The Road to Hell

First things first...you try confining a puppy for 10 days. Yeah. It's only day one and I am going insane.

Secondly, I just sent a brief email to the Department of Education. I am not sure that was the appropriate place to address my concern, but it is a place to start.

I think we need a "Teach for America" type student loan forgiveness program for university faculty. Colleges and Universities could sign up for the program and graduate students would agree to teach somewhere as an adjunct for so many years. The Colleges and Universities would save money by not hiring full-time employees (I know that could be bad. Maybe there could be some deal about the replacement hiring having to be tenure-track.) We could have our student loans cut back or forgive AND in the process the money we would have given student loans would go back into the community through grocery shopping, etc.

Really, I think it is a brilliant plan. Since the government/bank has already loaned the money, it has already spent that money and wouldn't really be losing anything. Hmm...I'm sure there is some capitalistic reason not to do it.

It's Dr. if you're nasty

It's not exactly a great start to the day. At least for once I didn't wake up at 7:30am, the problem is I woke up at 5:15am. I took the puppy out and tried to get back to sleep for about 40 minutes before giving up to go make some coffee and oatmeal.

Then I opened the email and this article from the LA Times came through. In case you can't get to it. The article is about how "pompous" it is for Jill Biden to expect to be called Dr. Biden when she only has a PhD in Education. I understand it's historic for a second lady to keep her day job, but if you really want to get all worked up about that then really talk about it.

Don't just thrown in as an aside the paragraph about how little she'll make as an adjunct faculty member.

McClellan declined to say exactly how much Biden would earn, but said she was teaching 10 hours a week and that the range of pay for her adjunct position was $900 to $1,227 per credit hour. (That means each semester her pay could be from $9,000 to $12,270.)

Point out the fact that this "not that much amount" is what most adjunct family members LIVE ON. Or maybe that she is making that much IN SPITE of the fact that she got her PhD, IN SPITE of the fact that she has 20 years of experience.

Or, maybe we should talk about the fact that she chose to work at a community college and what that means for everyone involved. Jim McClellan, the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Northern Virginia Community College, (notice how unlike in the article I showed respect for his position by capitalizing his title --you, know like you should for anyone) said,

"She could have done anything with her time and make a difference, but she chose to teach, and teach at a community college. That says to our students that they are important and that community colleges are an important piece of the American educational system."

The article doesn't pay much attention to what McClellan says, but I like that he equates teaching with a way to make a difference. Dr. Biden did her time in school, took the exams, wrote the dissertation all of it. She deserves her title. Notice how the article includes the title of Lynne Cheney's dissertation, but not Dr. Biden's.


Don't even get me started on how undervalued the Community College system is in this country. It's a personal soap box.

academic genealogy

Looking back over the archives, it amazed me to realize there isn’t a lot here about where I’m from…at least not where I’m from educationally. It’s amazing because the Cajun Princess and I talk about these things all the time. In fact, it’s pretty much how we bonded. So, grab yourself a cup of coffee, a beer, or even champagne and I’ll tell you a bit of the Tale of Little Miss Someday. (By the way, I’m still waiting on some good pseudonym suggestions.) This tale is inspired by Dr. Crazy’s “College for the Underclass” post. There are several ideas in there I’d like to address, but first I need to provide the background.

As with everyone, my educational genealogy begins with my parents. My Mother never finished high school, but got her GED when I was around 7 or 8. My Father graduated from high school and was eventually sent to some further vocational training by one of his employers.

(Aside #1 – Isn’t it fascinating how we do this? Construct educational genealogies for ourselves. It’s as if our parents’ educational level should both provide some indication of what our own educational potential should be; but, it should also be the level we seek to surpass.)

