Timing and Hearing
Before tackling Casie’s list of questions listed in my “Staying and Going” post and making my own decisions about academia, some of which may be more public than the rest, I’d like to consider the other side of the activist mentoring equation, the student.
Although it is difficult now to remember, I was once an MA student trying to decide whether or not to continue on into a PhD program. I’d come south to find an MA program that would also provide me with community college teaching experience, because I thought that was what I wanted to do. Like my mentor from community college, I thought I could be happy teaching at a CC by day and doing community theatre at night. A couple of things happened a long the way that made me question that idea. I started teaching at a cc and I started learning more about composition. I still wanted to teach, but I was no longer sure I wanted to pursue the cc track. I was also no longer sure an MA would be enough on the cc track. As I participated in a “Facutly-in-Training” program at the local community college, the English department announced a TT position, and I got an inside look at the application process. Sure enough, although the ad said the magic words “Ma required” those were quickly followed by “PhD preferred,” and of course the position went to someone with a PhD. I began to understand that, even though the PhD is a “research” degree, I would need it if I wanted to pursue a “teaching” career. Consequently, when the DGS called me in for an advising meeting and said, “Hey! You could graduate this semester,” I kind of freaked out. With only an MA, I knew without a doubt that I would end up an adjunct. Plus, I felt like I wasn’t done learning yet. Naturally, I turned to my favorite professor for advice.
Here you need some context.
The best words to describe my favorite professor were mercurial, cantankerous, and gloomy. Those might sound like odd words to describe a mentor, but really … when she was “on,”she pushed and expected the best of you, and you wanted to give it to her. She was also brutally honest about the academy, the market, and not staying where I was for my Ph.D. work. Here’s the thing. I heard every word she said, and I considered it, but then I continued, and I stayed. Not because I thought the market was getting any better. I stayed because I knew I would need the degree, because, as loose as it was, I had a network in place, and because she was there. The good news … I have the degree and my network of friends and family only grew during my Ph.D. work. The bad news, just before my comps that favorite professor of mine left, leaving a hole in my committee that didn’t get permanently filled until I started writing about writing centers.
Over the past few years I’ve worked with several graduate students, and I would say I’ve been a mentor to a couple of them. One has chosen to go on to do her PhD work. Without being as gloomy as my mentor, I did my best to ask her the tough questions, and paint an accurate picture of graduate school and the professions. I challenged her with some of the questions in yesterday’s list. Still, she’s half-way through her first semester of a PhD program. Yes, this is just one of the ways I see myself in her. However, having been through it all now, I think there is something else at play as well. I think that even the best advice has to come at the right time, because there are points in time when we are just incapable of really hearing/processing it. Some experiences, I think we just have to have.
Of course this doesn’t change the need for more activist mentoring, because for stubborn person like me (or my former consultant), there are students who need to be asked the tough questions. Students, who will use the answers to make informed decisions, and hopefully won’t end up at the end of a PhD program feeling as if they’ve been bamboozled.
Staying and Going
My friend Casie posted this today.
I have a couple of responses to this piece, but the primary one is … yes! Just, yes! That I agree with Casie really isn’t a surprising thing.
We first met at her job talk when I walked up to tell her how much I enjoyed her presentation, and before I could get two words out found myself in tears. True story. Honest-to-God tears, accompanied by those “I’m trying not to cry, but it only makes it worse sobs.” She was gracious enough to give me a hug and let me stumble through my little speech. It was my first year on the job and to describe myself as mortified would be a little bit of an understatement. Still, there were few happier moments in that first year then when I heard she had accepted the position.
What could make someone cry at a job talk?
Valid question.
Some of it was probably the stress of my first year. Few periods in my life have been as lonely and as exhausting. The commute, adapting to a completely new work schedule & environment, being the primary source of income for my family, and on top of it all still being a graduate student — I’ve talked before about how all those things add up, and how for me when the stress adds up it usually results in tears. I’m an equal opportunity crier – if I’m sad, I cry; if I’m angry, I cry; if I’m frustrated, I cry; if I’m happy (you guessed it), I cry. In this case it was recognition.
