All Change, please

I suppose for background to this post you need to know that I have been dating The Physio for around two months now. I've kept it a bit quiet, because it's very new, and it seems to be going well, and I didn't want to jinx it!

Last weekend The Physio was going away to North Eastern City for a stag night. Aspiring Author, my friend from the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss, wanted to come and visit me and the Little Dog, so I thought that would be an ideal weekend. I could then spend the weekend with Aspiring Author without neglecting The Physio, or not spending enough time with Aspiring Author because I'm also trying to include The Physio (and I thought that Aspiring Author might be a bit uncomfortable sleeping in my living room if The Physio was in my room).

The Physio joked about me spending the weekend with another man the first time he went away, but did add that he wasn't really the jealous sort and that I "don't seem like the cheating type". I'd say this makes him a reasonably good judge of character, although I'm not entirely sure what the 'cheating type' is like.

But I'm pretty sure that I must have looked like the 'cheating type' at the train station on Sunday, when I walked into the station with Aspiring Author, hugged him (he's a good and long standing friend) as he got on the train, bought a coffee, walked over to the next platform, sat for 10 minutes waiting for the next train, hugged The Physio as he arrived and left the station with him.

I wonder what the station staff thought...

I agree.

I was just reading this post at Victorianitas, and was writing a comment, and realised that it was turning into a post of its own so I brought it over here to Falling Leaves.

I agree with everything September Blue says about the job market and her response to those who already have permanent jobs - and presumably salaries - who are not being sufficiently sensitive to the worries of PhD students and post-docs. (This does not apply to all salaried academics, I hasten to add, only to those holding those opinions to which she rightly objects).

I was talking (casually, on the bus) to a very bright masters student the other day who was planning on doing a PhD, and had had several meetings with members of the academic staff to talk about it. I asked her why she wanted to do one, and she gave two answers 1) She's interested in her subject and 2) she would quite like an academic job. When I said to her that the job market was very bad, and having a PhD is necessary for, but won't guarantee you, an academic job, she looked at me in complete surprise and said surely there aren't that many people with PhDs to take the jobs? I told her that the last short term teaching job I'd applied for (because there had been NO permanent jobs for 6months) had had 180 applicants, and she was speechless. No one explains to pre-PhDs that the job market is rubbish. And no one explains that it's not just any vacancy either, it has to be one in your area. You seem only to learn this from those who have been there / are there / are struggling to make post-doc ends meet whilst trying not to be totally disillusioned about an academic career.

I taught this student last year as a third year undergrad. She is not stupid. She is doing well on her MA. But you can't expect undergrad and MA students to KNOW things about academia if no one in a position to know tells them. At best, many academics who are settled in their jobs aren't aware of quite how bad the market is; at worst (and I don't think this applies to any of the departments with which I am associated), universities NEED postgrad students, and being honest and realistic in meetings with potential applicants won't bring in the money.

Yes, we should do PhDs because we are good at the subject and because we love the subject. But we should make sure that students know what they are getting in to. Those who really want to do it will do it anyway. Those who aren't sure might think twice about the investment of time and money they will have to make without any job guarantees. That does not mean they don’t love their subject. But loving your subject, as September Blue rightly suggests, does not keep a roof over your head, or put food on your plate.

Re-reading and re-thinking

For the course I am teaching on Contemporary Women's Writing, I'm re-reading (and preparing a lecture on) Jackie Kay's Trumpet.

I have taught this novel before, a long time ago, to first year students at the university in the Beautiful Scottish City that I Miss. I remember thinking it was a useful text for teaching (identity/gender/sexuality/narrative structure), but that I didn't like or enjoy it very much. I chose to put it on the Women's Writing course because I thought it worked well with some of the other novels I'm teaching, because it's a gift if you want students to engage with theory, particularly Butler's arguments on performativity, and lastly because this course is a LOT of work for me, so I put on as many texts as I could that I had already read / taught. I know the last reason is not a good pedagogical reason, but when you are only being paid a TA contact-hourly rate to write a new lecture every week on a subject which is well outside your research area you need to give yourself a break sometimes! And I wouldn't have put it on the course if it did not work well with the other texts and provide excellent theoretical discussion possibilities etc etc.

I'm hoping that my third-year women's writing class will find it interesting, and engage with it on a level which my former first-year students could not, just by virtue of being first year students. I'm hoping that this group will not ask me how Millie and Joss had sex. I'm hoping that the essays will not include painfully embarrassing sentences which end with "but as my tutor pointed out, we don't want to know about that" ("Dear second-marker, I did indeed say this, but not in this context; I was making a salient point about difference, privacy and instrusion, rather than being totally prudish as this implies"). I'm hoping that these students will all have read the novel, and already have some opinions on how we might talk about it in a women's writing class.

