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For those of you who have been following the highs and lows of my efforts to get my Major Academic Project published, I’ve got good news! Today I received an invitation to submit the manuscript to another University Press, issued after the editor reviewed the prospectus and sample chapters. Having been burned by one UP, I’m keeping my enthusiasm in check. I am painfully aware that having passed this hurdle does not mean I’m near the finish line just yet. However, I’ve got my fingers crossed that this editor is more discerning, intelligent, and professional than the last (stroke, stoke the editor’s ego), and will pass the manuscript on to outside reviewers. I feel that if I can just make it to the review stage, I’ve got a shot — which may be naive, but who knows? For the record, no one that I’ve talked to about this process — even people who have published academic books — understand how it works. Like every other part of academia, it’s veiled in mystery and designed to foster the greatest sense of inadequacy and failure.
Meanwhile, to all the other University Presses which never even bothered to acknowledge that I contacted them, thhhhhhhwwwwwwwttttthhh!!!
From the inspirational Twisty Faster: “… hamburgers and radical feminism are mutually exclusive.” Want to know why? Read the whole post.
One of the things I hate the most about being an academic is the fact that it takes up so much time. The job swells like a sponge in water until it fills every waking moment. Last weekend I worked every day — grading, reading, prepping, on and on — and yet on Monday I was a frantic mess trying to figure out how I would get through the week. In other words, I had no weekend. When’s the last time you left work on Friday afternoon and didn’t think about it again until Monday morning? That’s a lifestyle I have never had the pleasure of experiencing. I usually work 7 days a week with little variation in the rhythm of my labor. Of course, it’s not a 9 to 5 civilian schedule but what is so grueling is the unrelenting nature of it.
After last weekend and the subsequent little temper-tantrum I threw about the utter futility of this job, I came to the realization that I have to change something. I desperately need a weekend, even if it’s a one-day-weekend (I’m being realistic here). I need a day that is sacrosanct from academic work of every variety — no grading, no conference papers, no research. Just a mental break.
I remember that Donald Hall says in The Academic Self that he never works after 5 pm and never works on the weekend. He argues that this is possible due to his rigorous scheduling — breaking down all tasks and working consistently rather than binging on a project to meet a deadline. I’ve always wondered if it was really possible — if a scholar with a sizable teaching load, service obligations, and publishing responsibilities can really survive on this schedule. I don’t think I could do it. At the moment I would be thrilled to find a little corner of my day that hasn’t been colonized by work. I fantasize about having time for gardening or errands or exercise or yoga or going to the movies … Ahhhhhhh, a real weekend.
By now everyone has probably encountered the latest stroke of brilliance by Michael Pollan. Pollan is, of course, the ultimate enviro-foodie and author of such tomes as The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Now he’s gone and created his own genre: the 3 sentence, 7 word edict.
The first three sentences of his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, read: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The publishers recognized the simple power in these phrases and have them right on the cover of the book.
Now, the method of Pollan’s delivery is getting as much attention as his message. The NY Times book blog, Paper Cuts, has characterized it as having “haiku-like resonance and [a] 2-3-2 sequencing [that] lends itself to tweaking” — and supplies some examples:
Drink wine. Rarely to excess. Unless necessary.
Have Sex. Really quite often. With humans.
Inspired by Paper Cuts’ fun, another NY Times blog, Well, invited readers to concoct their own 2-3-2 health and lifestyle advice and was flooded with entries. Here are just two humorous examples:
Wear clothes. Not too many. Mostly spandex.
Seek wisdom. Think for yourself. Avoid maxims.
You get the idea.
Now comes the time to apply this little formula to the academic life. Can the 2-3-2 formula capture all the rules, regulations, advice, and admonitions we dispense as teachers? Maybe we can finally shred those 12 page, legalistic syllabuses covering every possible classroom scenario in minute detail and merely declaim snippets of wisdom in easily-remembered soundbites.
How about:
Write paper. Only your words. Don’t plagiarize.
Attend class. All of them. Yes, all.
Here’s one that attempts to plumb the insecurities of graduate students: “Read everything. No one can. Everyone has.”
And here’s my own personal mantra these days: “Write book. Send it out. Wait patiently.”
I welcome you all to try it. Consider yourself tagged for the The First Annual Michael Pollan Academic Edict Extravaganza.
Here’s the spam I found in my email this morning:
Indaiatuba, SP, February 5th, 2008.
