by Dr Davis on March 4, 2010
I am at the Conference of College Teachers of English and the Texas College English Association conference this weekend in Beaumont. It’s a small town about 90 minutes from my home. It’s also a small conference, with lots of quite nice folks.
Because of a funeral the grad students from my alma mater were here without anyone else from the university. Of course they’re adults (and they had a lot of fun hitting all the diners on the way down), but they were really planning on having Dr. W help them through the conference labyrinth. I enjoyed meeting them and I took them out to dinner.
I gotta tell you, if I had realized how good I had it at my alma mater, I might not have left. And if I had talked to these guys before I decided not to apply for the opening, I might have done it. They had stories that really made me miss folks.
One of them is writing her thesis on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I told her I want to read it when she is through. I teach that book in my freshman literature class and I would love to have some new material.
Overall it was a good evening. I miss grad students. And I miss being a grad student.
by Dr Davis on March 4, 2010
One of my chapters, one out of my vocational expertise but scholarly and interesting, was supposed to be published this summer. However, the publisher is backing out of all of their obligations.
No publication this summer.
That hurts.
It was the first publication in a book that was going to come out. Now I’ll have to take it off my CV.
Too bad there’s not a section for “Not Published due to Recession.” I have two of those where I wrote and it was accepted but the book didn’t come out after all because of financial issues.
I hope no more of those happen.
by Dr Davis on March 4, 2010
I share information with other teachers and borrow ideas from friends and off the internet. I created this blog so that you, too, could borrow my ideas.
The Chronicle has an article about a Chinese professor being demoted for using someone else’s open book test. It turns out the test was available on the internet.
I don’t really understand why using someone else’s test, assuming you’ve read over it and think it is good, is bad. Although I would probably put a citation on it. “This test originated with Dr. X at XUniversity.”
I do think it would be bad to have a test that is available online (and thus give some students an advantage), though some would say that students who go online for help are “going the extra mile.”
by Dr Davis on March 4, 2010
The site folks are in English, too! Get a Job! has some useful information. It seems targeted to ABD candidates. However, there is some good stuff there.
Found because I read ProfHacker.
