As a paying subscriber who is 100% ok with commenting in public, I'd be game for a Friday thread. Not only do I have my narrative of academic dissatisfaction, but I work with A LOT of profs whose (anonymized or aggregated) dissatisfaction I can share.
Congrats on Inner Life. Excellent. I’m exited for this. As for a strange/interesting teacher experience: This one’s easy for me: My high school senior English teacher. He was the first teacher I ever had who treated me like a real person (an adult) and more importantly made me lust for literature. It just so happened he’d also been around during the first wave of punk in the seventies. We were teenage angsty punkers (who read challenging books) in the early 00s. He’d tell us after class about seeing the Sex Pistols in London or Ramones in New York at CBGBs. He got us to love literature by saying things like, ‘You know, if you really think about it, Jane Austin was punk rock.’ We ate that up. He was our hero. Coolest man alive back then, to us. We thought he was ancient. He was 40. My age now 🤣🤣🤣🤣🔥🙌
Yeah, and Nathaniel Hawthorne was Emo :). I suppose the coolness of some English teachers or professors is also their downfall within current secondary and postsecondary institutions. On the one hand, good teaching isn't a cult of personality (I get that some assessment initiatives try to guard against that, and rightfully so). On the other hand, what you're describing here is not so much that as your teacher's ability to connect to his audience. Emerson was also a rock star for his time -- a celebrity speaker in demand everywhere. These analogies are more than shtick; they really do help young people connect with other historical eras.
Exactly! My old prof knew what teen boys cared about. Boring author 150 years ago? Eh. Boring author 150 years ago who you can pull a connecting thread to from then to your real life right now? Magic.
This is exactly the kind of critical thinking that goes hand in hand with good textual literacy and with strong information literacy. Great work -- I'm sure your students still remember this.
I know that I've asked you, Josh, about your declining relationship with academia.
But I'd also like to clarify that some of us, say myself and Kelly Baker than you had on recently, would be more aptly described as never having a successful or productive relationship with academia as a professor.
I've noted a general lack of perspectives from the permanently adjuncting, the under-employed, etc. And those stories of "recovery" are often very different than the tenured or tenure track who leaves.
I hear you. I wonder if there might be some useful distinctions here between intellectual life and academe as an institution. Do you think that recovery from your own academic experiences means giving up your hunger for intellectual life? This might be a commonality that we share, since we all brought similar expectations and hopes to an academic career. But I'd be eager to hear more about the different kind of recovery you allude to. Is there more you want to say here?
Recovering from academia, even while still in it, required me to give up my research program after 4 years on the adjunct market and without access to academic libraries. I coped by having a shining moment in the early professional blogoverse, and have seriously considered trying Substack as an alternative.
But I never truly gave intellectual life up; I cannot, as it's more important than breathing to me. I became a total wonk in practical pedagogy and online education, as I pivoted from a research and university/SLAC career to a community college one.
But over time, I picked up gardening, landscaping, artisanal furniture making, light carpentry, etc. because I have more "intellectual drive" than my current academic position can either hold or appreciate. (There's almost no comraderie or community at this institution, and real professional development is a solo affair ... it's a major part of why I'm here writing to you all.)
But that's just the intellectual stuff.
There's also a recovery from the vagaries of being on the job market for years at a time, which is why I mentioned and appreciated Kelly Baker. And bought both of her books.
When I asked about hearing more of your experiences, you wrote across multiple posts about a conflict between teaching, research, and the service expectations at Central College. That kind of problem is typical of SLACs, but not CCs or universities. Here at CCs, it's the 5/5+ load plus administrative duties with the least prepared students that grind you down. At universities, it more like the research demands, etc.
So, I am trying to articulate themes for those of us in the audience to take up. The different typical paths lead to different "maladies" and need for "recovery." The grief of loss also differs in regular ways, and it may be worth exploring the motifs, e.g., the perma adjunct vs. the tenured SLAC prof vs. the CC prof. How we try to find expression during and after--do we dive further into the academic such as become editors or academia adjacent--or do we as I did leave behind academia and do things that defy the class logic of academia utterly and go gardening or crafting? Seriously on that last point: my professional network cannot fathom woodworking as an outlet cause ... they're all upper middle and upper class...
I hope pointing out all these different threads is useful. I ... want to acknowledge the plurality of loss, of grief, and of recovery.
