Success or Failure in Higher Education: A Case Study

Hello All!
    New student orientation began yesterday at the GSAS... I hope it is all going well! New students, share your thoughts on the blog about how it is going and what your thoughts/ first impressions are!
   So, I just sat down to read the latest digital issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (ooh, note to self, I actually have to renew that subscription... I think it was my last one!) and I was struck by the Point of View article entitled "The Struggle to Make Sure Learning Takes Place," by Katherine Gekker. (It's on the last page of the issue -- check it out!) It's an anecdotal tale about one of Gekker's experiences as an adjunct professor teaching a Composition class in a large community college. Gekker explains that the course takes place at 6:30 AM and that it is a lab course in which "individualized tutorial" is built into the class. She also explains that many of her students are not native English speakers and that students get placed in this course because of a "deficien[cy] in writing" as deemed by the college.
    FIRST OF ALL, can we discuss briefly (and then more in depth later) the fact that this course is offered at 6:30 am. in the morning?? I almost cried when I read that, imagining the type of grit and determination and maybe even desperation it must take for these students to need a 6:30 am class. They are probably going to work after class, full-time, and then having to come home from that full day of work to do homework. Now, I know I am a graduate student writing her dissertation and also working at another day-job unaffiliated with my program, and also teaching one course a semester -- so yeah, pretty fully loaded myself -- but I still got emotional when I thought about the 6:30 show-up time for College Comp I. I really respect and admire these students.
    Gekker's article wants to ask the question, how can a professor ensure learning takes place? To do this, she tells the story of Helen, a student who hands in a paper that seems way beyond the skills she has shown in the classroom. Gekker confronts Helen about this paper; Helen finally admits she had help from a friend. Gekker fails her, and then Helen attempts to lay down the law, saying Gekker is way too strict, and to threaten Gekker with the prospect of bad ratings on Rate-my-professor.com, which will lead to no one signing up for her class, which will lead to no job in the future...
    WHAT IS THIS??? It seems like something made up on The Daily Show or something... "You'll never get a hot pepper from ME or ANYONE!!!!!!!!"
    The dean recognized this as a threat, and gave Gekker the go-ahead to reprimand Helen, and the threats stopped...

    And even though Helen had started to put some good quality effort in mid-semester, with one-on-one tutorials with Gekker and probably some revisions and do-overs, the whole story ends with Helen failing the class because she stops showing up with 5 weeks to go. She ultimately had to re-take College Comp and now has an F on her record. Gekker hopes she taught some people English, and will sign up again to teach Comp, despite the exortion attempt.
    So, what is the real moral of this anecdote? I mean, what is the take-away, for graduate student teachers or anyone teaching as a professor in a college setting? I am still trying to figure it out. To me, it is a highly frustrating story by all accounts... It almost seems like everyone failed.
    First, it is frustrating that this course took place at 6:30am. I'm sorry; I can't get over that. I already feel like that is too much to ask of students AND the professor. I know some people are early birds but I just can't imagine the expectation that everyone shows up at each class ready to go and ready to learn. It is already a losing battle, to me. Maybe it is the only option for some people who are choosing to get an education, but that is exactly what is sad and frustrating to me. What has America become?? Why is life here such a desperate struggle for some people? Do you think this kind of schedule exists in Europe?? They would go out of their minds to learn that some people enroll in 6:30 am classes out of necessity here. It is bonkers to me that life has gotten this way here. I KNOW students are doing that because they want to get ahead and have to go to great extremes to do so, and that saddens me. My income and work situation isn't the greatest either, and so I empathize with and admire these students and this professor who are working with what they are given and have made these choices in order to better themselves.
     Second -- and I guess this point is really at the heart of why I think this whole story amounts to one big frustrating failure -- is that how is giving an F to someone who got help from a friend a good educational move? I have helped friends before on papers, and I'm SURE that friend has learned something while I was helping them. Why is getting help with something an automatic F? I understand that college is supposed to develop your skills and critical thinking, but why can't that include learning that is generated by peers and not strictly by the professor? It seems to me that the professor thinking that she is the only one who can guide Helen in her essay writing is self-defeating and not efficient. I am not saying that students should buy their papers or let other people do their homework FOR them, but if a student gets outside help with a paper, is that automatically cheating? Is the only path to success getting help from your professor? What if the person had a tutor and the tutor helped them? Why is that bad? Isn't that learning, too?
      What are your thoughts about this article and these issues? Please help me sort this out -- I'd love a discussion here about teaching methods, ethics, and the philosophy behind learning in a college setting. Thanks to all the readers who have been checking in this summer. Please share your thoughts! Until next time, Liza Z.

