b l o g o s

where there's a dissertation there's a whippet

(ongoing series)

oh how i love zach galifianakis

Can't Tell Me Nothin' from Zach Galifianakis

Pat Summitt's Definite (half) Dozen, selected and redescribed for those of us in academia

One of the pleasures of being an alumna of Tennessee women's basketball is that each year I receive in the mail a copy of their media guide, a glossy, heavy-duty preview of this year's team, with a good dose of reflection about teams past. Debby Jennings and the media relations crew at UT do an amazing job on this publication, as evidenced by the many awards they have received in years past for their efforts.

This year, the page following a two-page spread chronicling Coach Summitt's road to her 1,005th win (since win number 1 in 1975), lists "Coach Summitt's Definite Dozen," a sort of twelve-commandments or set of be-attitudes for members of her team. I remember these vaguely from my years there, and I believe the pointers were evolving at that point. But as I was browsing through the list while gnoshing on my turkey salad sandwich, it occurred to me that Pat's definite dozen also includes advice that I wish were followed by more people in my current occupation. I have therefore pruned down Pat's list to a half dozen maxims that could help make English departments (and academia in general) a better, even healthier place, were more folks to abide by--or at least try to abide by--them. I am also fully aware that some of these (e.g., the first one) aren't unique to Coach Summitt and may as easily be learned in Sunday school. Even so, they're worth thinking about in terms of our jobs, our relations to our work, to ourselves, and to each other:

1. Respect yourself and others. This one makes me think particularly of all the self denigration that goes on in academia, especially--though not exclusively--among women. The other-denigration happens with even more regularity, and the two are no doubt related, though the self-denigration might well be more damaging. I have learned the lesson about respecting others from lots of people--an anonymous reader who pointed out that a footnote in an early draft was unnecessarily harsh on a particular scholar; a colleague who teaches grads to be very strategic about criticizing, and never to be seen as "going after" someone; others who model this sort of respect while also earning it themselves. I try when possible to call attention when people go the self-denigration route, or I refuse to engage it even by disputing the claims to (stupidity, incompetence, etc.) There are times and places when it's harmless, or even charming, but guess what? It can also be convincing and is best avoided or at least countered by a hefty dose of self-praise (even if that is practiced in private, for which, see number 6).

2. Take full responsibility. Oh lord, don't get me started on this one. I have precious little time for people and their excuses. Taking responsibility doesn't even have to be all that big of a deal. Pat teaches her players a short-hand code for when they screw up. We would say "rebound." Sounds gimmicky, but it was a good way to acknowledge and recover. Taking responsibility was something the seniors on the team did quite well, so I think we all developed it over time. No excuses! And also, we all screw up! Acknowledge your mistakes and get over it.

3. Discipline yourself so no one else has to. I admit that this member of the definite dozen is what prompted me to think of their broader application to work in academia. I struggle a lot with grad students who need discipline, even as I've been blessed with some of the hardest-working advisees ever. This relates a little to number 2. If work doesn't get done, it's usually no one's fault but your own. Yes, life dishes out some crazy shit, but that's why it's so important to stay on top of things, to know your limitations and work with them. I dislike nothing more than to have to be the person to try to teach someone this stuff. I'm a much better mentor when I can help someone focus on other ways to improve than simply spending more time with their work. So, to all you burgeoning scholars: spare us! DIY!

4. Develop and demonstrate loyalty. In the context of Tennessee basketball, this one obviously means loyalty to the team. But I would urge academics to think about it this way: who is your team? It could be your institution or department or immediate cohort in your field. It could be a network of people outside your institution, even a national organization. I would think it's most important to remain loyal to the people with whom you work most closely. Of course, this is more difficult when the loyalty doesn't travel the other way. Goodness knows loyalty seems low on the list of qualities to value in academe. I don't think I've ever highlighted this quality in rec letters, for instance.

5. Don't just work hard, work smart. I like this one a lot. It reminds me of teammates who would throw their bodies in all directions in order to demonstrate their willingness to do so. But sometimes that's not the smart thing to do. It can take you out of position, for one. The analogy in academia is when someone "shows their work," or describes the number of articles they have read, the number of pages of notes they have taken--evidence, no doubt, of their effort. But to work smart is to convert that effort into what is supposed to be produced. Efficiency might be a good word here, though I would clarify that I give the term an elastic meaning, not just a factory-style pump-it-out approach. Working smart may well entail taking longer with things. It all depends. (Burke is good on this concept of efficiency.) Note too that this one also assumes hard work. Well, yeah.

