Alex Kudera's Blog, page 138
December 19, 2012
calling out well
I'm one of those weird ones who shows up; I can't remember calling out sick in sixteen years of teaching, and the only unplanned absence I can recall is one involving a delayed flight from another country.
Although I try to be, I'm not invariably punctual, and I remember early mornings in my adjunct days, with courses on two campuses and then evening tutoring ahead of me, when I'd arrive past civilization's ten-minute mark for occasional 8:00 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. sections, but I also remember teaching full days after the worst of a stomach virus came and went in the middle of the night along with other days when mere papergrading or insomnia was what limited my sleeping the night before.
One winter day in January or so of 2005, in freezing temperatures on my walk to a first 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. section from my 21st and Race "junior" one-bedroom, my anxiety and fatigue combined with anticipation of a full day of teaching and then evening tutoring to a more significant degree than usual. After making good progress for the first three-quarters of my walk to work, at the busy intersection of 30th and Market, I began to have the sensation that I could barely step forward, that I better find a newspaper box or sturdy pole and lean against it. The feeling was intense enough that I had to stop at the 30th Street Station U.S. Post Office, so I could warm up and try to overcome a dizziness and disorientation that would not abate. I was only the equivalent of a few city blocks from my classroom, but I felt desperate enough then to hail a taxi for the remaining distance.
I think that winter was when I first recognized that I better do anything in my power to reduce my teaching and tutoring load although I think the fact that I "escaped" that situation for my current one is due more to varying degrees of good and bad luck than anything else. I don't feel that it was necessarily any extra personal resolve that lifted me into the "lecturing" class, but I've tried to make the most of the current predicament (which really just means more lit and less comp, and some time for walking, reading, parenting, and writing). Alas, at other times, I miss my adjunct days in Philly, being in the city I belong to, and having one stimulating day after another full of unusual people in public spaces. I've noticed this before, though, that I have nostalgia for times in my life that were not necessarily or invariably the best of times for me.
Since driving down south, nothing so significant or severe has interfered with my ability to get to a classroom and teach once there, but for a fifty-minute class a few years ago, I taught with my daughter standing with me at the front of the room, because, as best I can recall, some kind of emergency had shut down the daycare, and that happened quickly in the middle of the day, and there didn't appear to be any other option. Around two years old, she stood and was quiet the whole time. It seemed like that class went okay.
But this post from The Professor Is In, is about more than the occasional miss or unusual circumstance. She is reminding us that's it's okay to quit academia outright, that it doesn't work out for everyone and even the seemingly successful among us are not necessarily the happiest of campers.
Leaving adjunct work seems to fit Migrant Intellectual well, and I hope he and his family can continue to make his new ventures work. He is writing and making music and raising children; maybe this is the variegated and full life we all deserve, and I only hope he can sustain it. I'm so thankful for his including me in his "Dodging a Seventy-Five Cent Toll" blog that I wanted to honor the spirit of the post and share with you some of the feeling from that winter almost eight years ago when I had six classes and tutoring and was a little unsure if I'd be able to survive it all, despite the fact that such a workload had become my routine for the five previous teaching seasons. Somehow, I made it through the doubt and jelly legs and by spring quarter had pretty much shaken it off. Now I'm just grateful that I'm no longer teaching six classes while also tutoring so many evenings each week.
The post also reminded me of my father's thoughts about taking days off. He'd say that more people should be calling out well, not sick, as in realizing it's those of us who can't stay away that have the more significant illness. In his Great Drives cameo, where he's introduced as the poet Jay Roberts by Maria Conchita Alonso, he notes that "staying in those offices all day" could be what drives folks crazy.
J.R. of sunny Ponte Vedra had a strong sense that there was some other world out there that too many of us were missing in our chase after steady bucks and plastic toys and American lifestyles and all that is most famously Faulknerly of the glands, and not the heart. I suppose Jay Roberts, aka Joseph Robert Kudera, thought much like Dr. Robert Baum, whose words I'll once more quote in closing:
Once we heal, we can create the conditions for abundance not austerity.
Once we listen to each other, we can think like educators, not legislators.
From abundance, we will meet our student-centered missions.
