On Grad School: Our Motto is "Catch up!"

Dr. Crazy's recent and much-admired post on grad school has Horace at To Delight and To Instruct collecting such posts. Since she and others have said more gracefully the important parts, what follows is a short response, in random bullet form.

I did not experience grad school as a process that broke down my entire sense of self and rebuilt it, a la the boot camp model. I didn't experience my professors as cruel, either; that may be because they weren't, or it may be because I was too oblivious to notice.

One of the biggest differences between grad and undergrad was that in grad classes, you were supposed to "get it" without being told. If a name was mentioned casually, you didn't raise your hand and ask but went scurrying off to the library to figure out who it was before anyone could figure out that you didn't know who it was. If a professor said, "Nice work. This should be publishable," he never gave any suggestions about how to make it publishable, or where it could be sent, or what conferences it might be suitable for, or anything else. If I had to identify an unofficial model for grad school, it would be "Catch up!"

Another motto would be "nobody cares what your problems are." This may sound heartless, but in retrospect, it prepared us for real jobs. In reality, as grim as it sounds, mostly people don't care if you're having a bad day, or you're depressed, or you just can't get motivated to do what you promised. They just want it done, and whining about it (which was semi-acceptable at lower levels) just wasn't acceptable. You could gripe to your fellow grad students about X or Y, but you were expected to suck it up, a useful talent--and policy--for later life.

Another useful thing to note is that you don't have to--and indeed shouldn't--express every opinion you have. I recall sitting in a class in Old English one time and being struck by an image in the poem we'd read for that day that I thought was quite beautiful. "Purple passage!" scoffed the professor, and the rest of the class laughed. My opinion didn't change (still hasn't--take THAT, Professor X!), but I recognized the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut. (And I've published more than he has, too, so there!)

Some theories and approaches are indeed transformative and will blow your mind. What they don't tell you is that some, well, aren't and won't. You can work your way through mind-bogglingly dense prose sometimes and discover genius, but sometimes that prose is just a cover-up for mind-boggling banality. The painful part is that both take equal time to read and decipher, and the critical fad significant critical paradigm of today may well be yesterday's news in a year or two. I've been out of grad school long enough to have seen this in action, so trust me on this.

Snotty, pretentious, PITA fellow grad students do exist. Avoid them, if possible, since they carry a negative energy that's hard to break free from.

So, what's the short version? Grad school isn't a Vincent Price chamber of horrors. Keep your own counsel, take pleasure in and sustenance from the good friends you'll make, do your work, and believe that you can do it.

technorati tag: grad-compendium

Feet of clay

As in most grad classes, the students in mine this semester read criticism as well as the primary texts. We read some purely theoretical pieces, too, but since the students have already had whole classes in theory, the secondary readings tend to use theory more as a lens for interpretation. In choosing the secondary readings, I didn't do a "greatest hits" approach but tried instead to provide a mix: some classic or essential pieces on the work, articles from a variety of critical perspectives, very recent articles, and articles that are representative of the critical discourse on the primary work. I don't set out to give them bad articles, but some "representative" articles may be more workmanlike than stellar.

It's been interesting to see the class's progression from a more hesitant to a more confident engagement with these secondary texts. Some of them are written by The Greats (and anyone who doesn't think academia has a star system is kidding herself), and sometimes it's entirely clear why certain analyses are classics. Some aren't called classics but are clearly excellent work on the text.

The students have also become a lot more adept at critiquing the weaknesses in a piece, however, and that's even better. They're able to spot flaws in logic or an interpretation that's simply a point-by-point application of Theory A to Text B, without much illumination of either.

On a couple of occasions lately, they've also discovered errors in the article. By errors, I mean attributing whole long speeches on which the author's interpretation rests to an entirely different character in the primary work. Think something like this: "King Lear enters the stage carrying the dead body of his beloved daughter Goneril" or "'From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee' cries Ishmael as he strikes at Moby-Dick." And this is in Prestigious Journal A and Prestigious Journal B.

Okay, so Homer nods, and so do academics and their editors. It'd be nice if errors wouldn't happen, but they do, and so finding this stuff is good in two ways:

It teaches students that they, too, are full participants in this process and that the Great Gods of Academe can have feet of clay without necessarily losing their crowns.

