Premature Insomnia.
August 29, 2009
Two days before the official start of the new semester and I found myself up at 3 am keeping myself occupied as I couldn’t sleep. Mr. Rottweiler and I had drinks with Labrador and another colleague last night. After the pre-requisite, what did you do last summer?, talk quickly devolved into what may well be the cause of last night’s and future insomnia for the next three years. Top Dawg, as I noted in my last posting, is no longer our chair. He has rotated out and been replaced by our esteemed senior faculty member, hereby dubbed Floppy Dawg. While Top Dawg had his irksome qualities, he was a sturdy, get it done type of a fellow.
Floppy Dawg operates quite differently than Top Dawg. Where Top Dawg blurted out insensitive comments at the drop of a hat, Floppy Dawg ingratiates. None can be cross with him, all should get along, and there should never be any conflict. Unpleasantness is worth avoiding at all costs. In short, Floppy Dawg seems to have a gelatinous back bone and we are in for a period in which the department will have no one to speak up for them. I suspect that the floppiness is symptomatic of a midwestern cultural phenomena in which one must be uber-pleasant at all costs. This phenomena has many local variants all across the midwest.
Floppy Dawg’s first obvious show of gelatinous backbone, unfortunately, reared its head when a new (as yet to be named) faculty member showed up this August. A year ago, when Schnauzer, Labrador and I were hired, we came to work to find a box of business cards and our computers in our new offices with working phones. Top Dawg had ordered everything in advance and had made sure the Dean’s office got involved when IT (ah, Midwestern U.’s blessed IT department) told him that the new computers would not be installed for two weeks into the semester. In his best Top Dawg voice, he had barked and howled until IT was forced to succumb to his will. We three arrived with at least a minimum infrastructure in place so we could get to work.
Need I point out that the new faculty member had neither computer nor business cards nor working phone in her office when she arrived? And did Floppy Dawg get on it? No– she deferred to our administrative staffer (who deserves at least a couple of blogs dedicated to her own sweet self, bless her heart, competence is not her forte) who announced newbie’s computer had never been ordered and would take several weeks to arrive. When newbie told me that she had to wait for a computer to arrive, I informed her that Top Dawg had intervened on our behalf last year and she should make sure the Dean gets involved. Floppy Dawg, of course, could not find it in his interest to take issue with either the administrative assistant OR to get on the horn with the Dean. When the administrative staffer told newbie she could not have the computer she wanted, Floppy Dawg smiled and nodded. Poor newbie had to take it up with the Dean herself. Result? A loaner computer installed right away, and the computer newbie wanted on its way, though it is still not arrived and the semester starts on Monday– oh, and the phone is still not working.
This, and other incidents, were the topic of conversation last night, and triggered a bout of acid reflux so painful, I was up for 2 1/2 hours puttering as all slept. I suspect that the next 6 months (or longer) will be filled with nostalgia for the days of Top Dawg. Otherwise, all I can do is hope that Floppy Dawg grows a pair. May be there is a steep learning curve associated with being department chair? We all know that no one really wants to do it as it is a very hard and thankless job to have, especially with little to no administrative support. I tremble to think that we may be so unfortunate as to have a chair who is, err, permanently ‘fixed’ per se– this thought is enough to bring on Faustian nightmares of devilish bureaucratic incompetence that could quite possibly herald some sleepless nights ahead.
In my elementary school days, I often remember having to prepare the infamous ‘how I spent my summer’ essay or presentation. The stakes always seemed rather high. What fabulous adventures had we all gotten up to over the summer months when some of us flitted in and out of each other’s lives? Remember, this was elementary school in the days before cell phone ubiquity and e-mail, let alone Facebook. Upon our return to school, newly shod in squeaky stiff shoes and, as we grew older, perhaps trying out a new fashion risk (hot pink jellies!), we would listen as our classmates enumerated their many adventures. We kept track of who traveled the farthest, went to the neatest camps, or took one of those iconic journeys associated with Americana (the Grand Canyon! Disneyland!). I was frequently a stay at home kid. While my parents would occasionally spring for day camp a few days a week, more often than not I was at home, reading books, swimming in the public pool, and playing with my upstairs neighbor in the hallways of our old apartment building. When my elementary school days ended, I was often taking summer classes, interning, or working– otherwise building my college prospects.