From community, we will grow as life-learners.
From renewal, we will solve this problem and look back saying, I wish we’d arrived here sooner.
This feels right.
This applies the best of what we do.
This is the best of who we are.
Although I try to be, I'm not invariably punctual, and I remember early mornings in my adjunct days, with courses on two campuses and then evening tutoring ahead of me, when I'd arrive past civilization's ten-minute mark for occasional 8:00 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. sections, but I also remember teaching full days after the worst of a stomach virus came and went in the middle of the night along with other days when mere papergrading or insomnia was what limited my sleeping the night before.
One winter day in January or so of 2005, in freezing temperatures on my walk to a first 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. section from my 21st and Race "junior" one-bedroom, my anxiety and fatigue combined with anticipation of a full day of teaching and then evening tutoring to a more significant degree than usual. After making good progress for the first three-quarters of my walk to work, at the busy intersection of 30th and Market, I began to have the sensation that I could barely step forward, that I better find a newspaper box or sturdy pole and lean against it. The feeling was intense enough that I had to stop at the 30th Street Station U.S. Post Office, so I could warm up and try to overcome a dizziness and disorientation that would not abate. I was only the equivalent of a few city blocks from my classroom, but I felt desperate enough then to hail a taxi for the remaining distance.
I think that winter was when I first recognized that I better do anything in my power to reduce my teaching and tutoring load although I think the fact that I "escaped" that situation for my current one is due more to varying degrees of good and bad luck than anything else. I don't feel that it was necessarily any extra personal resolve that lifted me into the "lecturing" class, but I've tried to make the most of the current predicament (which really just means more lit and less comp, and some time for walking, reading, parenting, and writing). Alas, at other times, I miss my adjunct days in Philly, being in the city I belong to, and having one stimulating day after another full of unusual people in public spaces. I've noticed this before, though, that I have nostalgia for times in my life that were not necessarily or invariably the best of times for me.
Since driving down south, nothing so significant or severe has interfered with my ability to get to a classroom and teach once there, but for a fifty-minute class a few years ago, I taught with my daughter standing with me at the front of the room, because, as best I can recall, some kind of emergency had shut down the daycare, and that happened quickly in the middle of the day, and there didn't appear to be any other option. Around two years old, she stood and was quiet the whole time. It seemed like that class went okay.
But this post from The Professor Is In, is about more than the occasional miss or unusual circumstance. She is reminding us that's it's okay to quit academia outright, that it doesn't work out for everyone and even the seemingly successful among us are not necessarily the happiest of campers.
Leaving adjunct work seems to fit Migrant Intellectual well, and I hope he and his family can continue to make his new ventures work. He is writing and making music and raising children; maybe this is the variegated and full life we all deserve, and I only hope he can sustain it. I'm so thankful for his including me in his "Dodging a Seventy-Five Cent Toll" blog that I wanted to honor the spirit of the post and share with you some of the feeling from that winter almost eight years ago when I had six classes and tutoring and was a little unsure if I'd be able to survive it all, despite the fact that such a workload had become my routine for the five previous teaching seasons. Somehow, I made it through the doubt and jelly legs and by spring quarter had pretty much shaken it off. Now I'm just grateful that I'm no longer teaching six classes while also tutoring so many evenings each week.
The post also reminded me of my father's thoughts about taking days off. He'd say that more people should be calling out well, not sick, as in realizing it's those of us who can't stay away that have the more significant illness. In his Great Drives cameo, where he's introduced as the poet Jay Roberts by Maria Conchita Alonso, he notes that "staying in those offices all day" could be what drives folks crazy.
J.R. of sunny Ponte Vedra had a strong sense that there was some other world out there that too many of us were missing in our chase after steady bucks and plastic toys and American lifestyles and all that is most famously Faulknerly of the glands, and not the heart. I suppose Jay Roberts, aka Joseph Robert Kudera, thought much like Dr. Robert Baum, whose words I'll once more quote in closing:
Once we heal, we can create the conditions for abundance not austerity.
Once we listen to each other, we can think like educators, not legislators.
From abundance, we will meet our student-centered missions.
