Blogs

Whether it goes by the name of exaggeration, half-truth, misrepresentation, distortion, or dissembling, lying is endemic in all of education.

Will prospective students have a positive experience trying to interact with your school?

Having been out of graduate school for several years now, it’s easy to forget sometimes that the advice we received in graduate school often did not match our reality or our preferences. I’ve written about the “publish or perish” emphasis and the lack of emphasis on teaching in most graduate programs. There are other manifestations of this lopsided emphasis on research.

The fine blog Not of General Interest asks the right questions about UD's MOOC-mucking, so let's do Part Three of my series on my experience as a lecturer in Udemy's Faculty Project (I've now recorded two talks for Poetry) as a kind of interview.

An occasional correspondent writes: "I'm the most junior tenured member of my department, in which some of the more senior tenured faculty are not on speaking terms with each other. For complicated reasons, I'm also going to be the chair of this department next year. Any tips on how to handle this situation?"

The value of extra-curricular artivities, or, why I blog.

This weekend I plunked down my $3.99 to watch the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Four bucks buys you access to every game. Watch on the web, or download the Android or iOS app for your iPad or iPhone (or mix and match). All 67 games on every screen, for less than the cost of a Starbucks venti caramel macchiato.

One sees signs across many campuses encouraging people to “say something” if they “see something,” but what does that mean for graduate students? Many graduate students experience some form of abuse, but we often feel helpless to do anything about it. We sense that something is wrong with us rather than the institutionalized patterns of derision, infantilization, neglect, and exploitation. To make matters worse, a blanket of silence shrouds this abuse. Those who are brave enough to address the issue are often suppressed or dismissed. Until we can bring about structural change as the next generation of scholars, we need to focus on supporting each other, finding individual solutions, and pushing our universities to provide greater protection.