Virtual Teaching, part 5; or, A Nice White Lady Teaches Black History

The first history class that I ever taught was composed entirely of black students. The class took place in at a "satellite campus" of the main community college campus, which meant that the class met in a high school in the surrounding school district. This high school was located in a black neighborhood that people usually referred to as "a bad section of town." The person originally assigned to the class turned it down at the last minute, so the school called another instructor, who also turned it down. I was standing next to him when he got the call, and I just wanted to teach, so I volunteered.

While the course was your average first half section of the American history survey, the content (at least as I taught it) included a fair dose of African American history; and I felt very white throughout the entire semester. For the first time in my life, I became very aware not only of the color of my skin, but what that color means in real situations. The power dynamic of the classroom, with students being in the subordinate role and the teacher being in the superior role, and with the students being black and the teacher being white, felt strange to me. At the end of the semester one of the students told me, "you know the history of our people better than some of us do." I was flattered, and at least had the humility to say that my knowledge was nothing special, just a matter of reading lots of books on the subject.

African American history has attracted me in so many ways for so many reasons (all of which are a topic for another blog post at another time). That interest has led me to the point where I am now teaching a class in the subject. No one has ever challenged my interest, at least not to my face. In fact, I've been asked, "why would a white girl even care?" To my face, black people have been more mystified at my interest rather than offended by it. To my face. What goes on behind my back, I can only imagine; and I imagine the same suspicion I would have toward a man interested in women's history.

A white woman interviewing for a position in African history was asked "why should we hire a white person to teach black people's history." She answered, without a hint of defensiveness, "my race doesn't preclude my interest in or ability to teach the history of Africa. The subject is fascinating and my scholarship solid." Then she moved on to discuss her research. That is certainly the way I have always felt about any subject. People can be part of the "in" or the "out" group in regard to any subject of history, the only difference is perspective. No one owns a subject.

That is all research and scholarship among equals, however. Here I am now, a white girl with a class in which all but one student has so far self-identified as being black, teaching African American history. The responsibility in this classroom is different because the students are not, in the context of the class, my equals. They come to me, the expert, for education in this subject.

At first, I felt privileged to be bringing "them" "their" history. I was secretly hoping to, again, earn the compliment of "you know more about our history than we do." I am now embarassed by those thoughts. I was going to be the Great White Savior coming to uplift the Natives. Like in the movies, I was the Nice White Lady teacher exposing the multicultural inner city kids to the big, wide world. I would be one of the "good white people." How utterly arrogant! How completely racist.

Education can be a very powerful and emotional experience. If some of these black students are coming to this class to learn about the past of black people because they have never systematically learned this history before, they might encounter some things that will be upsetting. Dealing with that anger and hurt and frustration -- the kind I felt when I first studied women's history systematically -- places you in a vulnerable emotional and intellectual place.

When I was going through that process in a women's history class, I felt much safer doing so in a class of women with a female teacher and in which the only male was a good friend of mine. That may not have been a particularly rational feeling, given the level of conservatism in the class. Indeed, I ended up feeling intellectually safer with the one guy than I did with the majority of the women.

More importantly, the teacher was female, so I did not fear that she would take my early attempts to understand patriarchy as an attack on her personally. In fact, when a couple of the other students were trying to silence a discussion on abortion, she stepped in and reminded them that the book that week was on the subject and that their desire not to even know that abortion existed because of their personal convictions of because they had "baby cravings" that week did not preclude us from discussing the history of the issue. I felt quite safe then, that my perspective would at least be respected by the person in charge of the class.

Which brings me back to my students. My membership in the race that did the oppressing, and my position as the person in charge of evaluating their work, could easily inhibit their exploration of the material. I don't want them holding themselves back out of fear that any emerging passion might affect their grade. Yet, how could they not hold back? That would require a type of risk and courage that doesn't have a place in a classroom, at least not in my classroom.

I don't want them trying to assure me that they don't think all white people are bad (which one already has done) because those assurances take away the intellectual energy that might better be used to evaluate different levels and types of racism that do not manifest themselves as overtly as Jim Crow. I want them to be able to share instances of racism that they have felt, and to be able to analyze those instances in the context of the history of racism. I want them to be able to share instances of pride and to analyze the pride in the context of African American history. With a white girl for a teacher, I fear that they will hold back and that they will not be able to educate one another in that way that can happen in a discussion setting.

This isn't about what I know and how I can impart knowledge to them, this is about how I can create an environment in which the students do feel safe in exploring this history and connecting the history to their own experience. I don't think they have seminars on how to do this. This situation I did not see coming.

MADtv's "Nice White Lady"

Job versus Work

Lori Hahn posted this quote by Drew Carey: "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar." This quote has always made me laugh. Still does; but I also find it sad because it betrays an existential angst bordering on frustrated anger about the meaning of work and life. In my little mid-life crisis, as well as my old quarter-life crisis, and just plain life-crises, work has been central to my search for satisfaction. I always figured that, if you were going to spend the greater part of your waking hours doing something, then that something ought to give you a great measure of joy. Otherwise, you really will be spending too much time at the bar.

I have spent the better part of my life figuring out exactly what pleases me, with much frustration. I've been fortunate enough not to desire marriage or children, which would complicate things, so I could focus on work. By "work" I mean something greater than a job, something more akin to a composer's opus. The biggest problem with this search, however, is that you have to live a little of life first in order to figure out what you want yours to be about. This can lead to a lot of dead ends along the way, as you realize that maybe this particular path doesn't lead anywhere you really want to go.

I actually found a variation on that theme. I had wanted to be an archivist for many years. Part of the reason I wanted to pursue that career was related to my failings as a historian. Historical interpretations come and go, and I was never going to reshape that; but the documents will always have to be there if those interpretations are going to have any value. I was never going to contribute much to the world or to my own satisfaction as a historian, but I might become a fantastic archivist. Ironically, by the time I was able to pursue the archival career, I had so developed as a historian that I no longer found the archivist path satisfying. Preserving the documents was not enough for me, I had to interpret the damn things now. Additionally, in the pursuing of the archival career, I found yet another interest that, were I younger, I might pursue to yet another graduate degree. Fortunately, I have neither the funds nor the energy to go that route!

I wrote about my realization that I am more a historian than an archivist last year. This year, I am at least fortunate enough to have progressed back toward a career in history. I work at a historical research project, where I earn a reasonable amount of money, have tons of vacation and sick days (seriously, I have something like a month in all), and where I have insurance. Yet, it is still not satisfying. You would think I am a perpetual malcontent. You would partly be right, but there is a good reason for my current malaise.

A few years ago, I worked on a similar project to this one. I loved the work, which is the reason that I applied for this job, knowing that, at the very least, it would be bearable. Unfortunately, I had to leave the position because the person in charge was so incompetent as to threaten the very existence of not only my job but the entire project. His incompetence, in fact, resulted in the loss of funding for my salary and the alienation of the sources for emergency support.

