Online classes require more writing. That's all there is to it. The students can only communicate with me through writing, which means that some of the interaction of the classroom that ensures that learning is happening has to go into writing. Writing takes more effort, both on the part of the students doing the writing, and on the part of me in creating the assignments, drawing up the grading criteria and doing the actual the grading. This is actually the greatest strength of the format.
Here are some of the problems inherent in the format.
First, being online, the classroom has no seats. Physically, the classroom size can expand almost infinitely. This is a very bad thing in a world in which the school budget was cut by $14.5 million (on top of a $12 million reduction) and enrollments are increasing. The higher level administration wants to expand class sizes in general, while the number of classes available for students shrinks. They want to "encourage" us to sign students in to our classes that are already full. For classes that are writing-intensive, this means a natural reduction in attention devoted to student assignments.
The higher level administration keeps sending down pronouncements that "our dedication to our students will continue" and "our dedication to quality education will continue" and "we shall all do our duties with a smile" becomes ever more ridiculous in the face of this. How many hours are in a day? How many days in a week? How much time can reasonably be devoted to each student on each assignment before the quality deteriorates, even with the most dedicated teacher?
Second, online classes require technology that often goes awry. This technology is also rather clunky. Since the platform is hosted by a vendor -- or however you phrase it -- then the help desk is located elsewhere. "Help" is often a misnomer. The student can't go over to a site on campus, pull up their account and say, "look: here's what's happening. What's going wrong?" That means that I have to troubleshoot tech problems about which I have absolutely no knowledge. That means that I often have to find alternative ways for the students having the tech problem to complete the assignment. That means even more work, an untold number of make-up types of assignments, and a total mess. This also causes me to question the fairness of these solutions in regard to the other students.
Third, most students take an online class for a reason: no time in the rest of their lives to physically sit in a classroom. They have full-time jobs and families. They sometimes take a full-time load of classes, too. They certainly take at least one more course. This is fundamentally ridiculous. I don't think that they understand that online classes will, in fact, be more work than a regular class. I don't think that they understand that, if they don't have time in their schedule to attend even evening classes, then they might not have the time in their schedule to devote to any class. As my chair asked, "do they sit down with a schedule and say, 'oh, here is an hour between mid-night and 1 am! I'll do my schoolwork then'?"
I get why they do this. Suffering for two years under this strain beats suffering under it for longer. Two years is ultimately cheaper than longer when you factor in charges other than tuition. Two years will also get you out before tuition goes up any higher, too.
Except now I'm getting a push-back. Two students have complained to me that the class requires too much work.* They told me that they have other classes and full-time jobs and that keeping up with my class is too much work. I've had this complaint one or two times before, phrased in the same way. One student told me that what I require is more in keeping with a 4 credit course, not a 3 credit course.
Part of me wants to turn into a drill sergeant and bark, "suck it up, maggots! Gut-check time! This is college, not a day at the beach!" After all, they knew what they were getting into from the start.
Part of me wonders what the other classes they are taking -- online, too -- require from them. Are they humanities courses? Are they math courses? Science courses? Courses in which the terms of evaluation are different from a history course? I know it can't be English! Maybe they are taking English, and think that is quite enough writing for one semester. This is history, after all! Just facts! Why write?
Part of me understands what they are going through because I've been in their shoes and because I am smothering under the weight of the grading. Part of me understands because I see it getting worse and am tempted to cut back on my assignments. Wouldn't we all be happy if there was less work for all of us? Yet, if I cut back, how do I know that they learned what they had to learn? Giving them multiple choice quizzes, a mid-term and a final will not do. This is, after all, college. This is community college, too, in which many students need work on their writing and analytical skills. They need lots of room to fail, and try again, and fail again if necessary, and then try again until they do get it right -- all within a semester.
My failure rates are higher in the online classes, mostly because many just stop trying part way through the semester. Of those who stick around, the average grades are lower. I can't decide if this is a failure on my part, or if I'm like that fired LSU professor who had high standards for her students. I think of these students going on to a four-year institution and want them to be prepared for what they will find there. I don't want professors there thinking, "jeez, these community college students are woefully unable to survive here." I want their college degrees to mean something. This matters, dammit!
Yet, I do want them to succeed. With 2 online classes for a total of 50 online students, I don't feel as if I have the energy or the time to even assess what they need to succeed. I was a much better online teacher when I had only one online class with 15 students.
At the moment, I can't see my way through to a solution because I'm buried in grading (in fact, I feel guilty for taking the time away from grading to write these thoughts down). I can see that things are only going to get worse -- and maybe worse than worse. No matter how many times the higher-level administration says, "we will remain firmly committed to quality teaching," I don't see how there cannot be some erosion. As someone fairly highly placed said the other day, these budget cuts are a direct threat to the college's mission. What I'm describing are some of the tiny ways that will happen.
*For the record, over the semester, I have them complete a multiple choice quiz for each chapter of the text (it's a way to make them read the text since every task must have some sort of immediate gratification component -- a post for another time), four unit assignments that are essentially essays in which they should tie together information from 2-3 chapters (much like on an exam), a paper on a visit to a museum, and a running bibliography with five sources annotated. The bibliography assignment is new this semester and probably a bit on the too much side. I may just have them do only the annotated part next time. Still, the purpose is to get them to use the freaking library and databases. Google is forbidden.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Now the Ignorant Protest Teh Gayz, OMG!!!
