CM's New Twitter Policy.

Oh, it's not a policy. That's stupid.

I'm going to keep the account open, and occasionally tweet links to posts on our site. We may also, when the subject matter seems germane, retweet links that come to our feed from other higher education sources.

If this is a problem for you, please let me know - like I could stop you.

I am comfortable with this step, and although I'm very disappointed in how the past couple of days have gone, I don't want this to drag on any longer.

As requested, we are not "following" any college profs who are on Twitter. Some community members feared this would out them. We are only following some national news organizations involved in higher education, and, of course, for Cal, Darla, and some others, Yvonne Strahovski.

Why I Do Dinner

I confess.  I have students over for dinner once a year or so.  I do it not because I want to socialize with them, but because I think it's important that they have the experience of seeing what it looks like to live a life of the mind.  When my professor invited me and her class over at the end of my senior term, I realized that being an intellectual was a real thing that you could be and still live an ordinary life.  That's an important realization even if they're not going to be academics.

Also, and no less important, they need a place to practice their grown up manners, goddamn it.  I've had students ask "Do we need to bring anything?" and I tell them directly "Yes.  When invited to someone's home for dinner it is customary to bring some small and inexpensive gift, usually consumable.  Chocolate or wine is acceptable.  Don't bring flowers; I won't have time to put them in a vase.  Don't expect the wine or chocolates to be opened that evening, because they may not go with the menu we've planned."  They need to know these things, and possibly no one has ever told them.  I sometimes think we need a class in how to hold a fork and put a napkin on their laps.

I certainly do not do this to be liked.  I do not become BFFs with students or have them over outside of that rather formal gathering.  Hell no.  I learned that lesson early in my career.  But also, I do like most of my students, in the sense that I wish the vast majority of them well and am interested to hear about what they do after college.  I think at least some of them probably like me, which is fine. Where the social interaction with students goes wrong, I think, is not in wanting to be liked.  We all like to be liked.  I think it's in needing to be loved.  

And I could never love them.  They have abysmal taste in wine.

For Maybelle, from a Fan.

Leona's Latest Tale From Loveland

All semester, I have battled a chatty group of students in my Survey of Hamsters class. The conversations are constant, and none of the standard approaches have worked in getting them to quiet down. The majority of the talkative students failed the first exam. I called each of them in individually to explain that they failed, attribute the failing to the talking in class, and ask how they plan to change their behavior. All of the students were ashamed, apologetic, and promised to act better in class and study more.

My final meeting this week was with Instigator Ian, who is always at the center of every conversation. I can count on him to be talking all the time. I assume he talks in his sleep, while eating, and perhaps even while singing. What Instigator Ian didn't realize was that as he and his friend, Clueless Cassie, were waiting outside my office for Ian's appointment, I could hear every word of their conversation. About what a bitch I am, about what bullshit this class is, about how stupid it all is, how they claimed to be sick last week and were actually just hungover. Ian came in, pretended to be remorseful, promised to change, then left and continued his conversation outside my office with Cassie and Entitled Eric, who had just arrived on the scene. Ian recounted our meeting to his friends (apparently I yelled and called him names and told him he's ruining my life), and his friends agreed that there was nothing wrong with his behavior. Entitled Eric announced he was dropping the class because I'm such a bitch, hoping that he will get a better teacher next semester.

I opened my door, looked directly at them, and said, "Do you realize I can hear every word you've said?" They stared at me. Then I went back in my office. I wanted to lose my temper and scream at them for being entitled, ignorant little shits with no sense of respect of decency, and I hope they have trust funds because even 7-Eleven won't hire them with that kind of shitty attitude. But I kept quiet, went back in my office, and continued working on a project for the students who actually give a shit.

You've Done It Again, Killed Something Good.

Bigger than Tingle's,
How could it not be?

Dear Leslie, Cal, whoever the fuck RGM was, Gordo, and dearest of all, Fab:

Well, you crazzy mothers, you've done it again.

The gradkinder in my lab have a Twitter account we use to keep up with scheduling and projects. I followed the CM feed a few weeks ago and followed some of these supposedly onerous "conversations" with real life dumbfuck snowflakes.

In more than half the cases, the students REPLIED, often with LOL or HAHA or the all-encompassing "Thanx for the lulz."

It was actually good. It was actually a professor saying to kids, "Hey, don't be such a dumbass. Think about what you've just written." Even the poopypants kid "favorited" Terry P's comeback.

So, yes, we should definitely kill that. I mean, we don't want to do any fucking good. Let's instead insulate the blog, focus on attacking each other, and then academe will be on its knees to us.

Great Jesus in the Sky, forgive us for we truly know not what the fuck we're doing down here.

WWW

The New CollegeMisery.com Twitter Feed Goes Live!

Hector from Hagerstown With a Big Thirsty on Likability.

As part of my duties here as a tenured full professor at an average state uni in the northeast, I do in-class evaluations of instructors as part of the tenure & promotion committee.