Now, after a semester with no teaching, I find myself realizing I am still a stay at home kid– at least for now. No fabulous field trips to start new research projects, no overseas conferences, or other exotic travels. I stayed home, sometimes commuting to my other home with Mr. Rottweiler on the East Coast. And what, do you ask, did I do with my time at home? When I started out in January, I was determined to work on my book proposal and dive into the book manuscript based on revising and elaborating my dissertation. For those who are unaware of my relationship with my dissertation, a quick reminder: I am still enamored of it. So I had really been looking forward to applying myself to its improvement, really getting down and dirty and wallowing in the thing and then sending it into the ether to meet its match in an academic press. Predictably, that is not what happened.
In the back of my head, a little voice (surprising like the voice of my [now former] chair, Big Dawg) started whining: “The book route to tenure is a risky strategy…. putting all your eggs in one basket. It could all go so very horribly wrong!” I ignored the voice, and commenced working on my book proposal. But the voice did not shut up– so Day 1, I found myself unfocused and distracted. On Day 2, I had a conversation with the voice. “Listen,” I said, “monographs are pretty standard routes for anthropologists. I know it’s risky, but do you really think that I won’t be able to get it out in the next 6 years? Really?” And without hesitation, the voice replied, “You never know….!” I promptly told the voice I thought it was full of s*&! and being generally unhelpful and would it shut up already and let me knock out the book proposal, pretty please.
Day 2 did not go any better than Day 1, and neither did the day after. I doggedly (hee) chipped away on the proposal for a week, but its completion eluded me, and the various pieces and chapters now actually seemed to repel each other (much like when you can’t stick two magnets together because they have the same polarity). By the end of the week, I found myself staring at a single chapter, and I decided, then and there, to revise it into an article and send it out into the world. I had presented this particular chapter on numerous occasions and as folks were generally receptive and no one had stood up and declared my total ineptitude and wrongness at any point, I decided that this one was ready to make its way into the world as an article. I picked a date by which I wished to make the submission– a week before our junior faculty review (we get reviewed every year at Midwestern). I made my deadline.
Once the article was submitted, I turned back to the book proposal, thinking now I could really give it a go. Turns out, I was wrong and Big Dawg’s voice started up again… this time muttering something about publishing at least one piece ‘beyond the dissertation’ in order to meet tenure requirements. This time I knew better than to argue, so I looked at my old field notes and decided to write a new paper on a topic I had not had a chance to get to for my dissertation. By May, I had a new article-length manuscript which I then test-drove at a conference, rewrote, and recently sent to some friends for another round of comments.
So how did I spend my summer? If you’ve been paying attention, you know I didn’t get to my book proposal or manuscript. Instead, I decided to tackle a third article, also “new” where it concerns my dissertation. When I say ‘decided,’ I mean that I had organized a conference panel that all the participants were so excited about, we decided to try to turn it into a special issue of a journal. In April, I finally found an editor willing to consider it, so I promised to get all the pieces submitted by June 1st, and, a week later, forgot about it. When I finished my second article in May, I glanced at the calendar and realized that I had better get to the article to make the June 1st deadline. No problem– base it on my conference paper, right? Err…. well, problem was I had presented a paper that had already been published (my only peer-reviewed piece, actually), so I had to write something completely new!
I managed to pull the thing together by mid-July, buy myself more time to write the introduction to the special issue, and get the other panelists to turn in their pieces. I am not sure if my submission will make muster. It was by far the most unpolished thing I have ever allowed anyone else to see, but I definitely was happy to have it off my desk (at least for now). I then returned to the conference paper I had finished in May (per above) and revised it in relation to the comments given me by my discussants and a trusted reader (ok– former adviser), before sending it out again. Another glance at the calendar, and a series of administrative emails making various demands jolted me into the reality of the on-coming semester. The last two weeks have been spent preparing syllabi (two old classes, one new!) and gearing up for a short research trip I will take before the term starts.
