Predecessor Stressor

It’s been a while since I broke into a rant here, so buckle up!

The issue has to do with this new admin thing I’m doing. This semester, we’re basically transitioning from Predecessor, the person who has done the thing for many years, to me. There are some things I’m already doing this semester under Predecessor’s watchful eye, and let me tell you, sometimes I want to claw that eye out.

There are few things I hate more than someone looking over my shoulder, checking my work. But I understand that Predecessor means well, and they’re generally a nice and helpful individual, and I want to be respectful and deferential… So I grit my teeth. And make sure to stock up on enamel-fortifying toothpaste.

But yesterday, something almost made me lose my cool.

I am the kind of person who will sit down and book every last thing needed for conference travel within an hour, then absolutely refuse to think about said travel until the day of. I put scheduled events, even those that I look forward to, on my calendar, set a couple of reminders, and then do my best never to think about them until the reminders start going off. In contrast, my husband derives pleasure from the anticipation of an experience, such as a concert or a romantic overnight trip. (We do those now! Yay for having big kids!) But as much as I enjoy the events themselves, thinking about them too far in advance fills me with anxiety and makes me want to cancel everything.

At work, I strive to touch something as few times as possible, and preferably once. Open email, respond, done. The longer something takes up my mental real-estate, the more overwhelmed it makes me feel. On the upside, I am swift and decisive. On the downside, I am extremely impatient and I do not work well with people who like to take their time.

Yet Predecessor is one such person. Predecessor likes to start everything well in advance, revisit things many times, plan, think, optimize. And that’s fine; people should work however they want. The problem is that Predecessor has been putting pressure on me to start doing things in early October, nudging, coaxing, giving me exasperated electronic sighs, only for me to realize that, save for some relatively small things that I indeed did sometime in October, nothing else could even remotely be acted upon until late November.

So Predecessor, who likes to think and plan and revisit, has been basically pushing me according to their own timeline, which has caused me quite a bit of stress, given that all the many other facets of my job (or my life!) haven’t suddenly gone away. If I’d had my way, I would not have spent the last month wasting my energy or time on needless (to me!) planning, which really felt more like me spinning my wheels, when I could now sit down over no more than a week and bang it all out.

There are real deadlines, and then there are fictitious intermediate deadlines that some people thrive on setting for themselves. That’s fine for them, truly, but maybe they should leave the rest of us alone.


Random Bits of November, a.k.a. the Fall Semester Exploding-Head Month

As the semester approaches peak insanity, I am (not exactly) pleased to report that, if your money was on me regretting taking on that administrative post, you have won the bet. In my defense, I initially declined, but my department chair came back with data that compelled me to accept. Blinded me with science, if you will.

Which is how I find myself teaching a large class, feverishly writing papers that will be important for me to get grant renewals, drafting grant renewals, meeting with collaborators about grant renewals, doing the million acts of reviewing and editing and sitting on student committees and all sorts of other service to the profession that all faculty do, and, yes, that huge admin job on top of everything. (By the way, whenever I get overwhelmed at work, I do what no sane person would do, which is ramp up my plans for my fiction writing. It’s like fighting unwanted work not by relaxation, but by more wanted work. Or maybe I just want even more people to disappoint. 😬)

I have come to realize that the admin job itself is not too bad, but that my predecessor has absolutely spoiled our colleagues, who now treat my predecessor (and seem to want to treat me) as a cross between secretary and maid. I have no time, nor do I have the patience for such treatment, and I am working to streamline the relevant processes, truly delegate the stuff that doesn’t require my input, and generally try to minimize intrusions into my time. But people hate change, and it has been an uphill battle.