I do this happily. I've often picked up great teaching ideas, and I love being able to keep up with the younger faculty.

Likable Lou, up for tenure, was my visit this week. I know him outside of class, and know his reputation as a very popular proffie. He's a great guy. I have fun with him; he's a gas at faculty meetings, and I've always heard that he's a great teacher.

So for an hour yesterday I sat through a maddening and mystifying "class" with him and 25 sophomores and juniors. It's a class I teach myself, but I really couldn't prove that we were endeavoring to do the same thing.

It started with 20 minutes of "free time," where the only requirement was that the students had to be in groups, and they had to be "lively." It was a clusterfuck of chatter and nonsense, and the only time students ever talked about the reading for the day was the 90 seconds Lou spent leaning over their circles.

The rest of the time Lou spent with his phone.

Then the class really began. Students stayed in groups, about half of them facing the windows or the back wall, and Lou talked about his crush on Maria Menounos, his love of green chili, a few things about an upcoming test, how the basketball team did last weekend.

He'd often say, "It's all connected, right? How we think is how we stink!" It was a mantra of some kind that the students knew and they all hit "how we stink" with him with great glee. (I've changed the mantra. The real one is just as stupid.)

The last part of the class featured students talking about their own personal experiences as it related to the chapter reading which was about social constructs. They talked about their sororities and frats, those parties, what their high school friends did if they didn't go to college, the economy, climate change, and how cold it was.

Never did Lou try to wrap these ideas into anything resembling the chapter in question; never did he try to show a connection between the discussion and the point of the reading or the class.

At the end of class, about 10 students gathered around him. Everyone chatted excitedly about something. Then two young men took turns doing a protracted hand shake with Lou, tugs and whistles and high and low 5s! And it was over.

I waved as I left and started to my office. The department chair, to whom I write my report, came up alongside me.

"Oh, did you see Lou's class? My God, those kids love him. It's a shame we have to go through the charade of the promotion, because he's clearly going to get it. Just write up a couple of paragraphs and give them to me later."

Obviously people like to be liked, even professors. Adjuncts and part-timers, of course, have a lot of their value tied up in a set of friendly evaluations. But how on earth is Lou (tenure track, almost sure to be given tenure) helping his students, besides providing a nice clubhouse for an hour two times a week?

Q: Do you have someone like Lou in your department? What would you do with in my situation?

What Would Yaro Do? Twitter edition

I generally don't pay any attention to Twitter.  Why?  Because it's called "Twitter".  Anything that openly traffics in "tweets" cries out to be ignored.  But the recent post and comments sent me over to check out the College Misery Twitter feed.  And maybe I'm over-reacting here, but our Twitter feed seems to directly mock specific, publicly recognizable, individual students.

Smackdown: sure, it's what we do.  But through it all, we have always anonymized the target along with ourselves.  A while back, a member was outed, and their Dean 'asked' them to leave CM.  If my own Dean were to identify me, I think I would be willing to stand behind what I've posted here.  There is much to snark at in academia.  There is much to criticize, to mock, to rail at, to abhor and to call down heaven's wrath upon.  From Absentee Abigail, through Bookless Bob, Clueless Clementine and on through the alphabet, we snark away, but not at the individual.  Always we mock the absenteeism, rail at the booklessness and abhor the lack-of-clue.  I will call out the admins, the taxpayer, and the business community alongside the absentee student, but I try not to dump on individuals.

OK, I did make an exception that one time for Margaret Wente.

I don't know.  Is there really a big difference between on one of Cal's Vidshizzles and retweeting a foolish student tweet?  Somehow the mockery just seems more direct, more personal, more, I don't know, mean. 

I don't often invoke Yaro either.  (I love the guy, but I think the reverence for him jumped the shark back when CM put his avatar on pajamas - just sayin).  But he came to mind as I read 'our' twitter feed, because I can't shake the feeling this was something he wouldn't do.

It might be worth taking the community's pulse on this.

They So Must Party At Overland High.

A Cherry Creek School District teacher has been placed on paid leave while administrators investigate some racy photos and status updates she allegedly posted on Twitter.

The first-year math teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, Carly McKinney, is being linked to Twitter posts that include partially-nude pictures and comments about using drugs.

Cherry Creek School District Spokesperson Tustin Amole confirmed the teacher was placed on leave after a meeting Tuesday morning, at which the Twitter account was discussed.

The Twitter account in question is CarlyCrunkBear, which used the Twitter handle @crunk_bear. The biography on the profile read “Stay high. Stay drunk…Mile High City.”

MORE.
& More.
Ok, More.

Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail. From The Atlantic.

Honey! We have so
much homework to do!

Thirteen years ago, when I was a relatively new teacher, stumbling around my classroom on wobbly legs, I had to call a students' mother to inform her that I would be initiating disciplinary proceedings against her daughter for plagiarism, and that furthermore, her daughter would receive a zero for the plagiarized paper.

