Earning a graduate degree in English at Elite National University took intelligence and dedication, but it also required a person to learn the ropes of graduate-student performance. One of the basic rules involved never questioning the judgment of senior professors, especially powerful ones like "Dr. Dreedle," the director of the composition program. Since I feared his wrath, I wasn't the one who complained about his new series of presentations called Teaching Writing. I don't recall who did, but I do remember that Dr. Dreedle shut down all debate by announcing, "Someday you'll be glad we offered these sessions."
The hourlong talks were given by not-yet-tenured faculty members in the English department. Dr. Dreedle attended the sessions regularly, of course, as did the program's assistant director, "Dr. Cathcart," but none of the other tenured professors did. Junior faculty members showed up because they wanted to get in good with the powerful Dr. Dreedle. TA's showed up because Dr. Dreedle told us to.
The other struggling TA's and I would have welcomed a chance to become better at teaching writing, but we found the sessions useless. I recall sitting through a talk given by "Dr. Pathos," a professor notorious for emoting in public. She began by saying, "When you assign a paper, keep in mind that your students actually have to write it. Make sure that's possible. Try writing a paper yourself in response to each assignment before you give it."
So graduate students who were struggling to handle their own course work, plus grade 50 papers as a TA, ought to increase their workload by writing freshman papers themselves? I glanced at "Marcus," one of the best graduate students. He shook his head. I looked at another student, "Lucy," who just rolled her eyes. If even the most gifted of my colleagues wouldn't try this added task, I felt suspicious. Did Dr. Pathos, an assistant professor seeking tenure, actually write freshman essays before she assigned them?
Despite my skepticism, I listened on, hoping to gain something useful. At one point Dr. Pathos said, "A truly worthwhile assignment inspires the student to make an emotional investment in writing the paper. When you're searching for a topic, think of the writing assignments that excited you when you were an undergraduate."
Writing assignments that excited me as an undergrad? I couldn't recall ever feeling emotionally attached to a paper. I checked off a few in my mind: Duplicity in Richard III hadn't moved me, nor had Richard Nixon's role in Watergate, nor debunking potato-chip ads. Nonetheless, Dr. Pathos was an expert, so for my next class I gave my charges an assignment that mirrored my own experiences at Elite National U: I asked the students to write about a time they had great expectations that ended in disappointment.
The results disappointed me. Half the students raged about having to settle for Elite National U after getting rejected by institutions higher on the food chain; most of the rest lamented their parents' divorce. Only one essay stood out. One young woman, "Mindi," wrote about a time in middle school when she decided that having sex would make her life perfect. She began to seduce a boy, and described the experience in messy detail that I didn't need to know.
Another professor, "Dr. Logos," gave a presentation entitled "Teaching Logic." He was notorious for laughing too readily, but I went to his talk eagerly since I had a session on logic scheduled in my classes in several days. Dr. Logos began by saying, "I know that you came to hear a presentation on teaching logic." He giggled. "But I'm giving a paper on logic and literature at an upcoming conference, so I thought I'd practice on you." He gave a disconcerting guffaw, followed by repeated chuckles throughout the hour.
The topic of another session, "Grading Papers," sounded promising. The presenter was "Dr. Ethos," a gaunt woman unable to make direct eye contact with others. She spent much of the period going through basics that I already knew but at one point announced, "When you grade freshman essays, you really shouldn't spend more than 10 minutes on each one."
A murmur of disbelief went up from the TA's. "You need to be able to get six done an hour if you're going to survive in this profession," she said.
How could a person read six essays in an hour, consider their strengths and shortcomings, and make encouraging comments that would help students improve as writers? Was there some subtle trick to grading effectively at that pace?
Of course not. When she implied that a human being could grade six essays an hour—and do a good job of it—Dr. Ethos was lying. Even a novice knew that. I also knew that performing as a grad student meant not challenging my superiors, but I gave in to the desire that Edgar Allan Poe labels the imp of the perverse, the urge to do something just because I shouldn't. I raised my hand and said politely, "It's good to know that I need to grade six papers per hour, but right now I can handle only four. Could you and the other professors give us tips on how you reach the six-per-hour rate?"
Dr. Ethos stared in my general direction without making eye contact. Silence. I looked around the room. Dr. Dreedle and Dr. Cathcart, the only tenured persons in the room, glared right at me, but the junior professors all stared at the tops of their desks, just like my freshmen did when they couldn't answer a question.
Denouncing hypocrisy in public is more exhilarating than sitting in a classroom and haggling over Heidegger's infatuation with fascism. I wanted to stand up and say, "You know that the only way to process six essays an hour is to skim them. You aren't teaching us grading. You're teaching us how to avoid grading. You're lucky that our students' parents haven't caught on to this charade."