I think the most important thing about my mother’s education is that when I was 10 she went to the local Community College (CC) and got a business certificate. Basically, it meant she was able to work in an office doing a number of things like basic payroll and accounting. In fact, she worked in the business office of that same college after she graduated. At an early age the idea that education could get you a decent job you didn’t hate too much was ingrained in me. Even to a 10 year old it’s pretty obvious that a low level office job is better than cleaning houseboats. My Father was talented at what he did and always had a good paying blue collar job. So, during my high school years we were pretty solidly lower-middle class. It was assumed that I would go to college, but that instead of going away to school I would start out at the local CC. I didn’t even apply to any four year schools. While we didn’t have enough money to send me to a four year school, according to my Dad’s taxes we had enough that I didn’t really need financial aid.

My staying in the home town turned out to be a good thing. During the spring of my Senior year my parents divorced. I did go to the CC that fall, but I didn’t even last a full quarter. Life was just a little messed up for me. So, I took the first of what was to be a couple of ‘breaks’ from school. I’d work for a while, go back and take a few classes, and then work for a while again. There was a rather long break where I followed John Boy to the northern end of the state, but eventually I returned home and to the CC.

To me, this is where it gets interesting.

Dr. Crazy is candid about her goals as an undergraduate, “I was no fool: I knew that I needed to graduate from college and to make some money. Period.“ It is the sensible perception of education when coming from a working/lower-middle class background. It probably should have been my goal. Education, job, steady income. When I came back from North Hippy-ville, I knew I was going to finish at the CC and transfer to a four-year school. Sounds right on track, except that I was going to be a theatre major. Oh yeah, you want to know what degree is at least as useless, if not more useless, than an English degree, that would be a Theatre degree. The craziest thing is that I did it. So, not only did I not get serious about school until I was 24, when I did get ‘serious’ about school, it was in an entirely not serious way. I was pursuing a dream.

Maybe my desire to pursue my acting dream influenced the rest of my education, because even at the CC, I took courses that sounded interesting to me. My schedule was always eclectic. Yes, I took a lot of English and Drama classes, but I also took beginning Russian and a biology course on Modern Day Plagues – and, I LOVED it! When I finally really left home to go to a state school on the Prairie, I conceded a little to sensibility and supplemented my Theatre major with an English minor. It was a little about the fall back, but mostly because an entire semester of nothing but theatre and dance classes made me feel like my brain was atrophying. So, I supplemented with things I liked and wanted to learn English and French classes and even some Sign Language. It wasn’t until after I’d decided that I’d finish the Theatre degree, but that I didn’t want a career in the theatre.

(Aside #2 - I don’t mean that to sound like I thought I’d have some grand career. It was just that going into my final year at Prairie School I knew that I loved doing community theatre, and that I didn’t want to do the business of theatre.)

So, I set a new goal. I wanted to teach English at a Community College. My experience at my CC was great and I thought that teaching at that level was an attainable goal. I’d get my MA, find a job at a CC like mine, and do theatre on campus or in the community. Two things happened – I met Dr. Snarky and I worked for a year at a CC here in Middletown. The rest is sort of history. When it was time for me to graduate with the MA, I knew I wasn’t done. I felt like graduate school was just beginning. Suddenly, although it had never occurred to me that I would ever, ever get a PhD, I wanted one.

So, why the life story?

Well, I just wanted to illustrate yet another way that “college” means something different to everyone. I’m guilty of trying to convince my students that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is good – or, at least not a complete waste of their time. I’m guilty of this not because I buy into any sort of “de facto elitism” (which does exist), but because I want them to enjoy learning of all types. It’s a silly goal, but I think that if they can enjoy learning, then they will be able to see life beyond their paycheck. They’ll still be nurses, and whatever it is business majors become, but maybe they’ll also figure out how to do something they love as well.

Another reason for the life story:

Now you know how apt a title “Wandering the Academy” really is.

the babies are growing up...

