Academic jobs that require 3 full letters of recommendation instead of just contact info.
I don’t understand this, academia. We both know that you are not going to read every single letter from the 500 applications you’re going to get in response to this job post. Why make make all my mentors hate me while also just making things more difficult for the both of us?
The private services offered by Karen Kelsky on The Professor is In are crazy - and prohibitively - expensive. Don’t get me wrong, I think what Kelsky is doing, in general, is amazingly helpful and much needed when we live in a world that produces academics through and for academia that then does not train them to contribute to the very environment from whence they came, starting with basic teaching skills. However, as an adjunct making barely $20k a year, it is nonsensical to think that I or many of my peers would be able to afford $150 an hour to work on my documents for full time teaching gigs - especially when there are upwards of 6 documents needed for full time university teaching jobs in the arts. And it’s actually fairly frustrating, and perhaps even a little insulting - in some ways, it sets up a classist system that falls in line very much with the very institution that she is trying to (deservedly) critique and dismantle.
An example: for spring 2016, she is offering graduate application services, from $150+ a pop. I spent close to $1000 on application fees alone when I applied to grad school. There would have been no feasible way I would have been able to afford any of the help she offers at those prices - though I absolutely could have used it.
Look, I get that Karen Kelsky should be paid for what she is doing. It’s a great service. I bought her book, it’s invaluable. I even bought her course on how to make a successful academic cover letter when it was on sale (because I couldn’t afford the regular price) and it proved just how little I know about trying to get a tenure track job. But there has to be a better way of making services like this more available to underprivileged fledgling academics who may just need them the most.
(I am also aware that she offers a “scholarship” of sorts for her services to those who may qualify. If anything, it’s a small step in the right direction.)
My now standard reaction to when I force myself to go through student evaluations from the previous semester.
Feel like reading a rant?
I should preface this by saying that this is not for all student evaluations, and is certainly not in direct response to all students. A large majority of my students are wonderful and I generally love being able to interact and engage with young minds - especially when I get to see them grow over a long duration of time. It is indeed one of the main reason why teachers teach. And for the most part, I will also say that I personally usually land above the averages not only for my department, but for my university, on my evaluations.
However.
Every semester I realize that I cannot think of a worse way to evaluate teaching and classes within an academic setting than with student evaluations. Yes, I get the fact that we should make sure that teachers are actually teaching - that’s fine. But a large majority of the complaints I get on evaluations stem from the fact that students have not done the basic things required of them for attending classes. You know, things like, actually showing up. Or reading the syllabus. Or turning in assignments on time. And I teach at a Research 1. Things that you would think would be beholden to students paying for an education are somehow lost and then reflected poorly upon an evaluation of my teaching in my classes.
I had one person one semester not show up to a final. No email, no nothing. Then they emailed me wondering why they received a D while proceeding to critique the way I structured the class.
Every semester I have people who wonder why they fail when they have been absent 10 times and late another 8, then get mad at me when they do. These kinds of examples of blame shifting among students are rampant throughout my experiences in higher education.
Beyond that, it baffles me that students think that THEY should be the ones who get to dictate what they should learn. Look, if you want that, save yourselves $40k and educate yourself with Google. The purpose of attending a higher education facility, especially when enrolling the in the arts, is to be pushed beyond your current state of thinking. This notion of never wanting to leave a comfort zone - when college should be designed to do just that - is incredibly dangerous.
Yet then the sense of responsibility shifts from the student wondering how they could have done better, to it automatically being the instructor’s fault for not doing something more. And look, I know that instructors or not blameless. For one, teaching within academic disciplines is generally not taught (a paradox within itself) and there’s a high learning curve every semester for gauging that group of students and how well they will respond to the trajectory of the class and its material. Yet within a semester where I get some killer projects from students - all because I pushed and prodded them when they wanted to do what was easy - we then rely on a system that allows for an uncensored bitch session about reasons why the student thinks they are not learning the right things.
I have stopped reading the comments on my evaluations because every semester they resemble more and more the comments of internet trolls. And again, some comments are wonderful and reassuring. But instead of giving a potentially disgruntled anonymous student a blank check to go off on why they think they should have learned something differently, I can track through the progress of projects turned in how well my students are grasping the material and implementing that. My own frustration happens when that evidence is not always evident to administrators who may only view some numbers or random comments on a scantron. Or, you know, that some students who you try to teach things to reject them and then blame you for it through anonymous comments and filling in circles.
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