Yes, I wanted to declare something grand like that, but I also felt certain that if I stepped any further outside the boundaries of acceptable grad-student performance, Dr. Dreedle would end my career, so I remained silent.
Dr. Ethos looked down at her paper. "You just have to learn to pace yourself," she said. "Let's move on."
A week later, I had an epiphany about our exchange. Since earning tenure at Elite National U depended upon publishing a lot, and since grading essays ate up time that could be spent on publishing, the junior faculty members would be fools not to skim papers. When she told us about the pace of grading, Dr. Ethos was simply performing the part of a not-yet-tenured professor.
That insight opened the door to another. Why would the junior professors waste time participating in the Teaching Writing series? To make TA's better teachers? No, they were putting on a show so they would get a nod and a letter from Dr. Dreedle come tenure-decision time.
As they padded their CV's, however, the junior professors also modeled appropriate performance at Elite National University. Dr. Pathos didn't write papers to try out her assignments, but she showed the importance of claiming that she cared about her freshmen. Dr. Logos revealed that conference presentations are so important that he could trick graduate students into helping him rehearse. When Dr. Ethos stated that we needed to grade six essays an hour, she really meant that freshmen are an enemy that must be manipulated.
The junior professors couldn't speak those truths directly any more than the university could say to prospective students, "A liberal-arts college will give you personal attention, and a community college will offer you bargain-rate tuition, but come to Elite National University because we'll give you instructors we're paying to do research rather than teach you."
The series revealed that I'd become involved in a more sophisticated bait-and-switch than I'd realized, so Dr. Dreedle turned out to be right when he said that someday the TA's would be glad Elite National University had offered it.
What's more, Dr. Dreedle himself confirmed the lessons underlying the speakers' presentations. One day when a couple of TA's groaned about grading essays while trying to complete their own papers, he said, "If you ever have to choose between your own studies and the freshmen, shortchange the freshmen. They aren't the reason you came to Elite National University."
When the director of the first-year composition program tells his own instructors that they aren't at the university to teach, what more truth could a grad student ask for?
(Editor's Note: Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this series are online.)
Comments
1. philoctetes - January 27, 2010 at 08:18 am
I read the whole series, it is a striking indictment of English Literature as a discipline. Not anything we have not heard already. That first year PhD student teach comp is scary, but what is more scary is that the graduate courses as you describe them have so little relation to real scholarship.
TAs in my discipline are more often markers not teacher. The mania for small comp courses seems to be at fault. Teach comp in sections of 200 or 300 students I say, put a senior faculty member up front and use the TAs for leading seminars or tutorials. Once a class is over 40 students it might as well be over 100 and I am sure everyone involved would rather a faculty member in a class of 40 than a PhD student at 20.
As for your experience with faculty in graduate studies... it boogles the mine. The idea that the discipline of English literature is full of fad chasing and egomaniacal fools is supposed to be a stereotype of the so-called culture wars. Your five part essay indicates however that the search for knowledge is long dead in your discipline.
The same cannot be said of history or philosophy or classics. Perhaps it is English literature's attraction to the childishly naïve relativist theories of so-called critical theory. It is sad, because for the last 30 years the dwarfs are no longer standing on the shoulders of the giants, they are swan diving from them into the sewers.
2. 22015822 - January 27, 2010 at 09:13 am
"I couldn't recall ever feeling emotionally attached to a paper." Now there's an unfortunate comment. Perhaps "Henry Adams" is reacting more to "Dr. Pathos'" style of presentation than to what she actually said. I hope so. But if instructors can't be bothered to create engaging assignments, why should we expect students to produce competent responses? Knowing what your students know and care about is an important first step; making clear to them why they should care is a second. The papers will be better--and grading them will be easier--as a result.
3. zemilideias - January 27, 2010 at 09:21 am
yeah, if you were never emotionally attached to a paper what are you doing in academia, looking for the high pay and short hrs??
4. brucedavis - January 27, 2010 at 09:27 am
Bait and switch? Sorry, but that's the name of the game in many other aspects of academe, from policy meetings to workshops to conferences. One faculty meeting a while back had three non-controversial topics on the agenda; we all agreed going into it. The meeting took 1.5 hours! Workshops can easily take four hours to deliver 20 minutes of disappointing instructions. And it's fairly easy to become cynical about conference presentations--the advertised titles can be appealing, but not so many of the talks. We all become quickly aware of the number of papers with grandiose titles that promise keys to the universe but deliver only the trivia of small case studies, in excruciating detail, and typically conclude with something to the effect that if the study were extended planet-wide, then we would have a better world.
I've learned to keep expectations in check at all levels, as well as recognizing that the profession is full of activities and responsibilities that do not offer results commensurate with the time, energy, and effort required. Alas, we are baited and switched almost by default; learn to live with it.
