Filed under: Random
I normally don’t do these, but saw this one and was curious as to how it would turn out. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna ask any of you to do it (but you are free to if you want to kill time rather than work — though I don’t know how you could label this productive procrastination). So here is my album cover for my new band:
To Play Along…
1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.
To give the proper credit for the photo, you can see the original here.
Filed under: job market
Okay, so the stuff I found most helpful/useful:
1. Jenn Lena’s list of advice. And, in my exhaustion, I wrote that it was Tina’s advice for chapstick. That was actually in this list of advice. On this list are also included questions. Take those questions. Memorize a few of them. Sometimes they’ll just sit there and expect you to question them for 30 minutes. Also, her “bag that will save your interview” follow that… exactly. I didn’t use it all. But I needed kleenex, excedrin, chapstick, a second pen, the little notebook, and an energy bar. Since I followed that list, I had everything i needed. I may have had more than I needed, but that’s O.K.
2. Think about and have good answers for (also see Jenn’s list):
- Why do you want to be here? (Especially geography and teaching v. research)
- Where are you in your dissertation? Will you be done?
- Questions about children/husband — how are you going to handle those
3. No one told me to do this, but I used this a lot. After you get your itinerary, make a microsoft word (or excel) spreadsheet with three columns: Time, Who Meet, Summary of their work/research/teaching and questions to ask them. That way you can just glance at this between (on the way) to meetings and remind yourself of who is who and what work they do. I was able to start conversations with, “I know you’ve researched on X, are you still doing that?” Or “I saw the article you did with Y, did you ever go back and do more analysis like you suggested in the article?” This is NOT fail proof. A lot of times the website was not up-to-date, so they were like “Yeah, I did that once, but it’s not really what I’m interested in now.” I also googled, but that doesn’t always reveal all. But, hell, I figure it shows that you are interested and trying to pay attention to them as researchers. Then, I wrote notes on another copy of the itinerary on notes for my follow-up emails. I didn’t have time to write after every meeting, but did do so when I found time. Thanks to Blue who printed out all the faculty webpages and copies of articles for me to review.
4. Talking to current faculty at your U and others about how they would answer questions. For example, it WAS the lovely Tina from Scatterplot who gave me advice on how to speak about one area of research (also film and book suggestions). I also talked to other researchers in that area. I talked to a few about the purpose of general education classes. About how to mentor grad students. How to bring undergrads into your research. Basically, this was an exercise of just listening to the language used. How you answer should be what you believe because that’s the only way that it will seem sincere. But, it helps with professionalization through how to frame your answers (in my opinion).
5. It was also Tina who suggested to let my enthusiasm show through during my job talk. To give them insight into how I teach. I think this worked very well for me. I approached the methods of my presentation (network junk) as if I was teaching how to do it on a very basic level. I got a lot of comments that indicated to me that they appreciated that, and how I seemed approachable.
6. “F it in the A!” as Kristina pointed out earlier (btw, I totally picture the hand motions that Tom Cruise uses in Jerry McGuire). Indeed. Be yourself (although a glossier shinier version in nice clothes). It’s not like I’ve been offered this job. So I can’t say that this worked. However, I can say that being myself, being genuine, laughing and making jokes, made the experience enjoyable for me. Yes, it was friggin exhausting. But I also liked it. And, by being myself rather than who I thought they wanted me to be, I think that means that if I do get the offer: (1) They are hiring ME and not this fake character; and (2) I know that I enjoy them as me (possibly even more important). By the time I got there, I was in almost this Zen-like state where I was totally “F it in the A!” Yes, I wanted to do well, but I was going to do well as me (if that makes sense).
7. Bring copies of syllabi, manuscripts (that you present on), any other materials. I had several people that couldn’t come to the job talk, so I had to talk it through with them during meetings. I then was able to offer them the manscript that the presentation came from. A few that were at the job talk were interested in it, and they took copies too. The chair was really interested in my syllabi. At my final meeting with him, he referred to how I structure courses and how inventive I was. This is not something I was able to discuss with him, so it gave him more insight into how I teach. This is good. I made a lot more copies than I needed, but that was ok. I hated dragging my bag around with me the entire time, but it was useful when a professor saw me in the hallway and said, “Hey, can I get a copy of your paper?” Which did happen.