As part of my new duties, I’ve become privy to the finer details of my colleagues’ workloads. My department is a really nice, functional department — honestly, far better functioning than most — yet, there are more people here than I suspected who seem to have little shame. They offload way more work than can truly be justified — grading, preparing homework solutions, holding office hours, heck, even lecturing! — to their teaching assistants. They want to teach the same two courses year after year, even though most other faculty rotate among at least four (I have taught seven distinct courses so far, and like to add a new one to my portfolio every few years, for my own amusement and horizon broadening, but I understand that most folks are not like me in this regard). These colleagues treat the teaching part of their job as a complete nuisance, and I will never, NEVER get used to the fact that such people exist, that they have no qualms about offloading their work, for which they’re paid well on “hard money,” to junior people with much less power or ability to complain about being overworked.

Academadness is on the back burner for now, not because it’s not nearly ready, because it is, but because, honestly, I try to be as self-indulgent in my extracurriculars as I can be. The more stressed-out I am, the more self-indulgent in my projects, and the self-indulgence is right now pushing me more toward fiction. I was hoping to hit Christmas with Academadness, but that doesn’t seem like it will happen, so it probably will get pushed to 2025. I apologize to those who’ve been waiting, but I will definitely get to it in the near future. Just not right away.

I’ve been thinking about shutting down Xykademiqz, yet I’m reluctant. I don’t post nearly as much as I used to, but I still sometimes do, and I often have stuff I think about saying here at random times, but then I get busy and don’t have a free moment to post, and then I forget. There aren’t many academic blogs left, which saddens me, but perhaps this is just the ebb and flow of things on the internet. (By the way, it’s hilarious how people treat Substack like it’s something new and precious, and not just a blog with a newsletter — which, by the way, any decent blogging platform provides anyway — that readers have to pay for). I guess I’m just not ready to say goodbye yet. Academic blogging (on Academic Jungle since 2010, here on Xykademiqz since January 2014) has been a gateway into creative writing for me, and I doubt I will ever completely run out of things to complain about when it comes to my job.

What have you been up to, blogosphere? How’s your fall been going (other than the US election)?

By the way, I know the election happened. I was here in 2016, shocked and devastated. Now, in 2024, I am saddened and disappointed, but not at all surprised. Never again surprised. But let’s please not make it about politics here. I’m honestly sick and tired of it.

On the Logistics of Fiction Writing

By popular-ish demand, but mostly because I kind of feel like it and don’t feel like doing some of the work stuff I really should be doing, here’s a post on the logistics of writing the first draft of novel in about two months. Readers who have no interest in the musings of a dilettante author on the process of crafting genre fiction are strongly advised to disembark here and now. 

Also, I apologize if I’ve already written about some of this, because it’s likelier that I have than that I haven’t given I’ve been blogging for fourteen (!) years, but who’s got the time to rummage through the archives when I could be serving you piping-hot, delicious, new or lightly recycled words instead. 

Last chance to leave unscathed…

You’re still here? Seriously? 

Okay then. 

*pulls up sleeves, cracks knuckles*

This post will be mostly about the logistics of writing my second novel and some insights achieved in the process.

What it is that I write

I write short fiction across genres (general/literary, horror, sci-fi, weird fiction, mystery, and humor), with the number of published pieces approaching ten squared. Short fiction is a great way to develop one’s voice and craft, experiment with form and function, and learn to self-edit. These reasons are not why I started writing stories, but they are why I’m grateful today that I’ve been writing short fiction for years (since 2017) because what I’ve learned from the process (and also from technical writing and from blogging here) has been invaluable when I decided to embark on writing novels. 

As a novelist, I write so-called genre fiction. There are a lot of definitions of what makes literary fiction versus what makes genre fiction, and many such definitions (google away!) end up sounding a bit insulting to both the authors and the readers of genre fiction. I would say genre fiction emphasizes plot over characterization and language, while literary fiction emphasizes language and/or characterization over plot. However, plenty of genre books have superb characterization and lovely turns of phrase (see modern literary horror, for example), while compelling literary fiction generally has a narrative arc that makes the reader turn pages. You can’t have any type of emotionally resonant fiction without strong characterization, however, people often read for entertainment and there are popular genres where books that sell have spare language and minimal characterization, but excellent dialogue and action-packed plot. 