5. v8573254 - January 27, 2010 at 10:08 am
Arrogance and condescension are excellent qualifications for teaching composition.
6. eilonwy - January 27, 2010 at 11:43 am
Ah, to be young, self-assured, and snarky.
Asking faculty members to try an assignment is a long-standing and reasonable pracitice. Have I suggested it?--Yes. Have I tried to write some of my own assignments myself?--Yes. Have I learned from the experience?--Yes. Do I do it with every assignment I make?--Of course not. Is it a method of improving teaching that will benefit everyone instructor?--No, nor will any other method.
What a shame that the eager Henry expects every word uttered in a teaching seminar to aid him. What a crushing experience teaching his own courses must be as he learns that not every example he invokes works for every one of his students.
And, as someone with 15 years of experience teaching composition, I can attest that 10 minutes per paper is a fine goal at times. If I have already read and commented on a draft or held a conference with the student writer, I may well be able to grade the five page final version in 10 minutes. Henry may want to do some research about the effectiveness of grading and lengthy feedback on final versions. He will learn that usually the only person thinking carefully about those comments on the final draft is him. To inspire(or provoke) a student to think carefully about his or her paper, it is much more productive to provide input while the student is still working on the paper.
Henry's made some great points about the limits of education in his series, but he seems to have mistaken a few dead trees and unwieldy stumps for an excuse to clear-cut the forest. I also have yet to see any useful plan for change from him. Complaining about any institution is much easier than improving it.
7. john_drake - January 27, 2010 at 11:43 am
brucedavis: Is the real issue here baiting and switching? If the presentations by the profs in the article represent TA training to teach comp at Elite National University, then the comp program must be a farce.
8. bmljenny - January 27, 2010 at 11:57 am
So... people who have to work together in a hierarchical structure end up deceiving and manipulating each other. Huh, and they say academia isn't like the "real world."
9. johntoradze - January 27, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I have counseled many freshman students of mine at an elite national U (in sciences) to go on leave and get as much instruction at a community college as humanly possible. Professors at research universities are not there to teach. They are there to get grants and publish research. Teaching is an onerous burden, and most aren't good at it. Some few are, but many students drown as a result.
So it seems that the same is true in the English department? Dear me.
10. civilwarrior - January 27, 2010 at 12:45 pm
In the language of popular culture, "They have taught you well young Jedi." That is the way it is. The job of a professor at that type of school is NOT to teach. That sounds like an awkward construction, but I am being PRECISE. Not only are you not supposed to spend time on teaching, you must disdain it anyway you can and make it clear to everyone that you are there "not to teach."
11. eric_gates - January 27, 2010 at 01:07 pm
This guy is from Carleton, I guarantee it.
12. anonscribe - January 27, 2010 at 01:36 pm
As a current graduate student in an English department at Pretty Good National U (and former CC instructor), I can attest to the uselessness of lectures in pedagogy seminars. That said, most of the professors teaching these seminars recognize this. As a result, they allow ample time for all the comp t.a.'s to gather around, discuss their classes, provide little tips about elements of instruction or syllabus design, etc. This is extremely useful.
I never spend more than 10 minutes grading my students' essays and providing comments. There's simply no pedagogical reason to provide more--except to make yourself feel better. Students learn by writing. Some clear feedback is important, but office hours, general comments to the class after each paper is due, etc. all serve this purpose. Students wouldn't benefit an ounce more if I doubled the time I spent on grading. They look at the grade, skim the comments, then come see me in office hours if they actually have questions/want to improve.
Further, students' problems aren't unique. Aside from anomalous cases that take a little extra time, you should be able to identify 1) quality and 2) weaknesses to be addressed fairly quickly. It's simply not true that each extra minute you spend on a student's paper equals an extra quantum of learning for them. You're a facilitator, not a manufacturer of mind-widgets.
As far as motivating students, most instructors would be better served by working on their social skills than working on their pedagogical techniques. Learn how to communicate clearly, put on a smile, treat your students like human beings, drop the condescension, and develop a little rapport, and you'll see them as motivated as they can be to write that 5-page analysis of butter sculpture.
13. cstratton123 - January 27, 2010 at 03:04 pm
I see I was not the only one who thought this writer was arrogant and ignorant about what good teaching and good learning require. This is the person who will teach exactly as teaching has been done for the last 200 years. Times and students have changed so good professional development on how to work with students should be a requirement. Perhaps the problem was that the old hacks were trying to teach the same old thing. You needed an expert in professional development with knowledge of how to make learning successful.
Why do subject matter experts think they know how to teach without studying how to teach???