"You can't do that. She didn't do anything wrong," the mother informed me, enraged.

"But she did. I was able to find entire paragraphs lifted off of web sites," I stammered.

"No, I mean she didn't do it. I did. I wrote her paper."

I don't remember what I said in response, but I'm fairly confident I had to take a moment to digest what I had just heard. And what would I do, anyway? Suspend the mother? Keep her in for lunch detention and make her write "I will not write my daughter's papers using articles plagiarized from the Internet" one hundred times on the board? In all fairness, the mother submitted a defense: her daughter had been stressed out, and she did not want her to get sick or overwhelmed.

In the end, my student received a zero and I made sure she re-wrote the paper. Herself. Sure, I didn't have the authority to discipline the student's mother, but I have done so many times in my dreams.

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Students, make an effort to meet your professors. From the U of Alabama Crimson White

I'm here for dinner.

The college experience includes almost everything, ranging from the agonizing boredom of seemingly being the only person in town over Thanksgiving break, to getting the opportunity to meet and listen to some of the greatest minds on the planet today. It seems, however, that students and their professors rarely take time to interact on a personal level.

I only noticed this reality after I was invited to a professor’s house for dinner at the end of last semester. I can honestly say that going to my professor’s house, along with several other members of my class, is one of the best experiences I’ve had at the University, and is something that I’ll always point to as something that helped me develop as both a student and an individual.

...

Furthermore, some professors have some really interesting and funny stories. I’ve had one professor who paid his way through Brown by moonlighting as a magician and another that is part of a Swedish royal family. More often than not, professors are willing to share their stories over coffee or after class; it’s just a matter of asking.

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If My Students Studied 15 hours a week, I'd Throw Them a TeaPrtying BeerParty.

Is college too easy? As study time falls, debate rises.

Click for WashPost article.

Why are Recent College Graduates Underemployed? University Enrollments and Labor Market Realities. From The Center For College Affordability.

Increasing numbers of recent college graduates are ending up in relatively low-skilled jobs that, historically, have gone to those with lower levels of educational attainment. This study examines this phenomenon in some detail, concluding:

• About 48 percent of employed U.S. college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) suggests requires less than a four-year college education. Eleven percent of employed college graduates are in occupations requiring more than a high-school diploma but less than a bachelor’s, and 37 percent are in occupations requiring no more than a high-school diploma.
• The proportion of overeducated workers in occupations appears to have grown substantially; in 1970, fewer than one percent of taxi drivers and two percent of firefighters had college degrees, while now more than 15 percent do in both jobs.
• About five million college graduates are in jobs the BLS says require less than a high-school education.

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Students Get Savvier About Textbook Buying. From the Crampicle.

Ask Johnny Lazzarini whether he ever skips buying textbooks, and the Foothill College student laughs.

"When I look at a syllabus and it says, 'required text,' I think in my head, Oh, that's adorable," says Mr. Lazzarini, 21, a biology major at this Silicon Valley community college.

Mr. Lazzarini, who waits tables 35 hours a week, has a hard enough time paying for rent and groceries. Textbooks cost him about $500 each quarter. So before he buys one, he looks up the class on Rate My Professors. If previous students say the professor rarely uses a book, he skips it.

He's hardly alone. Roughly one out of every three seniors—and one in four freshmen—often don't buy required materials because of their price. That recent finding, from the National Survey of Student Engagement, was only the latest in a series of studies to show that students skip textbooks, a phenomenon that some say is growing.


MORE.

What to Do

I have never been unemployed before. I never quite made it onto the tenure track, but I managed to find extended contract positions to make up the shortfall. I didn't expect to be "let go" after just one semester of work at my new job, and now I'm in a small town with no other real adjunct/teaching opportunities.

Things in the personal realm are getting better, but I have to decide if I will go back to chasing the tenure track dream again.

My article got rejected. Worked hard on it too. No comments from the readers, just a vague "we don't think it will fit well in our publication" kind of "no." My mentor thought it would be a good fit; oh well.

I'm figuring out what to do to fill the hours between waking up and going to sleep. My research is rather hindered by the lack of access to a good library.

My old job got in touch with me; one of my old colleagues heard about my employment situation and Big Boss reached out and said I might be able to go back to my old position. I would have to give up on my relationship. I hate how my two options are either being single or being an academic. I thought this position here teaching Hamsters and Gerbils 101 would be the perfect alignment of relationship and work. I didn't count on getting let go.

I didn't count on scrambling for academic work mid-year.

What to do to fill the hours between waking and sleeping. What to do.

Faculty Fashion. From InsideHigherEd.com. (Old Article, Sent to Us By a Couple of Readers.)

Make it work!

Writing a column on faculty fashion is no small task. Indeed, the first thought that comes to mind is, "Faculty fashion? Isn’t that an oxymoron?"