And, in the immortal words of Joe E. Brown in Some Like it Hot, it shows them that "Nobody's perfect."

technorati tag: grad-compendium

Conversations with colleagues on research practices, (or advice to the gradlorn, part 2)

Among the most compelling kinds of blogposts I read are those in which people talk about their research and their research methods; those are like chocolate to me, and there is no higher praise. A lot of bloggers have written about their research practices, including good recent posts by Dr. Crazy, Tenured Radical, Flavia, Dr. Virago, Mel, and Professor Zero.

My IRL colleagues talked about similar methods when we talked a couple of weeks ago.

Both mentioned that they used freewriting and other methods to get started and that ideas had to be worked out over weeks, not written up in a mad dash a la the old days in grad school. (This is the "advice to the gradlorn" part of the post.)

One said that she often would write actual proposals based on various ideas she has, even if she hasn't seen a call for papers for that topic; in that way, she's ready if a call does come up. I'd never thought of doing this before, since usually the CFP and its promise (threat?) of a deadline spurs me to action rather than the other way around.

One also mentioned having some special program that allowed her to search her hard drive for materials related to her project. I mentioned using Google Desktop for a similar purpose, but it may be that her program is more specialized. I'm all about the free when it comes to software, so I probably will never know whether the special program does a better job.

We all agreed that reading and taking notes at the same time was disruptive; you read differently if you're stopping to write every few minutes. Of course, we were talking about reading primary texts; it's different, I think, if you're reading secondary sources.

A few of my own methods:

The Post-It note is my best friend; I should have bought stock in 3M years ago just based on my own use of it to mark passages that later get transcribed into a file for use. Sometimes, if I'm in the midst of writing, the passages just get used even without being transcribed. Usually, though, I try to prepare a file of notes as well as quotations as part of the preparation; if I'm working with a short story collection, I write summaries, too. I always think I'll remember the stories, character names, and so on, but if I get pulled away for a several months because of department business, teaching, or other projects, I'm always glad that I took the time to note the particulars.

Dr. Virago mentioned putting questions into her research preparation files, and I do that as well. ("Preparation file" is my term for it; what do you call those things that aren't yet a draft but are more than notes?) The preparation file usually looks like a mess, with some paragraphs that are more formal in tone, some running dialogues in which I argue with myself about the validity/relevance/originality/logical inferences of points that I'm writing about, and notes about "didn't so and so say this in X?"

About a research journal: I recently began to keep a record of words written for various kinds of tasks, including letters of recommendation, department service obligations, manuscript reviews, work on the main project, and so on. The idea behind this was to keep track of how much writing I'm doing is necessary but isn't going to keep my own work moving forward. It's been useful, but it's not a research journal.

I'm working my way into keeping one, though, and am looking for advice, so if you keep one:

Are these kept in a notebook or on a computer?
Do you write in it every day, and if so, do you make yourself write a set amount?
Do you go back to these and mine them for ideas, or does the mere fact of writing down the information help to spur on your writing?
Do you keep your research notes in these, too, or do you just write about the writing process itself? Or do you write about the ideas?

Thanks for any ideas.

technorati tag: grad-compendium

Conversations with colleagues, or advice to the gradlorn

Dr. Crazy and Dr. Virago recently had good posts about their research and writing practices--talking about book contracts, research journals, and the like. I recently met informally (i.e., pleasantly, as in not in a committee meeting) with some colleagues, and we got to talking about this, among other things. Here are a few points distilled from our conversation.

First of all, we all agreed that you have to work pretty darned hard, especially before you have tenure. This isn't exactly a newsflash, but one of the things that came out of the conversation is that we all do this because we really love it. Okay, maybe that's also not a newsflash, but the "advice to the gradlorn" point is this: if you can't envision working on your research as a pleasure as well as a duty, you should rethink what you're doing and maybe get into another field.

This isn't meant to be harsh; it's just that, like acting, getting a Ph.D. and a tenure-track job is about like landing a good part in a Broadway play, except with less fame and less money. (This, BTW, is why I found watching A Chorus Line when I was an adjunct so depressing that I vowed never to see it again.) The odds may be a little better, but as the MLA Newsletter recently reported "PhDs in the fields represented by the MLA appear to have about a 35% chance of getting tenure" (27)--if you get hired in the first place. My point isn't simply to repeat these dismal statistics; it's to repeat what another colleague said when she'd considered acting as a profession: her professor told them that if they could envision themselves doing something else, anything else, that they ought to get out while they could.