14. susca - January 27, 2010 at 06:54 pm
I just love these "student" perspectives that make fun of professors'appearance and social tics. Guess what, they're people, just like you, and I'm guessing you have a few such "faults" as well, which your immature freshmen will be sure to snigger about before you enter the classroom. Best to leave that to them, and grow up yourself. And yes, you do need to learn how to grade six papers per hour, or you won't be able to live. You can determine a grade in that amount of time, and the extra comments you'll need to give up don't convey what you wish them to to the student anyway. None of which is to say that teaching isn't important.
15. exilium - January 27, 2010 at 06:57 pm
Among the interesting and debatable points raised by this whole series and the comments, the false dichotomy of teaching-vs-research irritates me the most. Although I have known excellent teachers who did not publish much and although I'm sure their are big-shot researchers who do not teach well, I have found -- at all levels, as a BA, MA, and PhD student, and now as a TT-colleague in an English Dept. -- that those who teach well and who write/present papers and publish articles/books are almost always one-and-the-same. Indeed, my best professors in college were often well known for their scholarship, AND (not BUT) were fantastic teachers. I strongly suspect that their engagement in their fields of study contributed positively to their classroom pedagogy.
As for whether teaching takes time away from research, that's really a matter of time-management. Grocery-shopping and watching football take time away from both my research and my teaching/grading, but I manage to do both without much complaint. I suspect that many, including perhaps Henry here, who wish to assert that good researchers must be bad teachers are themsleves unable to manage their time or to engage in the various activities of life and of the profession well. As such, the extra minutes spent on a given student's 1st-year composition paper will likely make little difference in that teacher's overall career. Certainly, disorganization (not to say laziness) should not be elevated to a virtue by those unable or unwilling to teach and to do research and to perform service (the three principal areas of a professor's work) well.
16. mrswho - January 27, 2010 at 09:05 pm
Exilium, you raise some good points. I fear that some readers may discount them, since with a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. and a TT position in English, you wrote "their" when you meant "there" ("I'm sure _there_ are...").
17. neoconned - January 27, 2010 at 11:42 pm
i gotta say this is yet another column which shows how too many phd students (and future faculty) are clued-out, whining wimps (male and female) with a sense of entitlement disproportionate to their worldly experience and emotional intelligence
waaaaaaaaah, mommy, the world is unfair!
pathetic. no wonder some say the profession is going down the tubes.
this is it for me, reading these professional columns used to be informative and helpful, now 90% of them are dull, self-indugent rants. mostly written by junior folks who are crushed because their ivy league or whatever degree didn't get them a position in a similarly ranked institution. and they are surprised.
ugh! would the editors of the chronicle please stop publishing this drivel and publish something useful to those of us who are thinking about our jobs and not our wounded egos and failed self-aspirations.
18. jbn45 - January 28, 2010 at 09:15 am
Publishing this type of article seems irresponsible. Our representations of ourselves, to ourselves (as academics), should not be this kind of combative, unkind ranting, empty of criticism that is actually designed to suggest improvements, aimed more at punishing than improving. I don't wish to carry on the chain-of-snarkiness by making unkind comments about the author, who, after all, was invited/selected by the Chronicle to write this piece. Instead, I would like to make a suggestion that the Chronicle try to move towards a less sensationalist ideology in selecting and approving authors and content. ummmmm....this isn't Fox News, after all. I think we can do better. I would also like to offer an apology (not my place, really, but still) to those faculty members who were potentially unfairly maligned (rather than usefully critiqued) in this article. Anonymity here seems no more than a shield for anger and unkindness.
19. sahara - January 28, 2010 at 10:13 am
There is so much cynicism in these discussions; they lapse into whining sessions. Also, all you "English types" ought to check your spelling, grammar, and style before you hit "submit."
Let's adopt a lesson from Twitter -- also from business communication -- and limit the number of words or lines in which the whiners participating in these discussions are allowed to bore the rest of us.
20. driskila - January 28, 2010 at 10:57 am
Questioning the accuracy of an implicit evaluation, especially an ironic one, is every reader's duty. The readers in this list seem to have swallowed whole the accuracy of the Bait and Switch author's description as representative. Sorry! It isn't true. Composition and rhetoric are well-established fields with good research and pedagogy dedicated to student success. The depiction of the composition director in this attach reflects the author's lack of knowledge and self-confidence. Showing up for sessions in which others try to share their perspectives is no substitiute for taking graduate seminars in composition pedagogy and knowing your field. Would a graduate student teach contemporary poetry without having an appropriate seminar, at the very least? Graduate students who intend to be able to appreciate and respond incisively to undergraduates' writing have a responsibility, too. Pretending it's all the system's fault is no way to escape your own lack of expertise. "Bait and Switch" is a description of graduate students who pretend to be qualified to teach subjects they have not studied.