As of yesterday, I did hear back from the journal to which I submitted the first article (way back early in the Spring semester) and the comments are encouraging, so a resubmission seems to be in my future. In addition to the three classes I am teaching, I will be headed to two conferences this Fall, necessitating two new papers. It will be a busy semester and one in which I have now accepted that the book project will be on hold. But come December… I will be getting back to it. Oh yes, I will. So if Professor Rottweiler is a little harrowed and a little snappish with students this semester, it’s because she is busy and doesn’t have time to deal with their silliness. They’d best tread softly and stay away from my teeth.
Surfacing….
May 12, 2009
=GASP!= Lungs bursting from staying under for so long! This month I have clearly bitten off more than I can chew. I’ve only just finished drafting one article and have a second due on June 1st. I’ve been on a steady “page a day” diet for two months now– writing is being done. The quality– well, err, umm. Not so sure there. But there are drafts. And with that said, I need to take a deep breath, fill my lungs and….. *plunges back into the murky depths.*
Banished…
March 31, 2009
… not formally banished, but sternly admonished by a fellow academic who told me that blogging is antithetical to being writerly and productive. With two articles due on June 1st (maniacal inside head voice cackles!), I am respecting said banishment (more or less— well, minus this little missive) so all will remain quiet till the summer, at which point I will return to my intermittent blog tom-foolery.
Permanent eye twitch.
March 2, 2009
While I have returned to reading mode (I will finish reading a book today! Look at that!), I managed to submit an article to a competitive journal last week. It is the first time I have submitted an article to a competitive (in tenure review speak: “top-tier”/”high impact”/”flagship”/”highly selective”) journal. OK, so Rottweiler is a late bloomer. There is nothing I can do except get rolling on the next thing: articles, book manuscript. And yet… I keep logging into the submission site and checking to see if comments have appeared. This is completely illogical as nothing is bound to show up for months to come.
In the mean time, I have developed a wicked left eye twitch. It just won’t stop. How can I trick myself into forgetting about this article and not investing all of my hopes, dreams and fears in its fate? (Most likely to be a rejection and some tough but, one hopes, helpful critical feedback). Help! My eye is so twitchy it won’t let me move on to my next project. Something tells me that if I care this much, and in this very physical way, I will be not long for the academic world.
You’re not the boss of me. Uh oh. I’m not the boss of me.
February 19, 2009
Professor Rottweiler is used to being ruled by the clock. This semester, however, I am not teaching, so it appears that I have eliminated the one thing that kept me on some kind of regular schedule. In theory, I am left with scads of open time, all of which I am supposed to fill with oodles of writing. There is a book manuscript that needs to be put together, articles to write, conference presentations to put together and, of course, new classes to prep for next semester. There is also, in theory, brand spanking new research that is supposed to start happening as of this summer. Yikes.
The problem is that I am much too relaxed about all of these things. Where is the desperate urgency that drove me to finish my dissertation? Wherefore the panic? Instead, a month into the term I have an overdetermined orientation of being at the “beginning” of the semester. Hence, I’ve been avoiding serious work on my book proposal, spending time, instead, on reading “relevant” literature that has been published since my dissertation defense– an activity that I could probably continue in perpetuity, by which time someone else will publish my research rendering my book completely outdated and irrelevant.
A routine must be achieved. Towards this end, today I forced myself to leave the house and sit in the library all day. It took a great deal of self-discipline. The cat was looking extra cuddly, it was rainy and cold outside, and I was tempted to sit at home wrapped in my Snuggie (birthday present from Schnauzer! my first infomercial product ever!), sipping tea, and eating heart-shaped frosting covered cookies (birthday present from another friend of a yet-to-be-determined breed! not from an infomercial– baked for me with love). On top of everything, the recent birthday was unhelpful in that I felt justified in goofing off even more than usual… DANGEROUS!
