News flash: Faculty jobs are scarce in the humanities. If there's one thing a humanities PhD can't do, it's be picky about institutional type, location, etc. So, as in many fields, the bar is creeping up. Community colleges want you to have teaching experience. Universities want strong publications. But what the article doesn't explicitly point out is that, since you'll have to desperately grab any job you can, a doctoral student really needs to do both of these things to have a shot at a job.
Also discussed at the MLA was shortening the time to graduation, which in the humanities is currently nine years. While it's the kind of thing almost everyone claims to be in favor of, how, exactly, is that compatible with the job market requiring more from candidates?
The kind of PhD students I knew who got out in four-ish years with stellar research were smart, worked very hard, and were the kind of people who didn't mind slotting themselves exactly in to their advisors' ideas. Does that model even work in the humanities, where people work much more independently, and do we want to encourage creating clones? On the other hand, the kind of PhD students I knew who got out in four-ish years with extensive teaching experience … don't exist.
Something is going to have to change in the system of producing and hiring faculty, but what, exactly? Right now, it's not much different than the production of pro football players. There's a larger supply than demand. While we excoriate young people who gamble on an NFL future and laud doctoral candidates, frankly, I don't see much difference between the 18-year-old with no football career or other skills and the 30-year-old with no full-time academic career and $100,000 of debt. They're both stuck, one unlikely to find a job that will put food on the table, and the other to find a job that will enable her to pay off the debt before her own kids are college-age.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
Readers and writers
I'm reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and it's one of those books that depresses me profoundly. This, I am quite certain, was not Egan's intention; or, at least, the causes of my anxiety are not the ones she was endeavoring to achieve.
In the novel, we get to see the main characters, who have grown up to be successful if troubled adults, as their younger selves. Bennie and his high school friends do things like join punk bands, dye their hair unnatural colors, smoke pot, and have tortured relationships. In other words, they are the kids that I thought were way cool back in my own high school days.
This was the early 1990s. I suppose I had part of the act down - a fine collection of KMFDM, a pair of 18-eye Doc Martens, the requisite black-and-white striped tights, and a copy of the Death Sandman comic. But my hair was its natural blond, I didn't smoke anything at all, and I certainly wasn't in any bands. Sometimes I thought about starting an underground school paper; instead, I edited the literary magazine. I do have, to my credit, a few copies left of the comic book three of us made, which featured a gender-balanced, multiracial cast, starring a pair of alternatively-styled friends on a hospital adventure. I'm sure it's quite the collector's item.
Yeah, I wanted to dye my hair blue, but my parents didn't allow it, so I didn't. Besides, I worked after school at the local newspaper. I had no desire to smoke anything at all. I only skipped class twice, and once was with my parents' permission - they were smart, I'll give them that: Let her skip school to buy Nirvana tickets, and she'll never ask for a nose ring … And the one time I wore my Docs on a hike, I conceded afterwards that they were inappropriate footwear. Real Goths Up Trees would never admit that. My friends were mostly other good students who participated in decidedly uncool activities like quiz bowl and math team. One was a cheerleader. Some of them even prayed together during class breaks.
No, I was never one of those cool kids. Not like Egan's characters, and (I assume by way of "write about what you know" plus jealous projection) presumably she was. Which is probably why she's a writer today, and I'm a management professor. Sure, China Mieville got a PhD, but it was in Marxist economics, and he proceeded to promptly not use it. It's a little-examined tenet of my worldview that writers necessarily have had interesting lives - you know, so-and-so "has worked as an emu wrangler, circus contortionist, food taster, seasonal park ranger, receptionist at a buggy whip factory, and ankle masseuse."
And what about those cool kids, the real ones I actually knew? Some of them grew up to be soccer moms. Some are community activists or professors (in non-applied disciplines). At least one is trying to be Charles Bukowski. A lot of them, I have no idea.
