1. Ways to improve the website.
                        -For example, when I was looking at grad schools to attend, I found that the Graduate Dept. website was very confusing. Maybe just list the Version III program, and offer links to the others.

2. Class selection.
                        -Knowing further in advance what classes will be offered when and if at all.

3. Choosing a professor to be a representative for the capstone project and more information about the project in general. Can/Should examples be given?

4. How to choose a faculty member as a mentor for the thesis option

5. Areas of the discipline where classes seem to be lacking or not offered at all

That’s all I have for now! I hope that everyone can muster on without me tonight.

Im considering actually turning in the proposal, but I’ve only got two days to decide.  As with the book review, I started out pretty bored with it, but managed to get swept up.  My personality tends to be like that.  The writing was reminiscent to me of my journalist studies, and it was really fun to write a persuasive, witty, SHORT piece   Hopefully we will share them in class tonight – if not, I’d like to post it and let people have at it with the criticism

I don’t think I’ve felt this way since I read Running with Scissors. Both times I felt a terrible fascination, like it was a train wreck and I just couldn’t look away. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely parts of this book that had me laughing out loud, one such moment being when Hank has Finny (the goose, not the man) by the neck and he’s swinging him around yelling about how he’ll kill a duck a day if he doesn’t get his budget. The image this conjured in my head was so ridiculous that it took me the better part of three hours to take it back down to a hiccupping giggle. But overall I just felt this strange mixture of pity and indigestion. Maybe I’m just not cut out for realistic fiction. Maybe it reminds me too much of my own life. Not that Hank and I had too much in common, but maybe we just had too much in common.

Viewing this book in relation to Office Hours, I can definitely see the connection. Office Hours gave a very dry recitation of the situation in academia today, where Straight Man gave us an absurdist view. Neither was better or worse in their representation of the material, but, despite needing an Alka-Seltzer to read it, I would choose Straight Man hands down every time if someone were to ask me which book presents a better view of the situation. Sometimes, you just need a little absurdity to make the medicine go down.

Anyway, I’m just going to keep this short, since I already said most of what I wanted to say in class. I do want to ask this question (and please don’t skewer me alive for it!): Why is it so bad to be a public school teacher with a PhD? I understand that it’s always been a sort of unspoken rule that you once you achieved your Master’s you set out to teach college. It’s also been a sort of unspoken understanding that people who could teach college don’t teach primary and secondary schooling. I’ve never had a teacher with his/her PhD and the only one I’ve ever encountered is a man who has been a long-term sub in our building this year. We all seem to either avoid him or look at him as though he were an anomaly, a cipher, a….weirdo.

Isn’t this whole thing exactly the kind of classicism that we’ve been talking about with this book and with some of the previous books? Automatically assuming that anyone who was smart enough and dedicated enough to get a PhD should “demean” themselves by teaching in a primary or secondary school is just continuing this idea that professor are demi-gods to be feared (though truly I still fear! Don’t strike me down, oh Mahoney, god of the insanely big words like obfuscation!) This is probably where part of the problem comes in for me. I see no reason in the world not to chase a PhD in English. But I have no desire to teach anything but 7th grade. If I earned my PhD, I fully believe I would begin to feel pressure from all sides, urging me to leave. I can’t imagine the other faculty looking at me and saying “Hey! So glad you’re staying here with your PhD” because I’m sure secretly they’d be saying “Hey! Why are you staying here with your PhD? You’re earning more than us!” And I’m equally sure the administration would be saying the same thing except “We’re paying you too much!” This, I guess, is the OVER-qualified paradox.

I guess I am too much of an idealist. I think you should be able to do what you want, how you want. If you’re getting better pay as a secondary teacher with a PhD than as a professor, why not stay and teach secondary? Why does it have to be wrong? Why does it have to be deemed as “not living up to your potential?”

theend

Office Hours made transparent many of the double-standards, unethical behaviors, and hypocrisies that have reigned supreme in the ivory towers of academia since I first entered them decades ago.  What a pleasure to see insiders stand on principle and risk alienation by their colleagues and loss of rewards accrued by those willing to remain silent or play along as though nothing were wrong.  Activists like Nelson and Watt, along with other faculty members, graduate students, and part-timers who organize and fight for equitable employment practices and policies that protect academic freedom and the rights of minorities, surely they represent the best, if not only, hope for the future of the university as we once knew it or imagined it: a place for the free dissemination of ideas, for the opportunity to explore all avenues of knowledge — not merely those deemed useful or worthy by corporate business interests — that we might gain a greater understanding of our current conditions through studying the thoughts, theories, events, and imaginings of those who came before us.  As the gradual corporatization of academia creeps into the humanities and university publishing houses choking out research that doesn’t meet corporate interests and killing off literature classes that don’t promote profits, we will all need Cary Nelson’s rhetorical skills and commitment to fight for what we hold dear.