HONOURABLE [BITTERSWEET GIRL]
Congratulations!
My great admiration for your personal.
In annexe my essay for poety [name of Major Poet I have published on], for apreciation.
[Major Poet], for me, it´s one monument. One men of the great
admiration. It´s fantastic poety.
Please, help me US$ 300,00 for publication of the essay in Brazil.
Thank you your contribuition for my work in exaltation a [Major Poet].
Sincerely,
[Scam Artist's Name and Brazilian address]
***
What I admire about this scam is how much effort has gone into identifying me as a scholar who works on Major Poet. Really, that’s almost worth $300.00. Or is that $300,000? Either way, Mr. Scam Artist, I refer you to a previous post on my personal debt and you will realize that I have nothing to spare, even to exalt a Major Poet.
The most surprising thing for me over the past few days as I’ve watched the comments heat up over my most recent post, is that I never expected it to be controversial. It actually never occurred to me that my statement that a person who takes the Bible as a literal truth disqualifies him/her self from serious historical inquiry would provoke disagreement. Strong disagreement, I should say. Hurt feelings and outrage.
I am torn between a desire to defend myself and a preference to not have to defend myself. These are tiresome matters because no one is going to change their minds and no middle ground can be achieved. There are other bloggers who would be happy to host such an endless and divisive argument, but not me. Really, I look forward to returning to more mundane subjects and to far fewer readers.
Consider yourselves forewarned: extremely boring blogging ahead.
I generally enjoy “The Ethicist,” the “Dear Abby” for liberal New Yorkers which appears in the Sunday NY Times Magazine. I look forward to seeing Randy Cohen dispense witty and decidedly lefty advice on sometimes outrageous scenarios. But, today’s Ethicist has me steaming mad.
The question goes like this: “I’m a history professor — my period is 1500-1800 — with an M.A. student who wants to pursue a doctorate. While she is smart and capable, she is very religious, subscribing to the ‘young earth’ theory that the world is only 6,000 years old. I am to work with her for a year and then recommend her to Ph.D. programs. Must I do so if I find her views incongruent with those of historians?”
Mr. Cohen replies: “Unless your student’s religious beliefs impair her work — and you don’t suggest they do — they are irrelevant. You should judge her on her scholarship, not her spiritual life. If she were studying the Sumerians, she might have a hard time working out how they accomplished so much so soon after the earth was formed, what with all those dinosaurs running around trampling the pottery. But this young-earth nonsense need not mar her understanding of, say, Oliver Cromwell or, indeed, much else in your period.” Read the entire response here.
There are so many things wrong about this response I hardly know where to start. For one, it suggests that intellectual knowledge is so compartmentalized that you can be a total idiot in one area but a genius in another. The idea that this woman could cling to her idea that the earth is only 6000 years old, but still be able to be a good historian is absurd. Her belief system is antithetical to historical knowledge, to the very practice of history as a discipline.
At the same time, the recommendation that the professor should be respectful of his student’s lunacy because that’s her “individual belief system,” at the expense of accepted knowledge within history (or, you know, the world of rational thinkers) is unacceptable. Of course teachers must respect their students’ beliefs but not to the extent of enabling them to remain ignorant.
As a professor who teaches in a conservative state where many of my students have out-dated notions of sexuality, gender roles, and race relations — much of which is underscored by the teachings of their churches — I often confront what to me seems to me like abject stupidity and backwardness. I strive towards a generosity of spirit towards these students and I DO NOT insult them. However, I do everything in my power to correct their misapprehensions. I work to provide opportunities for all of my students to be exposed to perspectives and opinions that challenge their own — that’s what teaching is all about. Being so respectful of difference or so cowed by diversity that we allow ignorance to stand is the opposite of good teaching — and decidely unethical.
Moreover, if the history professor were to heed these guidelines, work with the student and then pass her on to a PhD program, he would be failing her on many levels. He would have given her a false expectation that her beliefs are compatible with historical research, that she stands a chance of succeeding in academia. She needs to be told sooner rather than later that a career as a historian is not for her.
On a related note, why is “The Ethicist” called upon so often to answer questions from academics or about scenarios emerging out of higher education? If you look back over the archives, there is a strikingly high percentage of queries about academic matters. Are we such an ethically-bankrupt profession that we need The Ethicist (who, notably, has no academic credentials other than having been married to Katha Pollit) to set us straight?
After all, isn’t that what we have Ms. Mentor for?