Graduate Personalities

  

    I often identify my first year of graduate school as the year in which I began to understand that I was more of an introvert than an extrovert. This narrative of the development of my self-knowledge has often comforted me in times when I need to understand some of the big-picture ways that going to graduate school has benefited me personally, as a soul moving through the universe, maturing and growing.

    So, considering that this topic of introversion vs extroversion has been something I’ve been thinking about for several years now in relation to myself, it was a pleasant surprise to see an article about introverts and extroverts in the April 20^th edition of The Chronicle.

    In the article, entitled "Screening out the Introverts," William Pannapacker reflects on the cultural bias towards the qualities of extroversion.  He discusses the way that introversion is looked down upon and even pathologized in our culture, and wonders whether graduate school programs do enough to resist these kinds of biases, and to accommodate and even celebrate the qualities of an introverted personality.

    To set up his reflection, Pannapacker points out that academia might seem to be a haven for an introverted type of personality: “Many people are drawn to academic life because they expect it will provide a refuge from the social demands of other careers: They believe one can be valued as a studious introvert, as many undergraduates are.” But then he also points out that a career as an academic is very different from life as a student; it requires a person to be comfortable both with solitary tasks as well as with very public engagements. As an academic, he points out, “Long periods of social isolation – research and writing – are punctuated by brief periods of intense social engagements: job interviews, teaching, conferences, and meetings.”

    Reading this article made me revisit my own narrative of how I came to know myself as more introverted than extroverted, and how that story relates to my growth as a graduate student. All my life, while I was in school from basically kindergarten through most of my undergraduate years, I considered myself a “people person.” Also, I loved being on stage, performing and acting and singing.  So, growing up, everyone, including myself, would consistently describe me as an outgoing, sociable, and friendly. I would say I “loved people.”

    There was, of course, another side to me as well. I loved to get absorbed in a good book, a new CD, a great movie, or my own writing, and I loved the mental retreat of a beautiful view of the ocean, a distant city skyline, a mountain, or a valley. I liked having one or two special best friends who knew everything about me. I liked meaningful, long, one-on-one conversations.

    When I first took the Myer’s Briggs test as a college freshmen, I came out an as extrovert. I now believe that my “extrovert” result was at least partly because of the very stigmas about introversion that Pannapacker points out. He says, “Given that introversion is frowned upon almost everywhere in the US culture, the test might as well have asked, “Would you prefer to be cool, popular and successful or weird, isolated, and a failure?” I do believe that our cultural biases probably skewed the test results, at least in my case. Plus, I thought because I “loved people” and loved being on stage that it didn’t make sense to identify myself as introverted.

    But the real point I want to make here is that I actually didn’t even know about my introversion until I entered the workforce in the corporate setting. I had always and forever been a student, and so always was in a social position in which acts of reflection and study were valuable and worthwhile ways to spend my time. But this notion of time well spent changed when I entered the work-force. When I graduated from college, I began working in the corporate world, in a consumer marketing position. No longer was I in a position in which acts of reflection or study were acceptable; now was the time to produce, not study. I believe it was this new social role that caused my discomfort. I missed the feeling that some personal reflection time was a worthwhile way to way my time. I felt drained and exhausted after interacting all day with people I didn’t care about or wouldn’t choose to be with if I wasn’t at work. After work I would crawl into bed, watch TV, and try to gear up for another day.

