While there are a handful of good comments below, the thread got a little off topic, so I've top-posted Ben's question in case anyone wanted to get involved. Sorry for any inconvenience. Comments on this post are now closed.
In our chat session yesterday, somebody mentioned that CM gives them the feeling of "I'm not alone" - that it's refreshing to connect with faculty who share your annoyance with students, committees, deans, etc.
I'm surprised to hear this because I complain with my colleagues about our job all the time. Sure, it's behind closed doors and doesn't result in any action to correct the problem. We get it off our chest, commiserate and encourage each other, then get back to work. I know several K-12 teachers and they join in when we meet at a bar on Saturdays. Even Mrs. Beaker Ben lends a sympathetic ear. This type of group support is normal to me.
Here's my Thirsty:
In our chat session yesterday, somebody mentioned that CM gives them the feeling of "I'm not alone" - that it's refreshing to connect with faculty who share your annoyance with students, committees, deans, etc.I'm surprised to hear this because I complain with my colleagues about our job all the time. Sure, it's behind closed doors and doesn't result in any action to correct the problem. We get it off our chest, commiserate and encourage each other, then get back to work. I know several K-12 teachers and they join in when we meet at a bar on Saturdays. Even Mrs. Beaker Ben lends a sympathetic ear. This type of group support is normal to me.
Here's my Thirsty:
What a great question. I don't have anyone I can talk to about this because I don't have tenure. Everyone I know is responsible for whether I get to keep my job. The idea of saying how much my job sucks would be tantamount to turning in a resignation letter.
ReplyDeleteBut, to follow up, what Ben has done here is the job that the moderator should be doing. I'm an avid reader and I can't believe how proudly Mr. Sabbatical crows about how he hardly works on the page. If you're going to take on the responsibility, you should do the work and not luxuriate DURING A SABBATICAL by not even keeping the page current. I think the previous moderators all did a far better job. There were posts from a variety of writers all the time and now there are just links and mascots. It's ridiculous. I'm sorry if I'm bitchy about this, but this site could be useful and great. I'm sure the moderator on his self-reduced schedule could improve things by posting new pieces every day, including POWs, thirstys, and all the rest. I remember so well how Leslie K and Fad would have new articles from a wide variety of writers every day, This is why I think Ben should run the page because he does all of his teaching, research, and family responsibilities, and still has the time to be the only one who keeps the site active. Thus endeth my bitching.
But don't you think that they have the same experiences as you do with students? You don't have to say that hate your job (even if you do) but you can make jokes about how poorly your students are performing, can't you? I don't mean to pry, I'm just curious about this type of situation, which seems to be more common than my own workplace.
DeleteRegarding your second paragraph, moderators don't and shouldn't generate the content on this page. That's what we are for. We write and either post it ourselves or send it to the RGM to post for us. If nobody posts anything, then there's nothing to post. I'm no savior. Search for my name on this blog. I haven't posted in months. I'm busy, like everybody else.
Just be happy with what we have here. It's really good. If you have some misery to contribute, please share.
Jesus, Lionel, bitching is right. I run a webpage of my own, plus a podcast, all in my free time. It's immensely rewarding. But this page is not a platform. It's a water cooler. An overinvolved moderator is not doing a good job. If you want something to read every day, go check in with something like the Chronicle or Higher Ed. Or start reading Katie from Kalamzoo's blog.
DeleteLionel the Lurker, aka Veracious Vic, Pete the Dishwasher and various others....always the same MO, isn't it.
Delete1st sentence or paragraph connects with the topic at hand and tries to build solidarity with the audience. The rest is always an attack on whoever the current moderator is. You've done the same thing to all of the previous ones.
Last week a student complained about how the free tea and coffee we offer in our department wasn't sufficient and we needed more variety. This is tea and coffee we provide out of our own money (as in the faculty each take turns to bring in a box of tea bags or coffee). Ungrateful!
DeleteLionel, that's how you're coming across: this is a free, unpaid forum. The moderator doesn't generate the content and shouldn't. If you dislike the content, your job should be to contribute content for us. Simply complaining about it rather than doing anything to make it a better community smacks of the entitlement I see in my students.
I have very strong feelings about the conditions under which we operate, but I don't share them with colleagues. With senior colleagues there is a history--very soon after coming here (20-something years ago) I started being called names like "elitist" and with "unreasonable expectations for our students", partly since I did come from "elitist" places (unlike most of them), and partly as payback for being an outspoken assistant professor. People get older, and right or wrong first impressions stay. (Two-thirds of the current full profs were already tenured when I arrived). Those impressions are passed on to more junior, more "social" colleagues (all my allies having long since left), and any "whining" from me would be met with a bored eyeroll. Also, being a good boy/girl is rewarded with teaching the few more or less competent students we get, so no one wants to be seen as "the malcontent".
ReplyDeleteBut that's secondary. I think the main reason we don't talk about this is "might as well talk about the weather". The things we talk about here--adminiflakes with misplaced priorities, incompetent/lazy students, the corporatization of academia and the diution (tending to extinction) of tenure--are accepted as "boundary conditions". There is literally nothing we can do about these things, so we might as well teach with what we've got and spend most of our time more usefully, on research and graduate advising.