From community, we will grow as life-learners.
From renewal, we will solve this problem and look back saying, I wish we’d arrived here sooner.
This feels right.
This applies the best of what we do.
This is the best of who we are.
calling in well
I'm one of those weird ones who shows up; I can't remember calling out sick in sixteen years of teaching, and the only unplanned absence I can recall is one involving a delayed flight from another country.
Although I try to be, I'm not invariably punctual, and I remember early mornings in my adjunct days, with courses on two campuses and then evening tutoring ahead of me, when I'd arrive past civilization's ten-minute mark for occasional 8:00 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. sections, but I also remember teaching full days after the worst of a stomach virus came and went in the middle of the night along with other days when mere papergrading or insomnia was what limited my sleeping the night before.
One winter day in January or so of 2005, in freezing temperatures on my walk to a first 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. section from my 21st and Race "junior" one-bedroom, my anxiety and fatigue combined with anticipation of a full day of teaching and then evening tutoring to a more significant degree than usual. After making good progress for the first three-quarters of my walk to work, at the busy intersection of 30th and Market, I began to have the sensation that I could barely walk forward, that I better find a newspaper box or sturdy pole and lean against it. The feeling was intense enough that I had to stop at the 30th Street Station U.S. Post Office, so I could warm up and try to overcome a dizziness and disorientation that would not abate. I was only the equivalent of a few city blocks from my classroom, but I felt desperate enough then to hail a taxi for the remaining distance.
I think that winter was when I first recognized that I better do anything in my power to reduce my teaching and tutoring load although at other times, I miss my adjunct days in Philly, being in the city I belong to, and having one full, stimulating day after another. I've noticed this before, though, that I have nostalgia for times in my life that were not necessarily or invariably the best of times for me.
Since driving down south, nothing so significant or severe has interfered with my ability to get to a classroom and teach once there, but for a fifty-minute class a few years ago, I taught with my daughter standing with me at the front of the room, because, as best I can recall, some kind of emergency had shut down the daycare, and that happened quickly in the middle of the day, and there didn't appear to be any other option. Around two years old, she stood and was quiet the whole time. It seemed like that class went okay.
But this post from The Professor Is In, is about more than the occasional miss or unusual circumstance. She is reminding us that's it's okay to quit academia outright, that it doesn't work out for everyone and even the seemingly successful among us are not necessarily the happiest of campers.
Leaving adjunct work seems to fit Migrant Intellectual well, and I hope he and his family can continue to make his new ventures work. He is writing and making music and raising children; maybe this is the variegated and full life we all deserve, and I only hope he can sustain it.
The post also reminded me of my father's thoughts about taking days off. He'd say that more people should be calling in well, as in realizing it's those of us who can't stay away that have the more significant illness.
Although I try to be, I'm not invariably punctual, and I remember early mornings in my adjunct days, with courses on two campuses and then evening tutoring ahead of me, when I'd arrive past civilization's ten-minute mark for occasional 8:00 a.m. and 8:40 a.m. sections, but I also remember teaching full days after the worst of a stomach virus came and went in the middle of the night along with other days when mere papergrading or insomnia was what limited my sleeping the night before.
One winter day in January or so of 2005, in freezing temperatures on my walk to a first 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. section from my 21st and Race "junior" one-bedroom, my anxiety and fatigue combined with anticipation of a full day of teaching and then evening tutoring to a more significant degree than usual. After making good progress for the first three-quarters of my walk to work, at the busy intersection of 30th and Market, I began to have the sensation that I could barely walk forward, that I better find a newspaper box or sturdy pole and lean against it. The feeling was intense enough that I had to stop at the 30th Street Station U.S. Post Office, so I could warm up and try to overcome a dizziness and disorientation that would not abate. I was only the equivalent of a few city blocks from my classroom, but I felt desperate enough then to hail a taxi for the remaining distance.
I think that winter was when I first recognized that I better do anything in my power to reduce my teaching and tutoring load although at other times, I miss my adjunct days in Philly, being in the city I belong to, and having one full, stimulating day after another. I've noticed this before, though, that I have nostalgia for times in my life that were not necessarily or invariably the best of times for me.