Part of the reason that I loved the work at that job was that I felt as if the project were part mine. Most research projects are headed by the person who came up with the idea for the project in the first place. The project is their work, for which they need assistants. In the case of the project where I had worked, the person who had begun the project had died. My supervisor was just his replacement, so I never saw the project as exclusively his intellectual creation. For some reason, that made me feel less like I was working for him and more like I was a real, integral, part of the creative process of the project. This feeling as if I were a partner in the project (no matter how dysfunctional that partnership had become), rather than an employee, was bolstered by the fact that I had come into the project toward the beginning and was able to contribute a significant amount of original research.

The project that I am now working on is at its end, and its beginning took place before I was even born. The originator of the project is still in charge, and this is clearly his life's work. I don't begrudge him that, to be sure, but I feel more like an employee or a drone than a partner. I have skills to contribute, but little else because the processes that permit originality have been completed. Like I said, the work isn't bad, even if it is dull. Had someone told me fifteen years ago that this is where I would be at this time, I would have been thrilled. (Of course, I would not have anticipated the ways that I myself would change.) While the job is pretty damn good, and I could easily settle into it, it just doesn't feel like mine.

That, right there, right now, is the key to my malcontentment. I have this desire to create something that is mine. That is part of why I love this blog, and am rather proud of it. That is why I keep going on my local history book, despite some of the obstacles that certain people have tried to throw in my path. That is why I have three of four other projects lined up behind the local history book. That is part of why I like teaching. These are all things that I create. That creative urge, that feeling of accomplishment, of putting something new out into the world, gives me purpose. I become depressed when I cannot give myself over to it. The biggest problem with this job right now is that I have only small pockets of time to give myself over to the creative urge, and those are not necessarily my best times of day or week.

When I took this particular job, I had a choice between it and another, both offered in the same week. The other would have returned me to the big city where I grew up, where I knew how to plug back into the progressive and feminist groups that I had found before I left. I took this one because, in addition to the greater prestige and paycheck, it would be a strategic move toward the real goal. I was trying to think three moves ahead. I'm not sure what that third move ahead will be, but I think that I am getting closer. Despite my malcontented bitching, I am getting better.


NOTE: A huge and massive thank you to everyone who gave me advice and encouragement in my last mid-life crisis post. You helped me come to some of the realizations evident (I hope) in this post.

Virtual Education, part 4

Teaching online seems rather anti-climactic. Normally, on the first day of class, you go in, see the students, begin the interaction. The feeling resembles that of "opening night" for a play. You prepare, then you go on.

This, on the other hand, is more of the whimper than the bang. The class begins, but you really don't do anything as the teacher. You've prepared, then you wait for the students to post. You keep preparing for future classes, but you don't quite feel like you are teaching.

For me, a big part of teaching is the performance. Performing has always been my favorite part and, I think, my strength as a teacher. History lends itself to peformance very well, in some respects, because you are trying to make a past world come alive for a modern audience who may or may not be particularly interested in the subject. You have to connect with this student audience and make the material relevant them on some level, be it as entertainment, as intellectual engagement, or context for the present.

Thus, I feel a bit handicapped in this online environment. How do I bring that performance aspect to the virtual classroom? At the moment, I'm using the blog as a model. Each week, the students have a set of readings to do, and then they have to discuss the readings online, responding to questions that I raise in my initial post. In that post, I try to give a little more information than the book provides, just as people do in blog posts where they discuss news stories. I feel almost non-intellectual in taking blogs as the model for teaching classes. Then, again, many serious scholars might think my performance approach to teaching is also non-intellectual.

Meanwhile, I await the students' posts.

Fiesta Texana

As you may know (or have suspected), I am a Texan.* Thus, I am putting in an endorsement for the Fiesta Texana blog carnival hosted by Millard Fillmore's Bathtub.

If you know anything about "Texas history, literature, geography, music, natural history, and all things Texas " or "Texas history, general history, music, geography, Texas myth, hoax, natural history, Texas products," then go ahead and submit an entry.

*Yes, I know, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. "Hi, my name is Clio and I'm a Texan."

Five Questions from Charley Carpenter

Charley Carpenter has tagged me with five questions. I kind of feel like I've had 'blog homework! My students would laugh themselves silly!

1. What was your funniest date?

"Date" and "funny" do not go together in my world. Heck, "date" and "fun" tend not to go together either, but I would have done better with that one. I am assuming by "funny" you do not mean "a really crappy date that was hell in the experience but made a funny story later." I'm also going to define "date" as any interaction with the potential of romance, even if that potential was not fulfilled. This would mean that the funniest "date" was in March 2004 when I went to the OAH conference in Boston, just before I moved there.

I met up with some friends, with whom I had gone to graduate school, at the hotel bar on Saturday night and had a few. This lasted a few hours, after which, we proceeded to dinner in the North End at a fabulous Italian restaurant. Dinner, naturally, went much better with much wine.

Somewhere around midnight, we returned to the hotel in a state of intoxication that lay somewhere between between buzzed and drunk. "Tipsy" might be the appropriate word. We walked into the lobby, where I saw my publisher sitting on a couch with a group of people. I waved "hi," and she signaled me to come over. "I want you to meet someone," she said. "He was looking at your book and considering buying it today." She indicated a older, black man sitting next to her. Who was this man? John Hope Franklin. Yes, John Hope Franklin allegedly wanted to buy something that I wrote! That was about two minutes off of my fifteen alotted for fame, right there.

Well, the lobby was so loud, and the sofa on which they were sitting so low, that I had to bend over to exchange pleasantries. I ended up getting down on my knees so that I could hear him, while my cohort stood over by the elevators laughing their asses off. When I returned to them and told them who he was, they laughed even harder. Getting on your knees in front of John Hope Franklin, they agreed, was probably the biggest, most unabashed schmooze EVAH.

After the mirth, the bulk of them decided that they were tired and went on up to bed. I wasn't ready to pack it in, nor was one of the guys with us. He and I were ready for more cocktails, and he wanted to see Cheers, just to say that he did. So, he and I went off to Cheers, which was really only a few blocks away. When we got inside, he tried to get me to yell "A. Rod Rocks!" I had no idea who the hell A. Rod was, and actually thought he was trying to get me to say something dirty. I asked a waitress what would happen if I followed his directions. "You'd probably get your ass kicked," she said. "Bad."

Later, after a few more drinks, my friend said that, the next day before he left, he wanted to see the State House and the Massachusetts 54th memorial. "Well, they are just down the street about a block, right across from one another," I said. "We could go now." So, we did. While we were standing in the middle of the street, holding each other up, and simultaneously preaching to one another about the aspect of Boston history that we knew best, he noticed a red brick line on the ground.

"What that?" he asked.

"That's the Freedom Trail!" I said.

"The what?" he asked.

"It takes you to all of the sites related to the American Revolution," I said, then launched into my History 101 lecture on the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Massacre and so forth.

"How far?" he asked.