This is really valuable, Jason -- thank you. Let me think on this more, especially as I plan future posts and threads. I hear you wanting to tell your own story as much as wanting to better understand my own declining satisfaction. There are long answers to this, but I think you've hit on the key point, which is the inability of the academic job to satisfy the intellectual hunger that I/we brought to it. Man, that's a killer. I alluded to abandoning Jonathan Swift in a recent post, but that's just one of the thousand cuts that eventually kill us. My research into neuroscience and literature was not something I could share with many undergraduates, even though I don't think it's overly complex. I often reflected on the sad fact that I was trained at a level -- as a researcher, critical thinker, and writer -- that my students never demanded of me. Sarah Trocchio speaks to this in next week's podcast: how many of us feel baited and switched by the job, which ends up not being "about" the things that drew us initially.
I have been in this field solely for the paycheck for the last decade and more.
I care about the students, and they stayed around, but the life of an intellectual and academic left me long ago. An unrequited love.
There's a short story by Henry James that speaks of a man who thinks about the life he didn't live ... and he imagines meeting the ghost of his other self. I am haunted by that other ghost.
There is a FB meme going around that I suppose some might see as trite, but that really does apply in this case. Something to the effect of: be compassionate toward yourself about decisions you made when you didn't have the information to choose differently. I might not go back to graduate school if I were to miraculously reinhabit my younger self knowing what I know now. But there's no guarantee that any of the other choices I'd contemplated earlier in life would have led to better outcomes. I gave up pre-law because literature made me feel more like a whole person. Could I have been a good attorney? Maybe, probably. That doesn't mean that would have been the right decision then. Later on, I quite literally chose between taking a full-time job in fire suppression with the Forest Service and going back for a Ph.D. Nearly all of my friends who took jobs in Fire are still working for the government, but that doesn't mean they are happier or that they even agree with the prevailing philosophy of wildland fire suppression. If I had done that, I would never have discovered the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness (my son is named for the Selway River), which I now think of as a spiritual home. I don't know all the particulars of your decision, but I don't think following a passion -- or deciding to take a risk for love, even if it seems impractical -- is necessarily regrettable, even if the pain of the unrequited love runs deep.
As a paying subscriber who is 100% ok with commenting in public, I'd be game for a Friday thread. Not only do I have my narrative of academic dissatisfaction, but I work with A LOT of profs whose (anonymized or aggregated) dissatisfaction I can share.
Thank you, Jennifer! I'm sure many of my readers would be eager to hear from you.
Do share.
🔥🔥🤘❤️
Congrats on Inner Life. Excellent. I’m exited for this. As for a strange/interesting teacher experience: This one’s easy for me: My high school senior English teacher. He was the first teacher I ever had who treated me like a real person (an adult) and more importantly made me lust for literature. It just so happened he’d also been around during the first wave of punk in the seventies. We were teenage angsty punkers (who read challenging books) in the early 00s. He’d tell us after class about seeing the Sex Pistols in London or Ramones in New York at CBGBs. He got us to love literature by saying things like, ‘You know, if you really think about it, Jane Austin was punk rock.’ We ate that up. He was our hero. Coolest man alive back then, to us. We thought he was ancient. He was 40. My age now 🤣🤣🤣🤣🔥🙌
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Yeah, and Nathaniel Hawthorne was Emo :). I suppose the coolness of some English teachers or professors is also their downfall within current secondary and postsecondary institutions. On the one hand, good teaching isn't a cult of personality (I get that some assessment initiatives try to guard against that, and rightfully so). On the other hand, what you're describing here is not so much that as your teacher's ability to connect to his audience. Emerson was also a rock star for his time -- a celebrity speaker in demand everywhere. These analogies are more than shtick; they really do help young people connect with other historical eras.
Exactly! My old prof knew what teen boys cared about. Boring author 150 years ago? Eh. Boring author 150 years ago who you can pull a connecting thread to from then to your real life right now? Magic.
Good morrow, Joshua
Well, you already know of one of my experiment posts at https://open.substack.com/pub/terryfreedman/p/three-experiments?r=18suih&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web. This article of yours has inspired me to publish another: https://open.substack.com/pub/terryfreedman/p/subverting-a-model?r=18suih&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Enjoy!
This is exactly the kind of critical thinking that goes hand in hand with good textual literacy and with strong information literacy. Great work -- I'm sure your students still remember this.
❤️
I know that I've asked you, Josh, about your declining relationship with academia.
But I'd also like to clarify that some of us, say myself and Kelly Baker than you had on recently, would be more aptly described as never having a successful or productive relationship with academia as a professor.
