December 2009

Too late for Christmas, but a journal I wish I had received is SMART. I’m going to have to order Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching for myself.

I actually heard of it due to the content in 14.2. So I’m going to want to back order that. And while I was looking for the content in 14.2, I saw the content in 15.2 and want that too.

So the order went from a simple $20 to $40. Still not terrible.

The really bad thing is that I have to print out a piece of paper, get a check, and send it in. I’m just not that good about mailing stuff in.

That’s why I wish I had asked for it for Christmas.

According to Daniel Willingham, this study says that Americans are reading more than ever.

But our scores aren’t going up? Why is that?

Willingham says it’s because the richness of our reading has declined.

The number of words read from conventional print sources (books, newspapers, magazines) has plummeted. In 1980 these sources accounted for 26 percent of the words read. In 2008 that figure was 9%. People today spend just 36 minutes each day reading traditional print materials.

Practice in reading lightweight material won’t improve your reading much. Reading content-rich material will. Thus, it’s not surprising that we’re reading more yet reading scores are stagnant.

Introverts are those people who need time alone to energize. Extroverts are the people who get energized by being with others.

If you are an introvert, then going to a conference can be difficult. It’s like being on stage all day long.

Gina Trapani offers The Introverted Nerd’s Conference Survival Guide. Even if you don’t self-identify as nerd, the tips are good.

Haven’t you occasionally wanted to run from the room screaming, not because the speaker was terrible but because you were on people overload? If so, what she has to say is helpful.

One of her points is to leave room in your schedule.

If you commit to every meal, every party, every meetup, by day two you’ll want to crawl under the covers back at your hotel room and cry.

To extroverts this may seem a little extreme, but conferences can be a real pressure cooker for introverts. When I went to a conference in February, I was determined to see every single panel I could. But halfway through day two I was exhausted. I ended up only attending the rest of the panels I was desperate to hear.

What I’ve done instead of going to every panel is to plan out all the panels I want to see and then make sure I have me time.

That can mean ducking back in to the room to eat my instant oatmeal packets, but some time alone and away from everyone really helps.

Staying by myself in the hotel helps emotionally, if not financially.

What I don’t have is a conference buddy for MLA. I took one to the big conference in February and found some in March, June, and October. I guess I’ll look around and see if I find someone to pal with at MLA too.

What do you think? Does having a single person (or two) to hang with make conferences easier for introverts?

Thanks to a post from ProfHacker I was inspired to go figure out what panels I will be attending at MLA.

I’m not coming in till Monday, due to the Christmas break and it being our year to go to my in-laws in Arkansas. If we’d been here this year, I would have showed up on Sunday, but we will be driving back to Texas on Sunday, so no go.

Given that the number of panels at something like MLA (which covers my own fields) exceeds 1000, it can be daunting to figure out where you’re going to go every hour. (This is what the plane ride if for, in my experience.) But it also means that there is almost certainly something relevant to your work happening right this very minute.

Despite my multiple field of interests, that this comment turned out NOT to be true is a little odd.

I think the problem was that multiple good panels on my interests were scheduled at the same time and other times had nada. So even in my official conference planner I have three sets of conflicts, after whittling down two of those from four panels I wanted to attend to two. And, of course, the one I most wanted to attend is at the same time as my incredible panel. Then there are a few blank hours.

And, since I decided to stay over till Thursday because I thought there would be late panels on Wednesday (been years since I last went to MLA), I actually have time to do things in Philadelphia.

This particular tip was good, and I found it to be very encouraging:

Participate in panels if you’re not speaking. As long as you’re attending the panels, take advantage of the scholarly exchange and become a participant. While the intricate maneuvers of the Q&A of the panels (if there is even time for it) could easily be the fodder for a Kafka novel or two, you should also consider speaking to the panelists following the session. Not only does this give you a chance to continue the conversation, but it’s led to some real opportunities for me, including an invitation to write a review essay, to participate in a large project archiving and cataloging electronic literature, and hanging out with senior scholars in my field.

There’s a way to start networking better, by asking questions after the panel is over.

If you’re there, I’ll be around. Maybe I’ll even be at your panel. If so, let me know. And, if you want to see me, you can hear me speak by attending 482 and 669.

