#professor things

[xiaq]

Hilarious to me that I have an equal number of people in my inbox asking for my thoughts on Heated Rivalry and Frankenstein. The duality of (wo)man.

[ilyberrymuch]

A meme I made for my students (I really just throw these in to amuse myself during lectures lol). Please feel free to use as you would like!

[singofsolace]

My first day of teaching is tomorrow morning at 9am. Part Three of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina drops at 3am Eastern time. Do I pull an all-nighter right before I need to meet all of my students for the first time, or do I wait until after I teach, risking spoilers, etc. etc.? Please help me make this very important decision!

[xiaq]

I’m fifty papers in to this round of grading. Please enjoy a selection of out-of-context comments I’ve left on students’ papers so far:

Further updates as warranted.

[xiaq]

Hi! I read an old post of yours from when you were teaching, where you said you earned 39k a year, and that it wasn't a lot of money. That would be 3k a month + 3k end-of-year bonus, especially if it's tax free (as in, all money already goes to you, with taxes already paid). In my country, that's a very good income. How much does life cost in the USA, for you to say that academia is not a career that makes you lots of money? I think I'd need context to understand, if you can explain, please :)

Hi there! So what it comes down to is cost of living coupled with an inability to put money away for retirement.

Also, that 39k is before taxes. So I was really making around 32k annually or 2,600 a month. No bonuses.

When I was making that, I was living in Dallas, TX and then Gunnison, CO. The average rent cost for a one bedroom apartment in Dallas was $1,500 base per month and in Gunnison, CO the average rent cost for a one bedroom apartment is $1,700. In both places I paid less than the average, but my total costs with paid parking, utilities, etc. were around $1,500. In addition to housing, I had to pay for health insurance which was around $2,000 a year, car insurance which was around $1,500 a year, and then general car maintenance which was $2-3,000 a year depending on if I needed new tires. I walked or rode my bike as much as possible, but was still spending at least $50 a month on gas (more when I'd go camping or drive home for the weekend 3 hrs away). I also had to pay for vet bills, food for me and my dog, and standard life stuff. Even with couponing and a strict budget, I was spending around $300 a month on food for me and my dog in Dallas and $400 per month in CO since food was more expensive in the mountains (like, a little box of strawberries was $8, a 2-serving bag of salad was $5). Also, even though I was paying for health insurance, I still had to pay copays and out of pocket for bloodwork and some specialists, which was a couple more thousand a year. I rarely went out to eat, I don't drink or smoke, and I bought all my clothes and books second-hand. Pretty much any time I traveled it was because my parents or friends were going somewhere and I could tag along, or I was car camping. So I was living a very frugal lifestyle and still had no money left at the end of the year to put toward retirement based on my teaching salary.

So, as a breakdown my approximate annual costs were (I just went and found an old budget spreadsheet from 2020)

Rent+utilities+wifi/phone $18,000 Health insurance $2,000 Car insurance $1,500 Car maintenance $2,000 Gas $1,000 Vet bills/dog food $1,000 Food $3,500 Medical copays and oop expenses: $2,000 Clothes $500 Books $500 Home-goods, laundry, cleaning products, misc $500 Skin, hair, hygiene products $500 Total cost: $33k You'll notice this is more than my teaching salary. I was doing a bit of tutoring and ghostwriting on the side and my parents were kind enough to pay for some of my car maintenance that year, which is the only reason I didn't end up in financial trouble.

Importantly, I had no money at all for emergencies or putting toward retirement. I was also working 60-70hrs a week, had very little opportunity for career/salary growth, and was constantly being asked to pick up additional unpaid labor for the benefit of students/the program. I loved teaching, but there was no way that lifestyle was sustainable and there wasn't any hope of retirement. AND I was one of the few people who had no student loans to pay off by the time I finished graduate school. Thanks to academic scholarships, living at home, and my parent's assistance, I had no debt. That is highly unusual for people in academia and I can't even imagine the stress it would have added to my life if I was trying to pay off student loans every month as well.