These days it seems like everyone and their second cousin is talking about what it means to be a working class academic, and about the working conditions for graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty. Three years ago, however, it wasn’t exactly the same. Three years ago being a working class academic was just something Ouiser and I talked about sitting on the garage couch when we were in our cups. Ouiser was the first person I knew to start talking about alt-ac careers and the irresponsible mentoring of graduate students. Consequently, when I sat listening to Casie’s job talk about her research with working class academics, it touched something in me. What I meant to say, and what I hope came out between my tears, was that hearing about Casie’s research was like finally being seen. It was the first time I’d heard an academic describe graduate students who could have been me. It was a naming and a calling into being.
So, I guess you can imagine why three years later I find nothing out of the ordinary about once again seeing Casie give voice to thoughts that have been floating around my head. The only thing different is, perhaps, the context. In her post Casie outlines this great list of questions for graduates to consider as they ponder pursuing a PhD and the academic life.
What is it you like about academia? Specifically, what practices make you happy?
What parts of academia stress you out or make you upset?
Is it important that you live in a specific city, state, or region?
What kind of financial compensation do you need to be happy?
What sort of daily or weekly schedule do you envision as your ideal?
Is teaching/research/administration a practice that you could envision yourself engaging with over time?
What feelings do you experience when you think about not working in academia?
What kind of job could you imagine yourself doing and being happy?
Do you like to research and write?
How do you deal with timelines and independent goal setting?
If you had to describe your ideal day at work—from waking up to going to bed—what would that day look like? What challenges might you encounter? What high points might you experience?
What identities do you call on when you consider your self-worth? Your values? How do you prioritize these identities?
Having finally finished and received the PhD (which I somehow still think will be rescinded every time I find another mistake in my dissertation), I find myself looking at the academic job market. I’m considering which jobs and which locations would be right for me, without necessarily thinking about whether or not this is really want I want. Yes, at this point it is what I’m trained to do, but does that necessarily mean it is all I can do, or that it is even really what I want to do? Technically, I am already in academia, and I don’t know that I could answer any one of those questions. I think I am at a point, like the MA student, where it is necessary to decide do I stay or do I go?
Fall Changes
Fall has always been my favorite time of year. Perhaps my birthday had something to do with that as a child, but school was always a part of that as well. The first day of school was exciting for me because it meant a change of pace, and a new order to the day.
Now that we live in the South fall has become even more important to me. The most magical day of the Southern year happens in fall. One day in mid-September the humidity just turns off. Life becomes tolerable again and I can turn off the ac and still sleep through the night. I can stand to touch yarn again, and pick up all the projects I’ve ignored over the summer. There is a gift I need to finish, and I’m finally feeling the momentum picking up to get it done.
This fall digital changes have happened here at Sur le Seuil as well. In an effort to get my digital life in order, I finally bit the bullet and bought a domain, and have been working on getting this site in order. The CV is up, as is a rudimentary About page. Now, I just have to figure out what to put on the Home page. The only thing harder for me than coming up with a title is writing something like a bio or About page. I’m certain it will be corny around here for a little while.
The Upside
Generally when I talk about growing up working class and how that had influenced my educational career, I do so to point out the inadequacies of the educational system and the cultural narrative that education is always the best way to get ahead. While all that still holds true, this semester the universe has not so subtly reminded me about the benefits of coming from a working class background. Please keep in mind, just as with the negatives I discuss, I think there is much more at play here than just a working class background, some of this is — I think specific to my situation.
The best part of my experience as a first generation, working class student, particularly as an undergraduate, was the freedom. Since no one in my immediate family had been to a university, there was no one around telling me what I had to be. No one pushed me into med school, or law school, and while I may not have made the best choices (that BA in Theater isn’t exactly paying the bills), I was able to do what I loved.
Last week Deanna Mascle posted this image on her blog.
And it is so true that I laughed out loud all day.
I would never in a million years say that I made the best/smartest career choices, but I can tell you how happy I am that they have all been mine.