You see where this is going, don't you? Next thing you know, we were walking down the Freedom Trail at 2:00 in the morning, which is really the best time to travel the Freedom Trail as there is no traffic or tourists. Plus, the burial grounds are much spookier. We stopped short of climbing the fences to see those any better. By "stopped short" I mean that he dared me to do it, then had to pull me off of the fence when he realized that I was on my way over.

The next day, we took the T to Harvard, just to say that we "went to Harvard."

No kissing. No sex. No subsequent romance. He's now happily married. I'm happily single. But that's the closest thing that I can think of to a "funny date," although it wasn't really a date, and you have to be a history geek to find it remotely funny.

2. You can go back in time to the 19th century, any location and time, but you have to be of the same social class you are in now, and have to stay a whole year. Where do you go, and what work do you do (you may switch gender for the year, if you want)?

This question is like an extreme PBS 19th Century House show! This one was very difficult because the one thing that you learn from studying the past is that it wasn't really a great place to live. I like my modern technology and hot, running water. Since it is only for a year, however, I think I could manage.

My choice would be the year that Frederick Douglass returned from England on his first trip. I'd want to be in his entourage in some way while he was there and then return with him to his family. I'd want to be a woman, which would be difficult and require me to have a female travelling companion, and probably require me to either be a speaker myself, or a secretary, both of which would fit my social class. I want to see Douglass speak. I want to know exactly when he met Julia Griffiths. I want to meet William Lloyd Garrison and Maria Weston Chapman. I want to talk to Anna Douglass and Harriet Bailey (aka Ruth Cox) Adams, the woman whom Douglass "adopted" as his sister (and about whom I am trying to finish an article). I want to see New York and London in the nineteenth century. I want to ride a train and a steamship, and see anti-slavery conventions. I have some questions that probably don't have definite answers, but I'd want to go in search of them.

3. What wine do you like?

Cheap, white Zinfandel. Berenger or Sutter's Home does the trick, but Gallo has a darker one that is pretty good. I go for the pink ones on the excuse that they are healthier than the white ones. Yes, I know that red is the type that is supposed to be good for your heart, but I don't like red that much (although Coppola had a really nice Zinfandel). So, I drink the pink because it has both the tannins from the grape skin, but is sweet. This taste for cheap wine runs in the family. My grandfather's favorite was "Wild Irish Rose." Thus, we have reached the limits of my skills as a connoisseur.

4. If you could conjure up a dream job that starts on January 1, 2009, what would it be?

Someone pays me enough to live comfortably above the poverty line, plus benefits, to research and write books (on topics of my choosing, of course!). This job would also be somewhere on a coast, far enough north or south to have four distinct season, none of which stick around long enough to wear out their welcome. Also, I want it to start January 1, 2008.

5. Are you taking any fun (ie not family- or work-related) trips this year?

Trips that do not involve work or family? I do not understand the concept.

Virtual Education, part 3

As my students begin checking into my class (which doesn't start until next week), posting their "welcome" messages and providing me with brief descriptions of themselves, I began to wonder about age and internet communication in relation to education. At the moment, I have no raw data and only the most myopic and subjective impressions, so the post is really more of a pondering to ask questions.

Distance education is generally intended to serve a "non-traditional" student population. That is, most students who benefit from the availability of distance education courses, such as my online class, tend to have been away from school for a number of years, have families, full-time jobs, mortgages, and a whole host of other responsibilities that prevent them from moving across country to attend school and which differ from "traditional" students who are fresh from high school and their parents' homes. (Actually, I'm becoming convinced that "non-traditional" is more the norm than "traditional" these days, but that is another post for another time.)

One of the major components of the online classroom is the discussion area. This area is set up like the discussion groups that appeared on webpages, in which a person starts a thread and people respond to that thread. In practice, a discussion should operate much like a comments section on a blog, with my lesson being the blog post and their comments being their reactions to the material and to each other.

People who are comfortable with this sort of online conversation, however, seem to be either very involved in technology or at the younger end of the age spectrum, in their twenties and early thirties. Again, these are my very subjective impressions based on no data.

I'm wondering about the relationships among three factors here: the blogosphere, online education, and age. Do people who participate in the blogosphere as bloggers or commenters or both take online classes? If they do, do they perform better or interact more frequently in the participation portion of the class? Is there a noticeable or significant age difference in people who participate in the blogosphere and those who don't? For instance, is a person in their 20s more likely to participate than a person in their 40s? Is there a noticeable and significant age difference in people who take online courses?

What other factors might affect participation in online class discussions? For instance, a 30 year old mother of two with a full time job might just check in and respond to the initial post, thereby essentially turning in an assignment, then go on about her business until the next response is due; but would this behavior be a result of her comfort online or a result of her outside responsibilities or a combination of both? Would a 20 year old blogger exhibit the same online classroom behavior because they see the class as work and spend the rest of their online time pursuing their own interests? These, of course, are just straw-students. I am just wildly guessing as a starting point for further reading (and will be happy to hear from anyone with any ideas, experience, or information).

In any case, I'm wondering how this semester will go in terms of the online participation. I'm hoping for something dynamic, such as you see on blogs (but no trolls, which would amount to a disruptive student in a traditional classroom). I worry that I will just get "turn in the assignment" responses. At this point, we will have to wait to see how the simple aspect of interaction develops.

Another DaVinci Code

On Tuesday, Slate.com published a piece called "What Would Jesus Smoke?: The Christian Doctrine on Bong Hits" as part of their Explainer series and in reaction to the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" story.

I sent the story along to my brother, the former Stoner and aficionado of all things Weed. (From him, I first heard the Ganga interpretation of Scooby Doo. Yes, I was that naive that my baby brother had to point this out to me). * He sent this reply:

Actually , after reading this I had a thought (oh hell here we go). So I did some careful examinations of Jesus pictures and found the truth that has been hidden by history and covered up by Anslinger. If you look closely at most renditions of the last supper you will find it. The true meaning of the last picture is to display the peril faced by the great son of god. He is actually asking who is going to roll the last joint he is ever going to smoke. Go ahead , you know you are going to look. Notice the fact that the thing sitting in front of him is actually a rolling tray and the dismay on his face is that of lackaweed. As demonstrated by this picture. And If you notice the others are holding out on him. Since it was known he was going to get the cross, the bogarts in this picture are clearly cutting ole J out of the loop. They didn't want him to smoke all their shit so they were passing by him in the rotation. So I do believe Jesus would say "legalize it". And maybe someone in the art history and Archeology dept. needs to take a look at this angle. Maybe I have solved the Da Vinci code.

Move over Dan Brown.

*I will leave his explanation of how the American Revolution was about the Founding Fathers attempting to defend their manhood, which had been called into question due to their wigs, "ponytails," and knickers, for another time. This was probably also a Ganga interpretation, as well, in that Ganga helped to formulate this interpretation.

Sea Otter Blogger

If you have not, I highly recommend visiting Claire's blog, The Life and Times of Big Calabaza. She offers free cognitive therapy and paradigm-shifting photos of herself. It's quite the place to be.

