A Sphincter Says What?

I typed up my student evaluations from last semester because, well, I'm an adjunct and no one in the department cared enough to have it done for me. These evaluations were done by the department itself, in addition and separate from the college evaluations that are online. All the history department asked was what students liked best and least about the class. Typing them up myself was its own particular kind of torture, not just having to read the comments that I can't respond to but also having a very good idea of who wrote what because I still remember most of their handwriting styles.

I decided to take to Twitter and tweet some of the gems (those that made me feel all warm inside *and* those that were particularly heinous), as a way to help me process the comments. When I came across a comment that said "I didn't like how early the class was," I tweeted that quote with my response at the end: Then don't sign up for an 8:00 class. It got some laughs and retweets. It also helped me not get angry at the student, who I in no way forced to take an 8:00 class when I am anything but a morning person and was certainly not thrilled at having to be there at 8:00 myself. I have a 45 minute drive in the morning. They have to walk across a street. (See? This is the downfall of seeing the handwriting, knowing who wrote the evaluation, and remembering all the things they told you throughout the semester.)

The tweet that got the most response, however, was this one:


"I liked how the teacher lectured, but you had to study. Most teachers make PowerPoints that give all the information and you don't do anything on your own."

When I first read it, I was stunned, hence the Wayne's World reference. You can get through college-level classes without studying? Professors just want you to regurgitate what they tell you? Call me naive, but that's horrendous. I almost didn't tweet it. I was so taken aback that I thought it had to be a one-off. But it wasn't. There were a few more comments in a similar vein, so I tweeted it and my response, which was "I don't know what to say about that last tweet eval. I feel sorry for those students who are taught to be robots."

Apparently, a lot of people agreed to me because there was a flurry of retweets, favorites, and replies with some very good points made. What happened to critical thinking? What happened to independent learning and studying and thinking for yourself? Is it wrong to expect students to study in college?

It is very easy to criticize students for not understanding what it takes to succeed in college, that they are largely responsible for their own success, that grades reflect performance, not effort. After all, how many times have we told students they don't get an A because they do the work, they get an A because their work meets a certain standard? 

But are we complicit in their misunderstanding? Evidently, some of us are. In this age of the assault on higher education, this is not how we should represent ourselves if we expect society at large to believe our protests that higher education is important and relevant and vital. If we don't make the effort to teach as well as we can, why should we expect students to make the effort to learn as well as they can?

I say this fully aware of the all of the changes taking place in higher education right now, fully aware of all of the other demands on academics that can push teaching to the back burner, and fully aware of the adjunct situation, since I've lived it for the past year. I say this as someone who tried to write her dissertation while teaching four new classes.

Do I regret spending what a lot of people would consider too much time on teaching? No. I really don't.  I just graded a student's final exam and the grade was more than double what they earned on the first test of the semester. The student obviously learned something this semester and it wasn't just modern U.S. history. They learned how to read for comprehension, how to study, how to think critically. How do I know this? I worked with that student quite a bit. I can see the change. That's why I don't regret it. Whether the student realizes it or not, I made a difference and that's enough for me. Well, that and evaluation comments like these:

"I liked the fact that this course taught things that weren't common knowledge. I deeply enjoyed my learning experience."

"I liked that we learned many things that could possibly change our views."

"I thought history was boring until I actually got engaged with it."

I might not have been at this school for long, but I can leave without regret, knowing that I did the best I could and that the school is losing an asset, someone who cares about their students, not someone who throws up a PowerPoint slide and tells their class to just copy it down. I care and I can make a difference. That's the point of being an educator.

Writing Group Week 16 - That's All We Wrote!

Well, well, well. We survived another writing group. Did you meet your main goal? Did you meet last week's goal?

Before we get to that, this is just a reminder that the next writing group is being hosted by Dame Eleanor Hull over at her place. The group she is hosting will be significantly different than this one, with DEH asking that participants focus on one piece of writing. Her group will provide a place for "public accountability and acknowledgment of interim goals met." JaneB has offered to host a kind of tandem writing group where participants can discuss more general goals, work process, OBW(hatever), etc., similar to what has happened in this particular writing group.

When I offered to host this group, I thought that there were enough of us ABDs or ECRs in the previous groups that it might be beneficial to have someone coming from that perspective co-hosting, particularly because my co-host is mid-career and could provide a counterpoint on behalf of those of you who are not ABD/ECR. I also, perhaps naively, hoped that as someone who struggles with the writing process (which is new for me because I never struggled as an undergrad, during my M.A., or during the first two years of my PhD) and, therefore, reads a lot about that topic, I might be able to provide some helpful new ideas or reminders of old tricks to those of you further in your career who might be stuck in a writing rut. Sometimes a change in perspective can get you out of a rut, after all. Certainly, when I could only offer questions, not solutions, others in the group did; however, if anyone feels as if they did not get anything useful from this group because of my particular perspective, I apologize.

