Choice is a Privilege

Yes, I'm back. I'm not going to give excuses other than:

1. I'm writing a book -- which tends to sap your ability to write anything NOT the manuscript. 
2. COVID-19. I thankfully didn't have it, but of course the disruption to the semester was intense. 
3. The death of George Floyd and the political implications to higher education's stance and statements on race. As the faculty trustee at my institution, it's been mine (and our Board's) focus at the moment. 

COVID-19 became a nightmare for educators at every level, and will continue to disrupt in varying degrees for semesters to come. I'm not surprised that masks have become politicized. I'm not surprised that universities are coming to realize the importance of face-to-face instruction for students as students consider gap-years rather than deal with an entire course load online. Concurrently, faculty such as myself are coming to realize the importance of having online components to our classes. Luddism here was a privilege to which none of us can adhere any longer. While technology broadly construed is my specialty, I was not a fan nor adopter of online or blended models of teaching. The technology wasn't (and still isn't) seamless enough for me to dynamically present material or facilitate discussion. That is my opinion, and it still is. I envy my colleagues who have managed this balance and who create rich and dynamic online learning experiences for students. I have been -- and will continue to -- look to them to guide me. 

The death of George Floyd and the spotlight on race and police brutality have put universities into (rightfully) awkward positions.  I'm sure many administrators and faculty alike have been blindsided by the activism of colleagues; or, conversely, lacks of activism. I won't go into the details of my own university's response, but I will say that what is abundantly clear is that for some, like myself, the death of George Floyd was a gut-check of my personal privilege, and a reassessing of the privilege and power that comes with it. Personally -- let me emphasize this -- personally, I found that I was not doing enough. My selective activism was a privilege in and of itself. As what will probably be one of the last generations of faculty to have tenure, I have an invaluable asset by and through which I can actively affect change. The challenge is for me to do so responsibly: not in the context of keeping anyone "comfortable," but in the context of not doing harm to those already being pulled in different directions by the intersectional forces of race, gender, poverty, and a myriad other vectors of power. 

I think that many of us in academia -- particularly in the humanities and social sciences --  have been talking about these things for so long that we forget that we have internalized and naturalized the discourse of race and gender studies. We simply can't believe that anyone but a college freshman could say "all lives matter" without malicious intent. Yet, when it does happen, we have a moral obligation to educate in the most effective manner possible. As a philosophy professor, I am spoiled in the fact that I face resistance on a daily basis to the things I teach in my classes: not necessarily because they are politically volatile, but because they are just ... well ... ridiculous. YOU try explaining to a student who never read ANY philosophy in their lives Plato's theory of Forms. Or try to thread the needle with Nietzsche and Sartre so that students realize that neither was a nihilist (in fact, both are as anti-nihilist as one can be). 

So when a community member, or relative, or administrator proudly -- and without malice -- says "all lives matter"* or declare themselves "colorblind"** in the context of wanting to be an ally or at least do no further harm, my duty is to be the educator that I am. Notice the context, however. There are plenty of people who have declared "all lives matter" or that they're "colorblind" with the same political fervor and intention as am internet comment section troll who has just learned the term "virtue signalling." 

Indeed, I've had some relatively important people declare that they'd love to sit down and have coffee with me because they'd find "real debate" with me to be "entertaining." I can't help but think of showing up in a toga yelling "ARE YOU NOT AMUSED?!" Instead, I politely decline, saying that while I'd love to talk about philosophy any day, I'd rather not take part in what will inevitably be the rhetorical equivalent of professional wrestling. They want me to follow the script of the liberal academic while they follow their own script of whatever they think the opposite of a liberal academic is.  

Yet, that's the real issue here, though, isn't it? I had the privilege of saying "no." I had the privilege of walking away from a so-called "debate" and get on with my life. Just as I could easily take another Facebook hiatus or "sit out" diversity discussions on campus simply because I was tired or just didn't feel like it. 

