Listen, brother, it's your page and you do what you want, but I'd gift you with the idea that it doesn't matter what the stats are.
I actually am mildly interested in the charts you put up, but I never have one tiny bad feeling if the numbers are down. It's going to be what it's going to be. July was slow. Summers have been in the past, right? So it's not as busy as RYS or DrudgeReport. It doesn't have to be, at least not for me.
I get a sense - and maybe I'm reading too much between the lines - that this disappoints you. Like I said, you do what you want, but I'd tell you not to sweat it. People who like it, read it. 'Nuff said.
Hiram
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Dear Hiram (and others),
I appreciate the thoughts, I really do. But I am always going to care about growing the page. I just am. That is in my DNA. I believe that what we talk about here, when we are talking, can make the academy better. I don't think of CM as a place to merely vent our poisoned gasses.
If we had more reach, more eyeballs, more hits, we could show our colleagues that a lot of us are sick and tired of how it is, and and that we are ready to engage and make it better.
But when the numbers are like they are, I am sure we're not having enough impact.
This is no way takes away from the admiration I have for the active members. I love reading the page, never missed it even when I was on vacation from it. But unless it grows, gets more reach, I think we've wasted a really great opportunity.
Please don't misunderstand me, Hiram. I appreciate your insight very much.
Fab
Fab, I'm sorry, but you're fucking deluded.
ReplyDeleteAaaaand, time for the delete key!
DeleteI'm mostly with Hiram on this, though I also have sympathy for Fab's point of view, since I do think our ongoing conversation here is valuable.
ReplyDeleteMy personal theory is that we strike a balance between frankness (including more-than-occasional profanity and other expressions of justified anger/frustration) and genuine devotion to our collective enterprise that works quite well for promoting serious dialogue, but perhaps is not as audience-pleasing as either a more pollyanna-ish approach, or a more combative one. That keeps us from being either as "inspiring" (in an insipid sense) or as entertaining (at least according to what currently passes as entertainment) as some other sites. We may be limited by both our directness and the (relative, but real) civility of our exchanges. If so, that's too bad, since higher ed, and the country at large, currently need both directness and civility, but I'm inclined to say "so be it."
If it stays low during the school year, we can start to worry. I think it's just the point of the summer where last years' students have become a dim, booze soaked memory. Once the shit storm starts up again folks will be hitting refresh and the 'emergency desk' bottle of Old Crow in equal measure again, I have no doubt.
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for Fab because I feel the same way he does. I've told about ten people over the past couple of years about the page, not about my involvement. Everyone who's ever spoken to me about it just said, "A bunch of complainers."
ReplyDeleteI guess that's true, but I don't think a serious look at the posts and the comments adds up to that, though.
Maybe people can't get past that. And it's a shame.
I'd call that the pollyanna faction, and while I do admire their enthusiasm and dedication, I'm far more comfortable around people who can see when the emperor has no clothes. At least to my eyes, higher ed is looking pretty naked (not to mention out of shape and a bit jaundiced, with some troubling lumps in vital places) at the moment.
DeleteI always thought the mod(s) were being sarcastic when they were talking about the page dying.
ReplyDeleteFab, you and the other mods do a great job. But if we don't provide enough content to make the page busier, then it's not on you.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Hiram. Try not to worry about it. It's really in our hands. You have my thanks for keeping this idea going after RYS.
I'm reading it, and that's all that matters because it's a frank-centric universe.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I just found this so I'm new to it. Youz guyz are doing great, so buck the fuck up and keep with it.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I love this page, I feel there's a complicated dance between promoting the Misery, generating regular original content, and maintaining one's anonymity (or at least plausible deniability).
ReplyDeleteMy institution has a history of spectacularly frowning upon the impugning of its brand on the internet. I am fine courting its ire in other (open) ways, but am very conscious of what's traceable online...especially since my particular branch of the academic industrial complex doesn't believe in the right of its employees to have anonymous email accounts.
So, I try to post what I can, when I can (and believe me, there will be some beauties when I feel the statute of limitations has run out), and, when appropriate, I casually mention the site to some colleagues and to other cool academics I meet at conferences.