6. Handle success like you handle failure. This one, I think, is meant to balance number 1 and attempts to keep in check the towering egos that are the occupational hazards of sports and academe. When something good happens, be humble and reflective (though maybe keep the reflective part to yourself), and, as Pat always used to say after a loss, "learn from it." Don't take either one--success or failure--as a grand commentary on you as a person or even your future. If this advice were followed on a large scale, we would all be more sane for it.

this story really bugged me

Was anyone else bothered by this story in today's New York Times, the one that focuses on a rich white kid who is obsessed with--and pretty good at--basketball? As I was reading it, I simply couldn't figure out what the hook was: that he's rich? white? kinda short? Yes, it's impressive that he plays through pain, but so many high school athletes do this that it's not that impressive. Is it that he quit skiing in order to protect himself from injuries? Please. That his dad manages and subsidizes (heavily, it sounds like) his AAU team? Well, that's a little more of a story, but this item treats it rather nonchalantly.

It sounds to me as if the only thing that begins to distinguish this kid from all the scrappers out there is his family's relative wealth. My cynical side makes me think he has some connex to someone at the Times. Because now, the only thing that sets Len Chenfeld apart from the thousands of kids like him, kids with big (though tempered and seemingly realistic) hoops dreams, is this multi-column news spread.

techie tech

Today has been what might be called a high-tech day. It started this morning when I installed a new router. This was a much-needed change, since our five-year-old router kept my laptop spiraling in buffering hell any time I tried to watch a video of any length. Audio isn't that great either. When KM was in town for thanksgiving, she suggested that we try a new router, and boy was she right. The new router makes everything faster on the four machines we have linked in to the wireless network, including our iphone and itouch.

Then I moved on to building my professional online site using the Penn State blogs platform. The platform leaves a lot to be desired, and ought to be more user friendly for as simple as the layout looks, but it will do. Even though right now I only have a front page, I have big plans for the whole site, including adding links to my published work and (more importantly) a resource page for the course I'm directing. 

Now it's time to make pizza dough for tonight. Yes, yes, this involves technology in that we always mix and knead the dough with our kitchenaid mixer, but just moments ago I was thinking about how my cooking moments here in State College have been missing something. When I lived in Urbana, I would do any mid-day meal prep (which=prep for the evening meal) while listening to C-U's awesome public radio station (WILL), a station that is all talk, all the time. I loves me some corn and bean report, and I miss it. Here, though, the public radio station plays classical music all day until the main NPR news programming begins at 4 pm. Snore.

A few months ago I tried putting my laptop in the kitchen to stream, but the sound quality wasn't great, our wireless buffering problem was annoying, and I ended up getting flour on my keyboard. So today I did what any thinking person would these days, and what I should have done long ago: I consulted my iphone. Voila, there is a free app called "public radio" that will stream hundreds of public radio stations from across the country. In the past twenty minutes since downloading it, I have listened to public radio stations in Austin, Lexington, and Chicago. So off I go to pop my iphone into my new speaker system (which incidentally reminds me of a boombox I had in the late 80s that I decorated with a rainbow sticker that said "Debbie" on it), so that I can listen to the afternoon magazine while mixing yeast, water, flour, and salt.

scattershot 10, thanksgiving edition

1. This was the first Thanksgiving dinner that JM and I have ever hosted, and I declare it a success. Everything was in top form, and nothing failed.

2. I finally mastered mashed potatoes. The trick? A potato ricer. (And lots of cream and butter.)

3. All hail the brine (and the briner).

4. (On moving): To the person who is usually on the side of keeping rather than throwing out things that the other person in the couple thinks are useless, stick to your guns, unless there is a replacement in your future. I still can't believe I gave in on the muffin tins.

5. And so our stuffing muffins became just stuffing. Effing delicious stuffing--in fact, my favorite thing on the table--but still.

6. Dear Nancy, your port-cranberry sauce is exquisite. A delectable reminder of last year's thanksgiving goodness. love, debbie

7. CM's flying biscuit biscuits are the closest thing we have to a tradition. And she did not let us down, oh no she did not. 