8. Not just comfortable shoes — but a different pair of comfortable shoes FOR EACH DAY. Basically, I had pretty darn comfortable shoes, but after 12 hours in them, they started rubbing in a few places. The next day being in the same shoes was suddenly painful. I suggest a separate pair that will not rub in the same places the first pair did.
9. Do a practice job talk. Invite all the faculty that you are scared of because of their huge brains. When I got my presentation past some of the scariest faculty I have ever had the privilege of knowing, suddenly this room full of strangers did not feel at all scary. After you get practice grilled on your talk, the real grilling seems so much nicer.
Hmm.. I think that’s all I got. Of course, keep in mind this comes from someone who has NO IDEA if she landed a job. However, I did enjoy my experience and that’s got to count for something.
**UPDATE**
10. Know your body. Know what you can eat or drink without causing pain or upset stomach. For example, I did not drink soda the entire time because soda makes me tired. I also was able to arrange to go places where it was appropriate just to have tea for breakfast (breakfast also can make me sleepy). I ate a light lunch for the same reason. It’s just the way my body is and how it reacts to food. Know that and act on it.
Filed under: job market
Oh my goodness.
I am amazed that anyone can give advice about the job market and how to do well at an interview. I just got back to the hotel room after nearly 12 hours of back-to-back meetings. It just happened today, and already it’s a complete and total blur. Complete and Total Blur.
I think I remember it going well. But I can’t even promise that. My feet hurt. My lips are dry. I can’t seem to get enough water. I remember watching a show on how to become a Navy Seal. I’m wondering if that feels anything like this.
So, all I can say so far, Tina’s advice to bring chapstick is good. Not that I remembered I had it, or had time to put it on (except once on the toilet). Maybe I’ll remember more after I finish tomorrow and get some sleep.
I’m sick of being socially awkward and unsure of myself. Screw it. I’m just not gonna do that anymore.
That is all.
Filed under: job market
Well, I’m down to the final days before my job interview. I have spent that past few weeks boning up on my introductory level stats (it’s been OH so long since I’ve even thought about an ANOVA) and worked on the professionalization of language.
I gave a practice job talk today. A good proportion of my committee showed up, as did some graduate students. I got some really great feedback.
I’ve gotten to the point that I am just so tired of getting ready. I think there was too much of a lag between landing the interview and the actual interview. Darn jury duty! Which was canceled by the way. I now have to go in March.
I have to go get a haircut and buy another suit. Then I need to clean the car and buy things like mints. Great fun. I’ll let you know how it went and any advice that others have given me that I found the most helpful.
I just read this book Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas. See a great interview/review here.
Zailckas describes how she began drinking when she was 14 and quickly fell into a pattern of alcohol abuse. She writes about how drinking framed her days, her relationships, her selfhood. Interweaving her story with a few footnotes that reports statistics, she is expressing anger at a society (parents, friends, her University, and others) where the approach to women drinking is summarized as okay as long as it stays “Out of sight, out of mind. That is to say, as long as we keep our drinking out of sight, the administration won’t mind if we do it” (pg. 115).
I must admit, I have little experience with the kind of drinking she is talking about. I don’t drink frequently and never have. What struck the biggest cord in me is her description of how women feel responsible for their women friends who are drinking. Making sure that they aren’t being taken advantage of, making sure they get home, that they don’t pass out and die, and that a man doesn’t take advantage of them. I did have my fair share of those experiences. I remember one night in particular where I was up until 4 a.m., having tucked two drunken roommates (one had gone home with her boyfriend) into bed and staying up to clean puke off the carpet and walls of our campus apartment. Quite inexplicably, I was a member of a sorority (made more inexplicable if you know me), and I frequently had to enforce the drinking rules of our sorority and policing who got into whose car, monitoring who could drive or not (mostly not — one sip and no sister was allowed to get in that person’s car — and believe you me, I was targeted for a lot of hate over that rule, not that I bended on it).