    I remember when I first began graduate school a year later, a sense of balance was restored to my inner self. I had time built into my life to read, to be in solitude, to write, to study and reflect; I also engaged with people in meaningful ways that made me feel purposeful and connected. By the end of a day’s work in the graduate school life, I felt energized and wanted to socialize with my family and friends rather than crawling in a hole and watching TV.

    With this sharp contrast to the way I had felt after a day of work as a consumer marketing assistant, I finally began to rethink my characterization as an extrovert. I began to realize that the solitude involved in writing and research actually helped recharge me and make me feel alive, and then my relationships with people could thrive and my interpersonal interactions were full of the energy and sociability I had always known throughout my life. I felt sure I had found a kind of job and life that harmonized with my personality.

    Ultimately, I guess the point of this blog post is to continue the important conversation that Pannapacker began in The Chronicle – to think through how personalities can define and shape the system of education, even as the system of education can define and shape personalities. What has been your experience in graduate school in terms of your dominant personality traits? In what ways do you think your personality drew you to your field? Which personality traits do you think are more valued within the system of graduate education? Which traits are frowned upon? How have these biases affected you? Please share your thoughts and reflections! :)

Graduate Education and the Preservation of Conversation

In a recent essay in The New York Times’ "Sunday Review," writer/ professor Sherry Turkle makes observations about our culture’s “flight from conversation.” She laments that, despite our technologically linked world, as we are only a text or chat or status away from sharing something, we “hide from one another, even as we constantly are connected to one another.” Her insights are sharp and valuable, as we should be striving to see how our technological advances have shaped and will shape the social and cultural world around us. Turkle’s hypothesizing offers much provocation about the way our culture’s social values will evolve and shift over time, especially in the spheres of behavior, learning, and education.

One fascinating thing Turkle says is that the “thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention.” Valuing our own control over where we focus our attention will surely have vast social consequences, especially in the area of learning.  If learning at a distance that we ourselves control becomes the norm, what will happen to learning itself? Will we stop being able to leap into someone else’s perspective, in order to understand a problem or see a solution in a better way? Will we stop paying attention to things that we might be drawn to unexpectedly? How will our privileging of the control of our attention change the way we learn, and change the way we think? Turkle's essay opens up this necessary dialogue. 

Another thing Turkle discusses is the way technological connections prevent us from learning how to be alone. “Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved,” she writes.  She worries that our habits of being only a click or a text away from sharing our thoughts will deplete our cultural ability to be alone, and as a result, everyone will be lonely, ironically creating a world more disconnected than ever before.  Turkle suggests, “Lacking the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people but don’t experience them as they are. It is as though we use them, need them as spare parts to support our increasingly fragile selves.”

Turkle provokes thought on things like “Siri” which promise a simulation of companionship and compassion; she surmises that with technology we are “cleaning up human relationships” which are “messy and demanding.” But for a price – human relationships have a richness that the simulations, for obvious reasons, don't have. In the end, our flight from conversation represents a loss for humanity that will have ripple effects in all areas of human life.

As I read, it struck me that we often talk about the “academic conversation,” and I wondered how Turkle’s thoughts and ideas about technology’s influence on social conversations could be thought of in the context of academia. Conversations teach us patience, she proffers, while technological connection and exchanges speeds things up, but only by dumbing us down and removing complexity and true understanding. How will this dumbing down of our communication affect the kind of sustained conversations we aim to create and participate in within and across our academic disciplines?

Looked at through the frame of education, the flight from conversation would wound our ability to see and understand different and new perspectives, a cornerstone of true forward thinking and learning. Turkle says, “In conversation we tend to one another.” To unpack this statement, she looks at the etymology of the word, which comes from the verbs that mean “to move, together,” and suggests that having a conversation is kinetic, and generates energy, and asks us to see things from perspectives other than our own. The loss of this sort of mobility in perspective, as well as these changes in social habits of expression that Turkle describes, will surely affect academia and scholarship in more ways than we can predict.