Although Nelson and Watt clearly represent a very small minority of tenured faculty who care about establishing equitable employment practices and academic polices that serve non-tenured faculty, graduate students and part-timers, their devotion to an activist agenda is both inspiring and informative.  In the chapter Organizational Affiliation and Change Nelson shows how involvement with organizations such as the MLA and the AAUP enabled him to network with multiply affiliates to eventually conduct a nationwide survey of part-time faculty salaries, benefits, and working conditions in 5,200 English and foreign language departments.  After two years of research, networking and resisting those who didn’t want departments identified by name or wanted only a small, anonymous sampling instead of the full number, Nelson’s group won and the survey went through.  With this news out in the open, universities began to be exposed for their unfair labor practices and small changes started to be made.  What struck me most about this significant piece of activism was how many people it took to make it happen.   A companion proposal, another survey on individual graduate programs in which the schools were named, helped to push it through.

Still, since everyone already covered the fact that this book is a downer, I will just highlight some things that I found interesting/shocking.  First, I found it amusing and disgusting that the “elite academics” (a.k.a. the MLA board members or whatever title they gave themselves) seemed to fail to recognize the problem going on with post-doc students and temporary faculty. To claim ignorance is ridiculous.  Anyone that attends a university (well, most universities anyway) can see the large amounts of temporary faculty that appear and disappear each year. If these “elitists” who love English so much really cared about the subject and its relevance and survival in the future, they would be much more concerned with this growing problem and make a serious effort to remediate it. Clearly, it is a case of people that are not affected by this problem YET not caring enough to say anything. Unfortunately, until these very people admit that there is a problem and pledge their support to fix it, nothing will change.

I also found the section on student debt shocking. Of course, as a student myself, I realize the tremendous costs of an education. However, I cannot imagine being in debt $100,000 or more and being able to pay that off and live, especially on a professor’s salary. What is more, I never realized how poorly temporary faculty were paid, so it is unrealistic to think that they could ever have a life that was debt-free. It is no wonder that so many people quit the profession–you have to make a living somehow.

The section on textbook reform was also eye-opening. Who knew the costs of printing a single poem!  People always complain that the same old things are taught.  No wonder!  What a hassle it is to actually get permission to publish a poem.  You would think that most poets would be honored to be included in an anthology and would relent on the high prices in order to have the recognition that would come with being included among other great poets. Still, I was waiting for him to say something about textbooks–he didn’t really. Although you could infer the ramifications that high prices have on textbooks and what they include, I felt the chapter was more about promoting and defending his own anthology (well, hey, I guess since this is his book, he can do that). However, it was a tad self-indulgent, and a better title for the chapter could have been chosen.  I also felt that the following chapter about the internet followed the same lines–his website, MAPS, was featured. He talked about how great it was as a resource. I did go on to check it out, and I will admit that it is pretty interesting that it provides criticisms on the poems and that normal people could perhaps publish something on there themselves.

Ona final note, the amount of post-doc students without a job was eye-opening. I had not realized the situation was that bad. It is difficult to come up with a viable solution. I did appreciate Nelson’s efforts at his own university to create a program that would employ their own post-docs, even if the program created some negative effects. At least they were trying to help them out. What this definitely made me realize was how glad I am that I DO NOT want to get my doctorate and DO NOT want to teach at a university. If I did have those aspirations, this book would have crushed my hopes. I feel bad for those people that do have these aspirations, though, because getting your doctorate is such a special, impressive accomplishment, and the fact that the degree is becoming devalued is a shame. It is another sign that our society’s value of education is declining all the way around, on every level. When professors are not even respected, is there any hope for the rest of us?

Maybe it’s me. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by the status quo, which Nelson and Watt seem to make worse in the beginning of this creative non-fiction/memoir(?)  I’m actually relieved when they move into Chapter 8, “Is It a University or a Country Club?” At least the tree-hugger-neo hippy imagery (stereotype) made me smile. After each narrative, the authors initials appear giving each account authority. However, the writing style appears more myth-making with Watt and Nelson as the tragic heroes rather than a multi-perspective academic read. I do like these guys since they are fighting for adjuncts’ and grad assistants’ rights to living wages and health insurance. They write, “Our main aims are to reform the MLA and other disciplinary and interdisciplinary affiliations” by focusing on labor issues–improving working conditions for the contingent staff while also increasing the tenure/full-time positions. In other words, the affiliations act like a lobbying group such as the AARP, where collectively their influence can (and does in AARP’s case) make a difference in the decisions made by administrators, politicians, that may become trickle-down from a nearly dried-up fund.  At the moment, many of these higher ed affiliations are “elite clubs” that are very much like Plato’s republic order where the elite make the decisions for the masses of underpaid. Nelson and Watts argument to see the English studies workforce as it is rather than as a status symbol might make the MLA a viable organization again (besides arguing over italics for titles instead of underlines).