The 'part 1' of Internal Imperatives is gone, because I don't think the part 2 is necessary. Well, at least a long part two isn't necessary. I made a pretty Venn diagram illustrating the point of part 2, but until I can figure out the expandable post thing, I'm not going to have a dorky Venn diagram hanging out on my front page. The summary of part 2 is this: Our field is Rhetoric and Composition for a reason. We need to research and theorize in the separate areas in order to make the space where we overlap better. Conversely, we need to understand that the space where we overlap is just as important to each field as the work that is done separately.

See. It only took three sentences, not a whole post.

If there is one universal that graduate school teaches, it is the need for a good party. Here in Middletown we probably take that a little too far at times, but this weekend we actually had a valid reason for throwing a party. Two of our ranks are leaving town for jobs. Not just any job...good tenure track jobs one in Lit and the other in Rhet/Comp. (I know it's amazing isn't it!) Actually, one of the things MU likes to tout is its job placement rate. Anyway, there was just cause for celebration and celebration ensued.

Because this celebration was in honor of her friend Dr. Pib came back to MU to help with the festivites. Dr. P and I always moved in tangential circles, but she is actually an important part of my experience here at MU. She was there in my "Very First Graduate Class EVER" when I began the MA. I wanted to be smart and funny like her. Saturday night we stood in our friend's apartment chatting about my dissertation topic. (She's very nice like that...letting drunk people talk about academic things for a while.) She looked back at Ms. Gossip, who took comps at the same time I did, and said, "It's so fun to see the babies grow up." Now, you might think that I would be offended by that, especially since Dr. Pib is younger than me, but I wasn't.

We are growing up. Intellectually, professionally, even personally throughout this process we are learning how to become independent -- how to leave the comfortable nest that school has become for us. So, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that this process is as confusing, exhausting, and painful as it is. Growing up is never easy.

Changing perceptions

It's amazing what a total of six days in a car and five with the in-laws can do to a person's brain. The Dear Husband (DH) and I just returned from seeing his family. We went for his sister's wedding. It was beautiful and more fun than any wedding has a right to be. The best part was that since everyone was focused on the wedding I didn't get the usual interrogation. "When will you be done?" "When are you moving back here?" or the more subtle version "Do you think you'll stay in Middletown when you are done?" The questions were asked here and there, but no one was really paying attention, so it was okay.

Actually, this time I got more questions about what I do and what I plan to write about. Trying to put my work into everyday terms was a good exercise. It seemed to be going pretty well, except the DH kept swooping in to "rescue" people from my boring conversation. (Yes, that was as irritating as you can imagine.) As my brother-in-law Bull (pseudonymed because he looks just like Micheal Cudlitz in Band of Brothers) and I talked about the project, I realized he wasn't quite getting it. Something about the way I explained things didn't really make sense to him. My frame of reference contained an assumption he didn't share. About that time the DH stepped in and I lost my train of thought about it for a few days.

It wasn't until a couple of days later as I drove through the third state of the day that I realized what hadn't worked in our conversation. At the very core of my project and how I think about the world around me is the assumption that language is powerful. Language not only shapes the world around us, it acts upon us. The missing step in my discussion with Bull was the very first one. I needed to say, "I start with the idea that language is powerful." It is because language has this power that the way we use it requires constant critique. Bull, and almost everyone else who is not in this profession, doesn't necessarily start from that assumption. He doesn't think about language in the same way.

Great. So, now I have a place to start when talking about my work. But, that was not the revelation for me. The revelation was about how naturalized my academic life has become. It is often something I think of as separate from myself. At the very least I think of it as a separate aspect of myself, not really a part of the core of who I am. But how I see the world, how I engage with the world, is absolutely influenced by my academic life. "Duh!" is an appropriate response to this revelation. It is a revelation I needed to have because much of my grad school experience has been spent trying to maintain a distance between my "real" life and my academic life. The fear that my life would begin to revolve solely around work and the academy, which would alienate me from my friends and family, was so great I tried to completely compartmentalize these two aspects of myself. Realizing how naturally my academic life fits in with the rest of my life helps me to see that it can compliment the rest of my life without taking it over.