Thank you for your comments to my last post. I haven't heard from that student, but in response to an announcement about a showing of a film about Bayard Rustin, I received an e-mail that -- well, I have to quote: "Homosexualiity [sic] and transgenderism are psychological disorders that are preventable and treatable. They are not like race." That was followed by a few links to "cure the gays" websites, then concluded with "The fraud of gay-egalitarianism will go down as a bleak chapter in American, and Western, history. The truth will prevail."
This was not from a school e-mail account, so I don't know if it was from a student. I'm not going to respond because all that I can think of to say is something along the lines of "homosexuality is no longer considered a mental illness," "you are entitled to your opinion, some of us prefer the truth," "yes, the truth will prevail," and "isn't it special that some people don't want civil rights, they just want inclusion into privilege so that they can indulge their own prejudices and ignorance."
It's really that last one that pisses me off the most. It's a very selfish conception of justice that is, again, based only on extension of privilege. I get boiling angry at the hypocrisy and the desire to remain ignorant and unsympathetic, indeed the refusal to consider their participation in oppression as the oppressor.
I'm going to have to keep my cool today when I show the film, just in case someone shows up to make such idiotic comments. My standard response when confronted with such opinions is to say, "let's say that homosexuality is a choice. So what? Does that mean that a person should be barred from their rights for that choice? Don't Americans value the ability to make choices?" Or "let's say that homosexuality is a mental illness. So what? Are you saying that people who have mental illnesses should be barred from civil rights? And since mental illness is considered a disability, are you saying that the disabled should not have rights?" Not that I like those terms of debate, but that has, on an occasion or two, shut the person up because they really haven't thought beyond their own disgust at "what THEY do in bed" (usually focused at gay men, and why is it always prurient? Do they go around thinking about what straight people do in bed?). That, or they just go back to the party line, at which point you know that they aren't interested in debate.
At least this person used the proper form for correspondence and addressed me as "Professor."
I wonder if these two correspondents would be happy with a film entitled, "People: Everything You Need to Know About All of Them, Everywhere, at Any Time -- Except the Gays"?
This was not from a school e-mail account, so I don't know if it was from a student. I'm not going to respond because all that I can think of to say is something along the lines of "homosexuality is no longer considered a mental illness," "you are entitled to your opinion, some of us prefer the truth," "yes, the truth will prevail," and "isn't it special that some people don't want civil rights, they just want inclusion into privilege so that they can indulge their own prejudices and ignorance."
It's really that last one that pisses me off the most. It's a very selfish conception of justice that is, again, based only on extension of privilege. I get boiling angry at the hypocrisy and the desire to remain ignorant and unsympathetic, indeed the refusal to consider their participation in oppression as the oppressor.
I'm going to have to keep my cool today when I show the film, just in case someone shows up to make such idiotic comments. My standard response when confronted with such opinions is to say, "let's say that homosexuality is a choice. So what? Does that mean that a person should be barred from their rights for that choice? Don't Americans value the ability to make choices?" Or "let's say that homosexuality is a mental illness. So what? Are you saying that people who have mental illnesses should be barred from civil rights? And since mental illness is considered a disability, are you saying that the disabled should not have rights?" Not that I like those terms of debate, but that has, on an occasion or two, shut the person up because they really haven't thought beyond their own disgust at "what THEY do in bed" (usually focused at gay men, and why is it always prurient? Do they go around thinking about what straight people do in bed?). That, or they just go back to the party line, at which point you know that they aren't interested in debate.
At least this person used the proper form for correspondence and addressed me as "Professor."
I wonder if these two correspondents would be happy with a film entitled, "People: Everything You Need to Know About All of Them, Everywhere, at Any Time -- Except the Gays"?
Sunday, April 18, 2010
An A$$ or Just Frustrated By Their Own Ignorance?
Someone -- I'm presuming the person was a student since the e-mail was from a college account and the address followed those of students and not faculty or staff and the writer included neither salutation nor closing -- this person just wrote me two e-mails complaining (in improper grammar and with multiple questions marks and exclamation points) about some of the programs that I am putting on at work. These complaints were along the lines of "Why aren't White People included????" "Why just THOSE women??? Why not ALL Women????" The person closed with something to the effect of "sorry, but I just don't understand all of the segregation at this school!!!!"
????!!!!.....*
I thought about hitting delete, but instead decided to respond and educate the writer on proper correspondence, history and privilege. I am, after all, an educator. Plus, sometimes I think that treating seemingly idiotic rhetorical attacks like this as serious might (one in a thousand times) get someone to pause and re-think. Sometimes, someone might sound like an ass when they are just frustrated by their own ignorance.
Here is my response:
---------------------------
To Whom It May Concern,
First, it is polite and professional when writing to people whom you do not know to open your e-mail messages with a salutation, to use a closing that identifies who the writer is, particularly when that is not clear from the e-mail address, and to use proper grammar and punctuation.
Second, segregation was a legal arrangement that was outlawed with the Civil Rights act of 1964. Under segregation, certain groups of people -- specifically African Americans, but also Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, and Native Americans -- were barred from using the same public facilities used by other groups of people -- specifically white or Anglo-Americans. No one has been barred from any event based on race, gender, sexuality, or any other reason.
Third, the world, the United States, [this city], and [this college] include many different groups of people, with different ideas, cultures, histories, and experiences. Part of the role of colleges is to expose and educate students and the community about these various experiences. That is the purpose of these events: to educate students about wide variety of people, experiences, and lives that might be different from their own and about which they might know very little.