21. driskila - January 28, 2010 at 11:00 am
Sahara, You're right. I should have checked my entry for typos before I hit "Submit." I apologize.
22. tony8832 - January 28, 2010 at 11:30 am
How true all of this is! I have a Ph.D. from a Big U. and my career was trashed, as a graduate student, by a Dr. Dreedle type. To make matters worse he even intimidated younger untenured faculty to the point of absolute fear. The sad thing about academe is that from the outside it looks like intelligent people contributing to society. Furthermore, it seems like they would revel in the discovery, learning, teaching, and sharing process. However, I found from the inside that it was anything but that. Academe is full of petty, jealous, manipulative people. In a way I feel terrible that my career was trashed by questioning a "power" professor. On the other hand, it is a sense of relief that I do not have to play childish games that seem to entertain them. If you are successful at academe, good for you. If you have a conscious, I suggest looking for an alternative career. Academe would never be fully satisfying anyway.
23. roboprof - January 28, 2010 at 11:33 am
I am quite surprised at all the venom directed at this article-writer. Perhaps it's because he is relatively low in the academic hierarchy and thus an easy target?
I am not an English PhD, but at my SLAC I regularly teach composition. It's a responsibility shared by all Humanities departments. Even if it weren't, I'd volunteer, as composition is my favorite subject to teach. I'm also non-TT, and thus an easy target for criticism myself. I will dare to comment here, as composition courses are something I'm very familiar with. Several years ago, I took an excellent graduate seminar on the teaching of rhet/comp requirements. In said seminar, taught by a non-TT faculty member, I learned very practically how to do my job well without overburdening myself or the students. None of the lessons were pompous or impractical. I hated the course at the time because it told me things about my teaching that I didn't want to hear, but I practically idolize the course today. I use everything I learned, even if I do some of it grudgingly. Classroom management? Paper grading? Moderation of discussions? Kinds of questions to ask about a text? Writing assignment types? Even the length of time to grade each paper was addressed--and the advice was to spend 15 minutes on each. And so I do, and it works fine. I think the sacrifice of time is well worth it to feel that, whatever else happens with my career, I have paid each student the respect they are due as a member of my course. I can actually grade papers in 10 minutes each if it's an emergency, but I don't feel great about it, and so I try to avoid that necessity.
Of course, I haven't just followed the rule book blindly as I've moved from institution to institution. After trying out many of my own ways of doing things, I've mostly gone back to what I've learned in the pedagogy class, with a few personal tweaks of course. And you know what? My composition classes are wonderful experiences. I'm happy with them, my students are happy with them, and the evaluations are good. My students don't resolve all their writing issues, but I am confident that most of them make a significant improvement in at least one area.
In short, it is possible to learn effective teaching techniques from a pedagogy seminar. I would feel much worse about my composition classes today if a good one had not been available to me. There is absolutely no reason for a series of talks on pedagogy at an elite university to be unrealistic, off-topic, or discouraging to the graduate students. It IS actually possible to teach composition to freshmen effectively. Why should it not be possible for assistant professors to communicate what they must know? After all, if they have earned an elusive TT job, they must have survived many, many composition courses with good evaluations. Assistant professors don't just spring out of the ground--they go through the training process just like anyone else, albeit with a more happy outcome at the end than most of us.
I concur with the writer in that the givers of these talks were not fully engaged with telling the truth about the task at hand. It is hard for me to discern one practical bit of advice in the three talks described. I also suspect that the assistant professors at this particular U might have felt downtrodden and put-upon.
Frankly, there are many areas of corruption in academia. It would not surprise me to learn that a particular university has subpar pedagogy instruction and overburdened assistant profs. Why would commenters blame a graduate student for noticing that phenomenon?
24. john_drake - January 28, 2010 at 01:02 pm
driskila, didn't the author describe a pedagogy course taught by Dr. Dreedle in an earlier installment?
25. driskila - January 28, 2010 at 01:19 pm
John,
No doubt there are extremes in every profession, but the Dr. Dreedle described is not representative of people who lead writing programs and communication across the discipline programs in big universities. Many readers seem to believe that this lampoon is typical and true of all universities. The people who belong to the Council of Writing Program Administrators, for example, are top flight and work hard to support all instructors. They base their instruction on research and not lore, and while some unprepared instructors may recommend ludicrous techniques, such practices are not typical.
26. john_drake - January 28, 2010 at 01:46 pm
driskila,
I agree with you. The head of the comp program where I teach is excellent. I couldn't ask for a better colleague.
27. sm0000 - January 28, 2010 at 02:25 pm
As a new PhD I have also found the same attitudes prevalent at the university from which I graduated. Both my own and a few associates' experiences confirm this article writer's experiences. I wholeheartedly concur with tony8832 above about the complete disconnect between what the academic world appears to be from the outside and what it really is. But for a few bright moments, I have been truly disappointed in what I found. Maybe I expected too much.
