BELOW: PERPETRATOR IDENTIFIED!!

That post I took down? It was the product of a passing irritation with a quote from c. 20 history bigwig Collingwood, and its magisterial "you're doing it wrong" thing got under my skin. But three hours later I was in a much more positive mood, and I was over it. Besides, in light of Historiann's Lawrence Stone posts (and her nice handling of their blowback) of last year, I decided that my own post was redundant. Again, my apologies to the commenters. And yeah, surely the post can be found elsewhere. Ah well -- my blog, my call.

But hey, something about my decision to take that post down (or perhaps about some totally unrelated thing? Maybe a response I recently posted to a misogynist commenter on a friend's blog?) – then a person used the blog comments area to react to my objection to a misogynist post on a friend's website. And you know, I don't usually respond to comments directly, but since this correspondent's contribution to the discussion threatened to languish in the comments thread of a nothing post, even though s/he explicitly wanted "[my] groupies to gander at" it, I thought I'd put up front and center so everyone could get a chance to share the love:

Notorious idiot, do us all a favor and do not declare yourself an intellectual because if that is the case we are all Stephen Hawkings. Reading fiction 13 hours a day does not make one an intellectual. Leave it to the public to decide what we think of your intellect, so far I'm not seeing much. Please shove all apostrophes up your elitist ass. P.S. I'm not bothering with your personal email....I'll leave my comment here for your groupies to gander at,asshole.

To which I must reply: I have groupies?


UPDATE: said commenter made himself plain when he came back to post the same noxious spew he had on my friend's blog (complete, again, with link to his own website) on the comments area of this post. I did delete it, because I don't tolerate hate speech here, and that's what his site is, in my judgment: imagine the above, but directed at all American women, and with much more abusive language. See? You didn't need to go there at all.

poofed post

My apologies to those who took the time to comment on the most recent post, which I have now disappeared. No, it was nothing incriminating or juicy -- it was just incredibly cranky, and I decided, on later reflection, that I just don't want to present that way here, unless it's actually productive in some way. Some of the stuff that I think is clever in the moment... well, it's just not.

This is shaping up to be one cranky-making semester.

Trouble a-brewin'

I've been really enjoying the conversation on the previous post on fellowships and grants in the Humanities, and I remain more committed than ever to increasing our Office of Research's awareness of the differences between Humanities and Science grants, so everyone** gets the kind of help and processing they need.

But the discussion has taken an interesting turn: Humanities researchers wondering where the money goes. We've had a few people intimately involved with the university side of the process (I'm looking at you, Katrina) chime in with their experience, enough that I've decided to do a separate post on the subject, probably to be posted Tuesday.

But it gets even more nefarious. You see, Comrade PhysioProf and I have been having an off-blog conversation over the last day or so, and I like to imagine that it's increasing some awareness on both sides. Seriously: how often do Humanities and Science faculty sit down and talk about their own takes on things that affect them both without it descending into a frantic grab for as much of the ever-shrinking cash pool as possible?

So, I cooked up an idea to do a joint post, cobbled together from the e-mails we've been sending back and forth. The Comrade upped the ante by suggesting that it be cross-posted at both of our blogs (or "blogges," if you like), so as to bring more science blog readers into the conversation. And please, if you're a grants office person, jump on in, too, because we want to hear from you.

And while you're waiting, check out this story, which talks a bit about a bill in the Texas legislature proposing that the ban on concealed handguns on college campus be lifted, so students and professors can be packing heat. That oughta' add some spice to discussions of who benefits from overhead costs!


**No, I haven't forgotten about those of you in the Social Sciences. It's just that your departments and research types can variously be more like the sciences (needs a lab and student assistants/postdocs) or the humanities (solitary work, need time to research and write) that I just don't think I should generalize. Feel free to read yourself into either group, or post "third option" viewpoints as you see appropriate.

Humanities People Like Money, Too!

I volunteered for a new university committee and, gods help me, they accepted me.

Here's what it is: the "University Research Advisory Council." They've put out a call for two faculty members (for all I know, we are the council), and I felt strongly that the Humanities needed to be represented. So I volunteered.

Here's my backstory: when I went to apply for my big fellowships, I had to go through this process that involved, among many other offices, the Office of University Research, and I quickly discovered that that office had no freakin' clue when it came to Humanities grants. I first had to convince them that, as a medievalist, I probably didn't need to go through the Human Subjects paperwork. Once that was done, there was the process of the grants themselves. I was told that the university probably wouldn't support anything but "high-dollar" grants. Again, fifteen minutes spent convincing them that they shouldn't hold their breath for me to find some mythical $100K grant for Humanities research. It was then suggested that I only apply for "high-profile" fellowships. An actual quote: "If you got a Guggenheim, we'd support it," followed not two minutes later by, "So... What does 'ACLS' stand for?"