Since driving down south, nothing so significant or severe has interfered with my ability to get to a classroom and teach once there, but for a fifty-minute class a few years ago, I taught with my daughter standing with me at the front of the room, because, as best I can recall, some kind of emergency had shut down the daycare, and that happened quickly in the middle of the day, and there didn't appear to be any other option. Around two years old, she stood and was quiet the whole time. It seemed like that class went okay.
But this post from The Professor Is In, is about more than the occasional miss or unusual circumstance. She is reminding us that's it's okay to quit academia outright, that it doesn't work out for everyone and even the seemingly successful among us are not necessarily the happiest of campers.
Leaving adjunct work seems to fit Migrant Intellectual well, and I hope he and his family can continue to make his new ventures work. He is writing and making music and raising children; maybe this is the variegated and full life we all deserve, and I only hope he can sustain it.
The post also reminded me of my father's thoughts about taking days off. He'd say that more people should be calling in well, as in realizing it's those of us who can't stay away that have the more significant illness.
December 13, 2012
thank you, teacher
I wanted to share this excerpt from Migrant Intellectual with all of my teaching friends:
First, thank you.
Thank you for your work.
Thank you for staying in the game.
You are so important; your work is so important; your voice is so important.
You are a blessing to your students, to your friends and family, to yourself.
In the language of my mentor Avital Ronell, you are a dear one, my friend.
In these words, Dr. Baum is comforting an adjunct who reports from the teaching front on her own anxieties and second-hand clothing. It reminds me of how my father wandered back into the world of higher education in the mid-90s, having not taught a college class since the early 1970s but in need of an income years after losing what he had in the white collar world of computers and technology.
Anyway, in Florida, he was scheduled to teach calculus at a community college, and with some passion he planned his lessons and gave it go. But he walked in on the first day, saw twice as many students as he was told he'd be instructing, felt he was lied to, and resigned on the spot. His pay would have been $1,400 for one class over 15 weeks, and although he needed work, he wasn't willing to work for that sum. He is just one of many folks I know who couldn't or wouldn't teach for such paltry wages, or was apprehensive to terrified about teaching at all.
So, teachers, when you get there, enjoy your break. You deserve it.
As they say, you're making a difference.
Back to my father, a beautiful moment for me this fall was when I discovered a note in my facebook "other messages" that was from one of his math students from 1973 or so. The gentleman, just finishing up an engineering career, from another country and living in a state far from Philadelphia, wrote to ask if I was Joe Kudera's son, and then told me my father taught him in a math class at Temple University (yes, adjunct work), and that my father would see him in University City and offer to give him a lift to Temple's North Philly campus. It was good to hear that my father extending himself to this young man 40 years ago was a memory the older version cherished enough to seek out news of his driver-teacher.
This also reminded me of all the positive things you hear about adjuncts, all the different ways they are extending themselves to help within their communities, and it also reminded me of the positive side of my father. I'm sure this kind of memory is bouncing around my brain because I recently finished Townie, Andre Dubus III's look at his own presant-absent, giving-taking, learning-teaching father.
Last night, when I should have been grading still, I was also editing a short piece, another excerpt from The Book of Jay , about my father's poverty of the late 1970s, between tech gigs, when he successfully negotiated with the Christmas tree guy and wound up with all he could afford, the top two feet of a tree, a serviceable amount for any giving season. Maybe I can finish this grading and get rough draft of that excerpt online before the end of Channukah.
Best wishes, Dr. Baum, as you navigate the waters of Fox News and more.
First, thank you.
Thank you for your work.
Thank you for staying in the game.
You are so important; your work is so important; your voice is so important.
You are a blessing to your students, to your friends and family, to yourself.
In the language of my mentor Avital Ronell, you are a dear one, my friend.
In these words, Dr. Baum is comforting an adjunct who reports from the teaching front on her own anxieties and second-hand clothing. It reminds me of how my father wandered back into the world of higher education in the mid-90s, having not taught a college class since the early 1970s but in need of an income years after losing what he had in the white collar world of computers and technology.