Fourth, if you are honestly interested in the questions that you raise, perhaps you might be interested in taking courses or reading about social theory, particularly in the field of sociology. You might start with this exercise called "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (http://www.case.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf), which has been adapted to expose different types of invisible privilege, such as with "The Black Male Privileges Checklist" (http://jewelwoods.com/node/9), and "The Daily Effects of Straight Privilege" (http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~hyrax/personal/files/student_res/straightprivilege.htm).**
Thank you for your interest, and please know that you are welcome at all events,
Prof. Bluestocking.
---------------------
I suppose if I got more missives like this one, I would not respond and would not be so generous in giving the benefit of the doubt that they aren't just being an overly-privileged ass. I'm fortunate -- privileged -- that I don't get more of these letters since most people either don't care about the events or are glad to hear more about anything.*** Otherwise, all responses have been favorable.
Still, there is always someone who thinks that, if someone else out there is getting attention, if someone else out there is being celebrated, if someone else out there gets one tiny little bit of anything, then that means that it -- whatever "it" is -- is being taken from them. They still have a bit to learn from their education. Sometimes I wonder if some people are ineducable because they are not frustrated by their own ignorance, but wallow in it.
*Seriously, I'm not using these punctuation marks as a euphemism for profanity. I'm poking fun of the e-mail's use of multiple punctuation marks. Every punctuation mark was repeated several times in a row, just like this....???? !!!
**These were the only ones that I had on hand or could find in a two-second Google search. Any other suggestions are welcome because I want to use them in an exercise on multiple identities and privilege in my Women's Studies class in the fall.
***The only other complaint about these events that I have received has been one from a student complaining that the announcements about the events dropped into their e-mail box at 2 am and that made their cellphone beep and they kept their cellphone by their bed in case of emergency and could I please go to sleep and quit bothering them? (I have no control over when the announcements arrive in the in boxes -- I send them out in the morning and they are vetted by the IT department)
????!!!!.....*
I thought about hitting delete, but instead decided to respond and educate the writer on proper correspondence, history and privilege. I am, after all, an educator. Plus, sometimes I think that treating seemingly idiotic rhetorical attacks like this as serious might (one in a thousand times) get someone to pause and re-think. Sometimes, someone might sound like an ass when they are just frustrated by their own ignorance.
Here is my response:
---------------------------
To Whom It May Concern,
First, it is polite and professional when writing to people whom you do not know to open your e-mail messages with a salutation, to use a closing that identifies who the writer is, particularly when that is not clear from the e-mail address, and to use proper grammar and punctuation.
Second, segregation was a legal arrangement that was outlawed with the Civil Rights act of 1964. Under segregation, certain groups of people -- specifically African Americans, but also Mexican Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, and Native Americans -- were barred from using the same public facilities used by other groups of people -- specifically white or Anglo-Americans. No one has been barred from any event based on race, gender, sexuality, or any other reason.
Third, the world, the United States, [this city], and [this college] include many different groups of people, with different ideas, cultures, histories, and experiences. Part of the role of colleges is to expose and educate students and the community about these various experiences. That is the purpose of these events: to educate students about wide variety of people, experiences, and lives that might be different from their own and about which they might know very little.
Fourth, if you are honestly interested in the questions that you raise, perhaps you might be interested in taking courses or reading about social theory, particularly in the field of sociology. You might start with this exercise called "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (http://www.case.edu/president/aaction/UnpackingTheKnapsack.pdf), which has been adapted to expose different types of invisible privilege, such as with "The Black Male Privileges Checklist" (http://jewelwoods.com/node/9), and "The Daily Effects of Straight Privilege" (http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~hyrax/personal/files/student_res/straightprivilege.htm).**
Thank you for your interest, and please know that you are welcome at all events,
Prof. Bluestocking.
---------------------
I suppose if I got more missives like this one, I would not respond and would not be so generous in giving the benefit of the doubt that they aren't just being an overly-privileged ass. I'm fortunate -- privileged -- that I don't get more of these letters since most people either don't care about the events or are glad to hear more about anything.*** Otherwise, all responses have been favorable.
Still, there is always someone who thinks that, if someone else out there is getting attention, if someone else out there is being celebrated, if someone else out there gets one tiny little bit of anything, then that means that it -- whatever "it" is -- is being taken from them. They still have a bit to learn from their education. Sometimes I wonder if some people are ineducable because they are not frustrated by their own ignorance, but wallow in it.
Anyway, in light of my history (that's a bit of sarcasm there), was I too bitchy in my response? I made sure to include my chair in the response, since he was copied on one of the !!!!????..... missives.
*Seriously, I'm not using these punctuation marks as a euphemism for profanity. I'm poking fun of the e-mail's use of multiple punctuation marks. Every punctuation mark was repeated several times in a row, just like this....???? !!!
**These were the only ones that I had on hand or could find in a two-second Google search. Any other suggestions are welcome because I want to use them in an exercise on multiple identities and privilege in my Women's Studies class in the fall.