Plus, she is exceptionally funny, and witty, and hot (you know, for a sea otter).

She is also looking for "an inter-species romance with one lucky reader and document the trials of being in a relationship unrecognized by the state of Illinois;" but will settle for "a sensitive, feminist boyfriend blog character who will feel completely unthreatened by my enormous blogging talent and who cheer me on from the sidelies with supportive comments. He will also serve as my beard on an as-needed basis."

Here We Go Again

My mother went back to school at age 42. I can't take credit for her decision, but it was my fault. She had completed college the first time, back in the early 1960s, but her degree was in "general studies." A degree in "general studies" is tantamount to graduating with an undeclared major. She did this as an alternative to the old MRS degree. She and my father had married earlier in the school year, and he was graduating to go into the Air Force. Due to a shockingly active freshman year and a few shifts in majors, she was still too many credits away from a degree in her ultimate field, library science. She did, however, have enough credits to graduate with the "general studies" degree. Graduation was the immediate goal.

Graduation, then life as an Air Force wife, then life as a housewife to a government bureaucrat in the days when daycare was not so common and when you were more likely than not to be fired for becoming pregnant, did not lead to much satisfaction for my mother. She went back to work, but a "general studies" degree did not get her anywhere that she wanted to go. Where she wanted to go was into a library, preferably in an elementary school, as a children's librarian; but she treated that more as a fantasy, rather than any attainable reality.

Then, I graduated from high school. I had hated high school, and had found a job in a law office, which I didn't like but which was a pretty good job for a high school graduate. Looking at my parents' examples, I didn't see where four more years of the same sort of hell that I had just gone through was going to get me any better. I'd just be forestalling the inevitable. So, I decided not to go to college.

That's when Hell broke loose at our house. I was wasting my life, it was charged. I was going to be a bum, dig ditches, have no future. I was not old enough to make decisions for myself. I would never make enough money to live on. I was never going to be happy. I was a loser. Life was very loud for several months, then deathly quiet. Not surprisingly, between this drama, a job I didn't like, and no sense of any other possibility with or without college, I developed a severe case of depression that made me quite ill on one occasion.

On that occasion, my mother picked me up from work to take me home. When I got into the car, she said, "If you went to college, this wouldn't be happening." "Again, with the college," I thought, but put on the show of ignoring her the way that eighteen-year-olds do. She didn't say another word to me the whole ride home. When we got home, she came inside with me to get lunch. I went into my room and assumed the fetal position on my bed. Before she went back to work, she came into my room. Actually, I think she kicked open the door, but my dramatic memory may have added that flamboyant detail.

"If you aren't going to go to college," she declared, "then I will." I still don't completely understand the tone of defiance that she used. I was, after all, going to be paying for my own education through my savings and through loans. It wasn't as if I was freeing up a load of cash for her to take from me. This was all psychological; and we were so much entwined in one another's psyches in our family that her reasoning did make a sort of sense at the time. Oddly, it still does.

Whatever her logic, she went. She researched the steps that she would have to take to become a children's librarian and applied. Hers was not an easy path. First, she had to be certified to teach, as all school librarians must. Before that, she had to raise that GPA from twenty years earlier (yes, it does follow you around that long!). Afterward, she had to get a master's degree in a very specialized field of education because the nearest library science program was three hours away, and they did not have distance programs then. The nearest school that offered this specialized master's of education degree was an hour away. She also began to work full-time in an inner city school's library during this time. She ended up graduating the semester before I myself went into graduate school. In a few more years, she will be eligible to retire. These past fifteen years, she has been happier than she has ever been.

When I remember this story, I realize that she was maybe three or four years older than I am now. I actually still think of her as that age.

Just before Christmas, my mother's doctor found "a growth" on my mother's ovary. "We will watch it for a while," he said. So they did. The growth grew. Now, of course, they suspect Stage 1 ovarian cancer. Since she is finished using her ovaries, they have decided to remove them. She goes back under the knife in May. I haven't been told if they have done a biopsy, or if it is, in fact, cancerous, or if they will put her through radiation or chemotherapy. I'm waiting for a reply to my questions. My dad is protecting us kids from worry by not giving too many details. He is of the mind that ignorance is bliss. I feel like keeping me in ignorance is betrayal. My mother is trying to deny that anything too terrible is going on. That may be the best tactic for her at the moment.

As with her surgery last year, I fear. Even if this turns out well, this will not be the last time that I fear. Her death is inevitable; but I see that bulk of our time together is now behind us. This is what I mean when I say that, these days, time seems so short.

Fear and Loathing in Childhood

Terry Gilliam tends to make movies that are frighteningly whimsical, like a Grimm fairy tale. Even when his movies stink, he has enough of a vision to make you at least consider where he was trying to go with his story, such as with his own take on the Grimm brothers. Last night, I watched his new (and universally reviled) Tideland. I'm still not sure what I think of it, but I know that it disturbed me enough to have to write about it.

The story begins. A little girl lives with her junkie parents in what looks like a church. She reads lots of Alice in Wonderland and prepares the needles for her father. The mother junkie dies from an overdose, ostensibly of methadone, so the father junkie takes the little girl to go hide out in his own mother’s house way out in the middle of nowhere. His mother has been dead for many years, and her house has been abandoned and has apparently at least onece been used as a party-central. The father then promptly overdoses and dies in the middle of the living room, leaving the little girl alone with her Barbie dolls’ heads, who are her best friends and who start talking back to her.

The girl soon befriends the neighbors, who consist of a mentally damaged brother and a mentally deranged sister. They keep their dead, mummified mother in her bedroom upstairs. The brother has fantasies in which passing trains are huge sharks that he tries to kill by placing various items such as shotgun shells and dynamite on the tracks. He seems to have had an affair with the little girl’s grandmother when he was a child. The deranged sister is a zealous taxidermist. She was once in love with the little girl’s father, and when she discovers that his dead body next door, she stuffs him as if he were a deer. Crazy things go on for far too long, then a train blows up and one of the survivors appoints herself the little girl’s protector. The little girl by this time seems to have gone a bit insane.

I’m not sure if I enjoyed this movie, or even think it is any good. “Ghoulish” is the word that comes to mind. In fact, even without the bad southern accents, the overall mood is reminiscent of what “A Rose for Emily” or As I Lay Dying would have been if William Faulkner had taken acid. Also, the pacing and length seem a bit like a short story stretched out over the length of a novel because the artist became a bit too enamored of whatever personal demons he was exercising. Indeed, the DVD began with a commentary from Terry Gilliam saying that, in making the movie, he had discovered himself in the little girl. This makes me wonder about his own childhood.

Gilliam is quite hostile to women in this movie. Most of them, be they the cartoon of a mother or the taxidermist neighbor or even the dolls’ heads, are vile creatures, antagonists toward the little girl rather than allies or protectors. The exception is the woman from the train in the final scene, yet even she is portrayed as much more in need of the girl’s company than the reverse, and comes across as almost predatory. The men aren’t much better, consisting of a delusional junkie who has trained his daughter to prepare his fix and the mentally damaged neighbor; but the little girl allies herself with the men. The women seem to represent active forces that willfully damage the girl, while the men do the same out of neglect or ignorance.

