Delicious

A quick follow-up on yesterday's thought. Be careful of that sarcastic kid who's been giving you trouble all semester.

At NYU apparently someone left muffins laced with razor blades behind in their philosophy class.

-- Second Suitor

They like me, they really really like me

So we're coming up on time for course evaluations. Now I fancy myself a pretty good teacher (I'm sure most of us do) but at this point, the course is essentially over and what really matters is getting decent evals. These are the things that presumably loom large in the job application for teaching colleges. (?)

Probably at this point there's nothing to do. It's too late to "buy good grades by being easy or generous graders." Some of my professors give a short speech about how these evaluations are actually important to try to get the students to take them seriously. I'm not sure if this helps. At my undergrad institution (and probably here) the average teacher rating was 'above average' so getting kids to focus on how it's important may make them apply some standard to your eval that they aren't to the others. Though, you might get some sympathy high marks?

Who knows? This time I'm planning on asking for comments about the syllabus or clarity of the lectures. Hopefully I'll get something other than just numbers this time.

On a side note, if you can take advantage of the Dr. Fox Effect.

-- Second Suitor

Sunday Comics

"With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound /
He [knocks] the [listless, dissertation-hating Philbot around]... /
Oh no, [this dissertation's] got to go /
Go go [Soon-to-be-Jaded Dissertator], yeah"

-Adapted liberally from BOC, Godzilla.

--STBJD

(Click on the pic for the full effect)

Update: Anon. 2:22 in comments improves upon my original hijacking of BOC:

"With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound /
They dash our job market hopes on the ground/

Neophyte philosophers crying out in pain/
Please don't make me defend this again!

We pick up a theory and we throw it back down/as we quantify and generalize all over the town"

Oh no, this thesis got to go /
Go go and publish (yeah)
Oh no, there goes my last hope/
Go go and finish!"

Noobie's Dilemma

Noobie posted a question a few days ago that brings up an interesting point. Noob said:

"I just got my first tenure track job, and I am very excited (obviously), but the job is by no means a dream job (5-4 teaching load, though the location is great). I found out that we have yearly review up until tenure, which I thought was a bit odd (and this is a serious review process, I have heard of several people who were not reappointed to their tenure track positions in the second, third, and even the fifth, year), but judging from the comments this is done at some places. Anyways, my question was about whether or not a person like me should be on the job market every year? It seems to me that if there is a real possibility that a person may not be reappointed then that person should have a back up plan (and there is no way to judge if one will be repponted. At least two of the cases mentioned above were ones where the department and chair loved the person, but the president over-ruled them and let them go). So it seems to me that I have ample justification for going on the market each year (I feel guilty for doing this for the obvious reasons, like I spent so much time convincing said department that I WANTED to be there)...will this sort of thing be held against me? My chair says 'don't worry about, you'll be reappointed', but I am sure that is what all the chairs say (even though they do not have final say)...so what is the proper/ethical thing to do here?"

Seems to me that the department doesn't have any standing to complain that you're keeping options open especially before they commit to keeping you... but who knows?

--Second Suitor

Wired

Maybe I'm doing something right... according to Wired, "distracting your brain" can actually improve your mind's performance (note: I'm not taking a stand on whether your mind is your brain - though I'm not sure where else it's supposed to be).

Before anyone gets too excited, the distraction needs to be related to what the brain is supposed to be processing. This seems to indicate that it's better to distract yourself with something like a blog... about philosophy... than say the undergrads working beside you at the coffee shop talking about how they're going to start their paper due on Friday after they go out Thursday night..

Oh and a little caffeine may help you not get Alzheimer's... maybe.

-- Second Suitor

Sunday afternoon fun

Taking a breather this weekend, I was catching up on last week's NY times and saw an article about a new flea market in Brooklyn. So far so good. Perhaps like a few of ya'll are like me and grew up around flea markets. I still have a wicked chair fit for a king that I got for 20 bucks.

That said, I was disturbed when I read: "So, 13 years ago, he tossed over a career in academia (teaching philosophy) and traded in the subtle mysteries of Wittgenstein for the joys of tracking down vases from manufacturers like Roth ceramics, renowned for its blob-like lava-glaze."

Hopefully that guy found his true calling in life... but I hope that the job market doesn't push me all the way to hunting down ceramics at dirt malls.