Literary-Fiction-Vs-Genre-Fiction-Venn-Diagram

Anyway, I write genre fiction with what I believe (and the reviews confirm) is strong character work and some nice writing, but rest assured, I will never receive a literary prize. That’s fine by me. I’m after fortune over fame, so that I can finally buy my trophy husband of 25 years that beachfront property I promised.

I jest, I jest. 

Seriously now, I write because I really enjoy it. And it’s been amazing to witness my own craft development, when in my work and at home I spend so much time focusing on the development of others. I fund, manage, and oversee while younger folks do all the fun stuff. Well, writing is something I do for myself…and for whomever wants to buy my books. 

Writing the first book

I will do almost anything to get out of doing what I’m supposed to be doing. That’s why no other job would suit me as well as being faculty does, because there’s so much to do that I can procrastinate on one thing (or even five things) by doing any of the other twenty things I need to do, which feeds both my inner procrastinator and my inner overachiever. 

I had a plan for a whole first novel, with a good plot and interesting characters, and I kept avoiding to write it. I realized I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to pull it off, so I set it aside and started a completely different project, one a little more trope-driven, and I told myself it could be a novelette or a novella, it didn’t matter, I could figure out what to do with it once I was done. I told myself I could trunk it, too, it wouldn’t be a big deal; it was just for practice. And so, I was able to start writing. I wrote about 65% of it in the summer of 2022, the rest over winter break 2022/23, edited and polished and had it beta-read, started querying in the spring of 2023, signed a contract with a small genre publisher in the late summer of 2023, and the book was out in the spring of 2024. 

Did the book make a splash? No, it did not. The small publisher did a nice job with cover art and editing, but they don’t do much marketing or promotion for people who are not their reliable bestsellers. I’ve been pretty much on my own, and I’ve done what I could. I did sell some books, but I’ve also learned that a) people are reluctant to pick up a book by an unknown debut author, and b) front list sells the back list,  meaning that the best way to sell books is to write more books, as each new book picks up a few new readers, and they go and peruse the back catalog. 

So, I realized that rather than killing myself trying to sell one book, I simply needed to write more. 

In the words of my colleague, who originally said this for scientific projects, “There’s never a shortage of ideas, only time and money.” I don’t have a shortage of ideas, and after researching what people who write my genre do (hint: they put out multiple books per year), I figured I should see how fast I could write given I have the job I have. 

Writing the second book

Here is some great writing advice from my youngest kid: “There’s a lot of day left after 4 pm.” He was referring to his afterschool videogame time, but he’s right in general. 

I drafted my second novel working mostly after dinner, 6–9 or 7–9 pm, at the local Barnes & Noble. It took less than 8 weeks.

After the first novel, the process wasn’t scary anymore, and once it wasn’t scary, it was doable. Now, many serious writers will aim for 1k words per day or 2k words per day. I don’t like to be that regimented because I know I will have days when I’m simply too busy with work to do much else, also days when I will just fart around, so instead I aimed for 8–10k words per week, and as long as I hit this range on most weeks, I told myself I would be good. It turns out, some weeks I went way over, a couple of weeks I came close but not quite. Here’s my table:

BookTwoTable

This was for the first draft only. After that I took another full month for several comprehensive edits before sending it to beta readers and ultimately to the publisher (they have the right of first refusal, since it’s a book in a series that started with them). 

As you can see in the table, I did try to hit 2k words on most days when I wrote, but on some days it was really hard. I also couldn’t sustain multiple weeks with 12–15k words and six writing days. I know some pro writers can do it, but I clearly cannot, at least not at this point. 

Now, I feel writing in the evening is really beneficial for drafting fiction because writing when tired weakens the inner editor, eases the access to the subconscious, and generally improves flow. I wouldn’t recommend editing technical prose or writing code or doing complicated math when tired, but drafting fiction? Absolutely. I often finished a session with only the vaguest recollection of what I’d just written, which was a little like being drunk, only wholesome. With this novel, I focused on moving forward rather than editing as I went, so I pleasantly surprised myself a few times at the quality of some parts that I was barely cognizant of ever having written. 