28. geochaucer - January 28, 2010 at 05:29 pm
I trust that Chronicle readers (and the bloggers who inevitably recirculate this piece) are experienced enough to recognize that one person's miserable experience (and resulting perspective) at one school is not universal. I'm familiar with the writing programs at probably 150-200 American colleges and universities, and I can say that the attitudes displayed at Pseudonym University are uncommon. Not completely absent, alas, but rare. Much better practices, grounded in theory and research, exist at the myriad schools, large and small, prestigious and not, whose writing professors and leaders have scholarly backgrounds in rhetoric and composition. They tend to belong to organizations like The Council of Writing Program Administrators or the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and they tend to train graduate students who find the teaching of writing meaningful and rewarding, even with all of its complexities, and end up less jaded than Mr. Adams. --Doug Hesse, The University of Denver
29. drew_m_loewe - January 28, 2010 at 06:51 pm
Sigh.
Here we go again with another Chronicle or IHE piece on Composition written by one bitter person to be circulated and re-circulated as if the writer's experiences were universal.
I'm sorry if the writer's experiences were as described. However, I can point to dozens of colleagues' experiences, as well as my own, as counter-narratives. Not every university treats its writing students or graduate instructors with this level of disdain.
Prof. Hesse gives some excellent places for writers, commenters, and bloggers to learn a little more about the field they love to mischaracterize.
Drew M. Loewe
St. Edward's University
Austin, TX
30. tony8832 - January 28, 2010 at 08:27 pm
Sigh.
I do not think that just because someone says the negative truth about how academe really is, necessarily means they are bitter. As I said above, I had my career trashed by a bitter, hostile Dr. Dreedle type. What I witnessed at two different large universities from the faculty was comparable to watching school yard bullies. In other words, he who has the most power, rules the department. I witnessed untenured faculty literally bowing to relentlessly rude, tenured faculty. Of course, if a superior asked the tenured faculty about their behavior, I am sure they would get the obligatory look of disbelief. Furthermore, the tenured faculty would wait to plunge daggers in the back of the complaining individual. Hey, grad school applicants, be careful what you wish for. All that glitters is not gold.
31. neoconned - January 28, 2010 at 11:12 pm
tony8832, your first comment merely shows that academia is like anyother professional environment on the planet. for god's sake grow up and get with the program. if you have intellectual/integrity the name of the game is learning how to work the system and get ahead without losing that integrity or sacrificing your ideals.
but if you step into a boxing ring dont' start crying because someone hit you.
now go home, watch glengarry glenross, and then ask yourself if you'd rather be in academia or business, then get to work
32. neoconned - January 28, 2010 at 11:13 pm
sorry too damn busy doing real work to correct my typos
33. tony8832 - January 29, 2010 at 10:34 am
neoconned,
You very obviously missed the point I was making. That is that many people at universities have no INTEGRITY. There is a difference between working the system with integrity and not having any integrity at all. You sound like a Dr. Dreedle type. In addition, I find it ironic that people that do shameless things to you always give the cop out advice of don't start crying, or its in the past (or whatever lame exuse they (you) give for being irresponsible and unprofessional. As far as glengarry glenross, I don't know what that is. I already work for myself and am much happier not to have to deal with self-righteous morons, for example, kind of like you.
34. brucedavis - January 29, 2010 at 11:22 am
Glengarry Glenross -- excellent suggestion for when I'm feeling trodden upon or tired of the same ol' same ol'. For you who haven't seen this classic flick, it is highly recommended (particularly for the Alec Baldwin character--the ultimate Dr. Dreedle). Serves as a good notice that whatever the ills of this profession, it sure beats working for a living! Take a look--you'll feel lucky.
35. taxidriver - January 29, 2010 at 11:44 am
I'm grateful to the Chronicle for publishing this series. I realize that everyone didn't have a bad experience in graduate school, but for those of us who did the validation is comforting. I'm not as bitter about what happened to me as I used to be, but that isn't because I've grown as a person. It's because I'm older. The abuse I experienced was real. Sadly, the comments above that blame the author confirm that things will never change. I wonder if there is a term for mass Stockholm syndrome.
36. neoconned - January 29, 2010 at 05:04 pm
tony8832
the point is that in all environments most people have no integrity, and there are many people with insecurities or who are simply cruel, and when those people are in positions of power they tend to become bullies, and pick on people who they percieve of as weak. it's sad but true. so you learn to either defend yourself, or if that is too hard or demands too much of a compromise you get outta dodge. it's not nice, but it's life, and most of us learn this somewhere between K and 12.
this has nothing to do with academia and everything to do with life.
so this type of self-pitying however justified it might be should be exercised with a shrink, a bartender or a friend (although you're going to run through friends fast this way), and the Chronicle should be publishing articles which are of use to our profession not self-indulgent rambles. so go ahead and have a good cry, but not in the Chronicle, please, it's demeaning to all of us. And telling a grown-up to stop blubbering in public is not blaming him/her or being a "Dr. Dreedle" -- or if it is, it certainly puts a new perspective on the Dr.