As I was saying, rather than sit at home and succumb to inertia today, I made it to the library and managed to put some work into an article I am trying to submit for review. I have given myself a deadline related to our upcoming annual review (the Rottweiler intends to put her first paw on the path to tenure *gulp*). With the cookies nearly finished and the article finally getting to the point where it is fun to work on, it is easier to get enthused about working. Still, the Snuggie looks very tempting, the cat needs his belly rubbed, and it is not any warmer than it was yesterday. D2L is not working (OH MIDWESTERN U. When will you get your technological act together!?) and so I can’t access my files stored on-line. (Did I mention I have no network drive or automatic back-up because it hasn’t been SET UP YET? Six months into my having started this job? For real?)
Excuses aside, while I haven’t quite launched into a full-fledged routine, I feel it is nascent and soon I should be trucking along, turning out work, and making the most of this non-teaching term. It is, after all, just the beginning of the semester.
The dust settles.
December 29, 2008
Professor Rottweiler is painfully aware that much time has passed between her last posting and this one. We all know this trap… the more time passes, the higher the stakes are. That first deadline goes by and you haven’t even started, let alone come close to finishing say, the article you’ve promised the editor of a newsletter. You ask for and are granted an extension, without mentioning, of course, you haven’t started. The more time passes, the more time, in theory, you’ve had to work on the thing, so the better it’s supposed to be, right? At the last moment, when extensions are no longer there for the granting, you spew out some sub-par thing in a desperate act to cross it off your check list. (And I’ve been know to retroactively add things to a checklist that I’ve already done to make myself feel accomplished). You tell yourself it will be improved in the editing process, and that the damage will somehow be undone. The truth is, there is no editing. You actually just move on to the next deadline.
This is all to say that though I’ve been a long time in blogging, readers should have low expectations. I have not been refining my thoughts and contemplating my entry. No, I’ve been recovering. My first semester on the tenure track has ended. Some quick stats to recap:
Number of students taught: 111.
Number of papers graded: 642 (some were short ones)
Number of hours just lecturing: 24
Number of hours prepping classes: a lot more than 24
Number of hours spent on research: if I think about it, I might cry.
Number of peer-reviewed articles published: 1 (must not give up hope!)
The semester is over. There were things that I could have done better, but there are also things that could have gone a lot worse. The student evaluations are in, and they weren’t too painful. They were actually even just fine. Of course, I am obsessing only about the one or two biting comments in the lot. I suspect they may be part of the famed ‘revenge evaluation’ genre of which I have been told. And I’m going to gripe about at least one of them. Remember how I decided to kick my class out when I caught them not reading? Well, while most of the students in that class wrote very complementary things, one of the little ingrates decided to mouth off.
According to said whiny student, it was shear immaturity that drove me to kick students out of the class. Such a stunt is only appropriate in grade school. Said student also reports that they have lost all interest in anthropology and have downgraded it from their major to their minor because they are unimpressed with all of the anthropology professors at Midwestern University. Plus, I gave WAY too much work, asking them to read a whopping 50 pages of ethnography per class, and when they asked for some respite, I made only superficial cuts to the reading (mind you, I literally cut the reading in HALF the last four weeks of the class).
I, on the other hand, am elated that someone who doesn’t want to put effort into a class that is a fundamental requirement for their major has jumped ship. I asked my students to leave class when they came unprepared, and I am GLAD I DID IT. My only regret is that I didn’t do it earlier in the semester!
And lest I spend another second worrying about the semester behind me, I have to remind myself that the semester ahead of me should get me motivated, because I am not teaching this Spring. Rather, I will be in high-output writing mode. I am wondering if this Spring will be much different from last Spring as last Spring I was focused on finishing my dissertation, and this Spring I will be working on my book manuscript and two articles I would like to get done. After spending the semester mainly caught up in teaching and getting adjusted to new faces in a new city and a new institution, I am looking forward to working on my own research. Next semester’s stats will be calculated in words written and articles submitted. I can also start keeping track of air miles as I will be commuting between Midwestern U. and Virginia where Mr. Rottweiler is in graduate school. That’s right, I will be splitting my time half and half between Midwestern U. and Mr. Rottweiler. After much careful analysis, I have simply concluded that it is easier to be married when one resides in the same town as one’s partner. I will miss Professor Schnauzer when I am away (and Mr. Schnauzer, too)… I would not have survived the semester without them! We shall have to cram four weeks worth of dishing, drinking, griping and cheerleading into two weeks. What’s a rottweiler to do?
