and security to keep me afloat.Perhaps one day I'll blog about this huge transformation, but right now, I'm just embracing the change and being happy for it.
As such, I would like to make a final suggestion before I leave the posters' roll. I've been trying to disentangle myself from the negativism of complaint, because I have oh-so-many complainers around me--my previous job in academia was filled with complainers (both students and colleagues), everyone wants to dump their grief on me as if I were a complaint magnet, and of course my entire family is chock-full of highly accomplished complainers (we're half-sicilian and half-jewish
)--and because complaining, iIve found, is just such a killjoy. Miserable, unironic, uninspired, uncreative, uninteresting, utterly banal complaining. Boring, Sidney, fucking boring.I'm not blaming you, the blog, the bloggers, or blogging, nor am I making a case for the "good-old-days" of RYS or some such; quite the contrary, I'm not "blaming" or complaining at all.
I get the value of complaining: it's a release, a relief. It's rather a shift in my own perception, my own lived experience: I just can't deal with complaining any more. Yes, that's right: it's not you, it's me.
So what I'd like to suggest as a parting gesture is that in addition to being an outlet for complaining about academia--and dog knows that there is so very much to complain about, especially if you're not blessed with tenure at and R-1--please try to emphasize the positive things as well, the funny-ha-ha in addition to the god-i-want-to-kill, the naively isn't-that-just-swell along with the cruelly-mocking-it-to-death. You do it sometimes, but up your ratio: for every five negative complaints, publish at least three happy-feel-good things.
Maybe it's the meds, but I'm feeling pretty good these days, and I'd rather believe that it is due to this step-back away from the culture of complaint in which i was immersed and which permeated my being, rather than the SSRI. And that's my suggestion. Thank you for letting me be a part of it for a brief time, and i'll peek in from time to time.
- The Phenomenologist
This is such an interesting post. I was unaware that there were positive elements to a life of academia at all.
ReplyDeleteSure, people say: "but the summers!!" So? You sometimes get a summer off, and you spend it working furiously to catch up all the crap you neglected during your 60 hour workweek semesters.
No job security, not very good pay, very little recognition for your very hard work...
What good is there?
In fact I've been visiting the blog less often lately because it is such a downer. So I know what he means. However, see my comment on Fab's post (above).
ReplyDeleteThat is why I love college misery, the complaining. After I read a post about a disgruntled student or a plagiarist or whomever, I can be happy in the fact that I don't teach that student. It makes my day!
ReplyDeleteThe view must be really nice where he is.
ReplyDelete@Phenomenologist: I'm glad to hear you've found a happier place by thinking outside the academic box. I hope you will, indeed, send back reports of your adventures; it would be salutary for those of us who occasionally contemplate such changes ourselves (and for those who are better-established, but advise grad students/recent PhDs at a time when changes in academia make that particularly hard). At the very least, it's good for us all to realize there are options, and to be reminded of them.
ReplyDeleteThat said, while I don't exactly enjoy the complaining on the site, I do very much appreciate having somewhere I can go where people acknowledge that there are real problems in higher education these days, that they stem from a variety of sources, and that we won't be able to solve them all by adopting new technology, or working smarter with less, or testing more, or whatever nostrum some administrator or politician is pushing at the moment. I appreciate the chance to say, now and then, "this is a real mess!", before going back to trying to make the best of it for myself and my students. And I appreciate learning from others who are struggling with different aspects/levels of the problem exactly *why* they think it's a mess. I actually end up more depressed when surrounded by people who insist that everything is really okay when I'm pretty sure that it isn't (maybe that has to do with my Calvinist upbringing, and/or the genetics that may have attracted most of my ancestors to Calvinist denominations in the first place? Or with the fact that I come more from a stiff-upper-lip than a recreational-complaining tradition? Who knows?).
And all that said, I'm also pleased when a bit of cheer breaks out, in a whole post or in part of a comment thread. In fact, I appreciate it all the more precisely when it's coming from someone who gets discouraged, too.
None of which is meant to criticize what you suggested. I think I'm mostly trying to figure out why I'm *not* depressed by the page.
I love this blog. It's not, in my mind, chock full of complaints. It's full of a reality check... & empathy & humor (both the sick & spew-your-drink variety) that academics inspire. It's a place where I come when my colleagues are waxing unrealistic about their little gems of students who can do no wrong bc my colleagues don't teach GEs and only have two grad courses a year. It's a place I come to remind myself that sanity does prevail and that cynicism isn't always the worst place to live.
ReplyDeleteI wish you well on your journey beyond college misery as you break up with us and yet offer to remain friends. ;)
One of my classes is fucking awesome this semester. I don't have time to write about it.
ReplyDeleteSnowflake smackdown brings me great joy.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who thinks RYS was that way should look at those archives. Most of what I sent to RYS was published, but the few items that were not generally got rejected because they were too positive, making them not "compelling" enough. One time I did try to offer positive advice to someone and got jumped all over with the "that will never work" attitude from three or four folks. Lesson learned--at least at RYS, negativity was what got the spotlight. Here I realize we have more options since we can publish our own thoughts. I'm still in a pretty dark place, but my hope is that I will have something positive to share by the end of the term.
ReplyDelete