Moron, perhaps; self-righteous, hardly; realistic, certainly.
37. unsound - January 30, 2010 at 12:41 am
This series is the most depressing thing I've seen online in a while. I'm kind of sorry I read it now. Henry Adams seems to have a lot of demons to exorcise. I hope he figures out how to grade effectively without killing himself, and how to come up with writing assignments that elicit responses that don't disgust him. It isn't easy. I have to wonder, though -- if you find yourself in graduate school, hating your professors, resenting your students, and gradually discovering that the whole enterprise is fraudulent, why stick it out? Have things gotten any more palatable since he (Adams) got out of school and got a job? I hope so. If not, I feel sorry for his students, and for anyone else who has to deal with him.
38. tony8832 - January 30, 2010 at 03:46 pm
neoconned,
Your self-righteous attitude is clear. In addition to picking on people that are perceived as weak, some people also pick on others that they are jealous of, or any multitude of reasons. Just for the shear reason they can get away with it. Furthermore, it is hard to defend yourself against a lunatic. There needs to be some sort of checks and balances system, or some other method that would keep people from getting out of line. There is just a hierarchy of don't ask, don't tell, sit down and shut up. I thought academe was about having intelligent dialogue. I suppose what you write is not a self-indulgent ramble? What a laugh. You are a classic bully, (or wanna be bully). Just look at the article again and many of the responses. Brushing the angry, childish, dark side of academe under the rug sure is a good way to deal with it, isn't it? That is just easier for someone like you. Would you not want better for someone else? Would you not want better for universities? Many people that enter high levels of academe should be more psychologically atuned.
39. neoconned - January 31, 2010 at 04:50 pm
tony8832
buddy, i don't make the world the way it is (other than my own small contribution) i live in it.
but back to my original point, which is that self-pitying self-indulgent drivel should not be what the Chronicle is publishing.
it's boring, much like this thread (including our contributions) has become.
perhaps making that point or being realistic about life makes someone a bully, but i see at as being a someone who respects self and profession. sorry.
get over it, universities are no different from any other environment; people may be more educated and perhaps more intelligent on average, but that doesn't make them better people.
don't want to be disappointed? lower your expectations of others? don't want to be walked all over? stand up on your feet.
don't like the profession? move along.
40. gadget - February 01, 2010 at 12:27 am
Rhetoric and writing is my third field. Why? As an undergraduate I found other fields where I found ideas, research, and topics where I was excited and engaged as I wrote papers. I feel sorry for anyone who pursues a field where they never feel that frisson, that electric thrill of researching and writing about something really interesting--yes, even as an undergraduate. As for my professors at the elite public university I attended for undergrad and grad school, most were clearly thrilled by their work and their fields and conveyed that to their students. They were fully engaged, and their classes were about content and ideas and new ways of understanding the world.
My experience in an English department as a grad student in composition led me to believe that the real problem is that at some level, as important as writing is, the field of composition suffers from a dearth of anything important to say. I cannot imagine anyone in psychology worrying about how long to spend grading a paper, for example. Or fussing because a more experienced faculty member recommends no more than 10 minutes per paper (actually, it's good advice).
If your field is not exciting to you as a graduate student, you are in deep trouble. Why did you select that field in the first place?
41. fobean - February 01, 2010 at 05:01 am
Though this writer is entitled to his opinions, he is not entitled to call people liars. One can grade a paper in 10 minutes if one knows what one is doing--the responses that students write to a prompt tend to fall into piles, which is why we can do rubrics and which is why we can do evaluations of them for things like standardized exams.
You want to know how to grade an essay in 10 minutes? Try articulating your standards up front--and, yes, it helps if you write a few papers yourself. I mean, seriously, how long is it bloody going to take you to write a 500-word essay that defines "courage"? If it takes you more than an hour, then you are probably in the wrong field to begin with.
Once you have your criteria articulated, then come up with a rubric. One can read a three-page essay in less than 5 minutes with ease. One then fills out the rubric--putting a check mark as to whether the paper is excellent, good, needs improvement, or needs a lot of improvement.
Finally, do the best to come up with one thing the student did well. Choose one thing that the student should focus on for future papers. End by encouraging the student to continue improving in something that s/he seems to have improved on.
There--if you can't do that in 10 minutes, then you need practice.
