The Butts-in-Seats Teaching Philosophy
Now that people are grumbling about the usefulness of core courses and education that does not involve an MBA, I’ve been pondering the point of higher education. Is it facts? Maybe not. See what Dr. $hriaz has to say about that over at Worst Professor Ever.
After a few years in the Hamster World, I’m starting to think that education involves a sprinkling of facts and massive doses of the following three lessons:
1. Getting people to sit down, shut up and concentrate. I figured out this lesson when I taught SAT courses. The courses started in 9th grade and led right up to the test. I taught vocabulary and grammar, but I also gave practice tests, and you could measure success by how well the students were able to concentrate. You can memorize as many big words as you want, but it won’t help if you are thinking about your World of Warcraft scores during the test. Concentration is a critical skill.
2. Encouraging people to stop believing everything they hear. OK, this is the humanities element talking, but one of the best exercises I did when I was TA-ing was teaching logical fallacies by giving students print ads and asking them to list all the fallacies. Oh, bandwagon! Oh, slippery slope! I don’t think I transformed my students, but I think that a few of them were surprised to discover that just because something looks, sounds and even smells true doesn’t mean it is.
More after the jump! Image of Canadian students in a train classroom, 1950, from Library and Archives Canada, Wikimedia Commons.
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Be prepared!: After you send in your job application…
Maybe I shouldn’t be the one to be offering this advice, since I’m probably not sending any job applications in and still haven’t logged into the MLA JIL even for curiosity’s sake. But if you’re doing some kind of endzone celebration after sending in your first batch of job applications, we should flag you for excessive celebration. First, there’s probably still a bunch more applications to send in, which you would know if you made a handy spreadsheet like we suggested awhile ago. Second, it seems like no two applications on your spreadsheet list are the same, from those requiring the bare minimum of cover letter and CV to those asking for everything and the kitchen-sink. If you’ve already dealt with the latter, you’re probably golden for what’s yet to come.
"Emergency Preparedness 'Ready to Go' Kit" by Red Cross (Public Domain)
But if you’ve only been turning in the standard letter-CV variety up to now, you better be ready when you get the email you’re hoping to get for a secondary application or even a pre-convention interview request. It might seem like it’s too early to stress about it now, but don’t wait to sweat it when you get your golden ticket, but aren’t ready to promptly reply to it. In addition to the basics of the cover letter and CV, you can pretty much get any variations of the following at any time, so get your ducks in a row.
Writing Sample(s): I’ve been asked for samples of various lengths from 15 to 30 pages, including or excluding footnotes. Unlike some folks who just send in whatever they have at hand no matter the length, I follow instructions in fear of inflexible, dictatorial search committees looking for any reason to disqualify me, and will cut my default 30-ish pager down to 15 or 20 or 25, depending on what they’re are asking for. Use it as a good exercise in editing and not being too precious with your writing, since slicing and dicing your papers can actually make them better and more streamlined.
More about writing sample(s) below the fold…
Decluttering the job application process: The spreadsheet
So it might seem bass-ackwards to start talking about the academic job application process by beginning with letters of rec, before you even know what positions you’re applying to. Really, it isn’t, though, because that’s the only step that depends on other people–well, unless you count the schools you applied to. But the “next” step should really be the first one–finding job openings and making a spreadsheet listing them in a way that’s easy to access and sort. If only schools would cooperate and, you know, start posting positions now!
"ExCel Exhibition Centre" by jasoncart (Public Domain)
(A quick aside before we get going: you might ask yourself why you would listen to the unsolicited advice of a post-academic who hasn’t gotten on the tenure-track, which is a good rejoinder on your part. Well, I’ll say that I did have good success getting convention interviews, though it was definitely a case of “quality”–however you define that–over quantity, since I never got double-digit invites at any MLA nor applied to that many jobs in a given year anyway. As for the next step hopefully coming at the beginning of 2011, you’re on your own–or we’ll try and find a sherpa who knows what s/he’s talking about when it comes to campus visits. Till then, you’re stuck with me.)
So back to the process: The first thing you need to do, obviously, is find where the jobs are, which has been easier said than done the past few years. In English, we’re still about three weeks away from the big unveiling of the MLA Job Information List–henceforth known as JIL–on September 16, a day we’ll commemorate for sure. But, for the time being, you can check the Academic Job Wiki for whatever has been posted–you might as well bookmark the wiki and get used to checking it, because it’s gonna be the equivalent of your browser homepage soon enough. The Chronicle online want ads, H-Net.org’s job site, and university HR sites (if you know what you’re looking for) have some early job postings in a variety of fields.