Anyway, in Florida, he was scheduled to teach calculus at a community college, and with some passion he planned his lessons and gave it go. But he walked in on the first day, saw twice as many students as he was told he'd be instructing, felt he was lied to, and resigned on the spot. His pay would have been $1,400 for one class over 15 weeks, and although he needed work, he wasn't willing to work for that sum. He is just one of many folks I know who couldn't or wouldn't teach for such paltry wages, or was apprehensive to terrified about teaching at all.
So, teachers, when you get there, enjoy your break. You deserve it.
As they say, you're making a difference.
Back to my father, a beautiful moment for me this fall was when I discovered a note in my facebook "other messages" that was from one of his math students from 1973 or so. The gentleman, just finishing up an engineering career, from another country and living in a state far from Philadelphia, wrote to ask if I was Joe Kudera's son, and then told me my father taught him in a math class at Temple University (yes, adjunct work), and that my father would see him in University City and offer to give him a lift to Temple's North Philly campus. It was good to hear that my father extending himself to this young man 40 years ago was a memory the older version cherished enough to seek out news of his driver-teacher.
This also reminded me of all the positive things you hear about adjuncts, all the different ways they are extending themselves to help within their communities, and it also reminded me of the positive side of my father. I'm sure this kind of memory is bouncing around my brain because I recently finished Townie, Andre Dubus III's look at his own presant-absent, giving-taking, learning-teaching father.
Last night, when I should have been grading still, I was also editing a short piece, another excerpt from The Book of Jay , about my father's poverty of the late 1970s, between tech gigs, when he successfully negotiated with the Christmas tree guy and wound up with all he could afford, the top two feet of a tree, a serviceable amount for any giving season. Maybe I can finish this grading and get rough draft of that excerpt online before the end of Channukah.
Best wishes, Dr. Baum, as you navigate the waters of Fox News and more.
December 11, 2012
the migrant intellectual and the mainstream news
This migrant intellectual says Brett Baier of Fox News will be reporting on the adjunct issue, apparently in response to this wake-up call for mainstream media. There may be some sweeping generalizations in his blog, unless things such as invariable last-minute appointments apply specifically to the one community college he mentions, but the health insurance concern is legitimate and also why the majority of us were hopeful enough that Obama's plan will work that we voted to reelect the guy.
So far, there have been news stories about two colleges, Community College of Alleghany County and Youngstown State, adjusting their maximum number of courses downward in order to pay teachers for their classes without paying benefits, and we're just in wait-and-see mode with the whole bit--fiscal cliff, healthcare reform, and so on.
Stay tuned for full Obamacare in 2014?
Stay tuned to Fox News?
Haha.
My hunch is that the mainstream press will always prefer sensational nonfiction, academic corruption and suicide, to living, breathing literature, but in the sad world we live in, I sometimes forget to feel grateful for what I have and instead feel like Fight for Your Long Day is getting lost in the shuffle and deserves more continued recognition.
I guess it will always be easier to blog, hold a microphone, or kill oneself than it is to write a book.
Good. Now if my literature stays in the public imagination in any way, there'll be a little public disgruntlement readers can turn to for evidence of a decline in spirits in the later years.
Time to grade some more papers and take my mind off the rest of it.
I've come to realize that I enjoy teaching contemporary literature and business writing, even if I'm not always feeling so loved back for my efforts. And another quality small press asked to see the second novel, so there's some room for optimism in that realm as well.
So far, there have been news stories about two colleges, Community College of Alleghany County and Youngstown State, adjusting their maximum number of courses downward in order to pay teachers for their classes without paying benefits, and we're just in wait-and-see mode with the whole bit--fiscal cliff, healthcare reform, and so on.
Stay tuned for full Obamacare in 2014?
Stay tuned to Fox News?
Haha.
My hunch is that the mainstream press will always prefer sensational nonfiction, academic corruption and suicide, to living, breathing literature, but in the sad world we live in, I sometimes forget to feel grateful for what I have and instead feel like Fight for Your Long Day is getting lost in the shuffle and deserves more continued recognition.
I guess it will always be easier to blog, hold a microphone, or kill oneself than it is to write a book.
