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Being a thoughtful academic is more work than just being an academic

Being a thoughtful academic is more work than just being an academic

In a long Chronicle essay that came out today, there is a point at which the author describes his dissertation advisor’s tremendous ability to nurture his growing dissertation and his spirit with a combination of extensive, timely feedback on his writing; conversations in which it seemed this highly successful academic was genuinely interested in his ideas; and thoughtful attention to him as a person and not just as a laboring mind. In other words, the writer asserted, she seemed to…

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That UIUC job ad doesn’t say what people think it says; in some ways, it’s much worse

That UIUC job ad doesn’t say what people think it says; in some ways, it’s much worse

There’s outrage all over social media today in response to a University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign job ad* that is being widely derided for asking academic adjuncts to teach courses for free. If that is what the ad were asking for, it would deserve the most acidic vitriol flung by the strongest hands, the most strident criticism shouted to the rooftops. The thing is, that is not what the ad is asking for. And what the ad is asking for is…

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The idea of Eternity

The idea of Eternity

To my great surprise, teaching On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection is a fascinating process of watching students fall in love with nineteenth-century prose. It certainly helps that it really is mind-blowing that Darwin in 1859 posits a theory that relies on what we now understand as the genetic heritability of certain traits. In writing a coherent theory of adaptation that depends on small changes in organisms to better suit their environments, Darwin argues that unless we discover that there is some…

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You mustn’t fancy!

You mustn’t fancy!

Bitzer is a child Not Left Behind. Give him your standardized tests. He will pass them above the fiftieth percentile. He will finish them with time to spare. Multiple-choice questions are his forte. He does not neglect to fill in scantron bubbles darkly and completely with his #2 pencil; he does not hesitate over which end is up when you place a computer mouse in his hand. During a computer-administered benchmarking test, he never, ever would sit, idly looking out…

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