This particular posting about why she left academe is the post that (so far) has been most interesting to me. I'm curious to hear what the rest of you think. Frankly, I don't quite know what to do with some of what she says, no matter how much I relish her comments about academic elitism, etc. For starters, it seems to me that, as a headline, "Former Classics Professor Moves to Austin (TX, I'm assuming?) to Reinvent Herself" reads about as radically as, "American Literature Professor Also Teaches American Studies."
Moreover, all the praise that she appears to be getting, and that she quite understandably displays on her ingeniously titled "praise" page, would seem to be the direct result of her position in academe: a disenfranchised humanities prof from an elite institution has come back to tell all, to tell you all about all of the fuckups in academia. She knows because she's been there--and has had the good sense to leave. I wonder if that position allows her to be claimed by both conservative and liberal critics of higher education. Which I guess is just good marketing. So maybe that's why she's been featured in the various esteemed places that she's been featured, and all of us are, well, here.
I don't trust anyone who has to tell strangers on a blog that she has a serious rack and that she's cute, blonde, and "striking."
ReplyDeleteFantastic blog. And just what we need. Someone else who has a mind-blowing amount of self-esteem.
ReplyDeletePiss off.
I read her stuff a while back too, and while I found some of it interesting, I also felt like I was being quietly slammed for continuing to be a part of what it is she threw in the towel on.
ReplyDeleteIt her talk of the job of professor that irked me. I think she held a mythic, lofty view of the position she had at her 'elite institution' (the elitist attitude of which conservatives accuse us). Then somewhere along the way, the bloom fell off the rosebush and the job turned out to be just a job, and she became as disenchanted with her job as most people are...nonsense to contend with, hurdles that seem arbitrary, hands tied by policy, etc. All the crap that everyone deals with.
I certainly don't think she's a hero for calling bullshit on any of it. We do that here, all the time.
va va voom?
ReplyDeleteWait a minute, academia is full of self-involved assholes and you'd make more money if you knew computer programming? My god, I have to get on the next Southwest flight to Austin STAT. Thank you not-so-hot girl who says she's really hot (and that you are uncomfortable with her hotness).
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, I have much more respect for the people who quit the profession (for the many, many legitimate reasons to do so) but still are humble enough to not start a blog/twitter/tumblr/salon article about how anyone who would stay must be a self-deluded fool.
I pop in and read WPE's blog when I'm bored and there's nothing new on CM. I'm not entirely impressed with her, but I sometimes daydream about what it might be like just to leave and "reinvent" myself, too. In the end, guess I'm rather unaffected by her blog.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, I thought she seemed pretty shallow. Way to take your fancy education and refuse to serve the next generation with it, Missy. If Webinating softbloggery is what you think the world needs, go for it. But don't diss the rest of us who think we ought to give something back. I didn't get into this to get rich or impress with my hotttness. I thought of it as public service with a decent amount of security, like being a nurse or a firefighter or a cop. I got a great education -- I try to give one. The end.
ReplyDeleteHer post about leaving academia seems pretty reasonable. I'm always surprised that otherwise smart people, like WPE, seem shocked to learn that they are a cog in a machine which is driven by money. How did you think this world worked, after all?
ReplyDeleteI, too, have check in on her blog periodically. I'll be more impressed if and when she seems to have found a way to support herself at least as well as she did with her academic job. So far, she seems to be experimenting with various possibilities, and relying to some extent on friends for places to crash, which won't work forever.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I wish she were in my field. One more open tenure-track slot out there never hurts, and, like F&T, I think I've got a higher tolerance for the more mundane but necessary parts of academic life than WPE does.
And yes, her whole obsession with appearance, and people's perceived reaction to what she wears, seems a bit much. But maybe Vanderbilt is a really uptight place, and I'd be equally fed up (but more likely because colleagues thought I was too informal and/or dowdy and were giving me a hard time about looking more "professional"; showing cleavage at work -- or, really, anywhere -- isn't really my thing).
I totally forgot about her blog after that once we talked about it on here last year??? I'm guessing she'd do really well as a persona shopper... as a professor, the self obsession would get a little old. And being self obsessed means one wouldn't likely function in a career that needs you focused on others' learning rather than your own cleavage.
ReplyDeleteI had a look at her site at Vanderbilt (which is still up). She got the job in 2005 and left in 2010, a year (or two? Not sure about American institutions) ahead of the tenure review. She had 3 articles out or forthcoming (one from grad school) and 2 submitted, several quite interesting lectures, but no book in hand or really in mind. I don't know what the requirements are at Vanderbilt, but in these parts that would be a bit thin; she would have been expected to come up with some more stuff pretty quick to get tenure. Which she could have done, given another year, but she isn't the first person to look at her prospects, the amount of work and the uncertainty of the outcome ahead of her, to say nothing of the hellish tenure review process itself, and think, if I don't REALLY REALLY want to do this, why put myself through two years of hell? And she's not the first person to claim that she had lots of other reasons for jumping ship, either. And since there are many flaws in academe - that's all we talk about here - those reasons no doubt influenced her as well, as she says. But the picture does look a lot different after tenure.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly women jump ship before tenure far more often than men do.
