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Post by Shep on Feb 4, 2011 19:45:41 GMT -5
The people I looked to, my role models on this board are Shep and CH - because they can argue with you but still leave your dignity intact. They don't make you feel like utter crap for having a different view. It's a skill I wish I could acquire and it's a skill I respect. Hey, thanks, Shawn! Your website is a favorite btw.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Feb 5, 2011 1:16:41 GMT -5
Aw, well now your just being nice damn it. (seriously, thank you) More thoughts on being nice – I thought of this last night after talking about Christopher Nolan on another thread. I mentioned that there is a kind of detractor of his films who seem upset that his films are perceived as intelligent. And what I read from these people amounts to a… “He’s not smart and those who thinks he’s smart are stupid” Now I could be nice and say “Oh dear, it’s okay, you have a right to your opinion, I respect it and we can agree to disagree” – No, that’s bullshirt, I think that opinion is worthless. It comes off like the whine from a petulant child. And if I try and soft soap it, then I’m not being genuine. The question for me then, is how to respond. Do I ignore it, or go in blasting. Should I finesse it, find a way to call it a worthless response without making the person defense. Should I be diplomatic and just ask the person to clarify why he/she thinks what he thinks?
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Post by Frameous on Feb 5, 2011 1:36:22 GMT -5
When having those feelings or opinions, here or anywhere else, I just keep it to myself. In my experience, internet argument is rarely positive or constructive.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Jul 14, 2011 0:01:34 GMT -5
So I finished my doctorate. It took me nine years. But there were two children born along the way, and I’ve been a stay-at-home dad for most of the last four years. I also ended up with a topic about which I was increasingly luke-warm, and my willingness to follow a traditional academic career path is pretty small. I like academics because of the teaching. I’m good at it, it makes me feel useful, and I actually help people. But so much of being a college professor is not about teaching, or at least makes it secondary, that I haven’t been motivated to hunt down a tenure-track job. That’s not to say that there aren’t countless wonderful college and university teachers out there – there are, and I’ve worked with many of them and have many friends who are exceptional teachers. But to get a professorship in the current job market requires you to be a superhuman: to publish like mad *and* be a great teacher…and that has to happen usually at a school that deigns to offer you a position, and you take it wherever it may be.
My best friend in the program, for example, took 8 years to finish. He’s been applying for jobs for the last three. This is his first real job offer. So, three years, one job offer. He has to move halfway across the country. Luckily, it’s a good place for him, but most of the places he applied weren’t.
And we don’t even have much choice of where we apply. For example, last year, there were a total of twelve tenure-track (i.e., “real”) positions across the country that would have fit me (i.e., even considered my application) based on my research specializations. Twelve. Three of those were a stretch. And That’s across the entire United States, and one was in Alaska. I have two kids and a wife whose career is already established, so to submit myself to that kind of market is borderline insane.
All that’s to say that, Ph.D. notwithstanding, I doubt I’ll end up as a traditional professor. If you’ll allow me to blow (!) my own horn for a minute, it’s not for lack of ability: two of the chapters are going to turn into published articles, and I’ve got some high powered dudes (one used to run the academic side of Stratford-on-Avon, just won an award that Cambridge has only given to about 20 other people, including C.S. Lewis and Stephen Hawking) on my committee who still assume that I’ll end up a professor somewhere because they think my research/writing is decent enough. I’m nothing like an academic superstar, but I’m competent enough to play along in the very narrow field of Renaissance poetry. I’ve won competitive teaching fellowships, and I know for a fact that my students turn out to be better writers when they leave my courses than they went in – I make even my literature courses practically focused on writing and communication.
But the career…ugh. My buddy is facing three to five years of committees, extended teaching schedules, intense publishing commitments, all just to keep his job which will ultimately pay him about as much as I make teaching a mix of community college and online courses. And I get to stay home with my kids while he’s still hoping for a relationship that won’t require either of them to move across country or change careers altogether.
So: life poopie. I knew since I was a sophomore in college that I’d get a Ph.D. someday. Academic approaches to literature and philosophy just worked like my brain work. But the life and the practical issues that go along with it aren’t the kind of thing that my brain-heart-soul meshes with. If circumstances work out and a job appears right around the corner, then maybe I’ll be some tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking, self-satisfied tenured old fogey somewhere along the line. But if not, I’m a well-educated dad who teaches on a part-time basis. And I think I’m cool with that.
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