***The only other complaint about these events that I have received has been one from a student complaining that the announcements about the events dropped into their e-mail box at 2 am and that made their cellphone beep and they kept their cellphone by their bed in case of emergency and could I please go to sleep and quit bothering them? (I have no control over when the announcements arrive in the in boxes -- I send them out in the morning and they are vetted by the IT department)
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Rules of Engagement
In figuring out my perverse belief system about love, I'm also figuring out how that belief system has affected my work. You see, when I write of love, I'm not just writing of personal love. That is, I'm not just writing of the sad and warped way that my parents taught me about familial love, and I'm not just writing of the ways that I took that sad and warped understanding of love into a the world and got myself into some ultimately abusive romantic or sexual liaisons. I am also writing of the way that my sad and warped understanding of love made me wholly suspicious and even hostile to all human interaction. The suspicion and hostility affected my ability to have or to maintain friendships (a topic for another time), my ability to be a good teacher (also a topic for another time), and my ability to develop as a historian. That suspicion and hostility also bled me dry of any passion for my work.
The beginning of this story eludes me. Do I start with my need to find better parents, better people to help me into adulthood, to help me realize my own potential? Perhaps. If you start a biography or an autobiography, you start at the beginning, and this is the beginning of that professional autobiography. That would take me to my first adviser, who not only sexually harassed me, but also gave me some criminally bad advice.
I'm not talking about the kind of advice like, "no, no, the job market is fine, please do go to grad school in the humanities." I'm talking about, "yeah, if you want to study this subject you should stay right here with me. I'm the best, therefore this school is the best. So what if it isn't prestigious. So what if I know nothing -- in fact disdain -- the particular subject in which you are interested. So what if you would be better served going to these east coast schools and studying with these professors who do that sort of work. No, stay right here with me." I'm talking about, "take classes only from me and from the people whom I bully. Don't listen to anyone else, don't ask for anyone else's advice. Just do what I say. Besides, everyone else here is an idiot, professors and students alike; and let me tell you all sorts of dirty details about their personal life. And don't piss me off by talking to any of them, either, because then I will make sure that you are kicked out of the program." That sort of advice, which I was too naive to know was so horrible and, when I figured it out within a year, was too scared and in no position to challenge.
That relationship was one of those, "I'll do everything you say if you will put up with me" relationships. Sadly, I hated myself so much that I thought that, because he thought I was talented and smart, then I must be talented and smart. Then, I figured out his game. He did not think I was talented and smart. He thought that I was a flake and malleable and might serve as a good spy in his campaign of paranoia against the graduate students and junior faculty. Extricating myself from that professional relationship was necessary to my life, but I ended up back where I started -- maybe worse -- feeling worthless and now like a total idiot for not being more courageous and mature.
I look back now and I see that I did lack a significant amount of maturity. I'm still ashamed of it. At a time when people are well into pursuit of their careers, married, having children, generally becoming adults, I more resembled a teenager. I can only forgive myself for being so childlike because I now realize that nothing in my life up to that point had taught me how to be a mature adult. Most of the adults around me while I grew up -- even in my delayed state of growing up -- were invested in me being a child and rewarded me for being a child. They rewarded me by not beating me, by not belittling me, by not launching a nuclear assault on these early stages of my career. So, I grew to mistrust these adults, the ones in parental or mentor roles, the ones in roles that guide young people toward being adults and toward being successful professional adults. I grew to mistrust advisers. In graduate school, that is pretty much the kiss of death.
Eventually, I did find a good advisor, but of course I did not trust him and therefore did not turn to him for much other than to sign off on my dissertation and to write the occasional recommendation. I did not learn how to act like a professional historian from him, despite the fact that he was willing to teach me without any of the conditions that prior adults had imposed. I mostly hid from him. Only now, a decade later, am I starting to foster the sort of professional relationship that I should have back then. Of course, only now, a decade later, have I discovered that maturity that I should have had back then.
Looking back, I also see something else that I was doing wrong. Because of that sad and warped love that I had learned at home, I went in search of alternate parents and would glom onto anyone who might provide some wisp of hope of giving me what I craved. That's not the way to approach an advising relationship. That sets you up for some huge disappointments regardless of the person on whom you glom. Of course, if you are searching for something emotional from this relationship, that makes you prey to scum like my first adviser, and, indeed, the sociopath that I dated at the time -- and his pathologically lying successor.
As I write this, I also see that the convergence of that bad advisor and dating those two sociopaths, both of whom were fellow graduate students (ooh, what a bad bad bad idea!) all occurring at the beginning of graduate school worked together. After these first two or three years of graduate school, I no longer trusted faculty and I no longer trusted other graduate students. I also thought of myself as a complete and utter floundering idiot who did not deserve to be in even this low-grade program.
Thinking yourself unworthy and stupid doesn't help much in your friendships with colleagues. When I did start to make friends of good fellow graduate students, I didn't fully trust them because I was always sure that they were laughing behind my back, saying all of the things that the gremlins said in my head, "she's an idiot! How do they keep her around? She's not that smart. She'll drop out. She'll be kicked out. Her life is a shambles. What will be come of her?" This meant that I never really formed strong attachments to friends, and never put too much effort into holding on to them. I let them put in the effort, but I didn't.
I think I'm getting PTSD tremors just remembering this. At least I would, if it didn't seem so remote, now, like something that happened in one of those movies that seem to affect you years after you've seen it.
Anyway, there were three components to being successful in graduate school and as a historian that I did not foster: a functioning professional relationship with advisers, a functioning professional relationship with colleagues and friends, and my own confidence as a scholar.
In other words, I was fucked. This is why I say I don't deserve to be where I am. I am here by pure luck and some desperate, gut-level will to survive that surprised even myself.