It’s no secret that faculty members are famous for dressing poorly, outlandishly or, even at their best, in styles that lost popularity a decade or two or even more ago (the length of that time lag is dependent primarily on the year the professor in question entered graduate school). What is it about academia that seemingly produces an inability to pay attention to dress and hair styles — styles that are a ubiquitous presence in the media and our daily encounters with normal people?

Does graduate school somehow produce the superpower of resisting the conformity pressures of society? Or, as we like to say in the social sciences, perhaps this really is the result of a selection effect: academia doesn’t produce the fashion faux pas tendency; rather, people with a stunted sense of style are somehow inordinately drawn to the profession of teaching and research.

MORE.

Letters Never Sent, Part 3 (redacted previously due to an extended bout of post-traumatic stress syndrome)

Dear Go-getter Gloria:

When they announced that they were going to force all the faculty to attend a “motivational team-building workshop” with you, I groaned inwardly.  Then I groaned outwardly.  Then I emitted meta-groans that echoed into space.  I imagined a horrifying universe of trust falls, after which I was either permanently confined to a wheelchair, or riddled with guilt for crushing and killing Savior Steve, who is the only person on campus that I believe would to try to catch me, even though I’m much bigger than he is and his arms aren’t the same size.

Well, it is a lucky thing that physically I am no worse for wear, and Savior Steve is as vital as ever.  But you still suck, Go-getter Gloria.  You still stuck so very, very hard.

Here’s some tips for you the next time you have to deal with a room full of reluctant, post-break faculty, who are ambling around like dazed elk, mumbling about their unfinished syllabi, as they help themselves to Styrofoam cups of crappy coffee and poke curiously at withered pecan rolls obviously left over from the reception of people far more important. 

1)     Develop a sense of irony.  Most faculty, at least in the humanities, have an acute sense of it.  As in, “Isn’t it ironic that I only earn about half of what the new 30-year-old assistant professor in Business makes, when I have a Ph.D. and have been teaching for more than two decades? Ha ha!” 

2)     We’re not the audience of the Oprah Winfrey show.  We aren’t going to sit there rapturously, our eyes gleaming with unshed tears, as you try to inspire us with your arm-waving and fist pumping and gesturing off into the blue.  We know what’s off in the blue, and it sucks.

3)     Your life, and your own personal “Dream it, do it!” narrative is not a universal template of success.  In fact, other people might even think your life goals are horseshit.  It’s nice for you that you attained your ambition of reaching your version of “the top”—that is, Head of Hamster Resources at Big Corporation Led By Very Important People Down the Road—but I have to tell you that I would rather be lashed to a rabid mule and dragged across west Texas than do that job.    

4)     Team-building exercises usually make intelligent people despise each other.  This is because intelligent people resent being manipulated into a false feeling of camaraderie, and would rather remain wary and uncooperative with one another than prove a person that would initiate team-building exercises is actually capable of making us into a team. Brown-nosers that cooperate cheerfully (also known as the Education faculty, who love this sort of shit) are looked upon with the same malice as the collaborators in Vichy France. In the end, the only way we will coalesce into a team is if we decide to burn you in effigy.  Or for real.     

5)     Don’t ever, ever ask a grown human being to do the hokey-pokey.  I am not putting my right foot in.  I am not putting my right foot out.  I am not putting my left foot in.  I am not putting my left foot out.  And for the love of all that is holy, I am not shaking anything. 

6)     Lastly—and I cannot stress this strongly enough—No matter what the song says, the hokey-pokey is not what it’s all about. 

Introductions, Aspirations

My favorite line so far in my online students’ self-introductions: “please ignore the bong” (in reference to one of the knick knacks in the attached self-portrait).

Less amusing: the two students so far who told me what team they’re on, but not what their majors are.  It’s an online class, so I don’t even need to know you’re on a team, because your practice/workout/game schedule won’t be interfering with your class work, right?  Right?!? 

Also, a significant percentage of my students explicitly describe their majors as a fallback path to a career, in case their band doesn’t hit the charts (and they use language I thought was really out of date, like charts, and record, and album. Is that retro-hip now?)  One woman’s statement that she’s majoring in (visual) art so she’ll have an alternative if her singing career doesn’t take off is particularly, um, interesting.  I feel like I should send them all over to Cal for fatherly advice about day jobs and night jobs and what to do when neither brings in all that much money.  Besides, have they looked out the window and noticed what the economy is doing?  (No, they’re all apparently in their basement studios making demo albums. Ah, well; more power to them; you only get to be 20 once.  I just hope they take a break now and then and do the work. Or drop before they’ve wasted all their tuition money, and driven me and the classmates who are supposed to be earning points by commenting on their nonexistent work crazy.)  

Dear Absent Students, Please Make up your Zarking Minds.