Medievalist is asking for responses on business cards. Major conferences coming up, obviously.

I wrote on this topic just before I got my first set of business cards.

I actually ended up writing my email address on each one I handed out by hand because the addresses were so small they weren’t legible. So I went back and got new business cards. (I also have a handy batch of new bookmarks.)

At SCMLA I probably gave out ten cards.

I expect I will give out that many at MLA.

I still wish I could put my interests on my card, but I just don’t have space.

My card is white and the print is blue. Both my colleges have blue logos so that worked out well. I just printed in blue and put both their logos on the card.

I would have liked to have a picture or a cool image, but putting the logos of both my colleges required too much space to have anything else.

Disclosure:
I am an adjunct and have been one for eight years. Six of those years I was happy as an adjunct. Two of those years I was working a full-time job, but being paid as an adjunct. I have benefits because the state of Texas ruled that as an adjunct in a state college, I am allowed to purchase health insurance. It’s not great insurance and it costs $650 a month, but I have it. I have been an adjunct at three different colleges.

My view:
I think that adjuncts are the wave of the future. Yes, I am aware that adjuncts already teach 40-60% of the courses in higher education in the US. But I actually think that they will be teaching even more courses in the future.

The justification:
Finances are tight. Many tenure track lines are being lost. As folks move, retire, or die, the jobs they left behind them disappear. There’s not a lot of money and costs are being cut in ways that make sense and ways that don’t. One of the ways that budgets are being reframed is by having fewer full-time instructors.

I doubt seriously that most tenure track positions will be renewed once the economy returns. There are a lot of reasons to not do that.

First, of course, is the question of money. It is cheaper to pay adjuncts. There are plenty of people (including me) around who are willing to teach for minimal pay. The cost equivalent in teaching courses through adjuncts versus full-timers is between 3:1 and 5:1. At some of the better paying schools, this ratio might go even higher.

Second, is the issue of tenure. Without tenure schools can hire and fire at will. New administrations can restructure the school according to their ideals and many want to. If the faculty are half or more adjuncts, then it is easy to reconfigure the course of the school. Even if the schools add lecturer positions, which pay a little more than adjuncting, they will still have this flexibility. A one- to three-year contract will allow continuity without permanence, at a slightly higher price than simply hiring adjuncts to do the same work.

Third, is the issue of expectations. As faculty are let go, other faculty take up the slack. So if three members of a department leave and no more are hired full-time, the other fifteen people take over those three faculty’s committee and service work. There is no loss to the college in terms of service and so there will be no reason to hire full-timers to take over those service projects. The college will expect more service from the tenure-track faculty and they will comply if they want to keep their jobs.

Fourth, the negative of not being able to attract star faculty will not apply. Tenure won’t cease to exist; instead it will cease to be the norm. So, if the college wants to hire Big Name, they will still be able to offer tenure and, perhaps, even more money because they have brought their faculty costs down.

Therefore, hiring more faculty as adjuncts and still retaining the system of tenure will give college administrators more flexibility. Why would any administration, seeing this, decide to renew tenure-track lines and go for the more expensive option?

David Lodge’s Modern Criticism and Theory: “book of major works of literary criticism. It is excerpts from original texts rather than articles on theoretical approaches.”

Ann Dobie’s Theory into Practice: (From Cengage Learning.) “book that explains theory.”

Peter Berry’s Beginning Theory: “explains the theory, and then demonstrates how it is used in actual literary analysis. Each chapter ends with a bibliography for further reading. It was designed as a textbook, and it does its job well.”

Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: “extremely popular.”

Kristi Siegel’s “Introduction to Literary Theory.”

Falling into Theory by David H. Richter

Ania Loomba’s Colonialism/Postcolonialism

Deal and Beal Theory for Religious Studies

Charles Bressler’s Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice: “structured, almost formulaic breakdown of the major schools of thought.”

from the Chronicle‘s fora

ProfHacker offers an End of Semester Checklist that I liked. I am definitely a navel gazer, so it appeals, but I think it has some good points even for those who are not typically introspective.

One of his suggestions was a blog post.