But what has surprised me about re-reading the novel is how much better I like it this time round. And not just because I myself am now much more confident dealing with the ideas with which it engages, and the theories we might use in discussion. Or because I am now a much more experienced, confident tutor. More that I like the novel. I've actually found it so moving in places that I had to put it down so I didn't cry into my latte whilst reading it in a large coffee chain's comfy chairs.

I have realised that the last two novels that I have put on this course are not happy novels (the next one is The God of Small Things, which is not cheery, but is one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read). I think I'll have to take them chocolate at the end of the course to raise the happy levels.

But I stand by my course text choices. And I'm glad I have the opportunity to look at Trumpet again with new eyes.

Monetary surprises.

In light of September Blue's post commenting on warning students about the academic job market, this post seems particularly timely.

I am timetabled to teach 4 hours a week and am paid for 12 to account for prep time. Of course, it's token "prep time" - I work many, many more than I have ever tried to count (if I worked out how much I get paid per actual hour worked it would be too depressing to think about).

Setting aside, for the moment, my second teaching job - 2 of those 4 scheduled hours are taken up by this - for which I have not been paid at all yet because of their different pay claim system, I'm pausing to think about my pay slip from the big University in the City where the Castle is also a Prison.

When I openend it the other day I had a pleasant surprise. More money than I was expecting! And it wasn't even a mistake that they would take back from me; I had forgotten about the three days I had worked as secretary in Philosophy. Bonus money! (Well, already spent on bills, but bonus in being there when I wasn't expecting it). But what was more of a surprise - and not quite so pleasant - was that I discovered that I got paid almost as much for 3 days of secretary work as I did for a whole month teaching in English.

I know I'm lucky to have any sort of academic job at all. I know I'm lucky to get paid (however little at the moment) to do something that I really enjoy doing. But if I didn't love the teaching and the research - when I finally get to do some - I'd be very tempted to be a secretary full time.

So yes, tell MA students the facts and figures about the job market. And about how flexible you need to be both in terms of type of institution and of place in the country / a country / any country. And about the pay for part time TA work (if it's available - and it may not be).

No one should go into this with their eyes shut. Especially if they would rather be a secretary.

Sharing poetry

I heard this poem for the first time in a lecture yesterday, and found it so interesting that I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy!

La Figlia Che Piange
O quam te memorem virgo...

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair -
Lean on a garden urn -
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair -
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained suprise -
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and a shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight, and the noon's repose.

-- T. S. Eliot

Confession

OK. So here is my confession:

I am in love with one of my students.

Before you condemn me to an everlasting academic underworld torment of never finished book-reviews, undergrad essay mountains which grow taller the more you mark, and TA peanuts pay for evermore, I should probably explain.

He a mature-ish student (mid 20s), he’s tall, he’s slim, he’s quite attractive. He has small glasses and floppy hair. He wears shirts under tidy jumpers under neat jackets. He looks like he ought to be writing poetry in a garret room. He attends all of the lectures, and he usually has an exceptionally good (or politically interesting) reason if he misses seminars, and he has missed very few. He is informed, he is articulate, and he wants to learn. He has actively sought help from me with his analytical skills. And – and I’ve saved the best until last – he LOVES literature.

You might think this is a strange thing to say, when I earn my peanuts teaching literature students. But it seems to be becoming increasingly unusual to find an English Lit student who actually likes reading books.

The garret poet loves reading. He reads things that are not on the reading list, and he wants to talk about them. And he exudes an enthusiasm for literature and literary analysis, that sometimes leads him astray in his essays, but at least his essays are not in any way mechanical.

The tutor in me wants to nurture and train this enthusiasm into good academic criticism (hopefully without squashing the joy). My younger teenage self, who loved literature and was also fond of floppy-haired boys, is hopelessly in love with the garret poet.

So can I just say: if, after this confession and explanation, you still want to condemn me to the above mentioned academic purgatory of never-ending TA pay, please – pretty please – could it be teaching students like him.

Markers of folly.

From The French Lieutenant's Woman (chapter 34):

He did not like her when she was wilful; it contrasted too strongly with her elaborate clothes, all designed to show a total inadequacy outside the domestic interior. The thin end of the sensible clothes wedge had been inserted in society by the disgraceful Mrs Bloomer a decade and a half before the year of which I write; but that early attempt at the trouser suit had been comprehensively defeated by the crinoline - a small fact of considerable significance in our understanding of the Victorians. They were offered sense; and chose a six-foot folly unparalled in the most folly-ridden of minor arts.