There are those who simply cannot walk away from these issues. They cannot sign out of Facebook and not have to deal with systemic racism. Every act of theirs becomes a political act simply by the color of their skin and/or their gender identity. Between this and COVID, I was given a double-dose of privilege-checking. Just like the moment when I sat down to write this entry and told myself that I was specifically NOT going to discuss any of the above because I wanted to focus on something else. Yes, I will focus on other things in future entries, but this entry needed to be written. And I had a responsibility to write it. 

Black lives matter.

* saying "all lives matter" as an answer to "Black lives matter" is akin to saying to the owner of a burning house that "all houses matter" as their house burns down; or saying to someone who lost a child that "all children matter." 

** When one is "blind" to race, it also infers that one is blind to the experiences unique to that race -- both the challenges that race has faced as well as the pride and accomplishments therein. 

Academic Work and Mental Health

I've always said to my students -- especially those thinking of doing Masters or Ph.D. programs -- that graduate work (and academic work in general) can psychologically take you apart and put you back together again. It will often bring up deeper issues that have been at play in our day-to-day lives for years.

As I was annotating a book the other day, I felt a familiar, dull ache start to radiate from my neck, to my shoulders, shoulder blades, and eventually lower back. I took a moment to think about how I was sitting and oriented in space: I was hunched over -- my shoulders were high up in and incredibly unnatural position close to my ears.  I thought about what my current acupuncturist, ortho-bionomist, and past 3 physical therapists would say. I stretched, straightened myself out, and paused to figure out why I hunch the way I do when I write.

It’s like I’m under siege, I thought to myself.

And then I realized there was something to that.

If there’s one refrain from my childhood that still haunts me when I work it’s “You’re lazy.”

My parents had this interesting pretzel logic: The reason I was smart was because I was lazy. I didn’t want to spend as much time on homework as the other kids because I just wanted to watch TV and do nothing. So I’d finish my homework fast and get A’s so “I didn’t have to work.”

No, that doesn’t make sense. But it was what I was told repeatedly when I was in grade school. Then in high school, on top of all of the above, I was accused of being lazy because I didn’t have a job at 14, like my father did.

And then in college, despite being on a full academic scholarship, getting 4.0s most semesters, making the deans list, (and eventually graduating summa cum laude), I was perpetually admonished by my parents for not getting a job during the 4 week winter break, or getting a “temporary job” in the two or three weeks between the last day of classes and the first day of my summer jobs (lab assistant for a couple of  years, and then day camp counselor). Again, according to them, it was because I was “lazy.” My work study jobs during the school year as an undergraduate didn’t count because they weren’t “real jobs.”

And even though I was doing schoolwork on evenings and weekends, my parents often maintained that I should be working some part-time job on the weekends.

So doing schoolwork (that is to say, doing the work to maintain my GPA, scholarships, etc.,) wasn’t “real work.” In retrospect, the biggest mistake of my undergrad days was living at home. But I did so because I got a good scholarship at a good undergrad institution close to home. It was how I afforded college without loans.

But just about every weekend, every break, or every moment I was trying to do work, I was at risk of having to field passive aggressive questions or comments from my mother and father regarding my avoidance of work.

My choice to go to grad school because I wanted to teach was, of course, because I didn’t want a “real job.”

Most confusing, though, was how my parents (my mother in particular) would tout my achievements to family and friends, even telling them "how hard [I] worked.” But when relatives or friends were gone, the criticism, passive aggressive comments, and negativity always came back. It’s no wonder why I hunch when I do work. I am in siege mode. It explains also why my dissertation took me so long to write, and why that period of my life was the most difficult in terms of my mental health: the more I achieved, the more lazy I thought I was actually being.

Even though I have generally come to terms with the complete irrationality of that logic, I do have to take pains (often literally) to be mindful of how I work, and not build a narrative out of the negative thoughts that do arise as I submerge into extended research. I went back into counseling last summer, mainly because I was starting to feel a sense of dread and depression about my sabbatical, which I knew made no sense. I'm so glad I did.