Writing groups are what the participants make them and I, for one, am grateful for the increased sense of community I gained from this particular group. I could write it off as saying I've been feeling particularly isolated this semester with no real, physical academic community right now, but I think academia can be a lonely place, as a lot of you have said or shown in these groups and on your blogs. As I said over at JaneB's, I really felt as if you all acted as a support system for me and cheering me on through my successes and my struggles and I hope you felt the same from me/us in return, if that's what you wanted from the group. I could not have handled the stresses of the semester - writing, teaching, and personal, a lot of which didn't even get mentioned in the group, if you can believe that - without the support from all of you, so thank you all.

Enough of that. Let's celebrate the end of this group and all that we've done. Here it is - the final roll call (original 15 week goals included - sorry if you changed yours and this isn't up-to-date):

Amanda@ladyscientist: no check-in
15 Week Goal: completely finish two fellowship apps, get halfway through a third, turn my dissertation intro into a minireview, write my final section of TheReviewThatNeverEnds, and any other small writing projects that come my way

Amstr (writing account): 1) write 1500 words (or more!!), 2) read 3 articles, 3) notes on 5 articles (or more), 4) make office functional and call electrician to put in safe outlets.
15 Week Goal: finally finish the darn dissertation!

Bardiac: no check-in
15 Week Goal: working on a paper for the Shakespeare association, and also working on moving a paper from conference to publishable

Contigent Cassandra: finish & give lecture; continue grading; regroup/plan final push on chapter (including, if necessary, asking for a 1-2 week extension well in advance of the May 1 deadline. That's more professional, right?)
15 Week Goal: complete a chapter for an "approaches to teaching" volume (we'll call this the T chapter), due 5/1, and to keep up with freelance assignments. If I have any additional time, I'd also like to finish the J article that I was trying to finish last fall, and make some sort of progress on the P project, but, based on past experience, that seems unlikely

Dame Eleanor Hull: polish 1000 lines of translation and send it to my team. Review the companion-piece against the journal's style sheet and send it. Allow self 15 minutes a day with MMP-1.
15 Week Goal: finishing and submitting the MMP is my main goal, and if I finish it before the end of the group I hope I can declare a new goal.

Danne: 1) write first thing in the morning and 2) work on my PhD for at least three hours a day
15 Week Goal: read and take daily notes of my reflections and the progress I'm making. I want to work at least 3 hours a day, 6 days a week on my thesis

Elizabeth Anne Mitchell: no check-in
15 Week Goal: finish up article O, which I researched and got close to completion in the last group, for submission. I then have article O prime, the offshoot from article O to flesh out, complete and submit

Good Enough Woman: Spend a hour each M and W mornings reading secondary text, order two books from ILL.
15 Week Goal: "Finish draft of Chapter 5, Draft Chapter 3, Revise article"

heu mihi: Do what's on the to-do list. Finish the sucker, really.
15 Week Goal: get a workable draft of the article finished by the end of April. What I'd like to do is write 5 hours a week, plus fit in some reading time as needed

humming42: 15 minutes a day.
15 Week Goal: work on the reconfigured book project, which now includes some incremental steps like drafting a survey, getting IRB approval, and applying for a travel grant

Jane B: a) outline the results and discussion sections for the Paper That Wants To Be Written, and b) spend time with the Stupid MSc Paper - let's say three lots of ten minutes, as a goal.
15 Week Goal: make measureable progress' - I want to be able to report actual numbers in terms of papers moved from one key developmental stage to the next

Jason: no check-in
15 Week Goal: I need Chap. 4 & Chap. 1 drafts. Ideally, the Chap. 4 draft will come together in the next few weeks (sent to advisor by end of Feb.)

Jodi: Seriously finish the chapter because this is ridiculous.
15 Week Goal: 1000-1500 words/wk

kiwi2: Again, read and take notes on two papers a day for my exotic synthesis. Also write 500 words this week, to start putting some ideas together.
15 Week Goal: "conference talk to give in two weeks and have a big pile of analysis to do for this over the next week- hence, my first goal, is - do this. All week.
2)Paper X from the previous writing group needs reanalysis of one section (arggh), and general rewriting. Its a collaborative effort, and I am anticipating writing will drag on for some time although I would like to submit, like, immediately.
3)Paper Z, I want to finish the analysis of one dataset, and the writing of these results (probably two paragraphs max.). I am half way through this, and would like to just get it done.
4) There are other projects too that I want to get done, but I will focus on the above first, and then concentrate on two hours of writing a day. I think if I can achieve this, the other pieces of research will also fall into place"

kiwimedievalist/zcat_abroad: no check-in
15 Week Goal: 6000-word article due on the 1st of April, of which I have done a fair bit of research (much of it spinning out of my PhD thesis (aka dissertation), and about 2500 words written and bits(?) of a novel if possible)

luolin88: 30 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday
15 Week Goal: write and submit an article