Gilliam's rendition of childhood, however, is quite touching and frighteningly accurate. In this movie, childhood is an incredibly lonely and dangerous place. Children, he seems to say, are willing to accept any manner of insanity as normal. They are not idiots. He seems to contrast the neighbor brother, whose mental deficiencies stem from some sort of surgical procedure to his brain (possibly performed by his sister) and who seems to lack any internal warning signals. His warning signals seem to stem from external, learned sources, such as when he compulsively repeats admonitions to stay away from a wrecked bus (which he himself seems to have wrecked). The little girl’s internal warning system, however, plays out in conversations between herself and her dolls’ heads, which speak in her voice. She, of course, dismisses them in the interest of curiosity, adventure, and her longing for affection.

Longing for affection, ultimately, drives this child. She gravitates toward even the smallest suggestion of attention, but without seeming needy or herself damaged. Her need for love, be it from the abusive human adults, the squirrel hiding in the walls of her house, or her doll’s heads, seems as natural as her need for food.

Indeed, food and affection are connected in several scenes. In one, the girl attempts to feed her father’s corpse peanut butter, telling him “you don’t have to eat if you don’t feel like it.” In another scene, she sits down to her first meal in days with her new family of the neighbors and her father’s stuffed body, barely able to restrain herself from both her happiness at having this family and from the tarts set in front of her. Yet, this scene in which she satisfies her hungers retains a sinister note in that the main course is rabbit, possibly the rabbit that she had earlier befriended. These hungers make her vulnerable, as suggested by a scene in which she first sits down to eat that peanut butter, the only food in her house, and is bitten by ants. At the end, the woman from the train lures the girl to her side by offering the girl and orange.

Love like food, is a basic need and the lack of it places the girl in danger. Being a child, she cannot protect herself. By placing this need in the character of a child, Gilliam removes hardened adult judgment from his observation that human affection is a necessity that can be warped through misuse.

Abandon Hope

I think that I am having a mid-life crisis. I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't involve affairs with twenty year old men, affairs with twenty year old women, a Corvette convertible, or a journey to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. No, leave it to me to make a mid-life crisis an exercise in psychological masochism and depression, also known as "self-pity."

For the past couple of years, as my birthday nears, this feeling that time is getting short overwhelms me.* Call it a sense of mortality, a sense that only so many years are left and that they pass ever more quickly. You have to do what you are going to do, what you want to do, and do it soon before time runs out. Perhaps this is a sort of "biological clock" that does not involve marriage or babies.

The worst part about this crisis is the compulsion to review my life. How did I get here? Why am I not where I thought that I would be at this point in my life? Where did I go wrong? Why? Am I this way because I was naturally born this way? What about me is learned? How do I keep reinforcing the wrong things in my life? This can be quite discouraging when you realize that, by both nature and nurture, you are a fatalist.**

Fatalism is the one word that recurs in this exercise in self-pity. I know that I am naturally inclined to believe that, no matter how hard you work, no matter what you do, 99% of what happens to you is determined by factors completely outside of your control. This is actually a very stupid way to think because, even if that figure is true, the 1% that is in your control can dramatically affect some of that 99% that is not. In my case, I've become weary and embittered by working so hard on that 1% and feeling like I have so little to show for it. This is a frustrating way to think because this pattern of thought and its resultant actions finally drains joy out of everything I do.

The problem with figuring some of these things out, like what you think if you are very honest with yourself, and how your own behavior is self-defeating, and how you got this way in the first place, is that, ultimately, you begin to realize that this is how you are. In this mid-life crisis, with time feeling so short, I know that this is how I will always be.

That is, I will always be fatalistic and self-defeating if I keep on in this direction. Like I have discovered most of my life, I'm very good at figuring out what not to do and how not to be, usually after the fact. People call these "learning experiences." Have you ever noticed how "learning experiences" are usually negative? The problem with negative learning experiences is that they teach you "wrong." What you really want to know is "right." I know what doesn't work. Now I have to figure out what does work.

That right there, I suppose, is the crisis: not knowing what does work. Not knowing how to take all of these un-focused bits of my life, all of these souvenirs of roads taken that led nowhere, all of these learned lessons, and making them into something in that 1% of my life that is in my control. The crisis is also in not knowing if I would recognize that something and be satisfied with it.

*My birthday is not for another four months, yet. I thought I'd celebrate the festivities early this year.
**I am more than likely using this word without a full understanding of its philosophical meaning. There is probably a better word in philosophy for what I feel; but I haven't those tools of knowledge at this time (I am, howver, open to learning).

Beware!

SOOTHSAYER: Caesar!

CAESAR: Ha! Who calls?

CASCA: Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!

CAESAR: Who is it in the press that call on me
I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.

SOOTHSAYER: Beware the Ides of March.

CAESAR: What man is that?

BRUTUS: A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.

CAESAR: Set him before me; let me see his face.

CASSIUS: Fellow come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

CAESAR: What say'st thou to me now? Speak once again.

SOOTHSAYER: Beware the Ides of March.

CAESAR: He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

--William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act I, sc. 2

March 14

While we are on the subject of Babu, I thought I would pass on a little joke of his:

No.
Pie are round.
Cornbread are square.

Happy Pi Day!

*I may be the world's worst mathemetican, but I love a good pun, and pie!

Good for Them and This Place

My buddy Babu, whenever he hears that one of our peers has had a stroke of good fortune such as getting a good job or having something published, always says, “Good for them!” He says this without a trace of sarcasm in his tone or intent.

The first two years of my graduate program, longer if I am to be honest, were not lived in an environment of collegiality. The university that I attended was not by any means prestigious. We had some very good professors, but as a whole, the school and the program were not the sort that made people sit up and take notice of you immediately if you said that you went there. In fact, I have since had people visibly grimace when I tell them where I earned my degree (not that some of these grimacers have attained anything like a Ph.D. or published anything at all, but that’s another story for another time).

Thus, most of the graduate students who went there could not get into a better university, could not afford a better university, had familial obligations in the city that prevented them from going elsewhere, or had to choose between an equal or better university that would not give them funding and this one that would. Most graduate students knew that they would end up in the job market, after having worked very hard for many years, with a strike against them for having gone to "this place." Who was going to consider a candidate from Mediocre Urban University when they have a thousand others from Main State University and better? So, we all had a bit of status anxiety. We knew we were taking a risk, and we were afraid, often paranoid.

This sense of anxiety was encouraged by most of the faculty. The faculty, of course, all went to much better schools than ours. Many of the younger ones, especially those hired while I was there, were ecstatic to just have a tenure track job, and in a place where they could afford to buy a house and that did not require them ever to shovel snow.