I don't have to think, I've only got to do it

At a conference earlier this year I was chatting with a Jr. Prof at a regular state school who said that his hiring committee didn't seriously look at any application where the candidate hasn't defended. Maybe I've internalized this a bit too much, but it makes sense. It's a buyer's market and departments might as well take people who are done.

But what the fuck does that mean I have to do if I seriously want to be on the market in the fall? I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the diss by the end of next year, but I figure to have any chance I need to at least have a complete draft by the end of the summer. In the meantime I've still got to do the other shit they want candidates to do: teach, conferences, try to publish etc. There's just not enough time to get all this shit done before the process begins..

Whatever. Today I've got to say fuck it, I'm taking the rest of the day off to have a beer and watch the undergrads frolic in this beautiful spring weather.

-- Second Suitor

Still, We Figure Out the Keys

Just to add a more optimistic take on the problem of figuring out how to sell yourself to teaching departments, it looks like there's some consensus shaping up in that Leiter thread about at least one thing. A couple of different people are making the case for including complete sets of student comments in your teaching portfolio, since a few cherry-picked choice quotes don't say about as much as the quotes on posters for shitty movies. ("[PGS] was. . . interesting! Best philosophy class since Scary Movie 4!) Makes sense, and that's the sort of very concrete advice even I can use without fucking it up.

Oh, and I suppose I should link to this old post. It's the list of 23--23!--teaching interview questions I compiled from the suggestions of tons of people who actually know something about this. (My vote for most horror-inducing question? Number 22: "Suppose someone (perhaps a community member, and not necessarily a student) came to you and asked how to resolve moral problem X. What would you tell them to do?" Sweet holy god, that question would throw me into a mute stupor that'd last for about eight days.)

--PGS

You're Fading Out, Can't Hear What You Say

Okay, it looks like I'm coming a little late to the discussion, but the big kids are talking about how sell yourself to teaching oriented schools. This was a total fucking gong show in my department last year, since the placement committee, the dynamic duo of the Old World Septuagenarian and Evil Columbo, seemed to have only the vaguest inkling that those schools even existed. What goes in a good teaching portfolio? What questions do teaching schools ask in interviews that research schools don't? For me and my office mates, these were inscrutable mysteries.*

The thing is, it turns out it's actually really hard to answer these questions. Let me try to explain why. Check out this advice from Ken, a commentor in Leiter's thread:

Candidates should show some understanding of what the teaching-emphasis job is like, an interest in doing it, and the ability to do it. I don't have stock questions I ask to probe for this, so I don't have stock answers or “things to say” to get through this.

Right. What I want to do is show understanding and enthusiasm for a teaching job. I can do enthusiasm no problem. The problem is, I have no understanding of teaching jobs, and neither do any of the senior profs in my department. Ask senior faculty about this stuff and, as Sisyphus once put it, you get that confused puppy, head cocked to one side "Aroo?" look. They're as in the dark as I am. So how are we supposed to figure out what to convey in my application package? How are we supposed to figure out how to prep for an interview?

I don't mean this as a knock at Ken. Like he says, there are no stock answers here, so what can you do? But that just means we're sort of fucked trying to figure this shit out.

--PGS

*Actually, the teaching portfolio question is still an inscrutable mystery. I'm giving myself another two weeks to figure it out before I go all Colin McGinn on your asses and declare the puny human mind too feeble to understand what goes in a good teaching portfolio.

Sunday Comics

Hey, kids! Sorry about the lack of a new comic now, and probably until later this evening. Why the delay?

You know that feeling that surrounds us all like the cloud of dirt orbiting around Pigpen (comic idea!)? That ever-present feeling of guilt casting shadows over whatever it is that you're currently doing and sucking joy out of it all? The feeling that you should really be working on your dissertation instead of drawing comics, watching your fantasy baseball scores, and posting on the PJMB? Well, I feel the feeling overtaking me.

And so, I'm going to cozy up with the dissertation for a while; grateful that my guilt has (at least temporarily) awakened me from my productivity coma.

--STBJD

(Update: It's not happening tonight, folks. Sorry. And, you know, I'd feel a lot better about it if I had written a few more pages, but I have no good excuse, as it were. We'll see if I can get something for the true believers in the next day or two.)