Me, I'm temporarily indisposed because I wasn't rebellious enough in high school but was always fundamentally square, well-liked without being popular, and now I don't have any of the major neuroses that either drive achievement or burn you out. Really, all you need to know about me is that, when it came time to pick a New York apartment, I opted for the Upper West Side over the Lower East. And my barometer of what's cool is still the LES, when today all the writers live in Brooklyn.
In the novel, we get to see the main characters, who have grown up to be successful if troubled adults, as their younger selves. Bennie and his high school friends do things like join punk bands, dye their hair unnatural colors, smoke pot, and have tortured relationships. In other words, they are the kids that I thought were way cool back in my own high school days.
This was the early 1990s. I suppose I had part of the act down - a fine collection of KMFDM, a pair of 18-eye Doc Martens, the requisite black-and-white striped tights, and a copy of the Death Sandman comic. But my hair was its natural blond, I didn't smoke anything at all, and I certainly wasn't in any bands. Sometimes I thought about starting an underground school paper; instead, I edited the literary magazine. I do have, to my credit, a few copies left of the comic book three of us made, which featured a gender-balanced, multiracial cast, starring a pair of alternatively-styled friends on a hospital adventure. I'm sure it's quite the collector's item.
Yeah, I wanted to dye my hair blue, but my parents didn't allow it, so I didn't. Besides, I worked after school at the local newspaper. I had no desire to smoke anything at all. I only skipped class twice, and once was with my parents' permission - they were smart, I'll give them that: Let her skip school to buy Nirvana tickets, and she'll never ask for a nose ring … And the one time I wore my Docs on a hike, I conceded afterwards that they were inappropriate footwear. Real Goths Up Trees would never admit that. My friends were mostly other good students who participated in decidedly uncool activities like quiz bowl and math team. One was a cheerleader. Some of them even prayed together during class breaks.
No, I was never one of those cool kids. Not like Egan's characters, and (I assume by way of "write about what you know" plus jealous projection) presumably she was. Which is probably why she's a writer today, and I'm a management professor. Sure, China Mieville got a PhD, but it was in Marxist economics, and he proceeded to promptly not use it. It's a little-examined tenet of my worldview that writers necessarily have had interesting lives - you know, so-and-so "has worked as an emu wrangler, circus contortionist, food taster, seasonal park ranger, receptionist at a buggy whip factory, and ankle masseuse."
And what about those cool kids, the real ones I actually knew? Some of them grew up to be soccer moms. Some are community activists or professors (in non-applied disciplines). At least one is trying to be Charles Bukowski. A lot of them, I have no idea.
Me, I'm temporarily indisposed because I wasn't rebellious enough in high school but was always fundamentally square, well-liked without being popular, and now I don't have any of the major neuroses that either drive achievement or burn you out. Really, all you need to know about me is that, when it came time to pick a New York apartment, I opted for the Upper West Side over the Lower East. And my barometer of what's cool is still the LES, when today all the writers live in Brooklyn.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
If only, revisited
One of my cousins linked to this article on Facebook, and although I definitely am not a competitive runner, I thought it articulated nicely what it means to be into something.
If only I had a timeturner
People into anything - yoga, ski jumping, competitive stamp collecting - will meet people from time to time who say something like, "Oh, I've always wanted to do that, but I don't have time." When this happens, I try to politely ignore the comment and move on, because I do believe that if you really wanted to do it, you'd find the time for it.
Now, I'm not going to take that to a ludicrous extreme. You may be undergoing chemotherapy, dealing with a 3-week-old infant, or in the middle of a stakeout. But for the average middle-class adult (i.e., you don't have to work 80 hours a week just to feed your family), there is slippage in your schedule. And if there isn't any this moment (say, during that stakeout), surely in the years up until now there was.