I've noted a general lack of perspectives from the permanently adjuncting, the under-employed, etc. And those stories of "recovery" are often very different than the tenured or tenure track who leaves.
I hear you. I wonder if there might be some useful distinctions here between intellectual life and academe as an institution. Do you think that recovery from your own academic experiences means giving up your hunger for intellectual life? This might be a commonality that we share, since we all brought similar expectations and hopes to an academic career. But I'd be eager to hear more about the different kind of recovery you allude to. Is there more you want to say here?
Personally, yes, in a limited way.
Recovering from academia, even while still in it, required me to give up my research program after 4 years on the adjunct market and without access to academic libraries. I coped by having a shining moment in the early professional blogoverse, and have seriously considered trying Substack as an alternative.
But I never truly gave intellectual life up; I cannot, as it's more important than breathing to me. I became a total wonk in practical pedagogy and online education, as I pivoted from a research and university/SLAC career to a community college one.
But over time, I picked up gardening, landscaping, artisanal furniture making, light carpentry, etc. because I have more "intellectual drive" than my current academic position can either hold or appreciate. (There's almost no comraderie or community at this institution, and real professional development is a solo affair ... it's a major part of why I'm here writing to you all.)
But that's just the intellectual stuff.
There's also a recovery from the vagaries of being on the job market for years at a time, which is why I mentioned and appreciated Kelly Baker. And bought both of her books.
When I asked about hearing more of your experiences, you wrote across multiple posts about a conflict between teaching, research, and the service expectations at Central College. That kind of problem is typical of SLACs, but not CCs or universities. Here at CCs, it's the 5/5+ load plus administrative duties with the least prepared students that grind you down. At universities, it more like the research demands, etc.
So, I am trying to articulate themes for those of us in the audience to take up. The different typical paths lead to different "maladies" and need for "recovery." The grief of loss also differs in regular ways, and it may be worth exploring the motifs, e.g., the perma adjunct vs. the tenured SLAC prof vs. the CC prof. How we try to find expression during and after--do we dive further into the academic such as become editors or academia adjacent--or do we as I did leave behind academia and do things that defy the class logic of academia utterly and go gardening or crafting? Seriously on that last point: my professional network cannot fathom woodworking as an outlet cause ... they're all upper middle and upper class...
I hope pointing out all these different threads is useful. I ... want to acknowledge the plurality of loss, of grief, and of recovery.
This is really valuable, Jason -- thank you. Let me think on this more, especially as I plan future posts and threads. I hear you wanting to tell your own story as much as wanting to better understand my own declining satisfaction. There are long answers to this, but I think you've hit on the key point, which is the inability of the academic job to satisfy the intellectual hunger that I/we brought to it. Man, that's a killer. I alluded to abandoning Jonathan Swift in a recent post, but that's just one of the thousand cuts that eventually kill us. My research into neuroscience and literature was not something I could share with many undergraduates, even though I don't think it's overly complex. I often reflected on the sad fact that I was trained at a level -- as a researcher, critical thinker, and writer -- that my students never demanded of me. Sarah Trocchio speaks to this in next week's podcast: how many of us feel baited and switched by the job, which ends up not being "about" the things that drew us initially.
I have been in this field solely for the paycheck for the last decade and more.
I care about the students, and they stayed around, but the life of an intellectual and academic left me long ago. An unrequited love.
There's a short story by Henry James that speaks of a man who thinks about the life he didn't live ... and he imagines meeting the ghost of his other self. I am haunted by that other ghost.
There is a FB meme going around that I suppose some might see as trite, but that really does apply in this case. Something to the effect of: be compassionate toward yourself about decisions you made when you didn't have the information to choose differently. I might not go back to graduate school if I were to miraculously reinhabit my younger self knowing what I know now. But there's no guarantee that any of the other choices I'd contemplated earlier in life would have led to better outcomes. I gave up pre-law because literature made me feel more like a whole person. Could I have been a good attorney? Maybe, probably. That doesn't mean that would have been the right decision then. Later on, I quite literally chose between taking a full-time job in fire suppression with the Forest Service and going back for a Ph.D. Nearly all of my friends who took jobs in Fire are still working for the government, but that doesn't mean they are happier or that they even agree with the prevailing philosophy of wildland fire suppression. If I had done that, I would never have discovered the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness (my son is named for the Selway River), which I now think of as a spiritual home. I don't know all the particulars of your decision, but I don't think following a passion -- or deciding to take a risk for love, even if it seems impractical -- is necessarily regrettable, even if the pain of the unrequited love runs deep.