If you maintain your own website, and blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), you should write up an end of semester roundup. This is a great time to publicly broadcast your accomplishments for that semester. The “End of Semester Roundup” post is a second cousin to updating your CV. The good thing about this kind of post is you can also talk about things that, for one reason or another, aren’t appropriate for a CV. So, you could talk in a lot more detail about your classes – things you tried, what worked, what didn’t work, interesting pedagogical issues that arose, and things you are going to try the next time you teach the class. You could talk about grant projects you started or proposals you started working on. Think about this is your Director’s Commentary Track to your semester….

What did I do this semester?

Teaching
I taught six writing courses, including one completely new course and one I haven’t taught in fifteen years.

Freshman composition
I taught two freshman composition courses, including one for Health Science Professionals.

That one had a less than auspicious beginning. It was clearly marked as limited to health science students, requiring the permission of the department head. Despite that the advisors allowed students into the course who were not nursing majors. This caused significant difficulties later because the course was filled, but not with nursing majors. When they found out they were in a composition course for majors and we would be doing majors-related activities, they were not too happy. I wasn’t very happy that I had half a class after all those students left.

However, in one way that made the course better. I was able to give the students individual attention that I would not have been able to do if the course had stayed full at capacity at 24.

The second freshman comp course stayed full all semester. That hasn’t happened in a while. I had a wide range of students and we did a lot of writing. That kept me busy with grading.

Remedial composition
I also had a remedial English course with 11 students. These students were overall able to meet the expectations of the course. I had a much better “debate” in that class this year. I assigned a topic to the students and they had to do research for one side or the other. After they read through articles, we had a classroom debate.

It was interesting. The students with whom I agreed were generally the less able students. However, there were enough of them that they were able to hold their own. Perhaps part of that was because these students actually knew what a debate looked like.

Business Writing
In this class I had a good book, used an old white paper assignment that went fairly well, and brought in two guest speakers. Those speakers helped the students see that I knew what I was talking about. They also helped me figure out that the students weren’t all juniors and seniors. (I had asked about sophomores and juniors and assumed the rest were seniors. It turned out the rest were freshmen, for a junior level course.)

The most interesting new thing I did in this course was the final. Since much of the emphasis was on job documents, for the final I gave them a resume, cover letter, and job ad. They were asked to comment both negatively and positively on the documents. They did an EXCELLENT job. So they know what to do. I was glad to see that. It’s often harder to apply it to your own documents than to someone else’s, but at least they know the basics.

Writing in the Social Sciences
This course was a rerun for me. It was the second time I taught it and I had figured out a lot of things I wanted done differently. Overall it went more smoothly, although I also had multiple plagiarism issues.

The poster presentations were significantly better. I think spending more time on the presentation of this aspect of the topic helped. Also, showing them examples and going through those for good and bad points also helped. Overall the posters this time were all B or better, as opposed to C and better last semester.

The best poster for this semester was from a student who was a repeat. Her poster took advantage of all the good points she saw last semester. She also let me keep her poster so that next semester I might have even better posters.

Writing
I wrote and presented conference papers at Texas Medieval Association, South Central MLA, and Southwest Conference of Christianity and Literature.

I finished my book, which will be published next year in October. (It’s already listed on Amazon.)

I wrote an article which will be published in the FORUM insert in Teaching English in the Two-Year College.

I wrote two book reviews, which have been published in Southwest Journal of Cultures.

I wrote another book review which will be published in CEA Forum.

Overall
I have been very busy. I think I acquitted myself well and that my semester was a success.

Community College Dean, a very successful academic blogger, had a post up asking if it was reasonable that a professor left school after his finals were over and did not return until he was expected to be at school again.

I think that’s ridiculous. Of course it is reasonable. We are not staff who are expected to be in our offices over the Christmas break. If there are no students, there is little need for teachers.

But I checked my email yesterday and I had a “you’re late” message from the college about something I turned in to the correct person last month, on time. They were very upset that I hadn’t sent it in. (They are in the middle of administrative changes and they apparently decided it would be easier to have each individual person send the forms in again rather than to get them from the person they were sent to.) It’s Christmas break. As an adjunct I am absolutely not required to be in the office over the holidays. But apparently I am still required to work.