This first piece of advice led to the second one: you'll have to work hard after you graduate, too, so get over it. This issue of work came up because we had all talked to seniors (and even some people in grad school) who seem to have bought into the idea that being a college professor is like being a high school teacher, except with fewer hours in the classroom so you can kick back and mow your lawn on a Wednesday afternoon. We've all tried to disabuse students of this notion, but a few of them seem to cling to it.

I guess the third piece of advice we came up with is that if you do get a job or want to get through, you have to learn to "suck it up." That doesn't mean that you have to put up with harassment or discrimination, but if you're annoyed because someone doesn't do your copying fast enough or give you a classroom with windows or whatever, there's no point in whining about it (except on blogs, of course, the proper forum for all manner of complaints). This goes double if you're on the first year of a tenure-track appointment: there's no way you won't feel overworked and underappreciated, and yes, you'll be tired, but it does get easier over time. I once saw a grad student having a complete melt-down hissy fit about copying during which she screamed (yes, screamed) at the entire office staff for not having her stuff done on time. I'm guessing that, professional as they are, they never went out of their way to help her again, and I wouldn't blame them if they didn't.

I didn't get to the research advice at all--next post, maybe.

technorati tag: teaching-carnival

You can lead a horse to water . . .

Recently, I was in a meeting with a colleague when he commented that a grad student "must have gotten bad advice from her advisor"; the context was something to do with a particular theory that a student did or didn't use.

Maybe yes, and maybe no. As profgrrrl and others have commented from time to time, sometimes we're giving advice and they're not taking it. Sometimes the smaller stuff is easier than the large stuff: we can suggest that if they want to submit something to Journal A and Journal A wants Chicago style, they'll have a better chance if the manuscript is in Chicago style. That kind of thing is a no-brainer. The same holds true if it's a really big question--of ethics, say, or of a university deadline.

It's the mid-level stuff that's the problem. Students aren't Play-Doh, after all. We can advise getting in touch with X person or including Y person on a committee, but ultimately we only have two kinds of power: moral suasion and the veto power enforced by quitting a committee. Since no one wants to do the latter except in the most extreme circumstances, we're left with persuading students that what we're advising really is in their best interests. Sometimes they don't believe us and go their own way. Sometimes they're right to do so.

Sometimes, though, they're wrong, and their project will leave people scratching their heads about the "bad advice" they got from their advisors.

technorati tag: grad-compendium

A different PSA about the MLA Job List

Flavia posted a PSA the other day announcing that the MLA Job Information List is now online. Like Flavia, I kept up a sporting interest in looking at the list even after I had a job (and tenure), but that changed after serving on (and on occasion chairing) search committees.

I have a PSA of my own; it's basically a few pleas for job seekers based on experiences past and current. (BTW, this post is a snark-free zone, unlike some others I've posted.)

Please do think about whether you're really interested in the institution and the general area of the country before you apply. If you're not really interested, don't apply. For example, if you get an interview and end up asking questions that basically ask how often/how much you can stay away from the institution/the area, we know that we've pretty much wasted our time and interview money on someone who doesn't want to be there.

Ditto if you tell us that your advisor thinks this would be a good "first job."

If the ad specifies a specialist in Subject Y, and you taught one course in Subject Y back in grad school but your major area and dissertation are in another field, please think twice before applying and trying to spin this into a major area for you. We'll figure this out in any case when we read your materials.

Proofread your cover letters carefully. Concluding with some variation of "and that's why I'm a perfect candidate for [Not Your Institution]" doesn't inspire much confidence.

If your research is exciting to you, and teaching is exciting to you, make sure that that comes across. You don't have to jump on a couch, but if you want to spend your life doing these two things (teaching and research), the search committee, and later the interviewers from the committee, ought to be able to figure out why it's exciting, what the possible research implications might be for the field, and so on.

This gets said over and over again, but try to personalize your letter for the institution to which you're applying. Printing out a boilerplate letter is faster than tailoring one to the job, but reading the same phrases in densely printed boilerplate about dissertation, teaching philosophy, and so on, especially in the increasingly long letters that we get, is a MEGO moment (my eyes glaze over).

technorati tag: grad-compendium