University of Venus

What’s happening at U.Va. is hardly an isolated phenomenon, though this example is more public than most. In fact, the focus of my dissertation research is this process of “strategic change” at universities, how it’s imagined and implemented, and how it’s perceived and experienced by organizational participants.

Just as the Bennet sisters had a season in which to find a spouse, academics have a season in which to cement their editorial couplings for the coming year. Each summer, hotel conference rooms and university campuses around the globe house those who write and those who edit as they perform a series of anxiety-ridden dances.

Aaahh. It’s evaluation season. Time for the tables to be turned on you. Yes, you, the professor. You thought you were being so clever by trying to institute some kind of an email policy: Telling your students not to email you at midnight and expect an answer before the 9 am class. You thought you were teaching your students responsibility by telling them not to wait until the night before to ask questions about their papers.

We have recently learned that many women choose to leave academia after getting their doctoral degree, and women are not the only ones deciding against a career in higher education. Especially in the hard sciences, many researchers prefer to work in their respective industries or in special research institutes. More money, a shorter path between the project stage and the practical implementation, and more effective administration are some of the reasons why this is the case.

We’re halfway through the academic year in South Africa, and like many of my colleagues, I’ve been catching my breath after the deluge of marking which arrived at the end of the first semester. I’ve taught since beginning my graduate studies, and have marked students’ essays and exam scripts both in South Africa and the UK. Over the past eight years, what has struck me is that the quality of students’ writing and research hasn’t varied all that greatly; I can remember a few very bad, and some brilliant, pieces of work, but I haven’t noticed a decline or marked improvement in the standard of the work submitted to me.

What’s New at UVenus: ● Janni Aragon at University of Venus at The Guardian with We should be paying more...

Often in class or informal discussions my classmates and I would gleefully make up words, justifying the practice by saying “we’re academics – we’re just creating new vocabulary to expand the discourse.” Of course this is all just rationalizing the bastardization of the English language, but we amused ourselves with it nonetheless. In some ways, it was a kind of dreaming ahead – one day we would be “real” academics. Our made up words would subsequently be cited and we would go down in the annals of scholarship as being the source for an absolutely integral concept or phrase. It could happen right?

Summer time is almost here and it is time to take a good and relaxing book and forget about the usual busy schedule of a normal day during the academic semester. However, for some of us, with academic interests but non-academic jobs, summer is the best time of the year to revisit old projects, apply for new funding and, eventually, find an academic job that will put an end to this schizophrenic way of working.