Others, however, were quite open about the fact that they considered this school beneath them. One repeatedly referred to his degree from Princeton and how they did things at Princeton and how much better Princeton was than “this place.” His degree, incidentally, was earned in the 1960s, and he had been at “this place” ever since. Another, who served as graduate advisor for a year, gave every student who entered his office a look of disdain. “Why?” he would ask. “Why would you want to get a degree in history? You will never get a job, especially coming from this place.” His tone was dripping with disgust. He then dismissed the students from his office. Not surprisingly, he was not graduate advisor for very long. Another said that, if we could not find a tenure-track job within a year of graduating, then we should go find something else to do because, coming from “this place,” we couldn’t expect much.

Well, of course, he and others like him did have a point about the difficulties we students faced. The attitude, however, was not “so how can we make you competitive?” nor “lets look at the types of jobs that you might have a shot at.” That might have helped improve some of the mood of the place. Instead, the attitude was "we are wasting our time teaching a bunch of people who won’t get jobs anyway. "

The limited funds for graduate students also increased our anxieties. Our program admitted far more students than it had seats in classes. One professor actually agreed to teach a seminar consisting of over 20 students when the average number of students was usually 12. Our program also admitted far more students than it had funding to support. The average number of t.a. positions was 25, while the average number of applicants for those positions was 80. Out-of-state students were lured to the school with a promise of a t.a. funding, only to not have the position renewed for the next year. This left them with out-of-state tuition to pay, no insurance, no income, and no hope for any future funding because now, having to work other jobs, they were not progressing at an acceptable rate. They were never given any reason, nor was anyone else, for having not been renewed. The only common denominator for getting or having a t.a. contract renewed--at least as far as any of us could determine--was whether or not your advisor sat on the graduate committee that year. Thus, from year to year, your funding, if you were so lucky as to receive it, was in jeopardy.

The students developed a defeatist attitude from the beginning, which only became worse as time went on. Unfortunately, because there was some truth to the obstacles that we faced, the defeatism was difficult to dismiss. We began to feel as if there were a finite amount of success in the world. That only so many t.a. positions existed. That only so many jobs existed. That only so many books or articles could be published. Teaching assistant positions, jobs, publications, any other sort of award or achievement did not depend upon your own hard work or the quality of your work. They depended upon arbitrary factors.

In this environment, we all turned on each other. “That one only got her job because she bought everyone lunch at all of the faculty meetings.” “That one only got a t.a. position because she’s fucking her professor.” “That one only got a publication because he knows the editor.” “That one only got an A because she quoted French in her paper.” “I could never get that job because I’m not a minority.” All of that, and much worse. Thus, if you did achieve anything, you almost didn’t want to share the news because you were afraid of how people would say you did not deserve it. At the same time, you also wanted to gloat.

All of this anxiety and fear and anger, I am certain, impeded some of our intellectual development. I know it poisoned our collegiality and friendships. I know it was why so many dropped out in defeat and disgust. It certainly had a bad effect on me. Yet, being who I was, being someone who responded well to fatalism and defeatism having been raised in a similar environment, I did not know any other way to think.

Then, came Babu. Not just Babu, the crop of new graduate students who came into the program in that same year seemed to have an entirely different outlook. They seemed less defeatist, less inclined to resent others’ accomplishments, more inclined to support one another. Babu, however, was dubbed the Voice of Reason. He had a very healthy, balanced attitude about the world in general. He did not believe in finite resources. More accurately, he did not believe that someone’s success automatically transferred into his failure. Just because someone received something did not mean that that same thing was taken away from him. He believed that a success for a colleague was something to be celebrated. If one of us could do it, he reasoned, the rest of us could.

This attitude shocked me at first. Not be jealous? Not seethe with envy? Not backstab with bitchiness? Not revel in schadenfreude? I almost dismissed him as naive; but Babu was never naive. Plus, his seemed like a much more joyful attitude. So, I tried to adopt it, just as an experiement, and found that Babu’s attitude is, in fact, quite liberating. Yes, we should revel in the job, the prize, the publications of our colleagues. Yes, we help each other, not cut each other. Yes, the more of us out there supporting each other rather than resenting each other helps us all. Good for them! Good for us!

That unity has, in fact, helped many of us overcome that initial setback of having graduated from “this place.”

Metaphor of the Mouse

Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down!
Hickory Dickory Dock.

When I was a child, I thought this rhyme told the story of a desperate mouse in search of safety. Having had no experience with actual mice, I assumed that the sole functions of the species were to eat cheese and escape being eaten by cats. Thus, I assumed that the mouse in this rhyme was searching for a hiding place from an unmentioned cat, possibly after having committed the crime of eating the household's cheese. The mouse ran to the clock, which, according to my book of nursery rhymes, was a grandfather clock, in search of refuge. Alas! The clock chimed the hour, frightening the mouse, who reacted by running away, down the clock, in search of a new hiding place.

When I grew older, this rhyme began to take the shape of a metaphor. The clock represented the human individual. The mouse represented inspiration, a muse, the holy spirit, caffienne, drugs, or whatever the human individual required to function as a creative and energetic individual. The mouse, as the embodiment of this inspiration, then climbed to the seat of human intelligence, as represented by the top of the clock. The individual, thus inspired, sprang into action, as represented by the striking of the clock. With the action in motion, the source of inspiration was no longer required. Thus, the mouse ran down the clock.

The bracketing lines of "Hickory, Dickory, Dock," serve as incantations. They represent the small rituals in which the individual engages in order to summon the inspiration, such as prayer, the burning of incense or the lighting of the cigarette, the brewing of coffee or tea, the opening of a diet Coke can, and the arrangement of paraphernalia. "Hickory, Dickory, Dock" summoned the mouse, or the inspiration, at the beginning of the rhyme. The repetition of the line at the end signified that, much like a wound clock must be re-wound to keep working, inspiration must be summoned again and again for the individual to maintain action.

Of course, there are some days when the little mouse does not quite go all the way to the top of the clock.

Virtual Education, part 2

Since the course takes place in an "online environment," the first thing that the university requires of its students and instructors is that they learn to navigate the "classroom" software. This is particularly important for the instructor because the instructor has many more bells and whistles to fiddle with in the course of the semester than the students do, and because the instructor will be the first person that the students turn to for technical questions.

The instructors tend to be accustomed to the traditional classroom environment, in which they walk into a physical space for a set period of time, see who is attending by whose butts are in the chairs, motivate their students through interaction, and stimulate learning (is this that elusive "learning-centeredness?") through the use of various aids such as pictures and recordings. All of this physical activity must now be shifted to the online environment where the students show up in the virtual classroom whenever they have time during the week, and where they have to be motivated and stimulated in a million different ways from those used in a traditional, physical classroom.

With the general lack of structure familiar to most students and instructors in the traditional classrooms, the instructor must provide a new kind of structure suited to the online classroom. The goals for each week, each assignment, each piece of reading be it in a book or on a website, all have to be clearly stated. The methods for evaluation have to be very specific. Every step of the class, every lesson in the class must be regimented, in writing and well ahead of time in ways that grow much more organically in a regular classroom.