Followed the link and checked her FAQ under "Should I Go To Grad School?" Answer: "No, you should not. End of story. Do not get an MBA. Do not get a PhD. Do not go to law school. Do not pass Go. You will be wasting your money because there are already too many people with too many credentials."
ReplyDeleteFigured that this wasn't exactly the sort of blog a grad student who's going on the market in six months should be reading. Alas.
The job market is paradoxically not nearly as bad in your field, JH, because not that many people are willing to learn 2 dead languages. So, not many jobs, but far, far fewer applicants than you'll find in English or History. The ratio is much better. Don't despair.
ReplyDeleteI've now read her post on Breasts in Academe, and felt a certain sympathy. I wonder if it's at least partly discipline-specific; I'm also in Classics, and have felt the same never-spoken pressure to frump up my look. Not that the men are snappy dressers either; we're all encouraged to look as if we dressed in the dark.
ReplyDelete@ The Contemplative Cynic: "I'm guessing she'd do really well as a persona shopper... "
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm sure you meant "personal shopper" (and minor spelling errors don't bother me a whit), I really, really like the idea of a "persona shopper."
Hmm, I'd like a persona with easy humor do defuse tense department meetings; and a persona that intimidates the slacker-boy students who call me "Esky"; and a persona with the body language that says, "I'd like to respect you as a colleague so please stop with the TMI." Can I try those on?
I also found her obsession with women academics and sex appeal tiresome. I suppose it's because I'm not in Classics. Maybe Classics has more issues. Other than that, I find her to be an extremist, as many are. Her writing is inflammatory and overblown. Yes, higher ed is a job with profit on the line. Duh?? It is better than many jobs, web design included. Oh, and the sites she designed don't work for me (way more important than whether or not I consider her hot).
ReplyDeleteMy own minor spelling errors do bother me a whit. I'd actually like a persona with easy humor *to* defuse tense department meetings.
ReplyDeleteI always find it depressing when bloggers need to explicitly claim to be using "humour" on their blogs. It's pretty much a guarantee that there won't be any actual funny stuff.
ReplyDeleteShe's kind of a shitty writer and seems a bit dull, which might have been a problem. Most of the Classics people I know are sharp and witty.
I'll take that as a compliment. :)
ReplyDeleteWe in Classics have very few issues beyond the usual tendency to kill our fathers and marry our mothers. Sex appeal is not an issue for us. We don't believe it exists, which, in our discipline, it largely doesn't, and help this along/kill it stone dead wherever it might accidentally show up by dressing mostly in burlap. With a bow tie.
I'm going to go all obscure references and say she reminds me of a Focke-Wulf 200 Kondor; she's paper thin, the plane's fuselage is the same. Yes the four-engined monster (one of the few four-motor planes in the Luftwaffe) could sink a freighter in one go, but sic some Spitfires on it and she's as good as gone.
ReplyDeleteThere are just some people who think that anything they do is press-worthy....remember the woman who joined the CIA in the 2000s, then bailed out and wrote a book about the whole mess?
@Merely: Looking at it, she resigned right about the time she would have had to turn in her packet. She was clearly toast, but at least she had the decency to spare her colleagues--not to mention at least six people at other institutions--a lot of drama and wasted time. About five years back we had someone who refused to resign under similar circumstances. It was ugly, and totally unnecessary.
ReplyDeleteNone of which in any way means she doesn't have a point or two to make. She is certainly correct that most graduate education, especially the professional schools, is a waste of time, money, and effort. But she'd hardly the first person to point that out.
As for the self-absorbed stuff about her appearance... Meh. I have a medievalist friend who likes to say that she became a medievalist because out in the real world she is unremarkable, but in a room full of medievalists she is smoking hot. In my experience that may go double for classicists.
Again, she has a point. The gendered politics of personal appearance in academia are seriously fucked up. But the point would be better made if she weren't simultaneously begging the reader to stare at her chest in wonder and admiration.
If "smoking-hot classicist" isn't precisely an oxymoron, it is at least true that the competition is thin.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend iwho resigned at about the same point in the tenure cycle, citing many of the same reasons. And it's not as if they aren't all true; but also, she hadn't finished her book. If she had, and had still resigned, I would have give the other reasons greater weight.
Dear WPE,
ReplyDeleteYou bore me. Please stop writing about how people should leave academe to do something meaningful and go do something actually meaningful yourself.
ps - get a push up bra or something, because your cleavage is NOT all that and a bag of chips.