I'm Just Sayin'

Updates on what's happening in my life. Thoughts about current events, politics, books, and anything else that I find interesting. Intended for those who know and love me.

Name:
Location: Albany, New York

Friday, December 26, 2008

My Neglected Blog

The fate of the blog had been up in the air for a while because I was feeling constrained about what I could write and I've been enjoying micro communications on Facebook more that I thought I would. But now I miss my blog. I'm going to be in Europe most of January, so I'm sure the blog will resurface at the very least as a travelogue.

In the meantime, my inane complaint of the day (which, for me, should really be a regular series) goes to Amazon. I'm changing most of the email notifications from different companies to reduce the amount of crap that I get. Amazon very politely sent me an email notification to inform me that I have canceled all of my email notifications. Are they trying to be annoying?

Saturday, December 06, 2008

At the Margins

I have an esteemed senior colleague, who I respect on a number of levels, who has colorful ways of describing various aspect of our jobs. One day, after an especially difficult meeting, he reminded me that we earn our paychecks "at the margins." There are so many aspects of our job that are truly enjoyable that we would probably do them even if we didn't get paid. So, we get paid for the tough cases; for the work "at the margins" that requires extra effort, extra guidance, extra patience, and extra careful decisions. The end of the semester is when the margins are stretched to their limits -- students who are not quite performing up to par, journal papers to review that should just be stamped "reject," but that require extra effort to be constructive about, articles that are not shaping up as you thought they would, people asking for extensions for any number of obligations, etc. At this point in the semester when non-academics think we are "on vacation," we are truly working hard for those paychecks.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Where Is the Evidence to Support This Claim?

Since I've written that question about 1,000 times while grading papers over the last two days, I figured once more couldn't hurt. I'm going to create a macro in Word that will put that question in a comment at the click of a button so I don't have to actually type it out over and over and over again.

At the beginning of the semester I'm excited about assigning research papers to my undergrads. I have sound pedagogical reasons and a sense of moral superiority that I am not taking the easy route when it comes to grading. Then by the end of the semester when I'm reading their final papers my moral superiority turns into a nagging inferiority complex that I have taught my students nothing in the past three months.

If only I could add the following advice to my paper instructions next time around:

1. Don't quote movies. Hollywood writers are not criminologists.
2. Don't quote political pundits. Nope, they're not criminologists either.
3. The key ingredient of a research paper is ... research. Otherwise the assignment would be called "8 pages of drivel."
4. A research paper is also not the same as a NYTimes OpEd piece. Although if my students could write that well I'd probably still give them credit for the assignment.

I shouldn't be so negative about grading, but end-of-the-semester burnout doesn't help my attitude much. Instead I should focus on the successes. There are some well written papers in the pile. Some students actually did learn something from me. I also had two students from last semester's class recently win paper contests with the papers written for my class, which I'm very proud of. The problem is just that sometimes those needles are really hard to find in the haystack.