Zooze the Horse roams around the pasture near Lamar State College. Zooze thinks about problems in academia. Zhe wants proffies to submit posts (blog posts, not fence posts).
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Weekend Thirsty
What's the most demoralizing thing that happened to you during this past week?
Oh my god. In one class I am dealing with an "athlete" assclown -- never shuts up. I have filed two complaints on him already. This week I wanted to reseat him and he started a whinefest, but eventually just left. This kid has already given me a 30-second argument about why an extra set of spaces after a period constituted a new paragraph. Then I got a "dead grandma" excuse (my first!), and this kid wants a month off. I said I was willing to keep him up to date for two weeks. I emailed my department chair that I thought a month was excessive -- no word back yet. Then I got a terrible review, so I felt shocky and suicidal for a day and a half. The review had good points in it, yes, but all these slings and arrows....
It was a common exam using scantrons - all of the sections went through the machine together. How did I inflate that? I just teach better. Deal with it.
Well if "demoralizing" = I was still ruminating on the whole thing >24 hours after the event, to the detriment of my focus on more productive things, then it would have to be an administrator who is genuinely a champion of the value of teaching (at an increasingly research-oriented/identified university) beginning a presentation that reported on the progress of a genuinely useful attempt to improve the contingent labor system by invoking a list of values that included things like "fairness" and "unity." While it will be a good thing to have a more orderly, predictable, and, yes, fair, system of rules for the hiring, retention, promotion, and, when the university deems it necessary, non-renewing of contingent faculty, and such improvements will, indeed, make the system fairer if you compare the experiences of contingent faculty members to those of other contingent faculty members, and might even promote unity, we're still talking about making improvements in a system of second-class university employment (and we're not even talking, at least not as part of this initiative, about improving the system of third-class system that governs the employment of part-time contingents/adjuncts). I just don't see how we can achieve real fairness, let alone unity, in such circumstances, and I wish the presenter hadn't even mentioned those values, since they left me wondering whether the administrator (who is trained as a psychologist, and clearly values hir own tenured status) was being manipulative or is self-deluded (and what would be the consequences, especially in the latter case, of challenging the whole values narrative).
Seriously, I'd settle for an apologetic, or even hard-headed, "yeah, parts of this system stink, and aren't fair at all, and I don't blame you for resenting them, but here's what we can improve." It's the pretending that we can achieve some sort of all for one/one for all utopia in the presence of serious class stratification that rankles, and makes the situation feel just a bit dangerous.
watching my department colleagues fail to appreciate how the shifts in the academy threaten our department--and I fear that too many of them are more concerned with being part of the admin state--merely for the reassigned time and summer employment.
Are you even at liberty to say?
ReplyDeleteThe husband and I both didn't get jobs we interviewed for. Better ones than the shitshows we're dealing with now.
ReplyDeleteOh my god. In one class I am dealing with an "athlete" assclown -- never shuts up. I have filed two complaints on him already. This week I wanted to reseat him and he started a whinefest, but eventually just left. This kid has already given me a 30-second argument about why an extra set of spaces after a period constituted a new paragraph.
ReplyDeleteThen I got a "dead grandma" excuse (my first!), and this kid wants a month off. I said I was willing to keep him up to date for two weeks. I emailed my department chair that I thought a month was excessive -- no word back yet.
Then I got a terrible review, so I felt shocky and suicidal for a day and a half. The review had good points in it, yes, but all these slings and arrows....
Grade inflation accusation.
ReplyDeleteIt was a common exam using scantrons - all of the sections went through the machine together. How did I inflate that? I just teach better. Deal with it.
Unsuccessful attempt at getting student ratings out of our T&P process.
ReplyDeleteWell if "demoralizing" = I was still ruminating on the whole thing >24 hours after the event, to the detriment of my focus on more productive things, then it would have to be an administrator who is genuinely a champion of the value of teaching (at an increasingly research-oriented/identified university) beginning a presentation that reported on the progress of a genuinely useful attempt to improve the contingent labor system by invoking a list of values that included things like "fairness" and "unity." While it will be a good thing to have a more orderly, predictable, and, yes, fair, system of rules for the hiring, retention, promotion, and, when the university deems it necessary, non-renewing of contingent faculty, and such improvements will, indeed, make the system fairer if you compare the experiences of contingent faculty members to those of other contingent faculty members, and might even promote unity, we're still talking about making improvements in a system of second-class university employment (and we're not even talking, at least not as part of this initiative, about improving the system of third-class system that governs the employment of part-time contingents/adjuncts). I just don't see how we can achieve real fairness, let alone unity, in such circumstances, and I wish the presenter hadn't even mentioned those values, since they left me wondering whether the administrator (who is trained as a psychologist, and clearly values hir own tenured status) was being manipulative or is self-deluded (and what would be the consequences, especially in the latter case, of challenging the whole values narrative).
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I'd settle for an apologetic, or even hard-headed, "yeah, parts of this system stink, and aren't fair at all, and I don't blame you for resenting them, but here's what we can improve." It's the pretending that we can achieve some sort of all for one/one for all utopia in the presence of serious class stratification that rankles, and makes the situation feel just a bit dangerous.
NONE, since I'm on Sabbatical. And I chortle "MUA-HA-HAAAAA!" in my best mad scientist fashion.
ReplyDeletewatching my department colleagues fail to appreciate how the shifts in the academy threaten our department--and I fear that too many of them are more concerned with being part of the admin state--merely for the reassigned time and summer employment.
ReplyDelete