Good. Now if my literature stays in the public imagination in any way, there'll be a little public disgruntlement readers can turn to for evidence of a decline in spirits in the later years.
Time to grade some more papers and take my mind off the rest of it.
I've come to realize that I enjoy teaching contemporary literature and business writing, even if I'm not always feeling so loved back for my efforts. And another quality small press asked to see the second novel, so there's some room for optimism in that realm as well.
December 4, 2012
Donkey Tired, Donkey Gets Slapped With A Wet Fish
Today in contemporary literature (haha), we had some fun evaluating Steve Almond's "Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched," the leadoff hitter in the Richard Russo edited 2010 Best of American Stories. Although that one is mainly about fathers and sons, therapy, poker, and among men competition, bonding, animosity, drunkenness, insanity, and generalized angst, we still had time to consider his comic "deconstruction" of Toto's Africa in relation to all of the postcolonial and transnational stories we've been reading.
So it was a veritable Steve Almond Experience in Daniel 405, and apologies to any students present or innocents reading this now who wind up swaying to the beat at an inopportune moment.
Here's some bonus coverage of Almond on bad jobs with some additional thoughts on the bad job that is the writing life.
Man, if this wily veteran rock 'n roller is still knocking on doors, what does that mean for the rest of us?
Yikes.
So it was a veritable Steve Almond Experience in Daniel 405, and apologies to any students present or innocents reading this now who wind up swaying to the beat at an inopportune moment.
Here's some bonus coverage of Almond on bad jobs with some additional thoughts on the bad job that is the writing life.
Man, if this wily veteran rock 'n roller is still knocking on doors, what does that mean for the rest of us?
Yikes.
December 3, 2012
peace and trade, redux
Here's a follow up to the peace and trade blog below, Philly style with Michael Nutter in Tianjin. I can't prove that this sister-city business lifts all boats in both towns, but I can't prove it doesn't, either (although there are news articles everyday about how young people around the world are struggling).
"Staggering" is Mayor Nutter's first description, and his impressions sound similar to mine during last summer's visit to Suzhou and Shanghai. Here's an excerpt from the article:
"Seeing what goes on here is a reminder of the things we can do and must do to maintain our presence on the world stage," Nutter said.
It also underscores "what our federal government can do if we would have, at times, a little less debate and a whole lot more work and understand that investment brings job and activity and furthers American interests," said Nutter, who also is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Make no mistake, Mike, China is very much the kind of place where behind the amazing skyscrapers, ports, bridges, and trains, you can still see the signs of hand-to-mouth living. Then again, every place in the world is like that.
"Staggering" is Mayor Nutter's first description, and his impressions sound similar to mine during last summer's visit to Suzhou and Shanghai. Here's an excerpt from the article:
"Seeing what goes on here is a reminder of the things we can do and must do to maintain our presence on the world stage," Nutter said.
It also underscores "what our federal government can do if we would have, at times, a little less debate and a whole lot more work and understand that investment brings job and activity and furthers American interests," said Nutter, who also is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.Make no mistake, Mike, China is very much the kind of place where behind the amazing skyscrapers, ports, bridges, and trains, you can still see the signs of hand-to-mouth living. Then again, every place in the world is like that.
November 30, 2012
Brian Glenn in Wes Government
I like this clip of Wesleyan classmate Brian Glenn, at the 39-minute mark in the video, exhorting current students to fight for need-blind admission. I didn't know Brian well at Wesleyan, but I enjoy his table-banging energy on this issue.
Ecrasez l'infame!
Ecrasez l'infame!
November 29, 2012
other campuses' children
If you read Inside Higher Ed or other sources that cover "higher education," you learn that there are scandals low and high surrounding America's colleges and universities--high-level appointments without the degrees their resumes state, scandalously low adjunct pay, college degrees that lead to nothing but unpaid student loans, and much more. So Penn State's Jerry Sandusky problem is certainly news in terms of the extent of the egregiousness, but it is not the first university to invoke a "conspiracy of silence" as part of its long-term strategic plan.