Sometimes, I even post links to the geniusness of the rest of you to my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts...but I feel like I can't do that safely when it's something I've commented on, or it's too close temporally to a post I've written myself. Part of the fun of CM is being able to express myself colloquially and profanely, and, if you knew me in real life, you'd recognize me on a page. While I commend the collective efforts of the Miami 4 to impersonate so many distinct (and awesome!) personalities, I'm sorely lacking both the time and the vitamin give-a-fuck to disguise myself too much here...and I don't think I'm the only one.
So yes, my active participation is tempered, and I'm careful with who I share the site with...but I'm a firm believer in a slow and strategic buildup.
I view us as a niche market: academics who get it. As much as I think this is something worth proselytizing about, I'm also pretty sure that many of my colleagues never *will* get it...or, if they ever do, they'll want to think it's their own fucking original idea (and try to publish a book about it).
Basically, I come here to get away from reading the ramblings of complete idiots. If I wanted to do that, I'd mark...and Reddit and YouTube are both spectacular examples of what can happen in the comments when a site is all about page views. If I wanted to read the Chronicle, or Inside Higher Ed, or one of the mainstream sites, I'd do it...or read the weekly bulletins from my faculty, because they seem to have someone assigned to reading these publications for me.
Fab et al., I appreciate that this page exists more than I can say. And yeah, it's your treehouse. I'm just trying to articulate, for what its worth, how and why I like to hang out in it.
I like the weird graph every month: I don't know what it means, but it's like the thirsty, a great tradition.
ReplyDeleteFab, dude. I love your desire to reach more of our colleagues, but have you met your colleagues? Mine are 75% Luddite. Like, to the point where they keep breaking their computers because they have 5000 open email messages because they have never, ever once closed an email (trufax, saw the IT guy nearly have a coronary). They don't know about the interweb, and they are still complaining about the library making the card catalogue electronic. Those people are never going to be hip enough for the CM, and that's probably a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI just helped a colleague (who I really like BTW) with copy-and-paste again. In the past I've had to help other coworkers with tasks just as simple. Even the simplest trick gets a gasp and a "how did you learn to do that!?" response.
DeleteGod, I know. Last year I had to do a swap-and-critique with other faculty members. The guy I observed and critiqued got to class at the hour and spent the first 10 minutes of a 75 minute lecture hand-writing key terms on the chalk board.
DeleteThe chalkboard. Hand writing. And then reading off of pages that looked they had been created on a frikin TYPEWRITER back in 1982. Yellowed with age.
Luddites.
Fab, I share your dream. When I signed up, I had visions of writing brilliant posts that would inspire the masses to rise up and throw off the flakes who beset the academy on all sides. OK that's an exaggeration, but not much. I still sort of do.
ReplyDeleteBut like Whatladder and MidnightChoir said, any clear-eyed look at our colleagues has to *ahem* temper this dream. I've voiced similar concerns and framed similar arguments, usually (though not always) with fewer F-bombs, in faculty meetings with said colleagues. Polite agreement is expressed before the whole bloody lot of them roll over and knuckle under to the flakes.
But like you, I keep wanting things to change. It's in my DNA too. (Samuel Beckett had a wonderful line about what happens when you stop wanting, but I won't disturb you with it, because it's pretty disturbing). So I'll keep hitting "refresh" and posting when I can and swearing and dreaming.
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ReplyDeleteI don't know, Fab, I kind of like things better whenever they're my own private little joke. Evangelism was never my style. I've tried it in my general-ed science course for non-majors, in the manner of Carl Sagan, to decidedly mixed results. I'm coming to think that most people simply do not have the brains to understand science as something fun and interesting, and never will.
ReplyDeleteWhat to do about fixing the academy is screamingly obvious, so much so that CM shouldn't matter. The real problem is that too many academics look away from what's wrong, pretending they don't see it. Some of them may be so obtuse, they really don't see it, but I doubt they're nearly as numerous as the ones who do see, but look away. In "The Next 200 Years," Hermann Kahn called this "educated incapacity": the learned inability even to see a problem, much less solve it. So, what's wrong with the academy will need to be fixed by outsiders, unless more intelligent, thoughtful academics give up teaching and research and take up administration. Fucking great.
P.S. For the CM Hall of Shame, at upper right: it's spelled "Frankenstien."