I don't mean you're sitting around twiddling your thumbs. Probably, to do it, you'd have to give up something else. Maybe overtime, maybe your kid's soccer game, maybe watching Family Guy. And you might say, "Seriously, you think I should be a worse parent? It's not worth it." OK, that's a fine decision, but what you're saying is that X rates below other things in your list of priorities. Nothing wrong with that, but it just goes to show that your "I really want to do X" isn't true. You reveal your priorities through your actions.
As an idle passing comment, it really isn't a big deal, though. If hyperbole was a capital offense, we'd all be dead. It's people who go around constantly telling people about how they really, really want to do X someday, but they don't have time now, nor are they working on a plan for how to make it happen in the future, that bother me. I'm sure you know That Guy.
Now, this is where, just as you think I'm being intolerant and superior, that I turn it around and reveal how capable of self-criticism I am. Isn't that an annoying writing technique?* It's like, "Geez, not only is she an impossible, perfectionist critic, she hates herself, too."
But the thing is, I've realized that I've been treating one of my goals in this way. I've been acting as if saying, "I want to do that," will magically git-r-dun. I don't mean, "I should really put 8 instead of 7 hours a week into honing my competitive stamp collecting skills." No, I mean, "Watching season 2 of Burn Notice while thinking, 'Yo, Turducken, you should probably be working on that other thing you haven't touched in two weeks,' is a colossal waste of time and reveals what your priorities are." It means that, apparently, I'd rather go to the grave as someone who watched the entire run of Burn Notice than be a world-class stamp collector.
I know there's plenty of research out there about how the brain and the body undermine the conscious self. This is the season of new year's resolutions, after all. Human beings are terrible at saving money, losing weight, getting in better shape, giving up addictions, or putting in the hours to become a concert-quality cellist. Willpower is pretty crappy. But I'm not a mind-body dualist. What your limbic system or your gonads want is what you want, as much as your conscious intentions are.
There's a quote, and I'm too lazy to Google who said it, that goes something like, "Do you want to be doing x, or do you want to have done x?" Which is basically what I need to ask myself, in about 500 words than I just used to get there.
*Still, it beats doing it in reverse - start out with the self-criticism and move on to saying, "But everybody does it." This just comes across as projection and excuses.
Now, I'm not going to take that to a ludicrous extreme. You may be undergoing chemotherapy, dealing with a 3-week-old infant, or in the middle of a stakeout. But for the average middle-class adult (i.e., you don't have to work 80 hours a week just to feed your family), there is slippage in your schedule. And if there isn't any this moment (say, during that stakeout), surely in the years up until now there was.
I don't mean you're sitting around twiddling your thumbs. Probably, to do it, you'd have to give up something else. Maybe overtime, maybe your kid's soccer game, maybe watching Family Guy. And you might say, "Seriously, you think I should be a worse parent? It's not worth it." OK, that's a fine decision, but what you're saying is that X rates below other things in your list of priorities. Nothing wrong with that, but it just goes to show that your "I really want to do X" isn't true. You reveal your priorities through your actions.
As an idle passing comment, it really isn't a big deal, though. If hyperbole was a capital offense, we'd all be dead. It's people who go around constantly telling people about how they really, really want to do X someday, but they don't have time now, nor are they working on a plan for how to make it happen in the future, that bother me. I'm sure you know That Guy.
Now, this is where, just as you think I'm being intolerant and superior, that I turn it around and reveal how capable of self-criticism I am. Isn't that an annoying writing technique?* It's like, "Geez, not only is she an impossible, perfectionist critic, she hates herself, too."
But the thing is, I've realized that I've been treating one of my goals in this way. I've been acting as if saying, "I want to do that," will magically git-r-dun. I don't mean, "I should really put 8 instead of 7 hours a week into honing my competitive stamp collecting skills." No, I mean, "Watching season 2 of Burn Notice while thinking, 'Yo, Turducken, you should probably be working on that other thing you haven't touched in two weeks,' is a colossal waste of time and reveals what your priorities are." It means that, apparently, I'd rather go to the grave as someone who watched the entire run of Burn Notice than be a world-class stamp collector.
