Even now, the thought of going on the academic job market seems so spiritually suicidal that I would rather abandon my career altogether than submit to the scrutiny of another semihostile search committee. As far as I can tell, the hiring process in English favors psychopaths with ice water in their veins, which explains a lot about the changing climate of the profession.
Mind you, I am not bashing the leadership of the MLA — which is, of course, full of well-meaning mandarins (God bless them, every one) — so much as I am lamenting the unstoppable transformation of a gentle, harmless occupation into a cannibalistic nightmare straight out of Goya. —Thomas Benton —A Christmas Present from the MLA (Chronicle)
This is the most cynical, bleakest essay I’ve seen from Benton. Perhaps he feels he’s doing his duty by scaring away more would-be graduate students. I regularly share Benton’s “Conference Man” reflections with students who are thinking about graduate school, but I think this essay goes well beyond unpleasant realism.
Benton refers to a 4/4 teaching load in a list of the “just about anything” that successful job seekers will have to face on the road to tenure.
That’s my load.
There are times when it drives me crazy. Fortunately, I haven’t been getting any pressure to publish a second book; I’ve been getting lots of positive feedback from my chair and my dean, I can’t think of a single colleague whom I dislike; we have an active support staff that takes a lot of the pressure off of me when it comes to dealing with students who have bad attitudes. I’ve taught some students four, six, or eight times, which means I get to watch them develop from doe-eyed freshmen to intellectually mature adults; I’ve taught certain courses enough times that I have the luxury of tweaking my teaching materials to optimize them, rather than scrambling to figure out what to do each week. I’ve got the opportunity to propose new courses in areas that interest me. My dean hasn’t turned down a travel funidng request yet. (In fact, the limiting factor on my conference travel is not travel support from the dean, but the amount of time my wife is willing to let me spend away from home.)
Quite frankly, a 3/3 load would make a huge difference in my productivity. Last semester, my dean asked me to take an overload, so a normal load will feel like a break. But when a January course that I had planned was canceled, I asked not to be assigned a replacement course. So this term, I’ll get a taste of what a 3/3 load would really be like.
As a grad student, I never imagined that the biggest barrier to getting published would be time — as in, at any moment there are a half dozen CFPs that are jumping up and down screaming my name, and one by one the deadlines whoosh by.
This term, I have a MWF class, and then a class that meets only on Tuesday, and another class that meets only on Thursday. Of course, with committee work and office hours and such, the day fills up pretty quickly. Also, because my wife is now teaching an evening course, I have to leave work early in the afternoon order to watch the kids while she prepares her lecture.
Last term, I was so tightly scheduled that I only had one four-hour block of unscheduled time — that was the only spot where I could hope to get any serious reading or writing done. This term I’ll have several such blocks. And I plan to use them.
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I've got a co-authored book chapter that has been through peer review and I've already submitted the minor revisions. A couple years ago I was approached to submit an article for a collection of essays honoring a former mentor, and I've got a Feb 1 deadline for putting together an article for a new digital humanities journal. In all of those cases, the subject matter is new media, but in two cases the form is perfectly traditional. (Well, perhaps with more illustrations than one typically finds in my discipline.)
So I've got several things at various points along the pipeline.
And in the time since I wrote this entry, my in box has produced a request that I submit and abstract for a special issue of a well-established journal. (I knew about this long ago, but the deadline used to seem so far away, and now it's suddenly upon us.)
I do appreciate your advice. I'm also sitting on a number of old conference papers that I could revise for publication somewhere. So I am certainly trying to focus on a few projects that look very promising, rather than pursuing every lead.
Empathy for the workload, and congrats on the freed time! But as I'm discovering while on sabbatical: time quickly fills, like when you poke a hole in the sand with your finger. We put more of that time into prepping or grading, simply because we can -- so the differences between a 3/3 and a 4/4 get elided when it comes to campus office work. Domestic duties (family, car, house, pets) are always knocking at the door, too, often with some with alarm. Then leisure activities (gaming, blogging about porpoises, surfing ebay for steals, riding the see-saw, etc.) chews up more time than we ever really want to admit. And sleep, precious sleep! Ah, I could sleep all sabbatical....
But I digress. You probably don't want my advice about your scholarly writing, and maybe I'm projecting a little, but when I read your comment about CFPs "whooshing" by I empathized to some degree because I have often found myself wanting to write everything and then winding up producing nothing in the process. So I thought I'd urge you with a reminder of some common sense: Try not to be overwhelmed by all you CAN do and focus on the one thing you SHOULD do and also most WANT to do. One thing. That's all it takes.
If you wanted my two cents, I'd recommend you choose to work on nailing another print publication, regardless of any pressure (or the absence of it) from above or worries for your tenure. You're calling your own shots most of the time, so it's good to challenge yourself and your own assumptions a little bit once in awhile. You've mastered a battery of new media experiments, so maybe the time has come to step back and try something more traditional? I think it might be good for your professional spirit and possibly even your legacy, if that's the right word.
But then again, there's always sleep...and Oblivion!