The things we achieve -- whether academic, professional, personal, etc. -- are things of which we should be proud. Sometimes we have to be a little proactive in reminding ourselves of how to accept our own accomplishments.

And maybe every 30 or 60 minutes, stand up and stretch.

Excavations and Turns

"To take embodiment seriously is simply to embrace a more balanced view of our cognitive (indeed, our human) nature.  We are thinking beings whose nature qua thinking beings is not accidentally but profoundly and continuously informed by our existence as physically embodied, and socially and technologically embedded organisms."

 -- Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, (217).  

I've reached a point in my field-related research that I've internalized certain ideas to the extent that they have become the conceptual bedrock of my current project. However, as I dug up my annotations of Andy Clark's Supersizing the Mind, I realized that I have taken certain assumptions for granted ... and had briefly forgotten that I didn't always think the way that I do about phenomenology, materialism, and particularly distributed cognition. Apparently, as little as seven years ago, I wasn't convinced of Clark's hypothesis regarding the ways in which our cognition is functionally and essentially contingent upon our phenomenal environments. Now, of course, I am. But reading my sometimes-snarky comments and my critiques/questions about his work gave me valuable insight into my own intellectual development, and pointed at ways to sharpen my arguments in my current project.

Seven years ago, I was still thinking that language was the mitigating factor in the qualia of our experience. In fact, I had written a chapter for an anthology around that time, working under the aforementioned idea. Now I realize why that chapter was rejected and left to literally collect dust in my office. The rejection of that chapter really affected me, because it was an anthology in which I really wanted to be included. I knew that something was off with it. It never felt quite "right."

Then, filed next to those notes, was a different set of notes written around eight months later. Those notes represented a complete 180 degree turn in my thinking. Unsurprisingly, that chapter was accepted into a different anthology ("Thinking Through the Hoard" which appeared in Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman).  That piece was really the beginning of my current journey. I suppose Clark's ideas had "sunk in" with the help of other authors who pointed out some of the broader implications of his work (like Jane Bennet and Hans Verbeek).

There are a couple of takeaways from this anecdote: 1) as academics/researchers, our ideas are always evolving. Several philosophers, including Heidegger, experienced "turns" in their thinking, marked by a letting go of what seemed to be foundational concepts of their work. My own work in posthumanism has made a couple of turns from its original literary theory roots, to an emo existential phase, to its current post-phenomenological flavor. 2) Embrace the turns for that they are. There are reasons why we move on intellectually. Remember why we move on is helpful when anticipating critiques to your current thinking.

Sabbatical: The True Meaning of Time

So no apologies or grand statements regarding that my quiet academic blog is now alive and awake again. No promises as to what it will become, or how often I will update. I'm going to let this evolve on its own. Like all the best things I do, I have a sketch in my head as to what I'd like this blog to be while I'm sabbatical -- as I research and write what will hopefully be another book. But, things happen and unfold in interesting and unpredictable ways. I have been doing a great deal of research in the past several months, all in preparation for what will be several months of concentrated work.

For those who may not be familiar with what a sabbatical is or how it works, it's basically a paid leave from one's usual responsibilities on campus in order to do intensive research or writing. Most universities grant year-long sabbaticals; but since Western isn't the most cash-flush or research-oriented university, our sabbaticals are one semester long ... we can take a year if we'd like, but at half-pay. Since I can't afford to live on half of my salary, I opted for the semester-long sabbatical. Sabbaticals are something for which faculty have to apply and be approved. It's a multi-step process that requires proposals and evidence that one has actually done research while they're gone. Once you are on the tenure track, you can apply for a sabbatical once every 7 years. 

This is my first sabbatical. So I have no idea what to expect nor can I wax philosophical on what it's like. 