People ask if I’m a plotter (someone who makes a detailed outline, character sheets, etc.) or a pantser (from the expression “flying by the seat of one’s pants”; someone who doesn’t plan or outline but makes stuff up as they go). I don’t think you can really be a true pantser when you write novels as the time commitment is too large to go in completely blind, but I will never be a person who handwrites pages upon pages of character descriptions before starting to write. What I have are some key character features and the main beats of the plot: the central conflict and the key obstacles (internal and external) to what the characters strive for. I don’t write those down, just mull them over for weeks or months while I do other stuff, until I feel satisfied that the conflict is substantive enough and serious enough to propel the book, that there will be significant character growth and change as  the characters face the external and internal obstacles, and that the story feels exciting for me to write, because if it’s a slog to write, it will be a slog for people to read. Then I start and let the process of putting the words down take me where it will. 

One thing I emphasize is a tight rein on logic. I have been saved from major plot issues more than once in each books by asking, “How would this come to be? Would an actual person do this here? Or would they do this instead?” Every time I followed my inner pedant down the rabbit hole of logical consistency, several things cleared up or fell into place. I mention this here because I’ve started noticing issues in other people’s books where I bet they had something as part of the outline and they stuck with it despite alarms blaring that things made no sense. Often, they could’ve gotten to the same pivotal point with some other, more logical assumptions or paths, but some people will adhere to the outline like barnacles to a whale, and then the whale sinks their story boat. 

Writing the next book

I took a short break, polished and submitted some short fiction, and of course read a ton. 

But now it’s time to start writing the next book. I hope I can draft one in the fall, one in the spring, one in the summer; that beachfront property isn’t going to buy itself (although, if I live long enough, the ocean might come to meet me here in middle America thanks to global warming). During a regular semester, especially with all I’ve got going on, I don’t think I will be cracking 10k words per week very often, but writing fiction is something I do for me, and I want to try and build up my catalog. I have outlines for i) a standalone novel, the one I wanted to write to begin with, ii) the next two books of the current series (I  should really write these first, but I don’t really wanna), and iii) two of the three books in a completely new series. At present, I’m deciding which of these threads to pull. 

musing_danger

Phew! This was a lot. 

What say you, blogosphere? Thoughts, shouts, murmurs? 

Back to the Grind

Another summer gone, another school year starting. *sigh* Here are some pertinent news. 

⁕ That leadership position I mentioned before? First I had said no, then the chair came back with data, and I kind of had to say yes. The chair blinded me with science, if you will. So, I guess I’m doing it. Leading and bleeding. 

⁕ So many grants to be written this coming year. So. Many. Grants. 😭

⁕ Recently had a paper rejected after the second round of reviews. The first round was excruciatingly detailed, but, apparently, all the many, many, MANY requested and implemented edits weren’t enough. Basically, nothing is wrong with the paper. It was the case of referees  (one of them, in particular) wanting a different paper. They had issues with several examples and insisted those be changed to their specifications for no reason that was clear to me other than that they’d prefer to have those done in that  way if the paper were theirs. 

I always hate it when this happens, as it’s reviewer overreach. You’re reviewing the manuscript before you, not writing your own. It’s OK if it’s not exactly how you would write it. Assess it on correctness, timeliness, and readability, not on how well it aligns with your particular vision of a paper. 

In the past, I would’ve battled the reviewers, but I just don’t have it in me anymore, honestly. I will take the paper elsewhere, but I hate that we lost all the months to the slow review and lengthy edits, and in the year before I have all the grant renewals. And the combative reviewer said they’d liked the work, so I don’t even think they wanted to see the paper ultimately declined; they just wanted it edited to be just so, and now they’ve screwed us. 

Man, I’m too old for this sh*t .