The tools for creating this regimentation are probably familiar to anyone trained in education. I myself had never heard of a "rubric," and to this day still imagine a Rubik's Cube when the word is mentioned. Terms like "pedagogy" had no meaning for me, and I still imagine that it means some sort of walking tour.

Granted, some of this vocabulary is just professional jargon used in the education profession, much like such words as "historiography" are jargon in the history profession. They are the words invented by the professionals to apply to a host of ideas about their profession.

As unfamiliar as the terms were to me, I was already actually using many of these tools in classes. You have to if you are going to have any standards or structure to your class. Nonetheless, these were things that I had stumbled up intuitively through experience, and which I used rather clumsily and with a certain lack of focus because they had been intuited as practical measures rather than learned as considered methods.

In the process of training us in the software and in helping familiarize us with this new type of classroom environment, the university was actually also teaching us how to teach. This, I found to be a very important component that was missing from my training up to this point in my career, despite of having worked as a teacher for over a decade. After all, most graduate students in history can expect to teach at some point, if not for all, of their career.

Indeed, at my university, it was assumed that students pursued a graduate degree to become professors. To explore any other type of career (with the exception of one or two professors, and that is another post for another time) branded a student a waste of time. Thus, the assumption, then, was that we would be standing in front of a classroom for between 6 (if you were really lucky) and 15 (if you were not) hours a week (much much more if you taught at the grade school level, but that is also another post for another time).

Why not, then, teach us how to teach? Why not teach us how to do one of the three things that would be a factor in gaining us tenure one day, if we were so lucky? Why not teach us how to do the one thing that would probably be the sole source of our income, given the increased reliance on adjunct instructors? The fact that the very craft and skill of teaching, the tools of the profession, were not a part of my training in graduate school, and that my apprenticeship as a teaching assistant was served under people who had a similar hole in their own professional training, seemed to me to be a gigantic flaw in the conception of graduate programs as a whole (or at least the graduate program that I attended).

Additionally, by training graduate students to be more effective educators as professors, the undergraduate students would receive a better education. Who has not had at least one professor who made them wonder how on earth this person was allowed responsibility over a class? Everyone has at least one horror story of boring, disorganized, or even incompetent professors. Poor instruction often leads students away from become educated, at the very least in the topic that the instructor teaches. Poor instruction also leads to higher failure rates.

From the students' standpoint, this is not just frustrating while attending class, this is frustrating when they receive their tuition bill. They are paying quite a bit of money, and more each year, to attend college. If they are on loans, they will be paying for it for many years to come. If you approach this as an economic exchange--not as paying for grades, but as paying for the opportunity to receive an education--then these students are being ripped off if they have poor instructors. Thus, it would seem to be in both the educational and economic interest of the universities to ensure that they are turning out professors who have the tools to teach.

So, how ironic that my training for a still controversial form of education would actually provide me with tools for teaching that my own, less controversial, university had failed to even consider an important part of my own and my colleagues' professional development.

NOTE: Kevin at Civil War Memory wrote an excellent post on the same general topic, with references to the AHA blog's post on college teaching.

Fairy Tales from Applicationhell

I tend to keep my c.v. in circulation, even when gainfully employed, because you never know what will happen and when. The problem is that I loathe applying for jobs. So much work, so little in return. For instance, today I spent three and a half hours applying for two job. Only two. Online. I have no idea why it should take this long, especially since I had all of the information with which to fill out the online forms set out in front of me. After all of this, I may never hear from either institution again in my life. I will never know if they are missing one crucial piece of information, or if one document attached did not go through. I will never know if this is the reason that I never heard from them again.

Applying for jobs in the educational field can sometimes feel like stepping through the Looking Glass. For instance, one of the applications today asked about "learning-centeredness." The question went something to the effect of "demonstrate your understanding of learning-centeredness and the role of full-time faculty in a learning-centered college." I seriously wanted to answer, "What the fuck?"

Seriously, what the hell is "learning-centeredness"? It is a college, for chrissakes: a place where people go to learn. Therefore, the function of the college is centered on learning. A teacher, as the employee of the college who instills the learning, is, by nature, inherently centered on students learning. I have to write an essay on the function of a teacher, at a school, where people go to learn? How dumb have your previous applicants been? On top of that, would a student know how to answer the questions, "Was your instructor learning-centered?" or "Was your college learning-centered?"

The question felt like a trick question, as if there is no right answer, they just want to see what the applicants come up with. Perhaps there is some code. If you know the right jargon or the right phrases, then you have passed the initiation rites. Maybe the question is on the application as a CYA measure for the institution, as some sort of jargon-filled accreditation requirement. Maybe the question is the product of action taken to statistically prove that students don't feel the way that I felt when I said that, at my university, the students and faculty seemed to get in the way of the business of the institution. Sometimes I wonder if the people immediately on the other end of these types of questions find them ponderous and useless as a real tool of evaluation.

Sometimes, I feel like a near-sighted pawn in a country of nekkid emperors.

Why I Love the Video Store

The video store in my town, the only video store in my town, has many flaws. They have all of the DVDs for the filmed “Left Behind” series, yet they do not have any musicals (thus hindering my ability to satisfy any appetite for musicals that the Gay Boys might have stimulated with their “Musical Mondays.”) They have an inconsistent shelving policy, placing "Classics" in both the "Classics" section and in the regular "Drama," "Comedy," "Action," and "Horror" sections. They have a “Featured Titles” section that is in no way prominently “Featured;” and they actually have a miscellaneous section called “Special Interest.”

They do, however, have a staff that seems completely unconcerned about deterring people away from renting movies. “Have you seen this before?” they ask, as they check a movie out to a customer. “It’s horrible!" They have no compunction about decrying bad movies at the check-out counter, and regularly have long and intricate conversations about the merits of this movie over that movie. They will even critique a movie as it is playing on the video screens.

Tonight, I went up to the counter with three movies. Two guys were discussing the merits of new releases. One professed to have very low standards but still hated the Borat movie. "Have you seen this one?" the big guy at the register asked, holding up one of my movies.

"Yeah," said his comrade. "It wasn't bad."

"How about this one?" he held up my second movie.

"That wasn't too bad either," said Comrade.

The third movie required reinforcements.

"That one looked boring," said Comarde.

“Well,” said the big guy, “I like Kirstin Dunst, so I thought it was o.k; but that was the best review in the store. Cindy saw it. Hey, Cindy!” He called across the store. “Cindy,” he yelled, “what did you think of Marie Antoinette?”

A blond woman, one who had tried to steer me away from the Bridget Jones sequel (I should have listened), popped her head above the DVD shelves. “Nothing at all happens in that movie,” she yelled back. “Nothing!”

“Yeah,” big guy agreed, “She drinks. She eats cake. That’s it.” He said this as he’s handing me my rentals to leave.

“Then, I’ll just drop by the liquor store on my way home,” I said. I mean, really, how do you respond to that?