8. Who knew applesauce was so easy? Not I. But I vow to make it regularly when local apples are available.

9. Drizzling maple syrup on while the vegetables are roasting? Why yes, that works very, very well. 

10. Thumbs up on carrot cake (recipe from the Grit in Athens, GA) as a post-thanksgiving-movie meal.

overheard at the PA state dept. of health

vaccine volunteer to the mother of the ten-year-old girl in front of me: so, has she had tetanus?

mother: yes, just this past summer.

ten-year-old: and I don't even have a boyfriend!!

on being edited

Yesterday I received two documents via email from the editors of a special collection on Burke and the archives. Since my co-prof and I are in the process of wrapping up a seminar on Kenneth Burke, and just this week, we ran a class on academic publishing that included some tips on incorporating archival findings into their nascent articles, I have archives--and Burke--freshly on my mind. So rather than wait until close to the deadline the editors gave me for turning this thing around, this morning I figured I'd settle in with the editors' suggestions to see just what I needed to do to make this piece a better contribution to the collection. 

And then it dawned on me: this is the first real line-by-line feedback I have gotten since I don't know when. Sure, there are reader's reports for journal submissions and book manuscripts, but sometimes those come down to cantankerous quibbling or generalizations about writing style. In the past few years, I have been doing this sort of editing/feedback work for others in the field--for dissertations-in-progress, for jr. colleagues, for journal and book submissions, for (especially) book reviews that I edit for QJS.

Academia is strange this way. We spend the first parts of our careers receiving more feedback than we give (obviously there are exceptions, like writing groups, etc.), and then once that first book is published we find ourselves squarely in the realm of giving far more than we receive. I by no means want to discount the importance of my "first reader" JM, who sees and helps improve everything before it leaves this house, nor do I want to discount colleagues who have lent a pair of eyes on chapters or articles-in-progress. In all, though, what we have is a pay-it-forward model that I have usually not given a second thought to.

Until this morning. This morning I find myself giddily--that's right, giddily!--plotting changes my editors requested and reworking sentences they have marked as trying to do too much. The piece is getting the benefit of two pairs of eyes, and the result is the most informed, thoughtful, and smart comments I've received since my dissertation advisor combed through my limp-along chapters some years ago. And I'm only now in a position to really appreciate the kind of time it took to offer this feedback. My essay has been in the hands of two very talented and knowledgeable in-the-field colleagues, and I couldn't be happier with or more grateful for their labor.

bureacratization of the nonimaginative

Most other people probably realize this, but at NCA this past week, it finally hit home with me that the longer we are in the field, the more our conference experience becomes bureaucratized. For all the board meetings, business meetings, individual meetings, meetings with publishers, and mentoring meetings, I pretty much didn't get to attend a panel unless I presented on it.  I'm also fairly sure--because we talked about it--that the other senior people in the meetings I had on my docket were having the same kind of conference. 

This is a sad state. I generally like to be in the conference audience, to see what's going on in the field, to ask questions and get conversations going from the other side of the podium. I hope to do more of that at RSA in May. I remember one president of ASHR who made a point to go to every single panel that made it onto ASHR's schedule. Tiring, I'm sure, but boy did he get a good sense of what kind of intellectual work the organization is supporting.

nca, yay. chicago, double yay.

The dryer just shut off, so I really need to go finish packing and therefore need to make this short. I am giddy about heading to Chicago for NCA. It's the Chicago part, more than the NCA part, that has me giddy. But NCA is okay, I suppose. I like the people, no doubt, and look forward to running in to everybody.

As an extra bonus, I convinced JM to fly and meet me there after his teaching obligations for the week are done. Chicago is where we always used to go to shake off the end of the semester, to eat some good food, and to catch a film that we might not otherwise catch in a theater. Mornings will be early for me--chock full of meetings and panels--but Friday and Saturday evenings, back to our favorite spots we will go. I even managed to work in an appointment with my favorite hair stylist. So if you don't recognize me, it's either because I'm 6.5 months pregnant, or because my hair has been blown straight. Come to think of it, the combination might not work very well, but I don't even care.

