Five years of Memoirs of a SLACer

Five years ago today, I posted about my job market success and Memoirs of a SLACer was born. Given that the average blog lasts about two weeks I am fairly surprised by my ability to keep this up for so long. I may have originally considered blogging to be a way to waste time that I should have been spending on my dissertation, but my dissertation was completed long ago and 572 posts later the blog is still going.

Early on, a friend who encouraged me to start a blog (probably so that I would stop sharing my “wisdom” with her) asked me how many readers I would need to consider this venture worthwhile. I responded that five readers would probably be enough to keep me going. Luckily, while Memoirs of a SLACer is not among the most read sociology blogs, more than five people read it every day (sometimes as many as eight!) so I don’t think I’m wasting my time.

Although there have been lulls in my blogging productivity, I have also been relatively successful at sticking to my preferred posting schedule. If you were not aware that there is a preferred posting schedule it is probably because talking about how frequently or infrequently I will post is prohibited by the Memoirs of a SLACer founding principles. These principles, eloquently titled “blog rules” in the text file I saved them in five years ago, are printed here for the first time:

• No Comments unless I ask a question
• No family life unless it is related to sociology
• No mention of how frequently or infrequently I will post
• No talk of singing in the shower at 3 am
• No jumps
• Capitalize the first word of post titles with no punctuation at the end

A few comments on these principles, which I have done a fairly good job of upholding over the years: Although I think that allowing comments can help develop a community around a blog, my thoughts regarding comments were influenced by this. Later, I read this, which reinforced my views. If it weren’t for John Gruber, you might be able to comment on this post right now!

The words “I have been meaning to post more” mean that the writer you are reading will soon stop providing updates. My policy on this has always been that I will post things when I want to post things and I won’t post things when I don’t or, more likely, when I’m too busy.

Possibly the most important blog rule was inspired by this. I have always connected with writers who allow some of their personality to come across in their writing, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing…

Although I’ve made it five years, I will not promise this blog will be around for another five. I won’t even promise that there will be a post on Thursday at 6 pm Pacific time. To do so would be to break my third rule of blogging.

At any rate, thanks for giving me a reason to keep writing!

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The reality of writing at teaching-oriented institutions

The other day Tenured Radical had a great post about the reality of writing in academia in general, but especially at teaching-oriented institutions:

The truth is that the vast majority of academic jobs, and some of the jobs that people want most because they conform to our romance of what higher education ought to be, are the least likely to forward one’s life as a writer and a scholar. Do you believe in faculty governance? OK, then, slice about six to eight hours out of your week for it, unless you are in the faculty senate or on some other major committee, and then take out another five hours. Are you a dedicated teacher? Six to seven hours a week, per class, until you start to enter Grading Hell about the middle of February, and then you can double that commitment. Do you like students? Well, then they will love you! Reserve another four to six hours a week for scheduled and unscheduled office hours, Mr. Chips, and this doesn’t even begin to count the hours you will spend advising and writing letters of recommendation.

I became increasingly aware over the last 25 years that peers who did not work at teaching intensive colleges had a great deal more time to spend on their writing. Yet strangely people act as if all full-time academic jobs are more or less the same, and that we all are similarly accomplished. We act as though there are not more than a very few people who work under the conditions that allow them to write more. In fact, I would argue that there is a kind of accelerator effect in academia, in which people who have access to the best fellowships and best jobs coming out of graduate school will, increasingly have access to more time to write than other people. It is these people who set the standard for excellence that, in the end, the vast majority of academics are expected by their institutions, and expect themselves, to meet.

This is a problem that I’ve discussed before in terms of academic false consciousness and the publication gauntlet. I am also hurrying to get some writing done before the crush of grading makes it practically impossible. While I think her identification of the problem is right on, most of her proposed solutions are aimed at helping faculty write more rather than addressing the fact that expectations no longer match a practical definition of reality for most academics.

False consciousness strikes again!

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Take Orgtheory’s public access poll

Following up on the idea of publicly-accessible Federally funded research, Fabio at Orgtheory has posted a poll. Go take it.

As a bonus, you can use the poll as an example of how not to write survey questions in your Research Methods courses this semester.