But what I want to suggest here, though, to contribute to these speculations, has to do with the way these changes may affect our perception of graduate school in a positive way.  My provocation here is that perhaps a benefit of these changes may be that the inherent value in a graduate education will become more visible -- will be thrown into sharp relief -- as this social and cultural lack that Turkle identifies persists and intensifies. 

From some advice given in The Chronicle by writers considering the cause and effects of the bleak academic job market for liberal arts and science Phds, it doesn’t always seem that a getting a graduate education from a arts and sciences school is a smart or practical decision. 

Yet, if we insist that graduate liberal arts education is built on meaningful exchanges of ideas between people, then perhaps it will become one of the only spaces in which the skill of sustaining a conversation – and by this I do mean an oral, face to face conversation, complete with eye contact, internalization, reflection, depth, and response – is still fostered, nurtured, and practiced. 

With no irony here or facetiousness here at all, I can see a way to look at graduate school  and graduate education as a location in which an insistence on conversations will continue to exist.  I offer this with all earnesty, and perhaps with a shade too much idealism. But perhaps a graduate school education will be a space in which the value in conversation, solitude, patience, messiness, demanding relationships, and mobility in perspectives will be preserved. And perhaps if we look at it as such, we may begin to understand the terms under which a graduate education in the arts and sciences is inherently worthwhile, despite the kinds of obstacles that exist for grads to becoming employed and earning a living. 

What do you think of the role of graduate education in the preservation of conversation? What do you think about our "Flight from Conversation" in terms of education, higher learning, and academic scholarship? I’d love to hear your sustained, intimate, genuine thoughts – even if it’s just in a post to Facebook or this blog. Perhaps then we can go get some coffee and discuss one on one! ;)

Creating an On-Line Presence for Grad Students

Hello All!
     Hope you are enjoying this summery weather here in New York City! It makes it a bit easier to get out the door, for me, at least, when it's warm and sunny outside, even if most of the day will be spent inside a building teaching and/ or writing and reading.
     Today's topic is E-PORTFOLIOS for graduate students. I had been thinking about this since one of my colleagues in the department asked for some feedback as she was launching her awesome new web-site for professional purposes. The wonderfully informative, functional, and accessible site she had designed got me thinking about having an on-line identity as a graduate student as we work our way through our research and onto the job market. I checked out the topic on The Chronicle, and of course I found a great piece on the topic already, entitled "Should Graduate students create e-portfolios?" by David Brooks. Mr. Brooks talks about "crafting our on-line presence," which is a great way to think about it, since, he points out, much of what we find on-line when we Google ourselves is a mish-mash of random clips and quips from social networking, conference programs, and on-line local newspaper archives. As Mr. Brooks said, "I had no hand in creating how, or where, my work had been displayed online."

     So, of course, the obvious answer to Mr. Brooks' question is, "Yes, we should create e-portfolios!" Digital, web-based, and technologically innovative teaching and research will be the defining characteristics of this generation's academic careers, and we must embrace that at once. Furthermore, creating our own site would give us a space in which to design, control, and craft our professional and scholarly identity in a cohesive presentation. Some ideas to incorporate could be:

• A website for your dissertation project
• An on-line teaching portfolio, which incorporates teaching philosophy, sample lesson plans, and demonstrations of your uses of technology in your classroom
• An on-line CV
• Videos of teaching and/ or research presentations
• Current events in your field
• A professional blog
• Links to favorite professional websites, journals, and associations

      There are several platforms on the web that will allow you to create a site like this. My colleague that I mentioned above used Wordpress.org, and Mr. Brooks mentioned Wix.com. There are also Weebly and Webstarts, to name just a few. Many of these have free options as well a premium upgrades. Another option is to use blog sites such as Wordpress.com (the free blog platform related to Wordpress.org), or Blogger.com. In addition, there are "academic" networking sites such as Academia.edu which allow you to create a professional profile that will link you to a network of other academic professionals and also provide you an on-line space to post a CV, bio, research information, and other links and documents. Finally, you could always take advantage of the more standard online tools such as Linked-In.
      Perhaps even Facebook could be a tool if you tailored a specific page towards your professional profile -- keep your personal page unsearchable and private, and use FB publicly to present your professional academic face to the world.
      I'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, and experiences! Share links, sites, and comments. :)
-- Liza Z.