Surviving graduate school became just that: surviving. Surviving is quite often simply functioning, putting your body into motion to do what you have to do to get from beginning to end, and not being sure what might be on the other side of the end. In fact, the other side of "end" is probably pretty crappy, too, so you have to fight your own ambivalence about getting to that end. Still, you persevere because you don't know what the hell else to do; and in surviving, you lose passion. Whatever motivated you to start on this path, whatever curiosity drove you, disappears. You become a machine.
Worse, you feel yourself a failure as a machine because, if you really did become a machine, you wouldn't feel so miserable. You wouldn't feel at all. You would probably be more focused and successful in driving forward, too. You also wouldn't end up overcoming your ambivalence about the "end" by realizing that you would be more miserable if you didn't get to the "end" than anything on the other side of the "end" could possibly be.
On the other side of the end, you actually find more of the same. Not the exact same. The details, the setting, the people from whom you are disengaged, the work that you plod through, differ; but the sense of being a ghost in your own life, of feeling as if you could slide off of the world, stays. The sense of surviving rather than engagement stays, and you often wonder why you bother to survive at all. You feel bleak.
What does all of this have to do with love? Love, in it's broadest sense, is creative engagement, an engagement that drives you forward and makes everyone involved better. As a child you engage with your parents, as a parent you engage with your child, you engage with your advisers, your mentors, your colleagues, your friends, your lovers, your subject. I'm not sure what you would call some of the engagements that I have had, but most were not creative and most were not love. They were destructive, caused me to disengage, and caused me to see any further engagement as not really worth the effort.
I'm starting to put all of these pieces together. My rules of engagement, so ingrained that I don't even notice them -- like my heart beating -- have kept me from actually engaging and have kept me from being a better historian.
That professional piece of love, of engagement, started to crystallize last weekend when I saw how a functioning professional relationship with our adviser helped one of my old grad school colleagues be a good historian. Heck, I saw how a functioning professional relationship with an adviser worked. Also, when I found myself in conversation with that adviser and realized that I wasn't hiding from him in any way. I mean that I wasn't afraid of appearing stupid or lacking knowledge, I was talking with him as a junior colleague would to a senior colleague. I also felt that when Prof. Famous addressed me in the same way.
I've been learning this also through this process of writing my article and my book proposal. First, seeing people respond to my work as if it is actually worth something. Second, realizing that their feedback and interaction with them not only helps me figure out what I do think on the subject, but also that I enjoy that interaction. I feel a sense of support rather than a sense of criticism. I feel myself trying to be better rather than hiding because I am not. I feel myself trust, which is so bizarre.
I've been learning this also through the way that I find myself re-engaging with my work, with the research, and most importantly with the puzzle of understanding what this man's life was about and, perhaps more, what these women's lives were about. Them more than him, definitely. This, in fact, is driving everything else. This is why I wanted to be a historian (even more than as an alternative to being a frustrated novelist): to somehow inhabit an alien world and understand how it operated; to find that understanding by looking at an individual life or set of individual lives and figure out how they negotiated through that world; and to write that story. That, I'm remembering, was the reason I went into that horrible professor's office in the first place to ask him advice on graduate schools. That, I know, is why I am still (or back) on this path. That has made a lot of decisions very clear in the past few months.
This is where I should have been 15 or 20 years ago -- hell, 42 1/2 years ago! -- but I had this really bad idea about people and about myself and that slowed me down. I'm still slow. Excruciatingly slow.
If you ever meet me in person, or even maybe you've figured this out online, you now know why I'm a little off, a little odd, a little inattentive, a little remote, and maybe even come off as a little weak or lightweight or, still, immature. I'm learning. Gradually, I'm learning.
The beginning of this story eludes me. Do I start with my need to find better parents, better people to help me into adulthood, to help me realize my own potential? Perhaps. If you start a biography or an autobiography, you start at the beginning, and this is the beginning of that professional autobiography. That would take me to my first adviser, who not only sexually harassed me, but also gave me some criminally bad advice.
I'm not talking about the kind of advice like, "no, no, the job market is fine, please do go to grad school in the humanities." I'm talking about, "yeah, if you want to study this subject you should stay right here with me. I'm the best, therefore this school is the best. So what if it isn't prestigious. So what if I know nothing -- in fact disdain -- the particular subject in which you are interested. So what if you would be better served going to these east coast schools and studying with these professors who do that sort of work. No, stay right here with me." I'm talking about, "take classes only from me and from the people whom I bully. Don't listen to anyone else, don't ask for anyone else's advice. Just do what I say. Besides, everyone else here is an idiot, professors and students alike; and let me tell you all sorts of dirty details about their personal life. And don't piss me off by talking to any of them, either, because then I will make sure that you are kicked out of the program." That sort of advice, which I was too naive to know was so horrible and, when I figured it out within a year, was too scared and in no position to challenge.
That relationship was one of those, "I'll do everything you say if you will put up with me" relationships. Sadly, I hated myself so much that I thought that, because he thought I was talented and smart, then I must be talented and smart. Then, I figured out his game. He did not think I was talented and smart. He thought that I was a flake and malleable and might serve as a good spy in his campaign of paranoia against the graduate students and junior faculty. Extricating myself from that professional relationship was necessary to my life, but I ended up back where I started -- maybe worse -- feeling worthless and now like a total idiot for not being more courageous and mature.