Where they lose credibility is in the editorial sarcasm. I know it is so hard to control it! lol. However, they could be a little more subtle about who they don’t like (or don’t agree with them). For instance, they write, “Yale postcolonialism theorist Sara Suleri turned in her student teaching assistant, then crisscrossed the country in a mink coat purchased with profits from the goodyear company’s Asian rubber plantation” (110). Although Nelson makes clear that he is using his personal experiences, these “gossipy” details detract from his arguments. I think its very fair to say that the MLA president was against graduate assistants joining MLA because leadership does set the tone, and indeed, this account might be crossed-referenced with historical documents. But mink coats and Asian rubber is shaky. This is hearsay–and yes–it is a provocative, memorable detail that will be repeated. And in a grass roots effort, winning hearts (key in moving people to act) is about creating the right myths. Perhaps that is their point to include it? I wouldn’t want to think it was just a hard-ball to the conservatives. They are asking for the near impossible and therefore if they are the heroes, we need to have some demons, right? Did they wear capes and use fans to blow their hair while sitting in their offices writing this stuff?

Now, my experience with Cary Nelson is pedagogical. I use his MAPS website as a regular reference for class lessons. LOVE IT!! Also, Nelson did manage to conduct his wage survey which lead to improving salaries. Perhaps my issue is whether shooting the shit belongs in a published argument. Nelson and Watt put their names behind these stories, but are we looking at unreliable narrators without the other side? If they are talking ethics at the center of their changes, should they be demonizing?

Choose the quote that doesn’t apply to what we have learned this semester:

A.  Many speak of the discipline of English studies as being in crisis-a kind of identity crisis wherein we as a field are desperately attempting to pin down exactly what constitutes the discipline.

B.  English studies is in a crisis.  Indeed virtually no feature of the discipline can be considered beyond dispute.

C.  Higher education as we have known it for nearly half a century is in the process of unraveling.

D.  I know this isn’t scientific, but this ship’s warning me she’s gonna die and take a lot of people with her.

E.  None of the above.

The correct answer is…E, although partial credit will be given to those who guessed D.  Did you recognize these?   Answer A is the opening line in Transforming English Studies; B is found in Berlin’s intro to Rhetorics, Poetics, and Culture; and C is how the uplifting tome Office Hours begins.  An argument could be made that Answer D also applies to all we have learned about English studies; however, this quote is not found in any of the readings.  It’s actually what Thomas Andrews the Managing Director of Harland and Wolff Shipyards said about the Titantic when it was built there. Seems rather fitting, don’t you think?  

While I was feeling a little nervous about my cruise on the S.S. English Studies before,  after reading Office Hours, I have now donned my life jacket and am starting to calculate the swim to shore if I decide to jump overboard.  According to Nelson and Watt, if I were to take the plunge, I wouldn’t be alone in the water.  Since there’s a 50% attrition rate from grad programs (23), there will be a number of other English majors out there drowning with me.  And those who are persistent enough to stay on the ship,a length of about 8 years plus under tough conditions (205), will find themselves drowning in debt once they disembark.  When they reach their final destinations with PhD in hand, they will discover that the natives (the tenured professors in those bastions of liberalism) will maintain a “don’t worry, be happy” attitude as they are enslaved in low paying adjunct positions.  Instead of  throwing out a life perserver to help these poor souls, those in control on Paradise Island are building bigger and better football stadiums and food courts. While a few of the brave and the bold in academia are attempting to act as a rescue team,  their main advice to the drowning is to try and stick together.  At this point, it seems that those floundering without tenure track positions are simply treading water until someone with money rents a fleet of lifeboats and starts saving them.  The chances of this happening are mighty slim since the powerful are busy negotiating the rights to their next book.   I don’t mean to sound naive, but to paraphrase Goldie Hawn in the movie Private Benjamin:   “I think they sent me to the wrong place.  I did join a graduate program in English, but I think I joined a different graduate program.  I joined the one with the jobs and the bright future.”

Office Hours, despite it’s great sarcasm and humor, is no book for the beach.  Instead it’s yet another SOS which proves that while the band is playing on deck , the English studies ship is sinking.