Mostly, for me, this books was a look into how other people may have lived. As a social psychologist, I was fascinated by the narrative of identities that this book wove. One of my favorite lines of the entire book was after her first drink where she is describing being slightly inebriated in the backseat of her friend’s mother’s car. This mother looked at Koren through the review mirror, and Koren responds in this way:
She doesn’t know that the thing I found in her liquor cabinet has given me the capacity to be a completely different animal on the inside. Inside, I feel exotic and dangerous. I’m a cobra inside a kitty cat (p. 25).
The early narrative is one of alcohol allowing Koren to act in ways that are more authentic, less trapped by low self-worth, fear of ugliness, an obsessive compulsive tendency to question and re-question every word you spoke before those words come out. Later, it becomes a lubricant she needs in order to experience any kind of intimacy — not with just males, but for friendships with females as well. When sober she justifies drinking because she knows, underneath her skin, she’s damaged — hideous.
But the narrative of identities is not so straight forward as this. She writes about how she forces herself, when drinking, to be brighter, more entertaining, just more. And then she wonders how this has irrevocably changed her personality. (Ossification, anyone?). She writes about how drinking made her angry, or perhaps revealed her anger.
She begins(and ends) the book by writing about how alcohol stunted her development. That learning how to trust her own voice, her ability to have intimate conversations, was always dependent upon alcohol in her system. She argues that if she had not drunk so early, so often, and formed a mode of self presentation based on alcohol, that she would be able to be intimate without it. Personally, this is one of her arguments I found both interesting and probably not true. While she defined her ability to do this in terms of having alcohol in her system, most likely true for her, I do not know if NOT drinking would have enabled her to “mature normally.” As a 30-year-old who did not rely on alcohol to cope, I do not feel any further ahead in these areas as she is herself. And I know that I could not as thoughtfully analyze my own existence as she does at the age of 24 (I couldn’t even do it at the age I’m at).
Underlying her entire story is the danger of men. How men can take and take from women. Fear of date rape. Fear of male mistreatment. How alcohol made her more able to deal with (and put men in their place) leers and comments. So alcohol appears to both have made her believe herself stronger — but also made her a victim. She writes about how she possibly lost her virginity to a frat boy she didn’t even like when she was 19 — waking up from a black out naked in his room. Later, she writes about being at a sorority formal where a staff member at the hotel would not let go of her and stalked her to her room when she did manage to get away. The narrative here is also complex. It’s a mixture of self-blaming, the acknowledgment that other women feel a need to be responsible for one another, and anger at a society that blames the woman for being in these situations rather than blaming men who rape.
All in all, very complex and great read. I’d be interested in whether any of you had read it and your thoughts on it. I’m particularly interested in how you think she discusses males in the book.
I was surfing around looking for a good text and/or reader on intersectionalities (race, class, gender, sexuality…) and found this website for the Race and Pedagogy Project.
From their own description:
This site presents diverse scholarship and opinions regarding race and pedagogy. The site is an academic resource intended to provide teachers, students, researchers and the interested public with on-site articles and theoretical analyses, policy documents, current legislative updates, and an annotated bibliography of research and teaching materials.
They review articles, have teaching resources (such as talking about Hurricane Katrina, Beloved, lesson plans, and film reviews). It appears that they stopped doing this in 2006, but still it looks like a very useful site.
Filed under: Race & Ethnicity
If you don’t normally read RaceWire: The Colorlines Blog, check out this post.
Filed under: Random
The Importance of Stupidity in Science
I feel stupid A LOT. Ok, I feel less stupid now then I did when I was a new Master’s student. But still, frequently, I feel like a complete idiot. But, as per that article, I guess that means I’m doing my job.
Feel better? Not really. It kinda sucks to feel stupid. Plus, I’m exhausted. REALLY exhausted.
Also, for you Sci Fi/Fantasy lovers (and aren’t we all?), check out this post from the Global Sociology Blog.
