I Think We Better Wait 'Till Tomorrow

Going back to that meeting I had with the Professor a couple of days ago, he was asking me what publications I'd have on my CV by the time I hit the market in the fall. I had to tell him I didn't know, since I'm still waiting to hear back from journals about a couple of papers. So he gave me some homework. He told me to send an e-mail to this one journal asking them (politely, naturalich) when the fuck they'd have a decision about my paper. In fact, I'd already sent them an e-mail asking them exactly that a couple of months ago, so this would really just be a follow up to that.

I've been sitting here in front of the computer trying to compose the e-mail, and I've lost my nerve. I don't want to write it. I don't want to push too hard. But if I wait for about a week and half, it'll be seven months since I first submitted the paper. No one can blame me for asking about the paper after seven months, right? Right?

I guess I could just rap their knuckles with a ruler or something.

[Photo redacted to protect pseudonymity.]

All my end-of-semester paperwork has gotten me thinking about the evaluations we get from our students. The problem with instructor evaluations is that they actually give you a pretty big incentive to be a crappy teacher. This is because good pedagogical methods are pretty much completely at odds with what it takes to make most students like you.

A surefire way to make most students love you, and thus give you fabulously high marks in your evals, is to give them high grades and not make them do much work. Of course, this is pedagogically unconscionable. Students really only learn anything when they actually have to work for it. And besides, most schools have at least a tacit expectation that your curve can’t be too high. You can’t very well give every kid in the class an A, just for showing up.

A colleague of mine has figured out a brilliant way to game the system here. He gives his students really easy assignments, and totally inflated grades, throughout the quarter. Everybody loves him. And then he fucks them on the final exam. Super hard exam; super tough grading. But the final exam doesn’t happen until after the students have filled out their evals. So he gets the curve he needs, and still gets great evals.

Genius. I’ve got to start doing this. Of course, it doesn't really solve the problem of forcing your students to actually learn something from you. But we all have to make compromises.

I Can Cut the Lawn, Cut My Hair, Cut Out My Cholesterol

I had a good meeting with the Professor yesterday. (Okay, it was good in a certain sense.) We were talking job market strategy for next year, because I wanted some advice about job talks. I know, it's early to be thinking about those. If I'm lucky enough to be giving job talks, it won't be until the new year. But I wanted to be thinking about them way out in advance.

The Professor's advice was that I need to have several different job talks ready to go on several different topics. As I've mentioned, my work is obscure. I need to spin it in one direction or another to make it interesting to different people. But now the advice is, I need different jobs talks about different things so I can spin myself in various different directions, depending on who's thinking about hiring me.

So that's a lot more work for me. But okay, I can handle it. And I'd rather be thinking about it now, rather than next January.

And Maybe I'll See You, At a Movie Sneak Preview

I knew this had to happen eventually, but I didn't think it would be so soon. I just got my department's colloquium schedule for next year, and one of the people coming is a guy who interviewed me at last year's APA before passing on my application. I wouldn't be suprised if I have to go to dinner with the guy.

What's the ettiquette for that? I know, I know. I have to be all fucking smiles, and "It's good to see you again," and blah, blah, fucking blah. I can do that, I guess. But I really just want to tell the guy he's an asshole for not seeing what an awesome philosopher I am.

Rocking the Passive Voice X

I can still get a little overwhelmed at just how many of these things I have:

I regret to inform you that the position in philosophy was offered to another candidate and that person has accepted the offer. We do not anticipate another opening in the near future.

It's one thing to get a rejection from a good, or even passable department. But so many of them, like this one, come from nameless little shit holes that no one's ever heard of in the middle of nowhere. God damn.

Well it Didn't Work Out That Way

Via Yglesias, get a load of this, from BarbinMD at DKos:

By the way, did I mention that [Eli] Lake majored in philosophy in college? Currently writing for the New York Sun, he apparently couldn't find a job in his chosen field.

Um, can I get a job writing for the Sun? I've never done any reporting before, but how hard can it be? I understand it involves phoning people.

Rocking the Passive Voice IX

Guess what turned up in my mail today? A PFO! I thought I'd got the last of them, what with the decision to toss my application having been made almost six months ago. Anyway, let's see what passive voice we've got here:

I am writing to let you know that we have completed our search, and that you are no longer under consideration.

There's really a couple different things you could say about this. One is, if they've just told me they completed their search, they don't need to tell me I am no longer under consideration. See, what "we have completed our search" means is that no one is under consideration any more, because all the consideration is over.

The other thing is the weird switch from active to passive in the middle of the sentence. It's like there's someone doing the action right up to the moment where things get awkward, and then they very discreetly bow out of the sentence to let events unfold without them.

More Than Words is All You Have to Do to Make it Real

Alright, PJMB friend Z calls me out in an e-mail: "So lay some of those mad abstracts on me!" And yeah, looking at the two sentence abstract I've got on my CV, both of those sentences are way, way too long. I feel like the real problem are the noun phrases. There's a couple that would have outlasted Mao on the Long March. Gonna have to work on that.

There Are Many Things That I Would Like to Say to You

PGOAT and I were going back and forth this morning about how to write an abstract of your dissertation. Some tool from her program was whining about having to write an abstract that's accessible to non-experts. He didn't think he should have to do that. Bear in mind we're not talking about writing for lay people here. We're just talking about writing an abstract that makes sense to other philosophers, just ones who aren't specialists in your AOS. This is a low fucking bar for accessibility.

I have to say, abstract writing is one area where working on completely obscure philosophy actually gives you an advatage in prepping for the job market. (Come to think of it, it might be the only area where working on obscure philosophy is an advantage on the job market.) I have never once, in all my illustrious career as a graduate student, had the luxury of being able to assume that who I was talking to understood even the basics of what my dissertation is about. I mean, my committee members have mostly got on board as I've talked to them over the years, but even that was initially a hurdle. If there's one thing I can do, it's make my work accessible to non-experts. I can even do it in a two sentence abstract suitable for page 1 of my CV.

No Time for the Killing Floor

There's this conference I want to go to in the early fall--not to present, mind you, just to see the talks and do some shmoozing. Actually, the shmoozing is the main thing. Now, one of the profs at this conference is a guy who knows me and who's very kindly looked at some of my work before and given me comments on it. Him knowing me is probably going to make the shmoozing easier. So that's good.

But this prof hasn't seen any of the work I'm going to be talking up while I'm there. And he's not going to see it either, because I didn't have my shit together enough to give it to him before the summer. ("Summer" is a senior faculty idiom that means "grad students go away.")

I should have gamed-out that shmoozing six months in advance. Fuck. I'm still learning lessons the hard way.