Dear Absent Students

I’ve been meaning to write for a while now.  I followed the news last spring and summer, and I’m concerned.  Seems there were big rallies through the streets of Capitol City, over a possible rise in tuition.  They went on for months on end.  It sounded bad.  Student leaders made speeches about the importance of education.  They spoke passionately about access.  They issued dire warnings that higher tuition imperils the future of a generation!  Placards everywhere declared Education to be a Right!  Such enthusiasm.  Such motivation.  Such thirst for knowledge!  And so it was with these stirring words ringing in my ears that I jumped out of bead and sallied forth to greet the new semester and… and um…

Where in the Zarking Fardwarks were you?

 I’m confused.  Why exactly did you strive so passionately for education when some of you won’t even plunk your ass in a lecture hall?  And so it is that I write to ask you, for the love of all freakin’ Belgium, to Please make up your Zarking minds!  What do you mean when you chant that education is a right?  Is it a vitally important passport to Winning the Brave New Future – one from which you are being barred by exorbitant tuition?  Or do you mean it is some godawful waste of time that once paid for you are at liberty to completely ignore?  Or more concisely, do you want to learn from me or not?

My fake college syllabus As your professor, I plan to take your money, never read your essays and pretend you're not checking Facebook. From Salon.Com.

Course Description

In this class, we will analyze some of World Literature’s greatest short novels in an attempt to interrogate the essence of plot and character while reading as few words as possible. Each class session will begin with a student presentation of 15 to 20 minutes, so we’re looking at an effective class time of about an hour. I’d love to give you a five-minute break halfway through the period, with the tacit understanding that we actually blow 15, but then I’d have to pretend I didn’t notice when 36% of you didn’t bother to come back. Or I’d have to pass around the attendance sheet again, which is a major pain in the ass.


MORE.

Does everyone have to go to college...?

In the high school where I teach, it is absolute blasphemy to tell a student that college may not be for them. We are supposed to push higher education at all times, for everyone. But what about the kid who can barely read or write and is only graduating because he is being pushed through? Should we not try to teach this kid a skill instead? Maybe he's good with his hands, and would make a great electrician, and make more money than most of the teachers with advanced degrees who teach him.

And what about the girl who tells me on a daily basis that she despises reading and writing (and can't do much of either) but plans on going to college to be a lawyer? Would it not be wise for me to inform her that she'd be wasting her money and she should also consider other roads?

Oh but what about the young lady who plays nail salon in the back of the classroom, and refuses to do any work? Could I not suggest that she get a cosmetology license and maybe learn how to run a salon as opposed to wasting her time and money in college?

The world needs hair stylists, heating and air conditioning repair, cooks etc.

Maybe instead of wasting time and money in college, and causing even lower self esteem, we should push kids to learn a skill?

Not Getting What You Paid For. From InsideHigherEd.com.

Everyone knows there's a reason the most expensive colleges in the country -- generally private residential institutions -- charge so much. The money they spend on hiring the best faculty members (full-timers of course) and on keeping student-faculty ratios low results in a higher-quality education. Right?

The crowd gathered here for a standing-room-only session at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities certainly wanted to believe. From a show of hands at the start of the session, the vast majority of attendees were
administrators at those institutions. And the researchers who presented new data on the economics of liberal arts education threw cold water all over that conventional wisdom.

Research presented here by researchers from Wabash College -- and based on national data sets -- finds that there may be a minimal relationship between what colleges spend on education and the quality of the education students receive.


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Tales of Northeastern Ghetto Tech. From Strelnikov.

Some preliminaries before the jump into the Grand Clusterfuck

“Why is Strelnikov so mean to the students?” (asked in a whiny snivel)

I’ve always hated them, even in grade school, but then if you’ve been following my comments (which I guess is impossible) you know I attended a string of Krazee Kristian Skools from about the 5^th grade until I graduated from high school, whereupon that final “institution” collapsed thanks to a pastoral sex scandal. I hated the students then because they submitted to being crushed by this idiotic orthodoxy willingly; I only made friends with people that had their own minds or who had learned, like I had, to become two-faced and privately critical of the school, the principal, or that Godforsaken joke of a religion. In college my hatred began again when I started taking day classes and ran into the snowflaky scumfucks this blog is built around and I realized I had been around these doofuses my whole life.

“Is Northeastern Ghetto Tech a real school?”

Tomorrow Morning, 1 AM Pacific Time.

A Strelnikov Post.

UC Davis Researcher Had a Blast. From the Associated Press.

A chemistry researcher at the University of California, Davis who was injured in an explosion at his campus apartment last week was charged Thurs-day with 10 counts of possessing firearms and explosives.
The Yolo County District Attorney's office does not say in the five-page complaint whether 32-year-old David Snyder intended to harm anyone with the items found in his apartment.

Snyder pleaded not guilty during a brief initial court appearance Thursday in Yolo County Superior Court in Woodland, north of Sacramento. One of his defense attorneys, Linda Parisi, said her client had the materials for research.

