Bewildering & Unsettling

Since 2008 began, particularly this past month, several friends and acquaintances of mine from the world of academia have ended up either seriously contemplating a departure from academia or actually exiting. The stages they're in range from "almost ABD" to "tenured and sick of it". I am told by "them" that this isn't surprising given the attrition rate in social science Ph.D. programs. I have, however, no official stats on tenured professors deciding they've had just about more than they can take.

Cut to any of the critical points in the academic cycle i.e. completed coursework to ABD, ABD to PhD, Ph.D to tenure-track positions (often punctuated by postdocs and horribly underpaid adjuncting gigs), tenure-track to tenured (where the horrors of the process might favor the mediocre rather than the wonderfully accomplished), and so on and so forth.

That's when it seems to change perhaps - or is changing of late?

Of all the people I've spoken to are brilliant minds (no-one else really opts to pursue a PhD so that isn't at all surprising) and hardworking, dedicated souls and stellar scholars. The reasons I've heard have more to do with extenuating life circumstances. For example, the "almost ABD" who can no longer continue the program because his/her committee members failed to read his/her proposal when s/he submitted it a semester ago and s/he has no way of funding himself/herself through this process because of visa issues. The "ABD to PhD" who can't really rely on adjuncting to pay the bills while continuing to work on the dissertation. The "almost PhD" who has worked hard but languished in the program because of inaccessible/unsupportive committee members. The "tenure-track Ph.D" who is freaking out because she's having a particularly difficult pregnancy while her due date falls right bang in the middle of the fall semester and it seems that her employer is uninterested in pausing the tenure clock let alone work with her in case she can't be up and about in 2 weeks time after she has the baby. The "tenured Ph.D" who, for the last 16 years, has lived far away from family and is simply sick of being unable to have a regular family life. Or the "tenured Ph.D." who feels completely frazzled in between the demands of teaching and parenting none of which are 9-5, Monday-Friday commitments. And the list goes on...

Maybe this will sound incredibly naive on my part but it seems strange to me that the same reasons why one wants to pursue academic life aren't, at many times, enough to keep one there. It's mind-boggling to imagine that up until the MA/MS/MBA level society rewards individuals with better pay and more flexibility in terms of things like geography and being able to bring your life into more balance at some finite point if not right away but that your prospects are relatively (quite?) dim if your terminal degree is the Ph.D. Add to that factors like the reconceptualization of students as cash-paying customers that must be satisfied lest they become disgruntled and the organization lose money, the notion that college is more a vocational/technical training grounds than a place to be educated, etc and that pretty much saps a lot of (but luckily not all) fun out of the teaching experience. Maybe it's not that grim and maybe I've lately found myself interacting within a configuration where these challenges abound for whatever reason. After all, I just finished a visiting professor gig that was probably one of the most rewarding experiences ever in lots of ways. Of course it was challenging in ways I'd never thought about either - but that's all fodder for another (forthcoming?) blogpost.

For now, I just wanted to vent about what seems to me to be a trend within the larger community of which I'm a part because I find it, as the title suggests, bewildering. Did something happen over the past couple of years that this is the conversation I'm hearing more of whereas it was previously non-existent? Something tells me that might be the case. Or, perhaps, the people I got to know in academia are at critical points in what I call the 7 year academic cycle (tenure takes about 7 years, the average time to finish a social sciences PhD in the US is about the same) where they have to make bigger decisions like whether or not pursuing the PhD fits in with the rest of their life plans or whether their tenured life in NoWhereVille, USA is something they can keep doing until death do them part.

Irrespective, that these conversations are happening is surprising to me because these are not the things anyone raises when you inform them that you're considering the pursuit of a PhD and putting yourself on the path to that most-celebrated-of-all-things-holy-in-academia AKA a tenured professorship. At that juncture, it's all about the nobility of the profession in so far that you get to create knowledge and shape young minds. We're told it's like being in school - something most aspiring PhDs have a pretty good knack of thus far. Your grad advisors tell you how you're made for research and teaching. How your mind and curiosity ought not to be wasted and how this is the only space that affords you the ability to indulge what excites you. What nobody tells you - or at least nobody told me or anyone I know/know of - that there are all of these other things that perhaps ought to be part of this calculation. I'm sure these folks I've spoken to feel cheated. I would be livid if I was in their positions. Why? Because we're sold this dream of the nobility of the profession - it'd be nice if someone dialed it down a notch so that reality doesn't feel like it's biting your butt hard when the satisfaction of sitting around in seminars or at conferences connecting with and being challenged by brilliance is confronted by things like bills, education loan payments, moving to the boondocks far away from civilization let alone an emotional network, disciplinary boundaries you must pander to for the 14 or so years from when you start the PhD to when you get tenure presuming all of these happen without any breaks in-between, spoilt kids whom you have to indulge lest you bruise their egos and rights as cash-paying customers at the expense of creating a genuinely open learning environment, the fickleness of the world of academic employment where networks are often tie-breakers over merit, and, perhaps most importantly, everything we label as 'life outside academia.'