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Katniss Everdeen on the academic job market

When Candide was on the job market, he held that everything would work out for the best. Atlas Odenshoot (I guess that the Chronicle has run out of normal-sounding pseudonyms) contends that the job market is more like The Hunger Games, where “the odds are never in your favor.” Odinshoot also shares some interesting insights about the fact that your advisor has been there before, the importance (or lack thereof) of appearance, rule changes, and competing with friends, concluding:

Of course, the academic job market is not exactly like the Hunger Games. If you lose in the games, at least it’s over quickly. The job market, on the other hand, stretches on for months, perhaps years. So when you write that email to your adviser to say you want to go on the market, it might be better just to raise your hand and shout, “I volunteer as tribute!” Better yet, just run off in the woods with Gale.

I guess that would be the equivalent of leaving academia. Compared to some adjunct positions, being with Gale might not be bad. I guess it depends on whether you prefer to be a movie boyfriend or a movie girlfriend.

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Open access for Federally funded research

As reported here, a recent congressional appropriations bill “requires that scientific research funded by the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education be placed in a free online repository within 12 months of their publication in a peer-reviewed journal.” If this is signed into law it will be interesting to see if it is actually enforced, since publicly funded data is also supposed to be made available to the public.

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Sociology and MLK

Does the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a sociology major make up for Ronald Reagan?

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In the future, there will be douchebags

As John Gruber at Daring Fireball says, “Heads-up displays and augmented reality are coming, no doubt. But a lot of the people who are excited about it today seem to be men with very troubling issues.”

I’m sure this is intended to seem cool, but this guy doesn’t even sound like a real person. I’m also reminded of the villain from the third episode of the new season of Sherlock.

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Social class, appearance, and women’s sports

Amanda Hess at Slate reports on ESPN’s documentary The Price of Gold, which focuses on Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan and features an interesting look into the ways that appearance and social class interconnect in the world of figure skating. Hess writes:

As Nanette Burstein’s documentary makes clear, the Kerrigan-Harding affair unfolded in a commercial landscape in which economic potential hinges on appearance as much as it does athleticism. By the early ’90s, Kerrigan and Harding were toe-to-toe in American figure skating competition, but when it came to monetizing their skills, Kerrigan was skating on an elevated plain. Though both athletes emerged from working-class backgrounds, Kerrigan was blessed with patrician good looks and a sophisticated air that easily courted corporate sponsorships and Hollywood attention. “Nancy looked like she was wealthy,” is how Boston Globe reporter John Powers puts it in the documentary. Harding, counters Connie Chung, was the “girl with frizzy blonde hair from the wrong side of the tracks.” And their performance styles reinforced the divide: While Harding powered through technical routines, Kerrigan danced.

And so Kerrigan’s face soon became as famous as her feats on the ice. She began raking in endorsements early in her career, filming spots for Campbell’s soup, L’Oreal, and Reebok; in 1992, she starred in a televised Christmas special. But even when Harding became the first American woman to land a triple axel in competition, in 1991, no one wanted her to sell anything. “She was a great skater. I was a great skater. But she was treated like this big queen,” Harding says in the documentary. “She’s a princess, and I’m a pile of crap.” At one point in the film, Harding recalls wearing a bright-pink costume in competition that she had sewn herself. “It was really pretty!” she says. But “one of the judges came up to me afterwards and said … ‘If you ever wear anything like that again at a U.S. championship, you will never do another one.’” Harding shot back that until the judges gave her $5,000 to buy a designer piece, “You can get out of my face!” Meanwhile, as Sarah Marshall detailed in The Believer this month, Kerrigan had Vera Wang designing her costumes gratis.

Although the scandal involving Harding and Kerrigan happened over 20 years ago, the situation has not necessarily changed for female athletes. Hess notes:

Last year, Maria Sharapova earned almost twice as much endorsement money as Serena Williams—$23 million to $12 million—even though Williams has racked up twice as many points as Sharapova in singles competitions over the past year and has beaten Sharapova 14 consecutive times. Twelve mil is still a decent amount of scratch—and Sharapova is also an excellent player—but the fact remains that Williams has to work harder to make less money.

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Privacy is (not) for the birds!

In a world where Edward Snowden warns that children will never know privacy, I guess it makes sense to deny privacy to everything else, too. Get an early start on your future career with the NSA by purchasing the My Spy Birdhouse, which allows you to see into the homes of birds (including the ability to use a one-way mirror if you want to do so covertly!).

Next year, the makers of My Spy Birdhouse hope to allow us to monitor bird calls without a warrant.

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