"What happened in Dr. Snyder's apartment was an accident. He harbored no intent to build or detonate an explosive device," she said. "He is a chemist working on a variety of projects."

Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Cabral said investigators found liquid and solid explosive materials and devices to detonate them in the apartment. He said Snyder had assistance from another individual who is connected to the university but is not a faculty member. That individual has been questioned by investigators, Cabral said, but has not been charged.

Snyder has a doctorate in chemistry from the university.


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[+]

A Ridiculously Sloppy, Incomplete, Fueled by Rice Krispie Bar, History of This Blog, Which is Going to Die Soon Anyway, But What the Hell, I Mean What Else Do I Have to Do Besides Changing People's Fonts.

In the beginning there was the RYS (Rate Your Students), a blog started by "The Professor" on November 3, 2005. It was a slow grower. "The Professor" handed off moderating duties when it got busy. Lots of national press. From 2008-2010 Compound Cal joined as a moderator, and was the last man standing when he shut the place down on May 28th, 2010. (Famously, Cal wrote a great piece for the Chronicle that provides RYS-specific history.)

A number of RYS readers approached Cal about keeping that page alive, but he did not want the name to continue. Fab Sun (aka Fabio Sunshine, I'm not shitting you) got the nod, and CollegeMisery.com started on June 24th, 2010.

What differs the most between the pages are that comments are turned on at CM, allowing us to flail madly, get off track, insult each other, and (more than occasionally) raise the roof on good ideas, and that CM "correspondents" can post directly to the page, bypassing the assured ruination by a moderator, who only judges, who only glares, who'd never let you have any fun! There are 100 correspondent spots available through the ridiculously stupid Blogger software. New community members can send a note to Leslie K., the current moderator - and ball busting bitch, according to some email - and if there is room, she'll dole out the special privilege.

A number of conceits exist with the community, some that come from RYS, and some that are all our own.

A Big Thirsty From Fab.

Do something fun. Read some of the archives, especially from 2010 and 2011. Scroll down to the comments and look at the names. Some will be familiar, and some will not.

Most of all what I see are old familiar names I've not seen around here for more than a year.

Q: Where do they go? What do they not find at CM that causes them not to return or to take part? Have you ever left CM for a time? Why? Why did you come back? Is there something transient about an academic's attachment to this blog? When the venting is over, is there any reason to stay?

From a Reader.

big thirsty

Q. Who is driving you batshit crazy today?  And why?


A. _________________________________
  (Yes, you.)

Don't Freak Out. Nobody is Going to See This Map at Your College and Figure Out YOU Are the One Faculty Member in Your State or Country That Actually VIEWED This Page and Are Therefore Unclean.

click to enlarge

[that's what she said]

Today's VidShizzle. Outfit of the Day. This is a Thing.

New Cornell Technology School Tightly Bound to Business. From NYTimes.

A reader writes:

This article from yesterday's NY Times reads like a press release, but to me the implications are sinister. Are they really saying that students will pay upwards of 40k in tuition for the privilege of developing a product for "up and coming" entrepreneurs, who will then market the product and reap the rewards? Or am I misreading this?

[+]

Their curriculum devotes months to helping a company solve a current technological challenge. Their progress is supervised not just by an academic adviser, but also by an industry adviser. Their vast campus on Roosevelt Island, when it is built, will intersperse classrooms with office buildings, where high-tech companies can rent a suite and set up shop.

And when they showed up Monday for the very first day of classes at Cornell NYC Tech, the most ambitious institution of higher education to open in New York City in decades, students arrived not at some temporary structure on the edge of a construction site but to 20,000 square feet of donated space in the middle of Google’s $2 billion New York headquarters.

Cornell NYC Tech, a new graduate school focusing on applied science, is a bold experiment on many fronts: a major expansion for an august upstate school, a high-impact real estate venture for Roosevelt Island, an innovative collaboration with a foreign university, a new realm of influence for City Hall. But the most striking departure of all may be the relationship it sets forth between university and industry, one in which commerce and education are not just compatible, they are also all but indistinguishable.


MORE.

Pants. From the Indiana University Public Safety Office.

It's cold, colder than it's been in a while. This morning, every campus is experiencing temps in the teens, or colder, something that hasn't happened since the winter of 2010/11. Back then, Iron Man and The Hulk were the only Avengers to have movies, then-Governor Mitch Daniels was still contemplating a run for president of the nation, and having winter skip a year seemed just a pipe dream. So, not that far back at all, really.

So why do I keep seeing people in shorts, leggings, and mini-skirts on our campuses? I can only assume it's an act of youthful rebellion, displaying indifference to the elements as a proof of strength. But what it really is is short-sighted, foolhardy, and of no actual benefit to anyone.

Working in emergency management for IU for four years now, I've learned a lot about assumptions. So many disruptive incidents have at their heart, a flawed assumption. You have to strike a balance of course, since it is safe to assume the sun will rise tomorrow, and that gravity will still pull downwards. Somewhere in between assuming everything is going to be ok and assuming everything is going to go wrong, that's preparedness. 