Nopes I'm not bitter...just unsettled by the unsavoriness of what I find around me. I think those other things that remain unspoken ought to be raised. Of course it doesn't make for very good advertising but at least it isn't false advertising. The former might mean you lose some folks but the latter avoids the disgruntledness and disillusionment that might accompany an individual's learning of the truth. Not to mention that this is a time-consuming process not only because it is lengthy but because it is emotionally draining and, often, soul-crushing. Knowing that's inevitable would leave folks better prepared to deal with a challenge. I know that I would've pursued this path because, as geeky as it sounds, I got into it given my love for learning even if someone had told me all of this but I wouldn't be feeling nearly as unsettled as I am right now.

Having said that it's back to the drawing (dissertation) board :-). Why? Not just because I see the light at the end of that tunnel but because I like what I've created.

On Cloud 9: best teaching compliment ever

I haven't finished grading finals which means I also haven't read the exit papers I have students submit at the end of the semester to get an actual sense of their experience of the course as opposed to the insipidness of standardized course evaluation forms that most institutions distribute. Okay that's a bad dig. Perhaps those forms are okay but they don't really tell me much. They don't really work for me - maybe they do for others. But that isn't the point of this post.

I've been getting lovely notes from students about their experience having taken my classes. Since I'm still swamped with grading I don't quite have time to write the longer post - or perhaps series of posts - around my teaching experience this year. [I was a Visiting Professor at a prestigious private university in the Northeast area of these fine United States]. However I do want to share what I think is the best compliment of my teaching style which really is more of an unstructured seminar if we want to label it.

Color me giddy with happiness by this particular piece of praise! Why? By which I mean something other than the obvious reason that most of us, if not all, like being told how fabulous we are. When I started teaching in 1998 as part of a team-taught course that would convene as a large lecture and break up into recitation groups I knew how I wanted to teach - aka the unstructured seminar style which is how I learn best hence the desire to teach that way - but my craft was getting there. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I didn't always know how to bring it together after letting it go. This past year I felt like I had some measure of control over my craft. I also felt like I learnt in the process. In fact, I'm quite impressed that I took the decision to significantly alter the syllabus for one of my classes a few sessions in. It was scary but I also thought I'd figured how it would work better given the configuration of the class in terms of the people and the relationships we'd begun to cultivate as part of a learning community. That this kind of praise came from someone in that very class makes it all the more sweet. Here it is - almost verbatim:

"I don't know how you did it but you let all of us contribute to the learning process. We'd start someplace, go all over, and then somehow you tied it all back together and at the end of each session we felt like we learnt stuff".

How cool is that?!

Update from the Professorial Trenches

I haven't blogged again about how the "tomorrow" that had me nervous in my previous blog post panned out. My bad! Long story short, it's been trying, taxing, and draining but last Wednesday (i.e. April 9) I finally had a class session in which I was able to create some space for a through and through productive conversation with the help of the rest of the class. I'd been making an effort to steer the conversation subtly but I think Wednesday was the first time I decided to use my authority more definitively with respect to the discussion and not just enforcing rules. I have to say it felt good.

This doesn't mean that the two trouble-makers have been reformed but, rather, made painfully aware of the ridiculous unsubstantiated drivel they have been spewing venomously since mid-February. Our class is built around a specific analytical framework which neither of those two have attempted to read, much less understand. Granted they joined the class late but making up the material they missed was their responsibility as I clarified explicitly. One of the students tends to respond better one-on-one during office hours and the subsequent class sees him performing better. The other one continues to miss making appointments, hasn't submitted anything, and is clearly failing the course. I've also just been informed by one of the Associate Deans that both students are 'problem cases' in that other professors on campus have had similar issues with them. Although that makes me feel somewhat better, part of me wishes that I'd known this in advance in order to have adjusted my pedagogical strategies much more quickly and perhaps even more pro-actively.