I look back now and I see that I did lack a significant amount of maturity. I'm still ashamed of it. At a time when people are well into pursuit of their careers, married, having children, generally becoming adults, I more resembled a teenager. I can only forgive myself for being so childlike because I now realize that nothing in my life up to that point had taught me how to be a mature adult. Most of the adults around me while I grew up -- even in my delayed state of growing up -- were invested in me being a child and rewarded me for being a child. They rewarded me by not beating me, by not belittling me, by not launching a nuclear assault on these early stages of my career. So, I grew to mistrust these adults, the ones in parental or mentor roles, the ones in roles that guide young people toward being adults and toward being successful professional adults. I grew to mistrust advisers. In graduate school, that is pretty much the kiss of death.
Eventually, I did find a good advisor, but of course I did not trust him and therefore did not turn to him for much other than to sign off on my dissertation and to write the occasional recommendation. I did not learn how to act like a professional historian from him, despite the fact that he was willing to teach me without any of the conditions that prior adults had imposed. I mostly hid from him. Only now, a decade later, am I starting to foster the sort of professional relationship that I should have back then. Of course, only now, a decade later, have I discovered that maturity that I should have had back then.
Looking back, I also see something else that I was doing wrong. Because of that sad and warped love that I had learned at home, I went in search of alternate parents and would glom onto anyone who might provide some wisp of hope of giving me what I craved. That's not the way to approach an advising relationship. That sets you up for some huge disappointments regardless of the person on whom you glom. Of course, if you are searching for something emotional from this relationship, that makes you prey to scum like my first adviser, and, indeed, the sociopath that I dated at the time -- and his pathologically lying successor.
As I write this, I also see that the convergence of that bad advisor and dating those two sociopaths, both of whom were fellow graduate students (ooh, what a bad bad bad idea!) all occurring at the beginning of graduate school worked together. After these first two or three years of graduate school, I no longer trusted faculty and I no longer trusted other graduate students. I also thought of myself as a complete and utter floundering idiot who did not deserve to be in even this low-grade program.
Thinking yourself unworthy and stupid doesn't help much in your friendships with colleagues. When I did start to make friends of good fellow graduate students, I didn't fully trust them because I was always sure that they were laughing behind my back, saying all of the things that the gremlins said in my head, "she's an idiot! How do they keep her around? She's not that smart. She'll drop out. She'll be kicked out. Her life is a shambles. What will be come of her?" This meant that I never really formed strong attachments to friends, and never put too much effort into holding on to them. I let them put in the effort, but I didn't.
I think I'm getting PTSD tremors just remembering this. At least I would, if it didn't seem so remote, now, like something that happened in one of those movies that seem to affect you years after you've seen it.
Anyway, there were three components to being successful in graduate school and as a historian that I did not foster: a functioning professional relationship with advisers, a functioning professional relationship with colleagues and friends, and my own confidence as a scholar.
In other words, I was fucked. This is why I say I don't deserve to be where I am. I am here by pure luck and some desperate, gut-level will to survive that surprised even myself.
Surviving graduate school became just that: surviving. Surviving is quite often simply functioning, putting your body into motion to do what you have to do to get from beginning to end, and not being sure what might be on the other side of the end. In fact, the other side of "end" is probably pretty crappy, too, so you have to fight your own ambivalence about getting to that end. Still, you persevere because you don't know what the hell else to do; and in surviving, you lose passion. Whatever motivated you to start on this path, whatever curiosity drove you, disappears. You become a machine.
Worse, you feel yourself a failure as a machine because, if you really did become a machine, you wouldn't feel so miserable. You wouldn't feel at all. You would probably be more focused and successful in driving forward, too. You also wouldn't end up overcoming your ambivalence about the "end" by realizing that you would be more miserable if you didn't get to the "end" than anything on the other side of the "end" could possibly be.
On the other side of the end, you actually find more of the same. Not the exact same. The details, the setting, the people from whom you are disengaged, the work that you plod through, differ; but the sense of being a ghost in your own life, of feeling as if you could slide off of the world, stays. The sense of surviving rather than engagement stays, and you often wonder why you bother to survive at all. You feel bleak.
What does all of this have to do with love? Love, in it's broadest sense, is creative engagement, an engagement that drives you forward and makes everyone involved better. As a child you engage with your parents, as a parent you engage with your child, you engage with your advisers, your mentors, your colleagues, your friends, your lovers, your subject. I'm not sure what you would call some of the engagements that I have had, but most were not creative and most were not love. They were destructive, caused me to disengage, and caused me to see any further engagement as not really worth the effort.
I'm starting to put all of these pieces together. My rules of engagement, so ingrained that I don't even notice them -- like my heart beating -- have kept me from actually engaging and have kept me from being a better historian.
That professional piece of love, of engagement, started to crystallize last weekend when I saw how a functioning professional relationship with our adviser helped one of my old grad school colleagues be a good historian. Heck, I saw how a functioning professional relationship with an adviser worked. Also, when I found myself in conversation with that adviser and realized that I wasn't hiding from him in any way. I mean that I wasn't afraid of appearing stupid or lacking knowledge, I was talking with him as a junior colleague would to a senior colleague. I also felt that when Prof. Famous addressed me in the same way.
I've been learning this also through this process of writing my article and my book proposal. First, seeing people respond to my work as if it is actually worth something. Second, realizing that their feedback and interaction with them not only helps me figure out what I do think on the subject, but also that I enjoy that interaction. I feel a sense of support rather than a sense of criticism. I feel myself trying to be better rather than hiding because I am not. I feel myself trust, which is so bizarre.