(The newly indited Graham Spanier, like Sandusky now in a Pennsylvania prison with death-row inmates, continues to deny everything and vigorously defend himself as an expert sociologist who was an abused child himself and thus would never allow such crimes to occur under his watch. It very much should be understood that he, like everyone else, is innocent until proven guilty, and yet the facts that can be verified along with the economic inequalities of the whole situation--from the most disadvantaged boys being the victims to the highest paid administrators and coaches as the accused-- reminds us of the inequalities and cruelties of the entire country, and how higher education, from at least one angle, can be seen to support and even exacerbate this economic status quo.)
Somewhat like Penn State, but perhaps so much more typical in that rapes of enrolled adults are known to occur on college campuses, is the news from Amherst College that while a traumatized young woman left school demoralized and without a degree, her rapist went on to graduate with honors.
And then, closer to home for me, at Wesleyan University, like Amherst, part of the "little three," rape wasn't in the news, but President Roth announced that the school was no longer offering need-blind admission. On the one hand, when I read this I had to chuckle because no matter what anyone has ever said, it was always beneficial if your parents could pay for college when it was time for the elite "need blind" schools to pluck kids off the waiting lists, and just by random chance, year after year, almost all of these schools have been enrolling about half a student body that can pay the entire nut outright. It's not until you graduate and see your peers driving off in brand-new SUVs that you see the full impact of economic inequality on American higher education as it's currently practiced.
But still, I should be grateful, and I am, because I certainly would not have attended Wesleyan if they had not generously recomputed my financial aid package after my father lost a "good job" after we had sent in the initial forms. And I had worked a lot in high school, and saved, and so I had a chance to pay for a huge chunk of my fourth choice's costs and go on to poison my brain with Marx, Melville, Nieztsche, and more. (I'm sure there'd be no Fight for Your Long Day or teaching life were it not for Wesleyan University and what I read and saw there.)
$80,000 for four years of a private liberal arts college seemed like an amazing sum back then, and I can only imagine what students and their parents are thinking about the $120,000 that they can pay for total costs for even in-state tuition, room, and board at our "flagship" public universities these days. An adult student I spoke with at Clemson told me his in-state, full-time tuition is $6,000 a semester, which would be under $50,000 for four years and a relatively fair, if not invariably affordable, amount to pay for what's supposed to be a Top-25 state school.
A lot of people seem so happy to have Sandusky in jail, but the scary thing is that those alleged criminals at Penn State likely kept silent not because of loyalty to Sandusky but because they felt the university would lose revenue, and they understood that it's revenue that can pay salaries for quality faculty, technology, group health insurance, and more while it also gives some nonwealthy Americans a better chance to earn an affordable college degree.
But tossing the pedophile in the pokey and throwing away the key doesn't resolve higher education's inaccessibity issues, and we're left in a world where Wesleyan could be setting a trend toward a "new normal," which of course is a return to the old model, of elite colleges not acting as democratic institutions but as exclusive clubs for the young and rich. As a country, we seem to be continuing an antidemocratic trend away from equal access and affordability.
To me, this is not America, at least not the country we were taught to believe in. Which quite possibly means this is America.
(The newly indited Graham Spanier, like Sandusky now in a Pennsylvania prison with death-row inmates, continues to deny everything and vigorously defend himself as an expert sociologist who was an abused child himself and thus would never allow such crimes to occur under his watch. It very much should be understood that he, like everyone else, is innocent until proven guilty, and yet the facts that can be verified along with the economic inequalities of the whole situation--from the most disadvantaged boys being the victims to the highest paid administrators and coaches as the accused-- reminds us of the inequalities and cruelties of the entire country, and how higher education, from at least one angle, can be seen to support and even exacerbate this economic status quo.)
Somewhat like Penn State, but perhaps so much more typical in that rapes of enrolled adults are known to occur on college campuses, is the news from Amherst College that while a traumatized young woman left school demoralized and without a degree, her rapist went on to graduate with honors.
And then, closer to home for me, at Wesleyan University, like Amherst, part of the "little three," rape wasn't in the news, but President Roth announced that the school was no longer offering need-blind admission. On the one hand, when I read this I had to chuckle because no matter what anyone has ever said, it was always beneficial if your parents could pay for college when it was time for the elite "need blind" schools to pluck kids off the waiting lists, and just by random chance, year after year, almost all of these schools have been enrolling about half a student body that can pay the entire nut outright. It's not until you graduate and see your peers driving off in brand-new SUVs that you see the full impact of economic inequality on American higher education as it's currently practiced.