But back to last Wedneday. Students came to see me during my office hours to let me know how grateful they were for what I did during that class. Of course, my intervention was only possible in the larger context of previous ones but this one felt final. That the students who had, over the weeks, shied away from the conversation with the exception of making remarks here and there now became actively involved feels like a triumph. This is not to say I'm the only one responsible but I did try to actively engineer that and I'm glad it worked.

Am I feeling less despondent? You bet. For those of you who e-mailed, called, or shared their comments - that was certainly enough to make me feel cheery and cared for. Thanks muchly for sharing your thought as well as for your support and concern.

[PS: "You know who" - a blog post is forthcoming in response to your comments on my previous blog-post]

The festeringly ugly, the heart-warming good, and the making-me-giddy-with-excitement best: my tomorrow in a nutshell

It's students and papers like this that are continuing to sap my energy. How's that for an opening sentence? I'd rant but I really need to go to sleep to wake up bright and early tomorrow morning. For now, the short version is that I have 2 horribly racist kids in my morning class on religion in contemporary global politics. That they're disruptive makes this particularly problematic. We've had a verbal explosion in class and students have complained about their behavior. I've tried to tackle it and the class discussions seem to be working better now that I've explicitly addressed their disruptive behavior after repeated attempts of steering them subtly. Of course, although I loathe pessimism, I'm being realistic when I say that this is no guarantee that this will stick. Their written work, on the other hand, continues to be ranty rather than analytical. That they continue to be in denial about this is making this all the more challenging in terms of dealing with them. Am I up to the challenge? Yes - and I also don't think I have a choice so I guess I'm not up to it because I'm dedicated or committed but because I'm trying to conduct myself professionally. Am I dreading tomorrow? Yes - because I've returned everything with feedback and these kids are going to be disgruntled. One of them has already made an appointment to come and see me. That both of them have a tendency to get loud and agitated means I'm really not looking forward to this. One of my colleagues asked if I've been feeling fearful for my safety. I didn't know how to answer that one. I think I'll be okay but I am somewhat fearful given the kinds of opinions these students have expressed and their general behavior. I am literally counting days till the semester is over and I'm done with my present teaching commitment. It's been the most bizarre mix of the best and worst students I've encountered since I started teaching in 1999. I've handled difficult students before but it's an entirely different ballgame when they spout venomous hatred for your kind repeatedly by which I mean in terms of faith, gender, and age.

As much as I detest grading for being so time-consuming, one of the things that frustrates me most about the academic life is that some students aren't there to learn and it's hard not to take it personally when you put in so much effort to help their learning process. I think it's easier to deal with if they're sitting there tuned out but not so much if the manner in which they engage is inappropriate and unproductive.

So I'm apprehensive about tomorrow. Particularly, 11 am - 2 pm is going to be nerve-wracking and frustrating...color me despondent about this :-(. Although my afternoon class is fantastic so I guess the day will get better.
The great news that has me genuinely excited about tomorrow: my grandparents are flying in from Pakistan and I can't wait to see them.

Vacations for Academics: I'm so on board!

Folks I know who work outside of academia are often envious at the thought that I supposedly have a 3 months long summer break and a month off during winter. Ummm...break? What's that like exactly? Conventionally defined these are periods of time in which you get to take time off from work and simply breathe. For us academics, it seems to be periods of time when teaching obligations wane so that you rush to get the next article/book/research project completed while you don't have to show up to teach. Not that it isn't fascinating to be able to tap into your creativity to produce research but when exactly does one get to live their life without being consumed by student e-mails, lecture preps, conferences, meetings, grading, reading, and writing? Linked above (to the title) is an article from today's Chronicle by Mary Werner. I'm not sure if the author suggests this in jest but I sure like the idea of having someone cover my class or assigning some research work or having my students watch a film while I'm away - not because I'm ill or because I have professional obligations that conflict with my class times but because I'm taking an actual vacation. Kind of like the way it works outside academia where people who work take time off to go away without their work lives falling apart.