Also, I'd just like to point out that adjunct professors make even less than I was making as a lecturer, and even tenured profs don't make all that much more. The humanities in academia in the US is not the place to be if you're wanting to make a reasonable amount of money for the amount of work you're doing. :( By contrast, working in tech, I'm now making $100k a year (78k take home), I work 40-50 hrs a week, I'm putting money into my retirement every month, and my work/life balance is magnificent. I'm also up for a promotion in a few months and I have a lot of opportunities for career and salary growth in the future. For the first time in my adult life I don't feel like I have to count every penny, and I think I may actually be able to retire some day.

Anyway, I hope that helps give context!

[xiaq]

since you taught at the university level and stuff, do you know the best way to reach out to professors when you're not a student at said university. like, is there any possibility of someone responding when you approach them with a project that you'd like their expert opinion on? and would just sending an email be like the best option?

Oh, absolutely. I received responses from every external prof and researcher I contacted as a student and I responded to every external email I received as a prof. Even if they're busy, 9/10 profs will want to talk to you about the thing on which they're an expert. A captive audience is nice, but the nicest audience is someone who comes to you and specifically seeks you out saying, "please won't you tell me about X thing you love to talk about." So yes. Email away. If you have several questions or want to have a discussion, or even are hoping for multiple discussions or reviews of a project, I'd offer to correspond in whichever way they prefer: zoom, phone, email, etc. Some folks like to think through things in writing while others prefer the speed/ease of hashing things out via video/speaking.

[xiaq]

A quick rant on "daddy issues"

Ok so in my technical writing class we were talking about language today, specifically idioms, colloquialisms, and other words/phrases that can't be directly translated from English to another language without confusion or offense (ex: “bite the bullet”). We do one general exercise, and then one exercise targeting language that might appear in a business/professional setting.

During the broad exercise, I got a lot of good responses, but I found it interesting that the women in the class nearly all chose gender or sex related language like “wife beater” (referring to a undershirt or tanktop), “make an honest woman of her,” “man up,” “grow a pair,” etc.

And one girl says, “I really dislike the phrase ‘daddy issues’ and the way my boyfriend’s friends have used it, like: love a girl with daddy issues, but I’m not sure how to explain why I dislike it so much. Do have any thoughts about that?”

And I was like. Oh boy. Shall we discuss this? And the class was like yes. Because they love a good tangent.

And I’m still sort of heated about it, hours later, so now I’m sharing it.

Here’s my problem with men who use “daddy issues” when indicating appreciation. Using this phrase has several implications:

1. They recognize the fact that when a father neglects or otherwise traumatizes their daughter, this creates psychological problems for the adult woman that child becomes.

2. They simultaneously recognize that fathers neglecting or traumatizing their daughters is prevalent enough that there is an incredibly well-known and well-used colloquial phrase referencing this behavior.

3. They—fully cognizant of 1 and 2—are planning to capitalize on the neglect or abuse perpetrated by other men in order to enjoy sexual gratification.

Tl;dr the reason you hate the phrase “daddy issues” when used in that context is because the man is essentially saying, “I love that some other man mistreated this woman as a child so I can now use her trauma for my own benefit.”

And frankly that says a whole lot more about the man using the phrase “daddy issues” then it does the girl he’s talking about.

[xiaq]

Context: I do a Kahoot review for the final exam in each of my classes. The winner gets an automatic 100 on the final/doesn't have to take the exam. As a result, things tend to get heated. Especially in classes like the one I taught today that is primarily made up of athletes.

Nearing the end of the game, my students were laughing and swearing colorfully at each other as the standings shifted.

It just so happened that my boss walked by right as a really difficult question came up, and the student who'd been in the lead lost their top position to a student who had been gunning for them all class.

Former winner: AH! FUCK. FUCK. I ANSWERED TOO QUICKLY. THAT WAS A TRICK!! THAT WAS MEAN. FUCK YOU.

New winner: FUCK YES. THATS RIGHT. I TOLD YOU. I TOLD YOU. DAMN IM GOOD. BOW DOWN BITCH.

Everyone else in the class: general yelling.

The door was closed but we have glassed-in classrooms/doors so I knew my boss could absolutely hear them, as close as they were. And I was like, oh boy. But they just sort of smiled and moved on. After class, I ran into them in the mail room, and I was like "I need you to know my classes are not usually that wild. We were doing a Kahoot review." And they were like, "oh, I know, I've had folks keeping an eye on you and reporting in to me and I've only heard good things. But, personally, I think if you have a class that's comfortable swearing in front of you, you're doing something right. Nice work."