More about getting started with the process below the fold…
Time to herd the cats! Don’t get wrecked by your recs…
"Herd of Cats" by Boksi (Public Domain)
I’m not sure I’m the person who should be giving this advice, seeing as I can’t even decide whether to save the dossier I currently have or just let it be sent to the paper shredder, where it probably belongs at this point. But if I were to, say, start planning for the academic job market, which is closer to starting up than you think, I would probably at least start thinking about the most excruciating part of getting your application together: herding the cats–er, contacting your recommenders–so that you can have your dossier ready to go. You know you’re gonna procrastinate when it comes to actually carrying out the palm-sweating task of asking your mentors to write your recs, so at least put yourself into that mindset now. That way, you’ll actually be right on time after you keep putting it off–call it time doping!
What makes getting recs so stress-inducing is that it’s the only part of your application profile you really have zero control over. If your CV is either too weak or really straining the limits of credulity, that’s on you for doing too little and/or embellishing too much. If your cover letter is a mess and the job you’re applying for is a real stretch, that’s your responsibility. But you have almost no hand in your letters of rec, short of deciding whom you ask to advocate for you.
What’s out of your control–and what you can try to do about it–below the jump…
After all these years: Reconnecting with faculty
"A handshake" by Dan Beard (public domain)
Remember how we wrote up a mid-summer Choose-Your-Own-Adventure checklist as a healthy reminder of what you should/could be doing to make the most of your dwindling block of dissertating/research time? We should’ve included that you need to stay in touch with your diss committee and faculty mentors. We know it’s easy for academics to reverse-hibernate during the summer, but it’s a good idea to stay in contact with folks and even follow up with faculty you’ve lost touch with. And it’s never too early to plan ahead for the upcoming round of job applications, so stay in prime networking shape, while you’re also getting what you’re supposed to be doing done.
Here’s what got me to think about how easy it can be to reconnect with your faculty whom you might have dropped out of touch with: Recently, I ran into a prominent prof in my field whom I hadn’t seen for a few years, as well as another faculty member whom I only know on a personal level at a talk. Not only did I have a good chat with them, but they were in fact warmer to me than ever before. This may have been due to the occasion, but I almost felt like they felt like they were seeing an old friend when we were catching up–although I didn’t tell them about my post-academic plans! The interactions put things about my relationships with mentors and former teachers into a new perspective for me.
Memories can be strong: I mean this in two ways. First, like I mentioned above, good impressions can carry a long way, and remembrances of things past can end up feeling warmer over time. Second, give credit to your faculty boosters for having good memories, rather than assuming that they’re just absent-minded professors. And give yourself some credit, because you probably did something good in a seminar or while TA’ing with a prof to make your faculty booster think of you fondly.
More about keeping in touch with your profs, below the fold…
CV vs. Resume: The Grudge Match!
"Fight on Snow" by su neko (Creative Commons license)
So it’s not quite Alien vs. Predator, but we figured we could end our respective serieses (plural of series?) with a little compare-and-contrast. You can think of the comparison between a CV and a resume along the lines of my posts vs. Caroline’s this week: the latter are longer and (overly) detailed, while the former are short and sweet and to the point. We understand that it can be hard to make the conversion from a CV to a resume, since it’s not just a matter of translating your skills and reformatting the way you describe them. There’s also some emotional baggage attached to the CV, as if cutting loose your publications and conference papers is the same as making them disappear forever. Don’t worry–they’re still there and they’re still significant accomplishments.
But if you really want to make a full conversion, just try starting over and seeing what you come up with. That CV is always saved to your hard drive, so you can always go back to it when you want. And take solace if you can’t cut the cord quite yet, because you have lots and lots of good company. To paraphrase Susan Basalla of So What Are You Going to Do with That? fame, the worst thing to prepare you for the hamster world job market is being on the academic job market. So think of the exercise of putting together a resume as a process of unlearning and relearning the rhetorical skills you obviously possess and can command.
Read below the fold for some key points to compare and contrast in our CV vs. resume battle royale…
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