And that's why I say preparedness is wearing pants. 

MORE.

Real Goddamned Mail With Leslie K.

• I think it would be smart if you gave an award, or posted a little graphic that notes which posts get the most comments. I'm attaching something that maybe you could modify, or if you want, you can just make your own graphic. This would really help ramp up the quality of posts, which are sometimes pretty lame.
• You have to put a lid on Xxxxxxx. He is ruining any good will your website earns with otherwise interesting ideas.
• I want to tell you that I'm not going to visit the site anymore. I thought it was sort of clever when I first started reading it, but it's clear now that you're engaged in a futile enterprise. Good luck getting out of the sinkhole.
• I posted a comment on the Xxxxxxx post yesterday and Xxxxxxxx took a really cheap shot at me. I know she's one of your "favorites," but I really wish you'd enforce the rules more fairly.
• My post got buried yesterday under some useless fluff and so I went in and changed the time of mine so it appeared at the top of the page. Then someone (I'm thinking it must have been you) moved it back to when I originally posted. I don't think that's fair. I'm actually trying to get some conversation going, and you can tell by the number of comments I get that I usually do that. Could you allow me to repost the same item tomorrow so people get a chance to read it?
• I want to tell Xxxxxxx that he's a real douchebag, but don't want the comment to come from me. Can you post this - verbatim - under the name Rick from Racine? Thank you. "You, sire, are a douchebag. Suck it, suck it, suck it."
• Can't you get some new writers. Jesus, this is the same juco complaining that this page always suffers under. Some of the examples in the stories are too ridiculous and tired. I'd think that you could contact some people at different colleges, 4 year colleges, and get their voices on here. Otherwise this page is going to continue dying.
• This may sound petty, but when I put a post up a couple of days ago I used Trebuchet font. Then someone changed it to boring Arial. I think this might have happened before. I choose my fonts based on the tenor of my post and I want that to be reflected in what readers actually see, not what you think the page should look like. I understand you're the mods and all, but if you want to really build your foundation and get some real creativity, you won't hamstring us at every turn. I sent this same email last year to whoever was running the page and I didn't even get an answer. How is that right?

Here's an antidote for those of you with Impostor Syndrome.

At least you didn't plagiarize your grad student's work, and then when you got rumbled by the Crampicle, make a really really really tragic blog about it.

The Crampicle article is behind the paywall, but since you are all reading this at work, it probably won't matter.

Dude is "no longer in academia" which might account for his inability to write his way out of a wet paper bag. The best part is where his plan to resolve the court case is to have you, the reader, troll the Crampicle's comments section.

I am therefore asking the community to look up The Chronicle article at http://chronicle.com/article/My-Adviser-Stole-My-Research/135694/ and register to provide comments.  It should take just a few minutes, particularly for those logged in on a campus that has an online subscription with The Chronicle. 

A fine idea, and one sure not to backfire.

Homework and the Very Important Snowflake. Sent in by Peter K.

I thought I had the homework thing figured out, what with twenty years of teaching and all, but Very Important Snowflake just presented me with a new conundrum!

E-mail from V.I.S., on Saturday:

A few questions in regards to homework 1 and I was hoping that you could help me. Just let me know what time is best for you on Tuesday.

Homework 1 was due last Friday, but I’m letting them turn it in on Wednesday, since we had bad weather. I e-mail back:

Dear V.I.S., I am not normally on campus on Tuesdays. Maybe we can try this by email first? Let me know which problems you’re having trouble with, and I’ll give you some hints to get started.

By Monday night, not a tweet had been heard from V.I.S. Now, there’s background: this snowflake took the prerequisite class with me, and often came to my office hours for `help’. In practice this meant I solved the homework problems, snowflake took notes and turned them in. (I used to object to that when I was young and naïve, but now I realize these are the students who care.) Clearly more of the same is expected, and I'd be happy to help. Incidentally, the “very important” acknowledges the fact that Snowflake is active in student organizations.

My second reply, on Monday night:

Not having heard from you, I assume you still want to meet on Tuesday. So I’ll be in my office in the afternoon to meet with you, but I need two things from you: first, please send me an email by 12 noon, confirming you will be there at 2PM. Second, please include in your email the numbers of the homework problems you need help with.

On Tuesday morning, V.I.S. replied to say meeting at 2 was not possible. I offered to meet later on Tuesday (I did go to my office anyway), and still don't have a reply.

Q: Was there a better way to handle this? How do you handle flakes who make appointments and don't show up, or don't respond to email exchanges they initiate?

(I'll let you know what happened in the comments.)

- Peter K. 

[not in any way related to the moderator,

because a wiseacre already asked...]