I do know that we miss you, Chicago. We look forward to toting our kid there. But in the meantime, we are excited to have you all to ourselves, even in the midst of the crazy convention.

post-halloween, post- D.S.T. seminar

sartre's crabs

This morning at breakfast I read the most delightful piece in this month's Harpers--a short excerpt of a conversation between Jean-Paul Sartre and John Gerassi, a scholar who interviewed him in 1971. The excerpt details Sartre's post-mescaline visions of crabs. They followed him everywhere, "just three or four of them." (The crabs, it turns out, were lobsters, but having not heard this anecdote before, imagine my delight when the interviewer knowingly responds to Sartre's reference to his near-nervous breakdown with, "you mean the crabs?" And Sartre, interestingly, chooses to refer to them throughout as crabs.)

These crabs kept Sartre company at movies, on walks--always when he "was going someplace." He consulted a psychotherapist, some fellow named Jacques Lacan, who suggested that the crabs were his way of coping with loneliness. It's odd, then, that they were never around when Sartre was writing, for there is nothing more solitary, more grippingly lonely (often) than writing. Simone de Beauvoir (jeez--this guy and his no-name associates) considered crabs a sign of his depression. 

The crab's mode of life seems rather relevant. Crabs are not sing-songy bluebirds, or sweet furry creatures. They are hard-shelled, pincered bottom-dwellers that scurry on the ocean floor, eating algae, worms, bacteria, what have you. With creaturely life in mind, the standout line of the interview is this: "Despite their mocking, my crabs never said that my books would not be on the shelf, or that if they were, so what?"

Sartre's crabs kept him grounded and real. From time to time, we could all use a few crabs.

from the top of mt. nittany

cool midwestern cities, awesome midwestern rhetoric scholars

I am on a two-legged midwestern trip, having completed the first one yesterday with a drive from Madison to Minneapolis. Appropriately, on the drive, I stopped at the Norske Nook to buy a lingonberry-apple pie.

The folks in English and Communication Arts at U of Wisconsin invited me to present at their colloquium, and I had a blast. For starters I got to see lots of my good friends from Pittsburgh K and M, in addition to dinner with the good comp/rhet folks, and coffee with SZ. One very nice graduate student, A, made a pan of what she called "pregnancy bars" [A, I need that recipe, please!] for the post-colloquium refreshments. At Wisconsin I presented a "bridge" project on Kenneth Burke and animals. Burke won't show up in my animals book--Aesop to Erasmus is already capacious enough--but he is a good warm up for it, because I can ruminate on the question of rhetoric and nonhuman animals more easily given that all his work is fresh in my mind and I'm teaching him this semester. The audience responses also helped me think about the next book while I'm still in the research stage, and so the bridging really is serving its purpose. 

Now I'm in Minnesota for a colloquium on Modern Rhetoric. Tonight's talks by Jim Aune and Bill Keith kicked things off nicely, positing some categories and provoking thought about autonomy, art, and much more. Richard G and I are presenting together in the morning, and we'll be talking about Modern Rhetoric's forwarding of Aristotle.

Now, I think I'll take a break from the cerebral to watch an episode of Friday Night Lights. It must be said that I miss JM and the whippets, and no that's not a band of fast ribby guys.

scattershot 5: plenty for a wednesday

1. I can't *wait* for the holidays, when I will apparently get my copy of this long-awaited release.

2. Something unexpectedly cool about expecting is learning about other people who are. Two cousins will now have babies 4 or 5 months on either side of ours. And then there are the academic "cousins" like little Nancy Wible or little Pezzullo-Striphas jr. Fun!

3. Now that my papers are mostly done, I'm really looking forward to my trips to the good old Midwest. Madison and Minneapolis in the same week, hooray. Nevermind that in my spare time while traveling I will be writing one of my NCA papers.

4. Speaking of NCA, one of the grad students in our seminar just informed me that this year's conference is *not* the week right before Thanksgiving but rather the week before the week before Thanksgiving. I was just assuming it was the weekend preceding T-giving, not having scrutinized the calendar all that closely, and having become quite accustomed, thank you very much, to chasing the conference with a nice (and much needed) week-long holiday. Such rhythm disruptions are definitely discombobulating, to me at least. 

5. And speaking of Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving this year will be all kinds of fun. JM's sister KM is flying to State College from London, and we are going to assemble the crib and the new stroller and whatnot. It also marks the end of my talk-based traveling for a good long while.