But still, I should be grateful, and I am, because I certainly would not have attended Wesleyan if they had not generously recomputed my financial aid package after my father lost a "good job" after we had sent in the initial forms. And I had worked a lot in high school, and saved, and so I had a chance to pay for a huge chunk of my fourth choice's costs and go on to poison my brain with Marx, Melville, Nieztsche, and more. (I'm sure there'd be no Fight for Your Long Day or teaching life were it not for Wesleyan University and what I read and saw there.)
$80,000 for four years of a private liberal arts college seemed like an amazing sum back then, and I can only imagine what students and their parents are thinking about the $120,000 that they can pay for total costs for even in-state tuition, room, and board at our "flagship" public universities these days. An adult student I spoke with at Clemson told me his in-state, full-time tuition is $6,000 a semester, which would be under $50,000 for four years and a relatively fair, if not invariably affordable, amount to pay for what's supposed to be a Top-25 state school.
A lot of people seem so happy to have Sandusky in jail, but the scary thing is that those alleged criminals at Penn State likely kept silent not because of loyalty to Sandusky but because they felt the university would lose revenue, and they understood that it's revenue that can pay salaries for quality faculty, technology, group health insurance, and more while it also gives some nonwealthy Americans a better chance to earn an affordable college degree.
But tossing the pedophile in the pokey and throwing away the key doesn't resolve higher education's inaccessibity issues, and we're left in a world where Wesleyan could be setting a trend toward a "new normal," which of course is a return to the old model, of elite colleges not acting as democratic institutions but as exclusive clubs for the young and rich. As a country, we seem to be continuing an antidemocratic trend away from equal access and affordability.
To me, this is not America, at least not the country we were taught to believe in. Which quite possibly means this is America.
November 28, 2012
Joseph A. Domino
I just stumbled upon this Joseph A. Domino piece, and was reminded that he was one of the early supporters of Fight for Your Long Day. Thanks, Joe. (I was searching for a recent reprint of his amazon review but couldn't find it.)
In a week where I've learned that another good friend lost a job, in this case, a so-called "good job," and that Governor Corbett has his steak knife out and is taking another look at Pennsylvania public-employee pensions, I'm still stumbling upon this kind of thing all over the web, and then I get caught up in how relatively good I have it and wonder when some more awful version of life will find me.
Okay, I'm going to crouch under the desk and hope they pass by.
And then in the middle of the night, when no one is looking, maybe I'll sneak back up here and watch Bill Black "Grand Bargain or Great Betrayal" videos at realnews.com. Black has it all--paranoia, tenure, facts, even a fair amount of his hair, and an office that is messy but not impossibly messy in that way in which even a Philip Roth character couldn't clear a clean well-lit place to seduce his paramour (the cleaning lady).
Good luck to everyone striving for a safer and more secure future.
In a week where I've learned that another good friend lost a job, in this case, a so-called "good job," and that Governor Corbett has his steak knife out and is taking another look at Pennsylvania public-employee pensions, I'm still stumbling upon this kind of thing all over the web, and then I get caught up in how relatively good I have it and wonder when some more awful version of life will find me.
Okay, I'm going to crouch under the desk and hope they pass by.
And then in the middle of the night, when no one is looking, maybe I'll sneak back up here and watch Bill Black "Grand Bargain or Great Betrayal" videos at realnews.com. Black has it all--paranoia, tenure, facts, even a fair amount of his hair, and an office that is messy but not impossibly messy in that way in which even a Philip Roth character couldn't clear a clean well-lit place to seduce his paramour (the cleaning lady).
Good luck to everyone striving for a safer and more secure future.
November 10, 2012
canon rap for loaves and fishes
"And the Canon Rap Got Played" looks to be the story I'm reading a section of at Clemson University's Writers' Harvest on Wednesday, November 14 at 7 p.m.
It should be a weird time.
It should be a weird time.
