:chef’s kiss:
8 Likes
5 Likes
Despite the slightly misleading title this seems to be the right thread for this:
4 Likes
10 Likes
I knew a professor who would regularly leave the country for 2 semesters out of 3, cram all his teaching into one semester when he was at GSU. He finally got a position in Europe, because he hated it here, hated most of the students (thought that most of us were beneath him and not worth teaching/advising)… he never did service work, because i’m sure he felt that was beneath him too.
Oh, and he was also always THAT guy in things like job talks. throwing out difficult, theoretical questions just to trip the applicant up…
[ETA] Holy shit, this part…
“Several said that they actively didn’t respond to emails, or acted in an exaggerated disorganised manner. This meant they were assigned fewer tasks, but were also less frequently asked, and thus got away without doing service.”
They’re actively using the scatter-brained professor trope to get out of doing a part of their job… 
11 Likes
Yep. Another method is pleading incompetence, as another form of avoidance (while doing other more high-profile things for the sake of their own career advancement). Of course, simply enacting incompetence works just as well. And the consequences in academia for ahirking work are minor to non-existent. It’s fucking maddening.
9 Likes
12 Likes
I was doing a continuing legal education unit recently because I needed the credits for my license. It was about the laws surrounding image and likeness for student athletes.
It was fairly interesting until we got to the part where one of the attorneys mentions that he thinks universities with successful sports teams wouldn’t be able to pay their players because the sports profits are spent on the rest of the school.
And I was like what? Pretty sure that’s not the way most of these sports programs work. He went on to say that this was only for universities with really big successful sports units. But I’m pretty sure that even huge universities like the University of Texas with their football, their profits don’t ever go back to the school.
10 Likes
10 Likes
Which now makes me question his authority on any of his other assumptions that form the basis of his teaching.
11 Likes
Exactly! His credibility just tanked with that statement.
10 Likes
Something to share with anyone you know who’s thinking of becoming a professor?
Universities are in trouble, and it’s not just money we’re talking about. They are living through something of a crisis of confidence, even of trust and faith. More and more, I find myself, and my colleagues, unsure of what we’re supposed to be doing any more, and certainly unclear on why we’re doing it.
There’s no doubt that many academics are feeling very pressured, highly anxious, and deeply insecure about their profession and its prospects. For some, suffering perhaps worse than others, a feeling of desperation, of being cornered, is setting in. Why is this happening, and what can we do about it?
The sheer amount of work seems to be increasing exponentially, and not just in terms of scale but the number of vectors it’s all happening on too. It is impossible to be a top-line manager and administrator and mentor and researcher and writer and outreach officer and IT expert and online instructor and pedagogical innovator and recruiter and teacher and marker and external examiner and press pundit and grant bidder and editor and look after your own wellbeing. No-one can do that. Yet that’s what is often asked.
What we’re really doing overall is running down our social capital, toiling away in a failing system that calls to mind nothing more than the late Soviet economy (far more similar to ours than we’d like to admit). When the money coming in continuously declines, organisations sweat their assets, and as they do so increasingly wear away their own foundations. What that involves is constantly whacking our own creativity, and capacity for ideas, against the brick wall of funders’ and employers’ indifference. That’s a losing game. Small wonder a lot of lecturers come to feel – or be made to feel – like losers.
9 Likes
Nice for people to notice, I guess.
9 Likes
9 Likes
Speaking as someone who is almost always reading a book on my iPad, both because of the ability to enlarge the font and because it means I can carry dozens of books with me when I travel, I’m definitely an example of how the new ways of reading are not all bad.
Now if the book apps (like Kindle) would only offer the dyslexic font as an option, I’d be deliriously happy.
10 Likes
I also love the portability of ebooks, but the experience of reading a physical book is different, and I find it more enjoyable in many ways, one of which is that it encourages sustained focus on the text, without the easy access to distractions. If I read a physical book for a while my brain calms down and I am less distractable in general. The tactile experience of holding the book is nice too. Humans like to touch stuff-I wonder if there is any correlation between people using fidget devices and tactile strips and such like and the increased use of visual-only teaching.
6 Likes
12 Likes
Are you saying tactile aspects in education are a good thing or a bad thing?
5 Likes
Oh, a good thing! One reason that writing notes is more effective than typing or recording them. Waldorf schools have all kinds of handwork as part of the regular school day. Forest kindergartens keep their kids outdoors all day, no matter the weather. The current obsession with “classroom” teaching, especially for very young kids, really isn’t a good idea.
5 Likes
Then how would the use of “fidget devices and tactile strips” correlate with " the increased use of visual-only teaching"?
5 Likes