I've been learning this also through the way that I find myself re-engaging with my work, with the research, and most importantly with the puzzle of understanding what this man's life was about and, perhaps more, what these women's lives were about. Them more than him, definitely. This, in fact, is driving everything else. This is why I wanted to be a historian (even more than as an alternative to being a frustrated novelist): to somehow inhabit an alien world and understand how it operated; to find that understanding by looking at an individual life or set of individual lives and figure out how they negotiated through that world; and to write that story. That, I'm remembering, was the reason I went into that horrible professor's office in the first place to ask him advice on graduate schools. That, I know, is why I am still (or back) on this path. That has made a lot of decisions very clear in the past few months.
This is where I should have been 15 or 20 years ago -- hell, 42 1/2 years ago! -- but I had this really bad idea about people and about myself and that slowed me down. I'm still slow. Excruciatingly slow.
If you ever meet me in person, or even maybe you've figured this out online, you now know why I'm a little off, a little odd, a little inattentive, a little remote, and maybe even come off as a little weak or lightweight or, still, immature. I'm learning. Gradually, I'm learning.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Real Life That I Should Have Been Living All Along.
The OAH conference was this past week nearby. I, of course, have nothing deep to report about it because that's not what I do.
What I do do is go on at length about personal experience and epiphanies.
I spent time with old grad school friends, all of whom are doing well. I talked with my old advisor about my Douglass and women project, and Prof. Famous was impressed by my article. Seriously, for just a brief moment there he appeared to be schmoozing me rather than me schmoozing him. Of course, I realized that, at that point, we had exited a situation in which schmoozing was an option and in which I was kinda sorta, just a little bit, maybe junior colleague in the profession.
Then, some really, amazing, cool events were set into motion and I don't want to say anything specific about them until they actually do start to happen because I might jinx it all -- or look like a fool. In any case, I had a moment right after they began.
As I'm sure that anyone can figure out simply by reading a few posts in this blog, I've been through a lot of abuse. I've sold myself very short. I've loathed myself constantly since about age 10. I've been my own worst enemy. I've had difficulty doing just the simplest, most basic activities of life that come so naturally to other people. Yet, within all of that, there have been moments in which I had these flashes, as if waking from a dream, that I am, in that second, living my real life. That, in that second, I have actually found the life that I was always supposed to be living. I had one of those moments right as I realized that these really, amazing, cool events were grinding into motion.
I also realized that I really really really wanted this to happen. Most of my life, I have been afraid to want things, or to want them too much because, in the magical thinking under which I operated, wanting something meant that you were likely not going to get it. In fact, since magic governed this thinking, wanting something pretty much guaranteed that you weren't going to get it. To want anything, especially to want badly, meant living life in a state of heightened disappointment. Life itself was disappointment, so why invite more by wanting more?
That is one of the rules to selling yourself short: don't want, so don't pursue, so don't be disappointed. Just wallow in misery and self-pity, hating the world, and looking forward to the day that you will mercifully die.
Pathetic. Yet, that was one of those beliefs, much like the abusive bargain of love, according to which my life operated without me really being aware of the process.
After the really amazing, cool events began to move, I started to realize just how much I desperately wanted these events to happen. I looked straight at it. A few weeks ago, they could have started in another way, but that attempt was frustrated. I was hurt, but I realized that I was going to go after this thing one way or another. I wasn't going to get it that way, but I might get it in a different way. Now, the different way might materialize; and I find myself thinking that, even if this doesn't happen this way, then it will happen in another way or another way or another way. In other words, I told myself, "want this thing! Want it badly and go after it with your whole being! Don't let even yourself get in your own damn way!"
That thought, that I could let myself want something really badly, gave me courage rather than the overwhelming terror of disappointment. The terror says, "don't invest yourself too much." The courage says, "you cannot live with yourself if you don't invest yourself too much."
I will, of course, gush or wail as the events progress.
----------------------------
As I look over the above post, I realize that I still am afraid to want because I haven't named the thing. If I name it, I will jinx it, which is stupid and fearful.
So here is the thing:
A pretty big academic press took a look at my proposal and wants to go through the process of offering a contract based on that alone. On the proposal! Of course, this involves readers, and responses, and publisher meetings and painful revisions of the proposal and so forth, which is the reason that I characterized this "thing" as a process set in motion.
The editor told me that this is a "no brainer" for a contract, the boss said that this was a "no brainer" for a contract, that they really want to work on it anyway because it sounds like fun, and that a contract will help me get funding (and I'm thinking will help me get out of the non-contract-required, online, summer school teaching without looking like a whiny, non-teamplaying baby). The editor even suggested different places to get funding.
This is no big deal, and the funding piece is perfectly obvious to other people, but I sold myself so short that I actually thought that my application for funding would be viewed as an insult to the funders. Yeah, I hated myself that much.
Anyway, I shriek with joy like an overly-excited teenager at the prospect of all of this. This is my real life that I should have been living all along.
Oh, and I am so excited by the prospect of a contract that I forgot to set the whole story up by telling about the fire on the train, and the nasty concierge who gave me maliciously wrong directions to an ATM machine to get cash because the cabs wouldn't take credit cards and I don't carry cash, and how I screamed and yelled the f-word (so loudly that people covered their children's ears -- no joke) about a thousand times between the moment that the train started billowing smoke and the time I finally stepped into the cab -- all of which took place on my way to the interview with the editor. Now, I've spoiled the story.
Meanwhile, back to jumping for joy like a meth-fueled cheerleader.
Then, this vista of grading that goes on forever, which is the crappy part of my real life that I should have been living all along.
