University of Venus

This semester I signed up for the University of Venus Networking Challenge. The challenge asked readers to reach outside of their departments and meet people in other disciplines, in other institutions, and/or in other countries. Because of my current employment position, I find myself getting in touch with a lot of people from other departments. Thus, I thought it would be unfair to count that as part of the challenge. However, the U Venus challenge prompted me to think about my interactions with faculty and staff from other schools and offices differently.

In the days preceding my wedding in a Cambridge College chapel, my brother would perform a spot-on imitation of George Costanza from Seinfeld and shriek, "Worlds Collide!" each time the English and American in-laws to be or my husband's Oxonian undergrad buddies and our shared Cantabrigian graduate cohort threatened to run amok.

In response to my last post, I received a thoughtful email from a colleague (an administrator) reflecting on the difference between managing and leading. This has been a theme for a lot of our on-campus professional development directed at faculty moving into administrative roles.

I have something to admit: I know that I eventually want to go into administration.

The advent season invariably leads me to engage in a self-reflection on whether (and to what degree) I have been naughty or nice. Oftentimes, I am very confident I have done more good deeds than bad, mainly because I have little occasion to potentially do ill to somebody. As long as I did things on my own (as a professor, researcher and writer), my actions bear little direct consequence to others. I would like to think I have a modest amount of social capital after being in the academic profession for 20 odd years, which I could bank on in case I veer towards the naughty territory.

A weekly update on what's happening with the University of Venus writers.

Long ago, when I heard or read about the huge pressure continuously faced by serious and appreciated academics to publish as much as possible (following the overused and abused slogan “publish or perish“), I was extremely surprised – if not automatically cynical. How could an academic do anything else but write?

My first book was the result of years of graduate work and was born of my dissertation. It had gone through multiple iterations and critiques from my adviser and dissertation committee. In the end, I felt as though the whole project was out of my hands, and I was simply responding to the demands of others. Of course, that is the point — as a graduate student, you are being shaped to join the ranks of academics who speak the same (metaphoric) language and share similar expectations for academic work.