Obscure References

Question: Which political leader said this about his own country?

"Uneducated people are easier to govern."

Answer: Saparmurat Niyazov, former president-for-life (read "dictator") of Turkmenistan (that's a country north of Iran, or south of Kazakhstan for those of you who learned geography from Borat), who was not known for his originality, although this was probably a rare moment of straightforwardness on his part.

My research assistant is probably the only person who knows where I read that quote, but the beauty (sadness) of it is its general applicability. (Come on, admit it, you were thinking of an American politician.)

Said research assistant and I are working on an encyclopedia entry about Turkmenistan for a new series called Crime and Punishment around the World. I'm co-editing the Americas volume of the series, but I also wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to learn about yet another obscure country for the sake of my own research interests. This one's turning out to be quite interesting.

Ugh!

For the record, Blackboard has the worst WYSIWYG editor ever! I feel sorry for folks who don't know any html. Is it too much to ask for good course management software?!?! Apparently, it is. (For all you C-Tools users, don't rub it in!)

As you can probably guess from this post, classes start up again this week. I'm teaching two classes that I've taught before, so thankfully I don't have too much prep work to do. I'm looking forward to getting back into a routine again.

On a completely unrelated, but happier, note, I seriously can't wait for the new Indiana Jones movie to come out. I haven't been this excited about a movie in ages! This is my favorite movie series ever and I really hope I'm not disappointed.

The Essence of My Grad School Experience

I don't blog much about my grad school days because the wounds are just healing and I don't like to dredge up too much of that past. But as time passes, and I have a different perspective being on the faculty side of the experience, I can occasionally look back and laugh, or at least marvel at the bizarre world of the University of Chicago.

Today's trek down memory lane was prompted by a perusal of U of C groups on Facebook. Here are my favorites:

• Aaaand, I'm Awkward (yep, they just wear it like a badge)
• Keep UChicago Nerdy (as if there's a real opposing force)
• I Am Aware of My Own Ongoing Academic Self-Destruction, and Yet I Do Nothing to Stop It (so sad, yet so true)
• Manly Men for the Resolution of Personal Disputes by Duels to the Death (and you thought I was kidding when I said Beauty and the Geek was reminiscent of the dating scene in grade school)
• UChicago Has Killed My Soul (or would have if I didn't move out of state)
• I Want to Mechanically Divide Durkheim's Organic Solidarity (sigh, need I say more?)

If you're really brave and want even more insight into this enigma, you can check out this list of U of C You Tube videos.

I Should Be Happy, But ...

The deadline to submit papers to this year's sociology meeting was today at 3 p.m. Unlike other conferences where you just submit a 200-word abstract of the research that you hope to finish before the conference, this one requires a full 20-page paper with completed results due 8 months prior to the conference. I find the January deadline hard to meet because there is just too much other stuff going on at the end/beginning of the year. Since I haven't presented a paper there in a while (though I did a poster last year), I thought that it was time to put this conference back on the rotation. I've been working on a paper for a while, but it got sidetracked in Dec. and Jan. by another pressing project. As of last weekend, I thought the chances of finishing this paper were quite slim.

Then I got a renewed burst of energy and thought I'd try once more to get it done. Hey, I've done this before. Lots of work in short periods of time with mounting stress is the hallmark of graduate school. Surely I could put in a little extra time and effort to pull this off. So I spent an insane amount of time on Monday and Tuesday writing this paper. At 10:00 last night I thought I had a decent draft that I would tweak today and submit. It doesn't have to be a perfect paper since I can (and should) revise it before the meetings, but I certainly don't want it to be embarrassingly bad.

Today I cleared off my calendar, locked myself away, and even declined to get on the Internet (very unusual for me) so I could spend the morning working. I just took a break for lunch and checked my email.

The deadline has been extended until tomorrow!

Yes, this is ultimately good news, but damn! Couldn't they have announced that on Monday? I could have worked less than 12 hours yesterday. I could have slept in an extra hour. I could whine about this forever ... Tomorrow, when I'm not completely exhausted, I will be happy that I finished this paper. Regardless of the conference, it needed to get done anyhow, but I am really getting too old for cramming.

A Fascinating Presidential Race

I'm surprised that I haven't blogged much about the presidential race, even though it is turning out to be one of the most fascinating that I can remember. I can't think of any other major political campaign that has forced Americans to be so introspective and articulate about our identities, beliefs, and policies. And needless to say, there hasn't ever been this level of gender, ethnic, and religious diversity, which is quite refreshing.

Normally I'm much more vocal about my political opinions at this point in the race ... so why not this time around? Thankfully, I don't think it's apathy. In part this is the first time -- in a long time -- that I don't feel desperate as a Democrat. There is no lackluster front runner this time. We actually have a pool of great candidates. While I'm still strongly supporting Clinton at this point in the race, I would be happy to support Obama or Edwards if they were to win the nomination.

I'm also trying to avoid some of the silly gender biases of the debate so as not to inadvertently legitimize them. Seriously, how many words were written/spoken over Clinton's tears? People cry. It's part of being human. Get over it.

Gloria Steinhem wrote a great NYTimes Op-Ed piece last week about Clinton's run for presidency. The title of the article was unfortunately right on target: Women Are Never Front-Runners. She also that nicely summarized why I'm supporting Clinton:

I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule.

Getting Out of a Funk

This week has been strange. I suppose I should have been happy that it's been around 50 degrees and it's mid-January in Albany. Instead the warm weather has brought a string of grey, gloomy, rainy days that have dragged me down as the week progressed. By late afternoon yesterday I would have paid good money for some sunshine. It probably doesn't help that our house isn't well lit, although I don't have that excuse at the office. Anyhow, there's been a slight upturn in my mood today. I've been trying to exercise more and remember to take my vitamins so maybe that's helping. I've also made some progress on a project that I've been working on all month, so that should make me happier. Tomorrow I plan to talk to my niece on the webcam because it's her 5th birthday. I'm sure she'll cheer me up with tales of today's cupcake birthday party.

Update: Here's the forecast for the week. It explains why I'm feeling better today, but it doesn't bode well for further improvement.

On Doggedness

I've been reading Frank McCourt's Teacher Man over the break and it's a really enjoyable book. I highly recommend it to anyone who teaches at any level, but it's a fun read for anyone who was ever a student as well. McCourt is reflecting on 30 years of teaching in New York city public high schools, which is an incredible feat in my opinion. After one year of teaching high school in Poland, where teenagers are much more respectful of adults than they are in the U.S., I seriously admire anyone who can face that crowd day after day, year after year, and not go utterly insane. As McCourt described it:

In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother-father-brother-sister-uncle-aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.

He envies the college professors who only have to stroll into a class and lecture without having to deal with the personal and emotional lives of their students. I definitely prefer teaching college students over high school students any day, but college professors sometimes perform at least some of the various roles McCourt described above, and I would argue that female professors are expected to do so more than their male counterparts.

But my favorite quote from the book so far is this one:

Doggedness is not as glamourous as ambition or talent or intellect or charm, but still the one thing that got me through the days and nights.

This resonates with how I feel about my career right now. In trying to gauge whether I'll be successful, I'm starting to think that doggedness is the key. Most folks in this business are smart and ambitious, but that's simply not enough. Perseverance, relentlessness, doggedness, and toughness are much more important, at least in the pre-tenure years. We'll see if it pays off. I've been feeling like I've been pounding my head against the wall lately, working on a particular paper that was not coming together they way I had expected. Yesterday, I may have had a breakthrough. Still too early to tell for sure, but doggedness may be my friend this year.