I can say, however, that this will be the first time I'm not on an academic schedule since I first started going to school. And I don't mean grad school. I mean Pre-K. My years have been portioned by the academic calendar since I was 4. Elementary school. High school. College. Grad school. Teaching. There were no breaks. I have always either been in a classroom as a student or as an instructor since I was 4 years old. I am now 46. You do the math. Sure, there are semester breaks, but this was the first time I entered a semester break without having to think about the next semester's classes. It was less disorienting than I thought it would be. 

Not many people who aren't teachers understand exactly how much time and energy teaching requires. I normally have a teaching load of 4 classes per semester. I'm physically in the classroom for 3 hours per course per week (spread out over a Monday/Wednesday/Friday or Tuesday/Thursday schedule for each). I am also required to have at least 5 hours per week of "office hours" for students. So that's 17 hours per week of teaching/office hours. That doesn't include class preps, grading, committee work, meetings, and the administrative side of directing the philosophy program. Most days, I arrive on campus by 8:30am and leave after 5pm. Most days before or after that I'm prepping/reading for classes, grading, or doing paperwork. Weekends are the same. When I leave for the day, I bring work with me. 

I get up at 5am on weekdays in order to have a little under 60 minutes to do my own research. Semester breaks are also times when I've been able to do my own research. But 1/3rd to 1/2 of those breaks are filled with writing recommendations for students, prepping for the next semester's classes, and dealing with the inevitable committee work that brings me to campus during those breaks. 

With a sabbatical, 85%-90% of the above work goes away. 

This is why sabbatical are precious ... because it gives us time. 

Time to let the big thoughts develop. Time to sit down and THINK. Time to actually read something that isn't a student paper or a committee report. Time to write through a problem without looking at the clock and thinking about how you're going to make Kant into a remotely interesting class. Time to focus on your own work instead of the at-risk student who has been looking really tired in class and probably isn't eating because they just got dumped by their fiancee or their dog is sick or they flipped their car over for the 3rd time in 2 years. Time to sit in quiet instead of dealing with yet another new directive from administration to fund raise or recruit even though you have zero experience or expertise in doing so. Time to read relevant writing in your field instead of being asked to justify the importance of your field or to report back as to exactly where your students from 7 years ago are working now and how your classes got them that particular job. 

There is time. 

Time to recharge myself so that when I do return, Kant will be an interesting class. Time to become re-invested in my field and feel legitimate as an academic again so that I can pay better attention to my students and reach out when I know they're at risk. Time to research so that when I return I have evidence of exactly how important my field is, and exactly why studying it isn't just important, but imperative to making students marketable to employers. 

There is time for me to focus on me, so that I can eventually focus better on my job and doing it well. 

That's what sabbatical is all about, Charlie Brown. 

Research, Sabbaticals, and the Reality of Higher Ed

It has been quite a while since I've posted, and -- for once -- it's for a good reason. I've been working on some new research which is very timely and somewhat sensitive, in that I am hoping that it is the start to a new larger, hopefully book-length, piece. I was recently granted a sabbatical for the Spring semester of 2019. While a year's sabbatical would be more conducive to research, my university only grants year-long sabbaticals at half-pay, which wasn't feasible financially.

I won't get into the details of my current project work here, but I hope to be posting more often, writing what I envision to be "parallel" pieces that indirectly relate to what I'm working on. Apologies for the intrigue, but sometimes when you've got a really good project that you think has legs, you want to keep it under wraps for fear of being distracted or getting "scooped." It's an aspect of posthumanism that hasn't really been explored in any meaningful way, and I'm hoping to be one of the first to do so.

It's an interesting feeling now, post-promotion to full professor, to establish a research agenda that -- while tempered by demands of my own field -- is my own. As academics, we often find ourselves driven by the desire to land positions that offer some kind of security amid various market pressures and political attacks. And even when we do find those positions, we're faced with internal pressures to engage in research that will ensure tenure and promotion. In most cases, academic freedom allows us to research what we'd like, but we also know that it has to be something publishable. And even then, as economic pressures on higher ed tempt universities to re-create themselves according to certain "identities" (i.e. we are a "destination" or "technical" or "public service" university etc), we find that rushed and panicked marketing campaigns begin to trickle down into discussions of liberal arts and general education: "perhaps if we taught more of [insert fundraising magnet field here], then we'd get more money."