The primary factor limiting any meaningful change is not lack of ideas or enthusiasm from the faculty, and not even the "corporate" nonsense; it is the realization that, no matter what we do, there is no way can recruit better students. We are the public university in a state with a weak education system, and generally low respect for intellectuals or academics of any stripe. So, if anything, it is going to get worse.
I did have a colleague with whom I'd complain with a lot, but then I was made department chair. Now I am privy to things I shouldn't really be discussing, and even things I can discuss--like which jerkface left his unwashed dishes in the communal sink again--take on an unsavory quality when it's jerkface's "boss" bitching about it to jerkface's peer. Plus, now my complain-buddy has turned into someone about whom I occasionally need to complain. So our friendship is now at best cold, at worst, over.
ReplyDeleteUgh. That really is misery. Now you can gripe with the other department heads about how ungrateful the faculty are.
DeleteI learned early on that my comments were often taken out of context, repeated to others in a way that painted me as a malcontent. Yes, I have always been outspoken but that didn’t necessarily make me a malcontent. I didn’t whine. I offered constructive solutions. Yet my suggestions accomplished nothing and were dismissed. So I’ve learned to keep my thoughts to myself.
ReplyDeleteLionel, please don't be so generous with Ben's time. Don't volunteer him. Trust that he knows what is best for himself. And as Ben pointed out, the page depends on readers submitting stories. Consider contributing from time to time.
Ben, I worship the ground you walk on. And RGM, you have all my respect and admiration.
Why on earth would I ever want to be worshiped, when respect is available?! Lionel, new friend, the page relies on material sent to it by readers. When material comes in, it appears, magically, on the page. When it doesn't, I put up mascots. You know why? Because I'm an asshole.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI can tell the person who currently casually monitors the page has thin skin about his performance, so I'll let it go. I meant no harm. I wanted to the page to return to what it once was. My bad.
DeleteAnd to answer the ON TOPIC question, I can't complain about my lot with my colleagues because they are not like me. I find my colleagues here, and always have. My colleagues have drunk the student-as-consumer Kool-Aid, and so I get my relief here.
Sue me for trying to make things better.
I learned early on that my comments were often taken out of context, repeated to others in a way that painted me as a malcontent. Yes, I have always been outspoken but that didn’t necessarily make me a malcontent. I didn’t whine. I offered constructive solutions. Yet my suggestions accomplished nothing and were dismissed. So I’ve learned to keep my thoughts to myself.
ReplyDeleteLionel, please don't be so generous with Ben's time. Don't volunteer him. Trust that he knows what is best for himself. And as Ben pointed out, the page depends on readers submitting stories. Consider contributing from time to time.
Ben, I worship the ground you walk on. And RGM, you have all my respect and admiration.
I do have my circles of sympathetic colleagues, but I have learned the hard way never to complain to them. One never knows who is a naturally honest person, and who is restraining their true self. I've worked with the kind of people in the past who start bitching sessions only to create a sort of recon so they may report back to higher-ups. It makes them look good, or something. Except that it doesn't. Either way, the entire circle of friends gets busted up by these people. So as a policy, I may joke about the institution but I never say anything incriminating.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I work at an insane place.
One year I gave up complaining for Lent and it damn near killed what had been a fairly close friendship. It made me think pretty seriously about the role complaining plays in bonding and how much I want to pursue that.
ReplyDeleteBen and RGM are all A-OK by me!
And why is it that everyone else gets to complain about fonts and so on and I can't complain about the complete lack of appropriate content? That doesn't seem fair.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I've asked for it by putting my head up and saying something after YEARS of following along, but Ben really welcomed me warmly during his chat yesterday and I thought this might be a place where my additions would be welcome.
I do think that once the current relaxed schedule moderator has to go back to actual teaching that we'll get another moderator who works the page a little harder. Not Ben, okay, I got that message. But we need to get someone who will post much more new material. If I want to read the University of Whatever school paper so I can make fun of a freshman editorial, well, I don't want to do that anyway. So cut out the stupid linked articles, said a MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY.
"I meant no harm".
ReplyDeleteBollocks, frankly.
You're the same guy that always pulls this shit.
Hi. Lionel is logging in from a different state from previous trolls, and of course that doesn't mean he's at home. But let's shut this down, okay? No need to defend the page. No need to attack it. Lionel, if you have any ideas about how I can be less relaxed, email me at the link in the sidebar, okay? The other mods no longer work here. They left for their own reasons. I started it up again on my own, and if it's not to your liking, maybe you need to find a different place. There are tons of academic blogs. We aren't the only poor faculty who complain.
ReplyDeleteI hate that Ben's question got co-opted by the back and forth. Perhaps I could have shut it down earlier, but you know me, I'm just so fucking chill that I'm not even working on the page. I may repost Ben's question again in the morning, unless, of course, there's some mascot shit that's burning in my brain.