Neurodiversity and Autism Awareness Month

Hello!
       I hope everyone at Fordham and beyond had a nice Easter Break, and will continue to enjoy the upcoming holidays and beautiful spring weather!
      This month, I wanted to mention a cause that is dear to my heart: Autism Awareness. April is Autism Awareness Month, and in this post, I wanted to increase awareness by sharing briefly how my interaction with individuals with autism has shaped my academic interests and intellectual pursuits.

      I began graduate school as someone who loved literary studies. I thought, and still think, that studying and teaching literature, and art in general, could make the world a better place; that by extending conversations about art, we could forge connections and understandings between individuals and groups that would create harmony in the world. I know these are maybe naive ideas, but I truly feel that studying and teaching humanities provides a benefit to the world.
       In order to help put myself through graduate school financially, I began working as an ABA therapist in the home of a family with two children who had been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. What was incredible about working with these two boys was that it opened me up to understanding how diverse the human brain and mind really is. These boys each learned, thought, and processed information in ways completely different from each other, and completely different from anyone I'd ever met. It changed my whole perspective on the ways in which studying and teaching art, language arts, and humanities subjects could, indeed, have an impact on the world. Suddenly, I began to see that forging connections and understandings between individuals and groups was important to bridge not only cultural and social gaps but also cognitive, perceptive, and sensory diversities.
      This realization changed my life and changed the way I studied literature and narrative. I embarked on my dissertation project which studies the history of representation of mental disabilities in American fiction. I also began attending disability studies panels and conferences, which are great because they are interdisciplinary and thus have exposed me to a wide variety of graduate research and scholarship  related to disability, bodies, difference, and neurodiversity. I also began working at a school for children with Autism, hoping to be able to help more learners with Autism acquire the skills in the way they learn best, in order to become more independent and self-expressed.

         In celebration of Autism Awareness Month, I urge you to learn something new about ASD, or share what you know and have experienced with someone else to keep the conversation going!
In the meantime, check out the Organization for Autism Research, which gives grants to graduate students researching autism issues across disciplines such as psychology, sociology, biology, neuroscience, and more. And, here's a great article from The Chronicle in 2009 called Autism as an Academic Paradigm. 
Let me know if you have any other questions or thoughts!

"You're Doing Great" and other fantasies of grad life...

Hello Grad Students!
Today I've been thinking a lot about graduate conferences, most likely because I am presenting at one on Friday at the CUNY Graduate Center. The conference is entitled “Cripples, Idiots, Lepers, and Freaks: Extraordinary Bodies / Extraordinary Minds" -- it's an interdisciplinary conference that aims to look at literature, media, culture, problems of representation, and social practices through the lens of disability.