⁕ Finished second novel (75k words, which is a solid length in the genre). Wrote first draft between mid-May and mid-July; it took less than 8 weeks. Finished several rounds of editing (including incorporating input from beta readers) by mid-August, submitted to the publisher that put out my first novel and has the right of first refusal, and now I wait. The first novel took longer to draft because, let’s face it, I had no idea what I was doing (wrote probably 65% during summer in 2022 and 35% plus over winter break), but now that I’ve had proof of concept (the concept being that I can actually write a publishable novel), I completely espouse the assertion (made by many productive writers, like Stephen King and John Scalzi)  that you can write the first draft of a novel in under three months. If there is more interest in the logistics, I can share it here later, but the main things for me were: 1) I had a rough weekly word goal of 10k words (and a rough daily word goal of 2k words, which was secondary to the weekly goal, and some days were easy and some were haaaaard), and sometimes I exceeded one or both because it was summer, but sometimes I didn’t come close to either, and some weeks I wrote six days and others I wrote two or three, but overall the wins overshadowed the losses; 2) I wrote at a local bookstore in the evenings, after dinner, 6ish to 9 PM, when the store closed. Writing when tired has the benefit of blocking the inner editor and enabling me to get good flow; as a morning person, I have perhaps too much energy when I wake up, and should do math or coding or editing or go kick someone’s a$$ (even though, let’s face it, I mostly waste time on social media or respond to email 😩), and should definitely not attempt to wax poetic or generate fluid, emotion-filled prose. So yeah—writing when tired FTW! My plan is to draft the next novel by the end of fall (good luck to me,  given how much proposal writing I have to do). Basically, banging out a novel per semester (fall, spring, summer) should be something I could do, at least in principle. I know this sounds like a lot, and it sounded like a lot to me, too, until I realized that most people who are serious about writing novels can and do do it, and most of them have day jobs with less flexibility than mine. Also, I’m a pain-in-the-a$$ who says, well, if they can do it, so can I, and, as it turns out, I (kind of) can. 

⁕ Before I get into the next novel, I want to finalize Academadness. The plan right now is to touch up the manuscript and then see if I can get the full wrap cover for the paperback finished, then get the print proofs, and once it’s done, it should be available to purchase. So a couple of months from now, you should be able to buy both ebook and print. 

How’ve you been, blogosphere readers? How was your summer? Any grand or not-so-grand plans for the fall? 

To Lead or Not to Lead

I’ve recently been offered a leadership position. It comes with some (rather small) salary benefits, but it’s a position with specific deadlines, plenty of busy work, and a lot of cat herding.

Objectively, I know I shouldn’t take it. The position doesn’t require a PhD, just someone with decent organizational skills, but the same can be said for most institutional service and leadership positions, and much of undergraduate teaching.

Pro: I would probably do a good job at it, likely significantly better than my predecessor, which is why I was tapped for it

Con: I am afraid it will obliterate my research program. Not that I am not already suffering from mid-career malaise, including boredom over revising the umpteenth manuscript or writing yet another grant. I’m cheering myself up with my creative extracurriculars. But if I end up having to do more busy work, I am afraid I will end up even more disengaged from my technical work, and I’ve got grants to write and students to feed. (If I were someone who no longer wrote grants or advised students, the position might be a godsend as it’s undoubtedly important for the functioning of the department; however, that’s not where I am right now.)

Pro: Whoever else ends up doing the job might do a crappier job and that might be a disaster for a lot of people

Con: I would end up no longer engaged in some service tasks, which, while being labor-intensive, do require technical expertise and accumulated institutional knowledge I now possess, and I happen to find them important and meaningful

Pro: It’s a challenge, and I love a challenge. I (unhealthily) crave overwork (those yummy elevated levels of adrenaline and cortisol), then obviously bitch and moan about being overworked. That last sentence is probably more of a con

Con: It will reduce my available time for my beloved extracurriculars, and will hinder my multiyear plan to achieve world domination (i.e., serious fiction sales)

What do you say, blogosphere? How have you wrestled with possible or actual service or leadership obligations? Have they been worth it (the time, the money)? Have you regretted them? Any words of wisdom? 