What I do do is go on at length about personal experience and epiphanies.
I spent time with old grad school friends, all of whom are doing well. I talked with my old advisor about my Douglass and women project, and Prof. Famous was impressed by my article. Seriously, for just a brief moment there he appeared to be schmoozing me rather than me schmoozing him. Of course, I realized that, at that point, we had exited a situation in which schmoozing was an option and in which I was kinda sorta, just a little bit, maybe junior colleague in the profession.
Then, some really, amazing, cool events were set into motion and I don't want to say anything specific about them until they actually do start to happen because I might jinx it all -- or look like a fool. In any case, I had a moment right after they began.
As I'm sure that anyone can figure out simply by reading a few posts in this blog, I've been through a lot of abuse. I've sold myself very short. I've loathed myself constantly since about age 10. I've been my own worst enemy. I've had difficulty doing just the simplest, most basic activities of life that come so naturally to other people. Yet, within all of that, there have been moments in which I had these flashes, as if waking from a dream, that I am, in that second, living my real life. That, in that second, I have actually found the life that I was always supposed to be living. I had one of those moments right as I realized that these really, amazing, cool events were grinding into motion.
I also realized that I really really really wanted this to happen. Most of my life, I have been afraid to want things, or to want them too much because, in the magical thinking under which I operated, wanting something meant that you were likely not going to get it. In fact, since magic governed this thinking, wanting something pretty much guaranteed that you weren't going to get it. To want anything, especially to want badly, meant living life in a state of heightened disappointment. Life itself was disappointment, so why invite more by wanting more?
That is one of the rules to selling yourself short: don't want, so don't pursue, so don't be disappointed. Just wallow in misery and self-pity, hating the world, and looking forward to the day that you will mercifully die.
Pathetic. Yet, that was one of those beliefs, much like the abusive bargain of love, according to which my life operated without me really being aware of the process.
After the really amazing, cool events began to move, I started to realize just how much I desperately wanted these events to happen. I looked straight at it. A few weeks ago, they could have started in another way, but that attempt was frustrated. I was hurt, but I realized that I was going to go after this thing one way or another. I wasn't going to get it that way, but I might get it in a different way. Now, the different way might materialize; and I find myself thinking that, even if this doesn't happen this way, then it will happen in another way or another way or another way. In other words, I told myself, "want this thing! Want it badly and go after it with your whole being! Don't let even yourself get in your own damn way!"
That thought, that I could let myself want something really badly, gave me courage rather than the overwhelming terror of disappointment. The terror says, "don't invest yourself too much." The courage says, "you cannot live with yourself if you don't invest yourself too much."
I will, of course, gush or wail as the events progress.
----------------------------
As I look over the above post, I realize that I still am afraid to want because I haven't named the thing. If I name it, I will jinx it, which is stupid and fearful.
So here is the thing:
A pretty big academic press took a look at my proposal and wants to go through the process of offering a contract based on that alone. On the proposal! Of course, this involves readers, and responses, and publisher meetings and painful revisions of the proposal and so forth, which is the reason that I characterized this "thing" as a process set in motion.
The editor told me that this is a "no brainer" for a contract, the boss said that this was a "no brainer" for a contract, that they really want to work on it anyway because it sounds like fun, and that a contract will help me get funding (and I'm thinking will help me get out of the non-contract-required, online, summer school teaching without looking like a whiny, non-teamplaying baby). The editor even suggested different places to get funding.
This is no big deal, and the funding piece is perfectly obvious to other people, but I sold myself so short that I actually thought that my application for funding would be viewed as an insult to the funders. Yeah, I hated myself that much.
Anyway, I shriek with joy like an overly-excited teenager at the prospect of all of this. This is my real life that I should have been living all along.
Oh, and I am so excited by the prospect of a contract that I forgot to set the whole story up by telling about the fire on the train, and the nasty concierge who gave me maliciously wrong directions to an ATM machine to get cash because the cabs wouldn't take credit cards and I don't carry cash, and how I screamed and yelled the f-word (so loudly that people covered their children's ears -- no joke) about a thousand times between the moment that the train started billowing smoke and the time I finally stepped into the cab -- all of which took place on my way to the interview with the editor. Now, I've spoiled the story.
Meanwhile, back to jumping for joy like a meth-fueled cheerleader.
Then, this vista of grading that goes on forever, which is the crappy part of my real life that I should have been living all along.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Too Tired
This non-teaching part of my job is taking over both my job and my life. Must make it stop. Must get out of summer online teaching. Must learn to say not just "no" but "hell no." Still have lessons to learn.
In good news, all of my events have been very successful to wildly successful. I was accepted to an NEH summer workshop that includes Annette Gordon-Reed and Jacqueline Jones in the faculty (awesome!), the OAH is this weekend (thus allowing me to feel as if I'm engaging with other historians), and summer is only a few weeks away (sweet sweet relief, except for that whole online thing that I need to get out of yet again). Yea!
Meanwhile, I'm too tired to blog.
That is all.*
*I know! Wonders never cease!
In good news, all of my events have been very successful to wildly successful. I was accepted to an NEH summer workshop that includes Annette Gordon-Reed and Jacqueline Jones in the faculty (awesome!), the OAH is this weekend (thus allowing me to feel as if I'm engaging with other historians), and summer is only a few weeks away (sweet sweet relief, except for that whole online thing that I need to get out of yet again). Yea!
Meanwhile, I'm too tired to blog.
That is all.*
*I know! Wonders never cease!
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