Anniversaries
This is a big year for momentous anniversaries and events. It is 3.1 leap years since the DH and I got married. The first time.
There was a big, if perhaps under-celebrated, graduation.
Then, the big 4-0, and we all know how that turned out.
Now in just 16 days, I will celebrate the 5th anniversary of Stroke Day. I don’t have a snappy picture for that, just some very fuzzy memories and a traumatized husband.
The other thing I do not have from Stroke Day, or its immediate aftermath, is some great inspirational quotation for you. Yes. My recovery was amazing, a gift really. Yes. I am thankful for it, nearly every day. The only thing I am more thankful for than my recovery, are the friends and family who visited me in the hospital, those who visited despite their deep unease in that environment, and particularly those who cared for me during my recovery and babysat me afterwards. (Ouiser, I’m looking at you.)
Yes. It is probably a little twisted to celebrate a day on which you almost died, but I do. I do it because it helps me to remember. To remember what it is like to learn to walk again, to do laps around the floor in my wheelchair, to make pudding with the 80 year old men, to be forced to do everything with my left hand, to need help going up and down stairs, to walk with a cane, to any number of things …
It is easy to forget all those details because unlike the dominant narrative about major illness and/or near death experiences my life didn’t suddenly change overnight. I didn’t get to walk away from the terribly hard work of dissertation writing, or teaching, to chase some long repressed dream or “true calling.” There were bills to pay and work to be done, so like any good working class woman I went back to work. I started writing. I found a full-time job. To this day people ask me, “How?” “How did you recover so well?” “How did you recover so quickly?” And I say, “Because I had to.”
So, I celebrate. I celebrate because I had to and I did, and that is – in and of itself – a blessing.
Working Class Thoughts on Education
One of the best pieces of feminist writing on the internet inspired this post. Melissa McEwan’s post “The Terrible Bargain We Have Regrettably Struck” is always worth a re-read. The post is a heart-rending examination of what it is like to be a feminist when negotiating relationships with the men in our lives. McEwan points out that while feminists may not hate men, it can often be difficult to fully trust the men in our lives. This isn’t a set up designed to make you think great things about what follows, I don’t pretend that my writing will reach McEwan’s level. I reference “The Terrible Bargain” because it is a piece of writing that carefully considers the consequences of living within the existing structure. In this post, I want to consider what it means to live within the existing culture at the intersection of class and the educational system. As McEwan points out in her post many other people could write this post equally well from different perspectives. I, however, can only speak from my own position (as a working class white woman with a Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Composition, who currently works coordinating a writing center) and in McEwan’s own words work to “make myself trustworthy” by striving to acknowledge and be respectful of those other perspectives.
While McEwan’s post inspired this piece, the point I would like to discuss isn’t necessarily a direct analogy, but in the same way that McEwan questions the cost women face when choosing to take a feminist stance in the world, I want to explore the cost to working class students when they choose to become a part of the educational system. Working class students receive very specific messages about education and they are expected to play a particular role within that system. For example, as a high school student in a small, economically challenged, logging town in the Pacific Northwest. Education was always considered good. Going away to college represented a chance to get “Off the Harbor,” to find somewhere with more opportunities. Additionally, more education was always better. If a BA/MS could get you a better job/life, then an MA/MS would certainly provide you with something even better. I can honestly say that during high school I couldn’t even fathom having a Ph.D. The underlying “more education is always better” message certainly got through, however.
Who knows, maybe in someone else’s experience, this all pays off. In my experience, though, I can’t say it has.
As the conversation about working class graduate students and faculty expands and becomes more visible, I’ve noticed a trend. Someone writes a piece about some aspect of the working class experience in graduate school, which gets published somewhere like The Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed, and while there maybe a few supportive comments, invariably they devolve into a chorus of, “X should have known better.” “They should have known x, y, or z about graduate school.” The most frustrating part of it all is that generally all the comments miss whatever the point was in the article. The commenters fail to engage with the larger critique of the educational system/institution. Although I learned early on Never to Read the Comments, and I’ve almost got to the point of just not even reading the articles, I just don’t want to ignore, what is to me, a vital aspect of who I am in this system. Consequently, I have been trying to why it is so disturbing to so many people to hear working class graduate students/faculty talk about their experiences. The answer I have come to is, as I think you get by now, wholly informed by my own experiences; but, I think the discomfort and antagonism comes from when working class individuals stop being consumers of the educational system and attempt to become members of that system.