It's especially frustrating for me when the perspective and knowledge I've gained from posthuman studies shows that competing and popular fields pushing these discussions forward are doomed given the demands of the coming decades. You can see the paths ahead to create curricula and programs that could make an institution a real force, but you're told -- directly -- that there have to be donors to support those changes. "Show us a donor with eight million dollars and we can talk about it." When those words can be spoken aloud -- to faculty --  at a university, it's hard to engage in research agenda not affected by those forces (whether it's to try to attract money or to purposely entrench in one's own research agenda out of classic academic spite).

Both extremes are destructive.

I'm not going to stand on the perspective of tenure or promotion to justify my position, because tenure and promotion mean nothing when your program is eliminated. But I can and will speak from the perspective of two decades' worth of experience. I know that to be an effective instructor and researcher, I need to engage in the research that speaks to my own passions and interests. I also know professionally that I have to adapt and shape those results into something that is marketable. And if it doesn't fit into the newest identity one's university is trying on for size, it has to be marketable enough to be published, and perhaps get a little attention. Even if a professor isn't publishing in the most popular majors, universities will still plaster their pictures up on website splash pages to tout their faculty's achievements.

My own research has taken a turn into something that is both meaningful and important to me but could also be timely and popular (well, as popular as academic writing can get). And my upcoming sabbatical is a chance for me to lose myself in it without dealing with the institutional noise and growing list of tasks that are being heaped upon faculty on a daily basis: write the copy for your program for our marketing materials for the 6th time in five years because we've fired the last five marketing people and have no idea where any of that information is; come to this campus discussion about how we're going to revolutionize our curriculum to the point where we're "encouraging" you to add certain content into your own classes; call prospective students to convince them to come.

At a teaching university, all of those are things that take me out of the classroom and interfere with my primary duties as in instructor. All of those are things that directly interfere with my face-time with students. All of those are things that contribute to the fatigue that makes me pass on sitting on committees that could actually make a difference. Some instructors make the transition from professor to fundraiser, although the titles they are given mask that fact: "Director" or "Dean" of something seems much more palatable than "chief fundraiser." The one token course they might teach a year become pegs upon which whatever pedagogical integrity they had is precariously hung.

I do, however, understand the need for people who can chase millionaires and billionaires for funds which are desperately needed to keep universities afloat. It's become a sad reality. And I have no problem speaking to parents and prospective students when they visit campus; I do see that as an aspect of what I need to do in order to actually remain employed. But my old mantra which I've said to the multiple marketing people who have come and gone has been "you get them into the classroom and I'll keep them here." That, sadly, is no longer enough.

It's ironic that sabbatical will take me out of the classroom which I so enjoy -- and have always enjoyed. It's not the classroom or the students from which I need a break, it's literally everything else. I am, in fact, very nervous to be without that classroom energy for a semester, because my students have always sustained and inspired me. But, in the bigger picture, losing myself in research will be a way for me to re-charge my classes and give the students the experience they all deserve.

"Your sabbatical isn't a break," I was told by an administrator at my university, who weeks before had told me that despite my "excellent proposal" I had "about a 50/50 shot" at getting sabbatical due to budget cuts.

But it is a break. A break from the things that distract me from what I do best. When the burdens of non-teaching duties and increased pressure to do the jobs of others encroaches on my class preps and time with students, then stepping away from that for even a semester IS a break. And during that time, I'll tap into the excitement of research that was the core of what allowed me to become a professor in the first place. As I said to a student recently, I knew early on that I wanted to be a professor, but my initial problem was that I saw research and the dissertation as a hurdle or impediment to that goal rather than the path to it. That research was a foundation upon which to build a career; a springboard for my passion to teach.

So, after twenty years, it's time to revisit my foundation, inspect it, and shore it up where necessary. I know I'll be a better professor for it.