This whole concept of "bait and switch" has more to do with Henry's assumption that academia is some pristine world in the ether where no one has personal tics, no one has professional needs, and everyone is going to be in starry-eyed pursuit of new knowledge. Hey, bubba. This is real life. People have personalities, and some of them are dysfunctional. People have professional needs--and sometimes they conflict with their pedagogy (not always, but sometimes).
Look--here's something that you should consider. Your expectations need to jibe with reality. If you come in with unrealistic ideas, and ideas based on the advertising blurb that an institution writes about itself are unrealistic, then you are going to be disappointed with the reality. What Henry really is, is a member of the Opera Generation (mi mi mi)--someone who takes advertising at face value and then gets divaesque when it turns out to be, gasp, advertising.
I really wish that this particular series would quit--I am very tired of reading what is essentially a Facebook rant. I thought this was a professional publication; can we raise the level of discourse just a tad?
42. larryc - February 03, 2010 at 10:08 am
What a precious little twerp.
43. muddle - February 05, 2010 at 09:57 am
Happily, my own grad school experience bore no resemblance whatsoever to what is described in this essay, nor to the sad testimonies offered by some commenting here.
I was in a top-ranking philosophy department at a great university. I came in with fear and trembling, knowing there were some powerful personalities there, and worrying that I might suffer at the hands of the "Dr. Dreedle" types.
Nothing could have been farther from the truth. I served as a TA for several semesters with a number of senior faculty, who treated me with the utmost respect and were downright friendly. The atmosphere was collegial. Wine and cheese gatherings after colloquia were common. The department's policies in distributing the goodies--TA appointments, lectureships, etc.--were equitable.
I faced my greatest fear when I learned that perhaps the most formidable member of the department--a pipe-smoking, mature Sean Connery type--would be on my dissertation committee. I knew up front that the position for which I argued was one that he, in his published work, had not so much challenged as brushed aside as beyond plausibility. (I might as well have been writing on whether the eighth dwarf, had he existed, would have accepted bribes or whether there is a possible world in which the Easter Bunny is elected Governor of Vermont.)
The chair of my committee opened my defense, and "Dr. Connery" spoke first. "I just want to open by saying that this is a dandy dissertation." The rest of the hour (or two) breezed by. I had not, of course, convinced him of my position, and he did hold me over the fire a bit during the defense, but he had managed to set aside his own views long enough to allow that I was making some good moves in my arguments. He saved his toughest questions for after my successful defense, when he shook my hand, congratulated me, and handed me a multi-page document with a number of pointed and interesting criticisms and comments.
One thesis of the essay above is that grad students learn lessons from faculty. I've now been teaching for more than twenty years, and my own students have often benefitted from my conscious efforts at following this gentleman's example of fairness and objectivity.
44. alialea - February 20, 2010 at 11:08 am
I was laughing so hard throughout this essay that I wanted to share a few supplemental stories from my Ivy U grad days, where occasionally senior faculty pretended to take an interest in graduate student teaching.
One faculty member would hold TA meetings every week in which we'd discuss the texts at hand with the ostensible aim of preparing for our discussion sections. Seeking approval, we TA's would all strive to show off for the prof in the brilliance of our interpretations, and the next day in lecture the prof would shamelessly restate all of our best ideas as her own. We'd then be left scrambling to come up with new material for that afternoon's discussion sections. Although we always tried to hold back at the TA meeting so that we'd be left with good material, the prof had created such an atmosphere of approval that we needy grad students usually threw our best ideas into the ring.
And here's my favorite. Another faculty member who considered himself an excellent teacher would hold little weekly TF meetings in order to "talk about the issues and concerns" we had about our teaching. We quickly learned that if one actually brought up such issues or concerns, he -with the other TA's following suite- would pounce on us and rip our teaching pedagogy to shreds, with no suggestions for improvement whatsoever. Each time he would ask "so, how were your discussion sections this week?", the floodgate of TA self-congratulatory praise opened wide as we expounded on our extraordinary pedagogical talents. Early in the term he had visited the class of a new TA who couldn't make it to the meeting due to illness, and he tore her apart. No one ever respected her again, but she never knew why. (The moral of the story was that we ought never miss one of these useless lunches.) I was particularly struck by the amusing hypocrisy of it all when he talked about her having no sense of what it was like to actually sit as a student in her class and understand the negative learning atmosphere she had created.
Profoundly ridiculous experiences like these permeated every aspect of graduate study there. What I learned is what the writer learned: understand the "meta" fueling these situations. I survived by identifying the people who really would help me improve and creating my own learning community. Do what you can with what you have, and learn from the people who do their jobs well without compromising their integrity.
45. dmaratto - February 26, 2010 at 07:53 pm
This guy is the professor the kids hope they don't get