 Although I've helped organize a grad conference before at Fordham, and attended several over the years, I've never actually presented at a grad conference -- I'm so excited for the experience! I'm happy that this one is in New York City, and that I'll get to meet some great graduate students from across the city and beyond.
To me, grad conferences provide safe spaces to be bold, to try out styles of speaking and writing and interfacing, to learn to believe in your own thoughts, reactions, and responses, and to challenge yourself. I'm excited because I always find conference weekends to be so invigorating, both intellectually and emotionally.  There's something about the way a conference works that stretches me, that allows me to think in new ways, and that makes me find a renewed commitment to my work and field. Depending on my mood, I find it possible to be anonymous, and sit in the audience and think and listen, or to talk, try out ideas out loud, and make connections with people.  I find myself scribbling questions that I try to formulate as I listen to the speakers and make thoughts cohere. It's a very energizing and motivating experience for me.
There's been some talk in The Chronicle blogs about different types of conferences -- oh yes, leave it to us academics to categorize, classify, and analyze our own professional formats and venues! We've got it all divided it up by specific criteria: On what scale does it take place: nationally, regionally, or locally?  Who's participating -- professionals, graduates, or both? What kind of subject matter -- general or specialty? Is it organized by a department, a society, or a school? Is it organized around a theme, text, or author? Does it focus on a critical school of thought? Is it interdisciplinary? Will there be a publication that results from it? Who will you meet? What new ideas will you get?
All fun-poking aside, I actually do find it interesting to think about the dynamics of the "conference." Individuals tend to see the benefits of a conference according to his or her personality: some like the networking, collaboration, and the opportunity to get in front of audiences; some like the opportunity to think and have one-on-one discussions over the lunch or dinner breaks.
Interdisciplinary events have been key for me to expanding my horizons and thinking about my field (American lit) in new ways. Fordham, I feel, is pretty good about offering interdisciplinary events for the graduate community. (That reminds me -- the Communitas Event is coming up March 30th -- check here for more info about the Research Competition and the Ganon Lecture.) But I think always more can be done -- for example, my project on mental disability and literature could probably benefit from talks with neuroscience, biology, and philosophy grad students, to name just a few! I am fascinated by possibilities of stretching the boundaries of what we already know, of ways we know how to be.
One last note -- I've been thinking a lot about the purposes of professionalization as a grad student, and what some goals could be for myself at this conference coming up. I had a random idea today during yoga class, actually. I was in a particularly difficult pose that made me lose my balance a bit. As I stumbled out of the pose, someone next to me whispered, "You're doing great." As he said these kind words, my mind did a strange thing: it sort of immediately and unconsciously produced an image of myself at the conference. In the mini-movie in my mind that had suddenly appeared, I saw myself fumbling an important point in my paper, and the person next to me at the panel table whispered, "You're doing great."  The thought came up through the subconscious so clearly and vividly and unintentionally that it almost made me laugh. I mean, the class leaders always say that the class will draw out the bad stuff going on in your life, and I've definitely had emotions come to the surface during class before, but never had such a concrete narrative scenario risen to my mind's eye. I guess it made transparent some insecurities I have about presenting my work in public, but it also was a pretty clear wish for the same kind of encouraging, comforting and supportive environment in my work life that I enjoy in the yoga studio.  Afterwards, though, I got to thinking -- hey, why not? Why should the grad conferences be the safe spaces that help prepare us for the real academic world -- why shouldn't it just be like that always? Maybe the vision came to me as an intention to transform the post-graduate school world into a space that can also provide a warm kind of support that graduate conferences offer us?  Maybe the vision was telling me to use the CUNY Grad Center conference this weekend as a chance to extend my congratulations, or encouragement, or praise, to someone else. Maybe we graduate students can take this opportunity now, during this relatively short time in our careers, to use the grad conferences we create and participate in to help transform the future of our professional world and the way our profession works. Why not? It's up to us, after all, to decide what kind of world we want to be in.

-- Liza

W.W.B.S.D.

Hi Grad Students,

My favorite (rock and roll) artist released an album this week.  On Tuesday, Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball, in glossy black vinyl, arrived at my fiance’s apartment, via U.S. mail, and a digital version I had pre-ordered was uploaded onto my laptop, via I-tunes.

www.brucespringsteen.net/albums/wreckingball.html

 Springsteen always speaks to me in my time of need. I remember reading an article once in Time Magazine in which Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks said that sometimes, when she isn’t sure of what to do in life, she asks herself, “What would Bruce Springsteen do?” and it usually helps her out of a dilemma, and guides her down the wiser road, or helps her find the strength to choose the road less traveled. This method of self-monitoring has often worked for me, too. His messages are in his music, and in his living example, and in his honest creation of characters that explore what it means to be an adult, an American, a human. In Wrecking Ball, the message is timely and urgent.

I was in desperate need of a little Springsteen, this week, actually, after sifting through archives of The Chronicle and finding, and reading, in its entirety -- in an act of what in retrospect I might describe as insane masochism -- an article entitled: “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go.” (I should mention that I also continued the masochistic episode and further increased the despair by reading “Just Don’t Go, Part Two.”) 