Most people might think this is rude, or that these guys should mind their own business. Their manager might even tell them to keep quiet because they could hurt rental sales or some such. Me, I love it. These are people who watch a lot of movies. They have this crappy retail job that can’t pay much more than minimum wage, but they have a passion for it that you just don’t see at the grocery store or McDonald’s or in any other service type of field. Don’t say that we didn’t warn you. Capitalism be damned, the movie sucked!

Virtual Education, part 1

In about two weeks I will embark on a new adventure in teaching history, otherwise known as "teaching a course online." This is apparently a new frontier in "distance education," allowing busy, non-traditional students to earn a degree at something resembling their own pace and on something resembling their own time. This particular university, in fact, has many students in the service who often have to move around quite a bit and at a moment's notice, so online classes allow them to earn a college degree uninterrupted by these changes (although, deployment to a war zone would be the major exception to this rule).

This method of online education has many detractors for many valid reasons, not the least of which is the fact that diploma mills use the same methods to crank out their own product. Other criticisms include the lack of personal interaction between the students themselves and the students and the instructor, and the high drop-out and failure rates resulting from the incredible discipline required to follow an online class.

Myself, I'm not sure about the whole thing as of yet. I became involved in this last summer when my dire financial situation, resulting from my dire underemployment, led me to pursue opportunities for earning some extra income. Teaching seemed natural because of my experience and my desire to keep that professional credential current. Online teaching seemed even more convenient because I could do the work in my jammies, always a good sign. Also, the school was hiring. Also, they loved my c.v. (which, for the uninitiated, is the academic version of a resume' and which, unlike the resume, gives the illusion of being impressive if it is more than one page long). The loving my c.v. meant more than the potential paycheck at that point in my despair.

More than all of those matters of my own needs and convenience, I have always had a soft spot that might even extend to the concept of "commitment," to the education of people who did not fit the traditional mold of college students as recent high school graduate. These students tend to have greater focus and commitment than recent high school graduates, are trying to materially and intellectually improve their lives, but require more awareness from the university in terms of scheduling and student services. I like being a part of that awareness.

Finally, my own recent experience in library school in a weird way impelled me to turn back to teaching. In graduate school for history, most of my classes were conducted as seminars. We read the book outside of class, then came to class, sat around a table, and discussed the book. Sometimes, but only very rarely, the instructor outlined the major schools of thought or major themes on a particular time period. Mostly, it was a free-for-all discussion. Assignments tended to be two papers, at most, due at the middle then the end of the semester. Sometimes you had a class presentation, but mostly not. There were no tests, no "homework," no weekly assignments beyond the reading (which many students found they could forego if they knew enough about the subject and were good bullshitters, but that's another story for another time).

In library school, we returned to the undergraduate model of education. We, the students, sat in the usual desks facing the board arrangement while the teacher stood behind a podium or sat at a desk and lectured to us. Discussions were not free-for-alls but followed the style of raising your hand to answer questions. In other words, despite being in graduate school for nigh on to ten years, until I went to library school, I had not been in a traditional classroom setting as a student since the 1980s. Library school put me back in the position of being the student. I may have learned nothing else of value in library school, but I did learn empathy for the students and was reminded of their expectations from their education and the courses that they take. Of course, this empathy would mean nothing unless put into use. So, a return to teaching, even in a non-traditional environment would allow me to apply one of the few lessons learned in that little foray of humiliation.

Now, also, I am a "'blogger." Nasty as that sounds, I'd like to "'blog" about this experience from time to time. I know educators occasionally hit on this site, and I would hope that they might see fit to give their perspectives on the matter. The same goes for people who were students at any point in the past or in the present. Don't worry; I intend to protect my students' privacy because they did not ask for a 'blogging teacher. My main goal is the exploration of the value of this method of education. I'll see where it goes from there.

More Bitching and Moaning from the Land of Local History

Sometimes my paranoia intersects with someone else's incompetence leaving me quite confused.

My little local history book will contain many a photograph, which is part of the whole marketing point of the book since the audience likes pretty pictures (and I'm a huge sucker for them myself, this being the most fun part of the research). Also, the inclusion of images helps the local repositories show off their collections. Well, I worked at a repository that had the two best and largest collections from two of the earliest photographers in the town. Anyone who has seen a historic image from the town has probably been looking at an image from one of these two collections. They document not only the history of the town, but amateur and professional photography during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In any case, I put in a substantial order for 30 of these images way back at the end of September. The woman in charge of issuing the permission for using these images was oh, so helpful, responding immediately and telling me that, as an employee, I would receive the employee discount. The employee discount was $20 per image (which, incidentally, was the regular rate for pretty much every other repository in the region, but I digress). Then, she came back and said that, no, I would have to pay the full rate of $40 per image. She wasn't too clear on why they had changed their minds. Well, eventually I got another job elsewhere and the point became moot.

October passed, then November. I moved across the country, got an extension on my deadline, and contacted her again in December to see if they had finished my order, then again in January. They had not even begun to compile it on either occasion. The offices were moving around, she explained, so they had not had time to pull together the licenses and compile the images. I smelled the rank stink of bullshit on that, but let it slide because I had the deadline extension and because in her next e-mail she said that they had changed their mind and were going to give me the $20 rate. She also waved the possibility of a further discount if I would allow them to include text from their publicity department in my text. As lovely as the word "discount" sounds to my broke little ears, that arrangement just did not sit well with me ethically, so I declined.

Here it is March, roughly six months after my initial request, and I receive a note from my publisher wanting the images as soon as possible. So, I contacted the woman at the repository again. Would you believe that they had not yet begun the work to get the images together? No excuses, they just had not done it. She finally put the work order in for the scans today. A much smaller repository, run entirely on volunteers, processed a similar request for more images in a week.

I am quite irked by the way this repository has treated me. I never saw them treat any other researcher this callously, even if that researcher were behaving like an ass (and we had one or two that acted like the entire staff was their personal team of research assistants). They certainly did not ignore researchers who were actually publishing something because part of their grant applications and information for donors included statistics on the number of publications that cited the repository. Citations indicated that the repository was useful to researchers and its existence, therefore, justified and worthy of funding.

You would think that I would have an "in" having worked there and being personally acquainted with the people involved. Then, again, maybe their personal acquaintance with me is why they are giving me this runaround! That's where my paranoia comes in. "They hate me," I think. "They are out to sabotage my project!" At the same time, their attitude reminds me of part of the reason that I was unhappy there. The "corporate culture" at the place allowed certain people expertise on a subject and those people behaved as if the history itself were a product that the museum owned. So, maybe they don't have something personal against me, they are just self-important and using that self-importance to cover the fact that they were behaving incompetently.

Meanwhile, in about a month, I allegedly should have a cd with the images, and can send them on to the publisher with their captions. The final product will be lovely, I am certain, and will, with any luck and skill, be exactly the book that I wanted to read six years ago when I first visited the town. The thing might even be in my hands by the time of my thirty-tenth birthday this summer. The thing itself should make the Great Wallow of Self-Pity a much happier occasion.