Delete"I'm coming to think that most people simply do not have the brains to understand science as something fun and interesting, and never will."
DeleteI feel the same way about my discipline. I sometimes feel like shouting "This is so easy! Why can't you get it?!?!"
But it's pronounced "Fronkensteen"
DeleteSay, isn't there a logical paradox here? This page is College Misery. One might think therefore that the more miserable academia is, the longer the page will be and the more hits there will be, and vice versa. So, if conditions improve, we'll have less to be miserable about. Remember the blues tune, "Can't Play the Blues in an Air-Conditioned Room?"
ReplyDeleteSo great! Things must be improving! I'm terribly, terribly pleased!
Here's my take, to play on ^WhatLadder's assessment above.
ReplyDeleteMany of our colleagues are silverbacks who haven't paid attention or had a new idea in well over a decade.
The newer ones (TT and newly-minted PhDs) by and large, are hard-charging go-getters (at least for a few years, anyway) who don't have time for our cynical "complaining" about students, deans, and helicopter parents. They think we're not "solution-oriented" and we're content to just sit back and be assholes. So this page isn't for them, really, except as a way to confirm their own superiority in dealing with their wonderful gumdrop unicorns.
True, we do get a few "young-uns" here, but mostly it seems like this is the place for mid-career academics for whom the scales have fallen from their eyes long ago.
For my part, I have not been avoiding the page so much as taking a break from being angry about all of the things I cannot control--my students, the Cheeseheadland governor and state legislature's dismantling of education, my pay as I am being asked to take on more and more duties (over the summer, no less, and outside of my contract year)--and working on ways to relax a bit more (albeit with copious amounts of Kraken rum dark-and-stormy-s).
I have a thirsty about concurrent enrollment, but the conundrum is that with traffic down, I am planning to wait until later in the month. Sorry, Fab.
This assessment makes sense to me. I do think there may be an age cohort (or at least a Ph.D./M.A. cohort) that's overrepresented here -- those who, whether they got on the TT or not, started their academic careers at a particularly bad time (not that there's been a really good time, as far as I can tell, in a generation).
DeleteHmmmm. I'm sympathetic, Fab, and I know that when you put a lot of work into something, you want a lot of people to see it. But I feel like this is more of a support group than an outreach project. The point is to express your misery and to get a glimpse of what other miseries look like (one positive effect of CM for me is that it keeps my complaints in perspective and reminds me that I lucked into some rapidly disappearing privileges even if my job isn't perfect and my state seems to want to drive higher ed to its knees). So it's more like an ongoing "happening" that people can drift into and out of depending on need. That works for me. I can imagine a different kind of page, dedicated to hard-hitting missives about the destruction of a labor force, but I think Michael Berube writes that blog.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, like everyone else, I'm grateful for your labors and happy to do whatever makes the page strongest.
I like the idea of a support group, since I certainly appreciate being able to complain here, where there are people who know what I'm talking about but who aren't my colleagues, rather than to friends or family who don't know what I'm talking about, or at work, where I fear I might jeopardize my job by sounding too negative. It's also hard to complain to friends who *are* in academia, but in either more (TT) or less (adjunct) fortunate positions, since class differences can, over time, jeopardize friendships. I also agree that the perspective CM provides is important, for precisely that reason; because people are frank here, I often see the converse of what you, F&T, see: that the grass on the TT side of the fence, though still tempting, isn't nearly as plentiful nor as tasty as it sometimes looks from a distance. That's useful information to have, both when I'm weighing my own goals and priorities, and when I'm interacting with my TT colleagues.
DeleteBring back Compound Cal and the alpacas...
ReplyDeleteSomeone once wrote that CM is like the Chronicle for the bourbon crowd. It's definitely not for everyone, I guess, but I learn a great deal here the way it is. You'll have to ask Strelly, but maybe fomenting a revolution just takes time.
ReplyDeleteWell, there's traffic and there's traffic -- witness our vacationing friend a few threads up. Some traffic we can do without (and the moderators' firm but fair hand with those who disrupt for disruption's sake might hurt the numbers a bit; if so, so be it).
ReplyDeleteI am only here to say one thing. Without this page, I would leave Academia.
ReplyDeleteLong Live Fab.