Ms Mentor
More bad advice from the Chronicle.
Ms Mentor on should graduate students publish.
But Ms. Mentor digresses. Your story will be much improved — and your job prospects immeasurably enhanced — if you have publications. That is your unique niche, the feather in your coffee, the cream in your cap. Without it, your Mom will still think you’re special — but she isn’t hiring today, more’s the pity.
and
“But I just want to teach!” you wail. Without a publication or two, or some unique talent, you’re apt to languish in the adjunct pool (making $2,000 a course with no job security) for as long as you’re committed to academe. Publishing, whether in obscure journals or popular magazines, will give you a name, a face, and a distinction. If you want to move from a community college to a liberal-arts college or a research university, it’s the only path.
What Ms Mentor (which clueless editor is this?) doesn’t understand - and what unfortunately so many in the field never seem to understand - is how problematic the separation of teaching from writing is.
1. You can’t teach writing when you are hostile to it (”I don’t want to write!”)
2. Writing is an act of informing. You inform yourself about the field you are involved within. When you don’t write, you lose touch with your field. When you lose touch, your teaching suffers (having been in a small department where many folks did not write, I saw this process up close).
3. You write to be in the field. Our areas of research and teaching do not need more folks sitting on the side admiring star persona. To be involved is to engage with the ideas, conversations, issues which surface throughout the field in a variety of ways. You write to be involved. Give up the binary of writing and teaching already. It’s done enough damage.
Writing is not an obligation for employment. What the publication earned in graduate school does is demonstrate one’s involvement in academic work; the publication is not fulfilling a requirement for being hired. Writing is a part of the career we invest in and learn in. When we continue to reduce writing to the obligation - as the tone of this advice column does - there is no investment nor is there involvement. Instead, what we find is writing no different than that done by the first year student who sees all work as obligation and removed from her interests and experience.
Good lord, that question is even worse than the answer.
If this is typical “advice,” no wonder English PhDs don’t get jobs.
Comment by cbd — March 16, 2006 @ 7:23 pm
Yes, the question is immeasurably worse than the answer. I am astounded that there are still grad students out there who don’t understand why they “have” to publish. I mean, isn’t this one of those “if you have to ask, you’ll never know” kind of situations?
Time for me to stop complaining about how much work I have to do and rejoice in that fact that, shit, at least I KNOW how much work I have to do.
Comment by sarah — March 18, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
To make a sad story sadder: I teach at a community college where publishing is implicitly held against a person because “if you’re publishing, you’re taking time away from your teaching.” It’s implied that even reading the scholarship of others shouldn’t be done because it takes time away from teaching.
Comment by Liz — March 21, 2006 @ 12:43 pm
I teach at a community college where we’re encouraged to publish, get grants, and help develop things like writing centers. Unfortunately I’m so busy with the last two that I don’t really have time to publish. Back to academia for me!
I’m uncertain why anybody with a PhD would settle for adjuncthood though. $2000 a course? That’s only 500 more than I make now with “just” a Masters. Why the heck would I spend 5 years and god knows how much cash for only $500 more a course *just* to teach?
Maybe everybody needs to spend some time in adjunct hood prior to their PhD so they either get it, or they like it enough not to leave.
I’m willing to argue that there’s lots of things one can get involved with (including) publication that prove ones dedication to academia though: serving on committees, planning curriculum, planning conferences, giving papers at conferences, working on academic journals, AND getting published all would suit equally well in combination I’d think. Unfortunately I don’t think all of those are open to graduate students at all schools.
Comment by Annie — March 25, 2006 @ 11:53 am
Teaching Carnival #7…
If you’re reading this, it means that the wordherders.net server is up and running again . . . Sorry for……
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