As with many of the ideas snarled up in the American myth of class mobility, “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” and “getting ahead,” education is supposed to get you ahead, but only so far. Working class students are supposed to be users of the educational system, but only to a point. They should pay to take those business, nursing, accounting, elementary ed courses, and then they should go out an get the appropriate job. The problem stems from those of us who aren’t good at business, or accounting, and don’t want to teach in the K-12 system. For those of us who find out that what we are good at is “school” and have the temerity to want to teach at a college or university, we make the dangerous from users of the educational system to participants in the system. Becoming, or trying to become, a part of the university system is a mark of reaching too far, of getting out of our place. The X should have know comments are a way to try to maintain a boundary and distance between an “us” and a “them.”
The result of this constant “us” and “them” positioning is that working class graduate students and faculty have a precarious relationship with the educational system. On the one hand it has gotten me away from where I was, and given me opportunities, but it has also not paid off in some pretty significant ways. More education is not always better. Maybe it’s true; maybe I should have known to stop when I reached the end of my MA degree. I should have thought — the PhD is a research degree, and because what I really want to do is teach I should just stop here. But I didn’t know that, and in the face of a lifetime of being told variations of “more education is always better,” I chose to continue on with my PhD. Perhaps I should have been able to tell earlier; I should have known how stupid it was to leave my full-time with benefits Starbucks job, to get teaching experience as an adjunct. But shift work at Starbucks looked just like the shift work my parents did for years without getting ahead. In many ways I won my gamble. I have a full time job at a university.
Now, however, I know. I know I should have stayed at Starbucks because I could be making the same life for myself without the insane amount of debt now hanging over my head. I know I could have/should have stopped at the MA. Heck, I should have gotten over my unease around rooms full of small children and become a K-12 teacher. Now, however, I am a part of system that I no longer trust, a system that won’t hear my experience, won’t accept my calls for change. I don’t know that there is an answer to any of the issues I have raised here, but I my experience, my feminist experience tells me there is value in recognizing and acknowledging the problem; my working class experience tells me the problem is that I’ve moved beyond the consumption of education and become a part of the production of education.
Compass Points
As I mentioned last week turning 40 might have been affecting my brain a little. Nothing too terrible, but some general malaise and discontent with where I am in life, you know. Nothing terrible, actually I think it is in someway just another thing they don’t prepare you for in graduate school. How, even if you get a job, it can take so long to get your life on track. For the last few months, however, I have been a little more willing to take risks and make changes, which was clearly illustrated in my last hair cut. In about an hour I went from this:
to this:
Keep in mind my hair hasn’t been shorter than my chin since 5th grade, when I tried an ill advised Dorothy Hamill wedge cut. The other thing to understand about this hair choice is that, for me, it was an incredibly fast decision. Normally, making a decision about my hair takes months. I took about a week to decide to go for this cut.
Which leads me to the next part of whatever mid-life crisis I’ve been having. For many people, the DH include and you dear readers, this one masquerades as a quick decision, because once I started talking about it I got it done. Last week was probably the first time I talked about getting a tattoo, but actually I have been thinking about this for a couple of years now. I have had the basic idea and image on my iPad for over a year. In fact when I went to the IWCA conference in San Diego last fall, I got a henna tattoo of the same general design in the same location to test it out.
After graduation I was very tempted to act on this decision, but life just kept getting in the way. With my birthday approaching, this really just felt like the right time. A way to commemorate, not one but two milestones — finishing the PhD and turning 40.
So, I began yesterday with an arm that looked like this.