At the end of the spring semester, the Rottweilers will return to the town in which Midwestern U. housed and settle in for the long haul. Mr. Rottweiler will commence disserting, and Professor Rottweiler will egg him on as she geers up for Fall 2010 (three classes and year two on the tenure track!) But all of this is far in the future. Spring 2009 will be about writing, commuting, and writing about writing– all of which you can likely read about on this here blog if you aren’t sick of me yet. Happy New Year, to all my puppies, hounds, and bitches! Here’s to surviving Fall 2008 and digging in to Spring 2009.
Funny email from a student.
November 24, 2008
While at the anthropology meetings in San Francisco, I received this little missive:
Dear Professor Rottweiler,
Get. Out. Now.
November 13, 2008
My Facebook status currently reads, “Professor Rottweiler asked her students to leave if they had not done the reading, and all but 4 out of 17 walked out with an icy wind at the their backs.” After noting that only three in the class had downloaded the reading last night, I suspected that something like this might be in order for cultural anthropology class. I posted my intention to calmly and reasonably ask people to leave if they had not done the readings in a Facebook status earlier today. My intention in doing so was two-fold: a) to solicit feedback from friends who were teachers and b) to hold myself to it lest I chicken out in the misplaced desire to continue to be ‘likable.’ A few friends (including the fabulous bulldog!) noted they had done something similar in the class and it had worked well, so my resolve bolstered, I devised a plan for managing this with a certain aplomb, or reasonable facsimile thereof.
In the past I have wondered why students don’t read. I had even cut the readings back significantly in request to this particular class’s whining and complaining. It doesn’t bother me that they SOMETIMES don’t read or make it all the way through… it bothers me because it seems to be becoming habitual. And when I wondered about the “mystery of the non-reading students,” many reminded me that it’s no mystery– it’s just about getting away with what you can get away with. Since I am not a pop-quiz homework assigning busy work police teacher, my students have learned that they can coast through discussions without being prepared. This has devolved in the last two weeks to a poor student presenter being virtually the only guaranteed reader of the text, with everyone else mooching off of this unfortunate soul’s labor. So today I decided I had had enough.
I walked into class feeling shaky from the get-go. I wrote two questions on the board and announced that there would be an open-note pop quiz. The two questions were softballs if you had bothered to CRACK open the books and write a single thing down. I gave them five minutes and then collected the quizzes. Then I asked how many had done the readings and prepared for class. A few hands went up. I then announced that if you were unable to answer both questions with an open-note format, that you were unprepared for class. Then, to my horror, the following words left my lips, “I am very disappointed that you are unprepared for class” (thanks, Mom). “You are wasting my time, your time, and the time of the students who are prepared for today’s class. If you are not prepared for class today, then I ask that you leave. When you come back on Tuesday, you should be able to answer these two questions.” They sat in stony silence staring at me so I just stared back. Then chairs started to move and folks filed out.
I was left looking at four frightened faces. I was sure, though my voice had been calm, that my face was bright red (I felt all hot and flushed!). A friend commented that it was tough to have been one of those who left, but also tough to have been one of those who stayed. I held class with the four students– we watched the end of a film and then discussed the readings. I gave them a chance to talk about their paper projects. Class wrapped up and I headed back to my office.
After class, I emailed the class telling them what I expected from them and how we could put this scene behind us… the email contained the conciliatory words, “I appreciate your honesty.” I’ve received two apologies thus far, which is not the silence I anticipated. I still feel shaky (from the belly on out) about what I’ve done, and I am curious as to whether it will a positive effect. I will report back soon, but in the meantime, welcome your stories about instructor-student standoffs (from either perspective). I prefer the one’s with happy endings, but may find your horror stories instructive as well.