Matilda: revise my plan for a new paper.
15 Week Goal: 1. Finish an article A. 2. Finish an article B. 3. 15-minute writing every day

meansomething: no check-in because of travel
15 Week Goal: continue to devote time each week to poems (drafting new ones while continuing to revise the sequence); to find a publisher for my second book ms.; and to experiment with breaking out some pieces of the lyric essay draft, possibly as shorter pieces on their own

metheist: incorporate the new ideas about gesture into my chapter.
15 Week Goal: finish chapter 4, write my introduction, edit, and defend. Also, I want to work more on embracing the present, not obsessing on the past or worrying about the future.

nwgirl: no check-in
15 Week Goal: Finish revisions of two chapters

Pilgrim/Heretic: no check-in
15 Week Goal: write 21,000 words by April 26

profacero (Z): finish and submit both abstracts
15 Week Goal: to reserve time daily, 25 minutes if that is all there is but ideally 2.5 hours. That is it, 25 minutes to 2.5 hours, 7 days a week, no vacation ever (on vacation, 25 minutes), and ideally closer to 2.5 hours most days

Susan: no check-in
15 Week Goal: first, a plenary talk at a major conference outside my discipline in late March, and second, a draft of a piece for one of the "companion" volumes that speaks to some of the conceptual issues of the book project

tracynicolrose: Finalize Frameworks for presentation; tackle citations in BE; continue with new MS matrices
15 Week Goal: work on 3 new papers this semester: BE paper, Methods paper, and HT paper. My aim is to get a decent draft completed on all three so I can submit over the summer

Zabeel: revisit article and make plan of future work
15 Week Goal: to get the book manuscript finished and submitted to press (finish final 2 chapters and conclusion; edit all for consistency; incorporate comments as they come in). I'd also like to finish converting a conference paper based on a new topic into an article

Got FOMO?

This is my life. There is no escaping FOMO for me. Either I am the one with FOMO, constantly checking emails, Twitter, and Facebook, not to mention texts, or someone I am with someone who has FOMO and is annoying me.

I'm pretty good about ignoring my phone when I'm hanging out with people because it infuriates me when people ignore me for their phone.* My best friend, on the other hand, is terrible. He is constantly texting - even while driving, making me yell at him - or checking email or Facebook and it drives me nuts. We can be out to dinner or having drinks or just watching tv and he is constantly on his phone.

Why can't people enjoy the people who are actually making an effort to spend real time with them, rather than focusing on what other people, who aren't with them, are doing? Whatever happened to enjoying the moment?



*Seriously. I really do make an effort. Avoiding work is one thing, but I think it's terribly rude to ignore people you are with and I just don't do it (much).

Enough is Enough is Enough

Have you heard the latest rape news? It happened in Canada, so you may not have, but here's a link to the story of Rehtaeh Parsons, a 17 year-old girl whose family just took her off life support three days after she hanged herself.

Why did she hang herself? Well, year and a half ago, four boys thought it would be awesome to rape her, DOCUMENTING THEIR ACTIONS BY TAKING PICTURES OF THE FUN TIME and then, because that wasn't hilarious enough, what did they do? You guessed it. They shared those pictures with everyone in school and their town.

Does this sound familiar? Nauseating shades of Steubenville, perhaps?

Parsons tried to hide what happened from her family until she could no longer handle the pressure and abuse from the community. Because, you know, it was clearly ONE girl's fault that she was raped by FOUR boys.

I will never understand what makes people think it's ok to rape and think it's ok, no - hilarious, to brag about rape. I will never understand what makes people think it's ok to blame the victim of a horrible crime that didn't end with the rape (it never does), but continued up to and including the time she hanged herself because of the torment she faced and the humiliation she dealt with every single day?

Despite the physical proof that she was raped, everyone in the town saw the pictures, after all, the RCMP didn't have enough evidence. They couldn't be bothered to even interview the "alleged" perpetrators right away. The mother was told that, regardless of the rape, there wasn't really a crime because the distribution of child pornography, which is what it's called when a 15 year-old girl is involved, was somehow not a crime, but a "community issue."