The article brings to mind a scene from the movie The Wedding Singer, when Adam Sandler’s character snarls to his ex-fiance who has left him at the altar and is now giving him reasons why she as fallen out of love with him: “Once again, things that could've been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!”

Sigh…. If you are one of the GSAS students in one of the humanities departments, you may know how I am feeling after reading that article. Thank goodness this episode of self-torture coincided with the release of Wrecking Ball. In the album, Springsteen’s characters are angry and anguished about the promises of the American dream being shattered, but also defiant and resilient. Rolling Stone reviewer David Fricke said one of the songs is like a “dance through the ashes” of the “scorched earth” that America has become, and that the record reminds us that we still have the power to sing and create.

Springsteen resounds, “Take you best shot, show ‘em what you got, bring on your wrecking ball,” and I imagined somehow channeling all my fear and bitterness and sadness and anger that arose after reading the article and somehow standing up to the world, without regret, doing whatever it is that I do here in grad school and in work and in life, and telling the crushing reality of life to come and get me, because in the end life is the journey, not the end product.

After reading the dismal and gloomy and soul-crushing article mentioned above, searching for a way to quell my despair, I asked myself, “What would Bruce do?” In his new album, he tells me what to do:

“Get yourself a song to sing and sing it til you’re done.”

The lyrics of “Wrecking Ball” remind us that our “steel and stories” will one day “drift away to rust,” and our “youth and beauty” will be “given to the dust,” and that although we may win or lose, we all are “burning the down the clock,” and that “all our little victories and glories” will “turn into parking lots,” and that since this is the nature of humanity, we have nothing left to do but stand up and say, bring it on. When you’ve been flattened, you dance through the ashes. You keep going.

‘Til you’re done. Yes. Onward and onward, folks. Until next time, Liza

Comprehensive Exams: What's At Stake?

          A recent column by David Brooks on The Chronicle’s website stood out to me because of its title, “As Smart As I’ll Ever Be.” Immediately, I thought to myself, “That must be about comps.”

          Yes, it was. As I read the column, in which the author recounts his exam year experience of reading, studying, and preparing, I remembered my comprehensive exams, which happened to be around the same year as the author’s. I resonated with Mr. Brooks’ nostalgic and reflective tone. Like Mr. Brooks, I often remember my exam prep as a time full of motivation and revelation.

          Lots of images and ideas in the column sounded familiar to me. Brooks describes his study scene, and his realization that this studying would not only help him get his degree, but also form the foundation of his career: “As I organized titles into ever-growing piles in my basement, I saw potential courses emerge. I started jotting down ideas for new syllabi. The process of going through the books helped me imagine teaching from them. For one of my four fields, the written exam became a survey-course syllabus with an annotated bibliography, including a justification for each reference.”

          Like Brooks, I, too, studied in a basement. For me, I found that I required some kind of physical space that could match the mental spaces I was carving out in my mind for this information and these ideas. And I remember thinking the same things – finding threads around which entire courses could be designed. It was exciting. Brooks writes, “Suddenly I was reading with the intent of organizing my impressions into a big, and hopefully clear, picture of those fields, rather than for the immediate, frantic task of cranking out another seminar assignment.” It was true – comps studying changed my view of my field entirely. It was a chance to zoom out, to take what I had found under the microscope and see how it fit into the whole literary organism.

          I always tell my friends, both within and outside my program, that I have never felt smarter than I did when I was waist-deep in studying for comps. Brooks alludes to this same feeling, and also notes that others he talked to felt the same way.  He writes about his talks with his colleagues about their experiences: “I sensed a degree of nostalgia that I have never heard anyone associate with, say, writing a dissertation.” As someone who is writing her dissertation now, I think that rings true, although I of course don’t know for sure since I am currently writing the diss rather than looking back on it. But what rings true to me is the difference between my feeling during comps studying and my experience writing the diss. Unlike during my exam year, I don’t feel smart writing my dissertation. I often feel overwhelmed and like nothing is good enough.  But during exam prep, I felt sharpened, and productive. I felt like I was making discoveries. I'm not exactly sure why the two periods in my academic career feel so different. Maybe it purely the veil of nostalgia. But who wouldn’t be nostalgic for a time of intense and revelatory intellectual and personal discoveries – a time when you felt smart and purposeful and motivated? On the timeline of someone’s life, those kind of moments or periods of time may be precious and rare.