I know there's plenty of research out there about how the brain and the body undermine the conscious self. This is the season of new year's resolutions, after all. Human beings are terrible at saving money, losing weight, getting in better shape, giving up addictions, or putting in the hours to become a concert-quality cellist. Willpower is pretty crappy. But I'm not a mind-body dualist. What your limbic system or your gonads want is what you want, as much as your conscious intentions are.
There's a quote, and I'm too lazy to Google who said it, that goes something like, "Do you want to be doing x, or do you want to have done x?" Which is basically what I need to ask myself, in about 500 words than I just used to get there.
*Still, it beats doing it in reverse - start out with the self-criticism and move on to saying, "But everybody does it." This just comes across as projection and excuses.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Yoga at LiM, not to be confused with LIM College
I first heard about Life in Motion when I my broker showed me the apartment I ended up renting. The studio is actually closer than the nearest subway station, and she said it was pretty good. However, the Yelp reviews discouraged me from even trying it. It is owned by a traditional gym, and the reviewers complained about exercise bikes and dirty floors. (Unlike other studios owned by gyms, such as Pure Yoga, however, it doesn't require membership.) I dismissed LiM entirely. Then at the holidays I missed my flight home and was stuck in the city an extra day, literally the day after my Dharma Mittra pass expired. I figured I might as well take advantage of their $5 first-class price.
I'll start with the bad, right up front: The floors are dirty. I don't usually feel an urge to mop things, but LiM makes me feel like a housewife in a cleaning product commercial. You know, before she discovers the awesome new product.
Then there's the neutral: The website could use work; it is totally not up to date with profiles of the teachers, for example. The studio itself is focused on running a few types of classes, nothing exotic, with no stars and few workshops. Classes are back-to-back, so there's no lingering or chatting.
And the good? The space is decent, especially the larger of the two studios - lots of windows. (And not carpeted, yay!) The prices are extremely reasonable - $11/class with a class card (there are no monthly rates), which is cheap even for places outside of New York. Finally, the location is obviously swell for me - no 45-minute subway journeys, no hauling yoga clothes and mat to work.
The best part, though, is the teachers. I've only tried their open-level vinyasa classes, but all the teachers I've tried have led vigorous, flowing asana classes with plenty of corrections. I particularly like Magi's Wednesday night class.
In sum? This is a studio I can go to on a regular basis for my everyday yoga needs. There are still a couple of "star" studios in town I want to check out, like Katonah and Laughing Lotus (especially their Friday night class), but not having to spend as much time on the subway as I do in class is a serious enough bonus to make this my "home" studio.
I'll start with the bad, right up front: The floors are dirty. I don't usually feel an urge to mop things, but LiM makes me feel like a housewife in a cleaning product commercial. You know, before she discovers the awesome new product.
Then there's the neutral: The website could use work; it is totally not up to date with profiles of the teachers, for example. The studio itself is focused on running a few types of classes, nothing exotic, with no stars and few workshops. Classes are back-to-back, so there's no lingering or chatting.
And the good? The space is decent, especially the larger of the two studios - lots of windows. (And not carpeted, yay!) The prices are extremely reasonable - $11/class with a class card (there are no monthly rates), which is cheap even for places outside of New York. Finally, the location is obviously swell for me - no 45-minute subway journeys, no hauling yoga clothes and mat to work.
The best part, though, is the teachers. I've only tried their open-level vinyasa classes, but all the teachers I've tried have led vigorous, flowing asana classes with plenty of corrections. I particularly like Magi's Wednesday night class.
In sum? This is a studio I can go to on a regular basis for my everyday yoga needs. There are still a couple of "star" studios in town I want to check out, like Katonah and Laughing Lotus (especially their Friday night class), but not having to spend as much time on the subway as I do in class is a serious enough bonus to make this my "home" studio.
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