And after waiting two hours at the tattoo shop, which was interesting to say the least, my arm looked like this:
The most descriptive thing I can think to say about the tattoo shop is that it was a decidedly masculine environment. I’m pretty sure your imagination can take it from there. In the end though, the wait wasn’t that bad, and I am happy to say that I tolerated my tattoo experience better than the young kid in front of me. The most disturbing thing to me was the 20-25 year old kid working the front counter that kept calling me sweetie. As much as I might not be in love with being called “Ma’am” most of the time these days, the sweetie from a much younger man is definitely not preferable.
And this morning after the swelling went down some, my arm looks like this:
Many people have already asked what the alternate letters mean. The thing is, I chose those letters in part because they can stand for any number of things. There are so many people in my life who’s name start with, or contain B’s that it seemed a natural element for the North point of my compass. At this point in my life however, it also serves to remind me of the importance of being my own North, my own guiding point on the compass.
For me, there was never any other choice but to put an H in the NW spot, because the more and longer I live elsewhere, the more deeply I know that the Pacific Northwest is my home. The DH spent some time this week probing and questioning me about my letter choices, which I was a little grumpy about at the time. In the long run, however, it was nice because it made me consider all the other “H” words that inform both my work and myself: hospitality, host, hostess, hope, etc.
Part of the DH’s probing about the letters I would choose has to do with a distinctly Grabow quirk, which is that the family seems to have a genetic need/desire for symmetry. The Captain and my sister-in-law couldn’t even look at a house down the street as they passed it without being annoyed that a decorative window in the garage was not appropriately centered under the peak of the roof. When I showed the DH the compass I wanted to use for my tattoo he was concerned that if I replaced NW with just an H, then the other NE, SE, and SW would look unbalance because they had two letters instead of just one. Yep, these are the things the DH thinks about.
In the end though, it at least got me thinking about the other points of the compass. The only other point that I would want to replace with a letter is the SE, but I couldn’t think of a letter for that — S for stroke didn’t really make much sense and would just be confusing. G for graduate school, ummm … given my current feelings about it, the less said/thought about graduate school the better. I really didn’t want it carried around on my skin forever. PhD feels the same way — plus it would put me in the same letter symmetry quandry. The other night it came to me – V. V could stand for so many things; something cheesy like Victory for my recovery from the stroke and graduation from graduate school, something a little sardonic like the vissitude and vagaries of fate, or a word I had forgotten how much I love — verisimilitude.
Versimilitude, to me captures my current relationship with the SE. It is like home in that I have developed friends and family here both in graduate school, and in my current position, but it is not really home in the way that the Northwest is. So, V it is because it does mean everything I’ve just said, and is also undetermined enough to allow for change over time.
At at the tattoo shop last night I also solved the problem of letter symmetry by having them just leave out the NE and SW points of the compass, which I think was the best choice because it kept the tattoo relatively clean and simple. And who knows where I will end up next. Maybe I will have letters to add in the future. As Ouiser said when I texted her the pictures, “It’s all about direction, isn’t it.” It is, it is about remembering where you’ve been to guide you to the path to follow.
The work that never ends.
Every semester someone from the Writing Center visits all the ENG 100 & 101 courses at my school.
Yes.
Every course. Every semester. Have I mentioned lately that I work at a large university?
Typically, I pawn off many of these visits on the consultants. It is good for the students to see the people with whom they will be working. This semester, however, things are different. For the first time in quite a while I have an almost completely new staff. The consultant training course I’m teaching actually has more than 3 people in it! I know I mentioned that before.
Being the soft hearted person I am, I decided this semester I wouldn’t ask any of the new people to do any of the classroom visits. Occasionally, students actually ask questions and I didn’t want anyone to have a bad experience. So, now I am looking at the first of many 12 hour days on campus. I really have to learn how not to be so nice.
The thing is though, as exhausted as I will be by September 12th, I kind of like getting to see the shiny new faces. Since I only teach consultant training now, I don’t really have the opportunity to see first year students much anymore. Sure, I know this is wildly altruistic, but I miss the wonder, excitement, and terror in their faces during the first few weeks of class. Remind me of this post when I am dead on my feet next week.
When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland
Everyone should read this piece by @tressiemcphd and if you aren’t following her on Twitter, you should be.
D5 Creation