          Towards the end of my exam prep, at dinner with my parents one night, I remember a comment that my dad made that shaped the way I understood my experience of studying for exams. This always sticks out in my mind, so thought sharing the anecdote on this blog may help me sort out why this seemingly off-hand comment has stayed with me.

          Let me set the scene: I had emerged from the basement of my childhood home, where I had set up a temporary “exam study room” with a bed, desk, and all my study materials. I was starving, ready to break for a meal before my night-time review session. I had come to look forward to my night time session  -- in the last month before my oral exam date, before bed each night I played a game with myself. For this game, I made index cards each day with important names, themes, titles, authors, characters, critics, and contextual threads written on the front. On the back of the card, during the day, I would write everything I knew. Then, that night, before I’d go to bed, I’d spread these cards out on my bed, so that they covered my entire bed spread. I wasn’t allowed to go to bed until I’d talked through each card.  I found this game to be a great way to review the studying I’d done during the day, or week, and also to practice speaking orally about the topics, which I knew was a different skill then just knowing the information. Anyway, that evening, I had just set up my cards for the night, and my plan was to eat dinner, hang with my parents for a bit, and then head downstairs for my game of literary solitaire. 

          I was lucky that I was able to move back in with my parents for exams, for financial reasons as well as time-saving reasons such as being able to share dinners with them sometimes instead of cooking for myself.  My parents were so generous with their time that semester, and so supportive and understanding. I realize that not everyone has the comforts of their mom and dad’s support during exam time! So I was feeling grateful that I could take a break and have a nice dinner with them.

          Anyway, during the meal, the three of us began discussing something that had nothing to do with academia or literature. I actually think we were discussing a new Bruce Springsteen song. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember my dad looking at me after I spoke and saying, “Maybe you are getting too smart to talk to us.” My first reaction was embarrassment. I apologized and blamed it on being immersed in comps studying. But the comment startled me – I hadn’t realized the kind of “mode” that comps studying had put me in. I finished dinner and went back downstairs, to play my game. But I ended up thinking long and hard about my dad’s comment.

          In the end, I was grateful for the comment in two respects. One, it made me aware that my studying was restructuring, hopefully permanently, the way I saw connections between my field and the world at large. Studying was indeed, a comprehensive act, and it was helping me draw together small threads of analysis that I had been accumulating and weave them into larger bolts of thought-fabric. I was seeing a bigger picture, thinking in ways that allowed me to make connections and draw important conclusions.

          The second reason I was glad my dad made the comment was that I didn’t want to walk around sounding like a jerk.

          “As Smart As I’ll Ever Be” made me think back and reflect on my exam experience. And my dad’s comment always makes me remember that graduate school, if nothing else, is helping my thoughts, views, and thinking skills to constantly evolve and grow.  I’m not the same person I was before graduate school, before comps, and before beginning my dissertation. And being aware of this evolution helps me see both the pros and cons of the graduate experience. Ultimately, it helped me realize what kinds of forces were shaping my views of the world -- and being aware of what shapes your thoughts is so important if you ever want to offer the world some original, truly creative new ideas.  

          All of this also makes me realize that grad life is real life – it’s part of the journey of who you are, who you become, and who will be. So, now that you’ve heard one of mine, what were your exam stories? Or, if you have yet to take them, what questions, fears, anticipations and expectations do you have? Comment and discuss!!

          In the meantime, I’ll be working dutifully on the dissertation, trying to reclaim some of little piece of the intellectual self-esteem I had once staked out for myself, during comps.  Oh, nostalgia…. 

Until next time,

Liza