They are, in a strange way, right. That it was acceptable to the community that this happened is a "community issue." That it was ok for her mortification to be increased exponentially by the sharing of those photos and by the sick, twisted reaction to those photos is a "community issue." That it is ok for four boys to rape a girl is a "community issue." How they responded to that crime is a "community issue." When things will change is also a "community issue" - a world community issue. How many times do we have to hear about these rapes, these shamings, these blamings of the victim? When will that change come?

Shame on the community. Shame on the RCMP. They are just as culpable in this girl's suicide. I hope every single one of them who knew about the crime but didn't investigate or didn't take it seriously is haunted by her suicide for the rest of their lives. It is the least they deserve.

Week 14: Rounding Third

Forgive the baseball analogy, but it's that time of year and not a minute too soon. Go Yankees!

Now that that's out of the way, in all seriousness, we are quickly coming to the end of this writing group. (Fortunately, Dame Eleanor Hull has offered to host the next incarnation of the group for those of us who need/want it.) Is anyone exhausted by the semester? Is anyone exhausted by trying to squeeze in the all-precious writing that we swore to protect at all costs, but perhaps we were not as vigilant as we could have been or the universe thought we were hilarious with such a vow and decided to prove just how wrong we could be? Yeah, that's me.

I struggled to even come up with a topic for the week because I am just so tired, but then I remembered a post by Kathy Steffen I read a few months ago about getting your writing back on track and one of my favorite tips was "Print out motivation quotes or writing affirmations and tape them to your computer so you will see inspirational words every day." This writing group, for me at least, is all about inspiration. I do, however, have a secret love, the best writing coach ever, that I thought I would share. Some of you may know him from the tv show Friday Night Lights, but some of you may not because you do not have the television interests of a fifteen year old girl. Meet Academic Coach Taylor. He can be hardcore, but it's all out of love. My laptop, iPhone, and desk are all littered with ACT pics.

He speaks the truth.

He can be a sweetie.

He can be...less sweet.

He can also be an enforcer when he needs to be (or when you need him to be).

Those are just a few of my favorites, but Academic Coach Taylor has loads more to say. Feel free to share anything you find particularly inspiring, but, otherwise, let's keep writing! We're almost there!

Quick Tank update for those of you asking - he had his stitches out yesterday, despite an obscene amount of whining and hysterics about going back to the vet (not uncalled for in his case, but still!) and then the precious boy actually gave the vet tech kisses while she was removing his stitches. So upset and still so loveable! Anyway, he's fine and here's a picture of the little muffin his first night home after the surgery. He looks absolutely thrilled to have to wear that cone, doesn't he? He's not the only one to be glad he's done with the cone.

Roll call!


Amanda@ladyscientist: Finish fellowship application.

Amstr (writing account): re-park diss. downhill.

Bardiac: no check-in

Contigent Cassandra: make continued progress on writing and/or research, alternating back and forth as necessary (and switching off with preparation for the mid-April lecture). get the tax tasks completed well before April 15th.

Dame Eleanor Hull: submit final draft of companion-piece. Continue at least one hour of research a day, 3 lines of transcription and 50 of translation. Return to MMP-1 and write another 2-3 paragraphs.

Danne: no check-in

Elizabeth Anne Mitchell: Begin the survey question creation for article B.

Good Enough Woman: Write conference proposal on new shiny topic.

heu mihi: Read through Kzoo draft; fix what's easy; list what needs doing.

humming42: submit May abstract, touch manuscript every day

Jane B: a) continue to do something research-like first every day, b) write up what I've done so far with the simulations, outline what the next step is (I am embarrassingly bad at parking computer stuff on a downhill slope) and outline the paper they're going to turn into and c) finish the damn draft of the wretched paper with the MSc student.

Jason: no check-in

Jodi: Write a ton Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully finish the revised first chapter by Wednesday. Grade exams by Friday.

kiwi2: Final draft of grant proposal, one pager and summary. Send paper X to collaborator B. Start gathering data files for next paper all in one place. I am also involved in a conference this week, giving a paper and chairing, so the last goal could be over ambitious.

kiwimedievalist/zcat_abroad: no check-in

luolin88: Complete the requested revisions for the article. Time: 30 mins TWTh and 1hour Friday.

Matilda: revision of my paper

meansomething:  1) 5 12-minute sessions; 2) 1 ms. submission; 3) 1 mag submission

metheist: T/R 7hrs and MWF 1-2hrs

nwgirl: no check-in

Pilgrim/Heretic: LOOK at the damned thing at least 5 minutes per day, even if I don't write anything

profacero (Z): Spanish version of abstract, write and send.

Susan: Catch up with teaching.

tracynicolrose: Finish drafting Frameworks presentation; draft BE discussion

Zabeel:  well, Finish paper.