Multiple shots reportedly fired at Lone Star College in Houston

• Students were lead out of their classrooms with their hands on their heads. (KRTK)

  
  

At least three people were injured on Tuesday in a shooting at a college in Houston, the authorities said. At least one suspect was in custody.

Officials at the North Harris campus of Lone Star College announced an evacuation at 12:52 p.m. on its Web site, citing an incident involving “a couple of armed suspects.”

Harris County Sheriff’s Department vehicles blocked access to the roads leading to the college on Tuesday afternoon. Students gathered in groups outside an off-campus bookstore near the college, located in northern Harris County about 30 minutes outside downtown Houston.

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Today's VidShizzle.

Cynthia from the Ceeside With a Job Seeker Thirsty.

Although I am not yet on the job market, this time of year I keep an eye on the various internet forums where job candidates and search committees discuss interview/campus visits. I have noticed a trend I find troubling and want to try and address when I go on the market very soon. I’m a graduate student in a department known in the field for being full of itself, at an institution that might have plant matter covering the walls. However I have degrees from a range of higher educational institutions, and believe I have a solid grip on the way the world really works. As such I would be thankful to have a job at any range of places, if it was teaching or research. I enjoy both.

Yet I’m seeing a lot search committee venting of spleens that seem to assume people with credentials like mine are only interested in jobs at X, Y, or Z type of institution as a fall back, with an eye out the door as soon as they are hired.

I know these sorts of people exist; I see them in my graduate program. They annoy the hell out of most of us too.

Q: How do I show my sincerity to a search committee beyond researching their school and department? Should I just assume that a certain number of places I apply to are going to write me off because a few bad eggs from my graduate program have convinced them that everyone that comes from my PhD granting institution are arrogant pricks?

RYS Finally Gets An Award, Only 969 Days After We Stopped Publishing!

Rate Your Students Rocks!!

Hi there,

I just wanted to let you know that your blog has been selected as a top higher ed blog to watch in 2013!  We sifted through hundreds of already recommended blogs to find the best and most relevant among them.  Our editors selected your site to be listed on UniversityWebinars.org as one of our picks. Here is a story about our process and method.

We are also narrowing down our list to the top 25, so stay tuned for that soon. Thanks for creating a great resource for higher education innovators!


Congratulations!

Darin Eich, Ph.D.

Cruisin'

Dr. Wanderer,

I apologize for missing the first week of classes. My parents took me on a cruise as a surprise and booked it over a year ago before I knew when classes would start. I will meet with friends that i have in your class to help catch me up on anything I've missed. If you have anything else you would really like me to know that you've said in class, then I can meet with you in your office, or you could just email it.

Thank you again, and I will introduce myself in class.

Cruising Student

Letters Never Sent, Part 4

Dear Sickly Sue:

Of course I can overlook your first assignment’s lateness, because you’re so very sick with the flu, so sick that you are on some serious medication your doctor just prescribed you.  No problem!  In fact I’ll even waive the requirement that you bring me a doctor’s excuse, which you didn’t get because you “forgot”.  When you recover from your debilitating condition, and if you still can’t get that excuse for whatever reason, why don’t you just bring your prescription bottles to my office? Or just take a pic of them with your phone and forward the pics to me? You did know, of course, that prescription bottles always have a date on them to indicate when they were filled. They also contain the name of the drug and the doctor that prescribed them. I’m sure you still have these bottles, since you are still so sick, and I’m sure the labels will indicate that they contain medicine prescribed this past weekend, for the kind of thing that doctors usually prescribe for the flu.  Tamiflu, cough syrup with codeine, etc. 

Don’t worry if you forget that too…I intend to remind you that I need to see them if you want to avoid the late penalty.  But when I ask for them, or the pictures, if you make up some dumb excuse I will know you are twice a liar.  That you lied about your initial illness, and you lied about why you don’t have the letter/prescriptions.  And if you are lying, I will not only penalize you with the standard grade off for lateness, but I will take off another grade as well.  This is known as the “liar’s penalty”.  It’s not written into the syllabus, but trust me, I will take off that extra grade and I will make it stick. 

Feel better soon.

am I the only one?

English: The first lecture in Experimental Philosophy, which took place in London in 1748. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I sometimes wonder, when I read the posts here, if I'm the only one on this blog who feels incompetent at this job.  Not just when I've got a new preparation and it's a constant scramble to come up with a lecture that sounds halfway competent with material I barely know (or don't know at all, to be honest).  Even with a course I've taught before, I constantly feel as if there is so much that I don't know, that I haven't read, that I should have read and digested and thought about before I pretended to know anywhere near enough to teach the class.  And then there's the constant panic, before a class, as I try to pull together a lecture without enough time to do it;  no matter how much time I left for myself to prepare there's always the frantic last-minute dash...

I thought, when I first started teaching, that this would wear off eventually. It doesn't.  It hasn't.  It's been many years now.  I always feel this way.  I'm really kinda tired of it.  Is this just me?