Now, if you're not a Humanities person, I don't expect that you'd know what all these things mean, nor should you. But if you are the designated person to help faculty navigate the grants process, here are some randomly-selected things you might be aware of:

• Guggenheim fellowships are not something that a junior scholar working on their very first book just goes out and gets. They tend to go to people working on second or (more often) third books, and to scholars who already have an established record of grant-getting.
• ACLS is kind of a big deal.
• $30-40K for a junior-level humanities fellowship is a lot of money, and you should please not tell faculty members that they are "wasting their time" in applying for these.
  

If these are foreign concepts to our university's research office, then what other potentially damaging areas of ignorance might be lurking out there? I decided that I needed to actually see if I could do something about this.

So here I am, half of a faculty advisory council, and here's my preliminary mission:

• Increase awareness among University Research Office personnel about the research money available, and about what constitutes a good investment, and most importantly, about why scholars in the humanities (especially those with high teaching loads) need to be supported when they apply for time to research and write.
• Get someone in the office who knows Humanities funding, and who can help faculty identify and apply for funding -- and not just NEH funding.
• Make the application process more transparent and easy to navigate: if you want us to fill out a form, don't just e-mail us a spreadsheet with no instructions or guidelines and then tell us you are doing it to "empower" faculty.
• Finally: Eradicate, once and for all, the odious term "grantswinsmanship" from all university materials.
  

There's probably more to do, and I'm sure I'll figure it out. But dammit, this is important.

Teaching My Way to Words on Paper (or: Making a Teaching Assignment Work for Me, Rather Than Against Me)

God, how I hated this question in interviews: "How does your research affect your teaching?" Sure, maybe I should have been able to answer it, but as I was applying for generalist jobs most of the time, so I couldn't see what to say without making myself seem too narrow. Of course, now I have a good answer to that question, one that has to do more with keeping myself interested and excited, but at the time, it was a stumper.

I have, however, discovered something even more delightful: My teaching can actually help my research. And a semester like the one I've got coming up is a perfect test case. here's how it goes:

• Monday: Graduate research seminar (3 hrs): 20-25-page paper
• Wednesday: Undergraduate research methodology/intro to the discipline (4 hrs): 10-12-page paper
• Thursday: Graduate capstone research seminar (4 hrs): 18-20-page paper

Anyone noticing a theme here? Yep, basically I'm doing the exact same thing in all three classes, though at three levels, and with three topics.** Most importantly for the purposes of my discussion here is this commonality: all three culminate in the students producing an original research paper (different lengths), and all three directly incorporate a lot of steps in the process of doing that.

Coincidentally, I have to write two things this semester: a conference paper (10-12 pages), and a presentation for the department research seminar (about 20 pages). Also, I am a person who does best with concrete deadlines: only fear of looking like an ass in front of other people really motivates me to actually getting something done.



So here's the deal: I write these papers right along with my students -- and I let them know I'm doing it. When they have to write a preliminary proposal, I make sure that I've written my conference abstract. When they have to do an outline, they get to look at mine. We keep each other honest, and keep each other working. At least, that's the plan.

Wish me luck!


**There is actually a reason why I don't use the same topic for all three, having to do with available sources and what the students are prepared to do at a particular level, but that's a whole 'nother post.

***image lifted from the "Hyperbole and a Half" store. Perfect gifts for the reluctant academic.

Overcoming Post-Traumatic Semester Syndrome

Another semester is upon me, and I'm jumpy.

Those of you who followed this blog last semester know that I totally revamped my approach to my undergraduate courses. I added some more challenging assignments, but compensated by putting in a lot more scaffolding and a replaced a few of my lectures with one-on-one tutorials in the upper-division classes. And it had exactly the opposite effect from what I was aiming for: low performance and (more recently) the lowest evaluation scores I've ever gotten in over ten years of university teaching. To add injury to insult, one of my bread-and-butter classes was, for the first time ever, canceled, as a result of catastrophically low enrollment. The fact that students are staying away in droves may not have anything to do with my new approach. On the other hand, it might.

It has been, to say the least, demoralizing. This is made worse by a quirk of my own personality: I'm such a freak about personal accountability that when something like this happens, my first internal response is "What am I doing wrong?" Part of me simply refuses to consider that it might not be (entirely) my fault.**

fig. 1: temporarily empty seats ≠ Professor Notorious sucks and ought to give up

But you know what? I've looked at it from every angle, and even consulted with other people in my department, and I've reached the conclusion that I did it right last semester, perhaps righter than I've ever done before. So what if I got handed the utterly-grueling-for-everyone-concerned boot camp course two days ago in order to replace the underenrolled course? You know what? I'm going to go into that course and kick some instructional ass. I will not listen to the one colleague who I know will tell me that I'm expecting too much, and ought to give up the research paper requirements, because I know that having my favorite courses fill is not the point: it's about what the students are learning, rather than the ego boost that comes with having popular courses. I'm going to be the best classroom teacher I know how to be, and if that's not enough, then fuck it. Because I can't do any more than that.

Watch out, semester: I'm going to take you down.


**This applies to areas of my life other than teaching, but that's a post for another day -- or more probably, never.