Happy Independence Day to US readers!

Show, Don’t Tell and Proposal Writing

One of the most frequently cited rules in fiction writing is “Show, don’t tell.” It basically instructs the author not to explicitly narrate, but to help create a more vivid scene in the reader’s mind by relying on the descriptions of setting, actions, sensory details, character feelings, etc. 

This is an example of telling:

(1) “The man waited nervously at the bar.”

The adverb nervously is the offender here; it qualifies a generic verb, and hints that the scene could be rendered with more pizzazz. 

The following would be an example of showing, using the same scene as in (1) above: 

(2) “The man hunched over the bar, his drink untouched, his forehead sweaty. He tapped his fingers on the sticky wooden surface, stopping only to push up his sleeve and check the time.”

This example is perhaps too wordy and perhaps trying too hard, but you can definitely tell that the man is nervous without me saying that he is nervous or that he is waiting nervously. You can tell he is nervous because he’s sweating, he’s fidgeting, and he’s ignoring his drink, and you can tell that he is waiting because he’s frequently checking the time. Perhaps any one of these above three clauses would be a reliable and widely accepted marker of nervousness? Piling all of them surely signals the author’s wanton disregard for the economy of language, or perhaps a desire to hammer home the fact that the man is really truly nervous. In any case, the nervousness likely didn’t escape any reader who read the second sentence. 

Now, let’s see what happens if I replace the second sentence with the following one: 

(3) “The man hunched over the bar, tapping his fingers on the sticky wooden surface.”

Are you still certain that he’s nervous? Maybe he’s fuming with rage. Maybe whoever he’s waiting for is late. Maybe he’s got ADHD and forgot his fidget spinner or stress ball and is now annoying everyone by tapping on the bar. Most people would still likely assume he’s nervous, but it’s a bit less clear than in (2). 

How about this?

(4) “The man hunched over the bar, his drink untouched.”

Is he still definitely nervous? Maybe he’s a recovering alcoholic battling his demons. Maybe he realized the drink he ordered sucked. Maybe he just has a lot on his mind. In any case, it’s definitely not clear that I am hinting at him being nervous.  

And how about this?

(5) “The man hunched over the bar, his forehead sweaty.”

Now it’s even less clear that the man is nervous. Maybe he stopped at the bar on his way back from the gym. Maybe it’s 90 degrees outside. Maybe the bar owner doesn’t believe in AC. Maybe he is sick with a fever. There are many reasons why someone would be sweaty in a bar, and nervousness likely isn’t the first thing on the reader’s mind. 

The point I am trying to make is that a common failure mode of the “Show, don’t tell” mantra is that what the author thinks they’re showing is actually not what they are showing in the eyes of the reader. Sometimes it’s because the author is trying to be too subtle in their attempts at showing and/or the tool the author is using to obliquely show something is not specific enough to what they are trying to show, so they end up missing the mark. (The tool might be hinting at a bunch of different issues, some of which might be within a geographical, historical, gender, racial, or cultural niche. Or perhaps the character has an idiosyncrasy that would indicate a certain behavior for them but not most other people, and this idiosyncrasy would need a very bright lantern hung on it somewhere in the narrative in order for this type of showing to work.) In the end, a weak or diffuse attempt at showing hurts and confuses more than an inelegant instance of direct telling. (Another failure mode of the “Show, don’t tell” mantra is the author showing every single thing, weighing the narrative down. Sometimes all you need to do is tell.  Sometimes what you need is to say “Barry got up and opened the door” and then we can all move on to admiring the monster on the other side.) 

Now, why am I writing about all this on Xykademiqz? Because the failure to clearly communicate complex implications is a common issue in technical writing, especially persuasive technical writing, such as in grant proposals. I frequently see people making weak or diffuse inferences in their proposals that might only be picked up by (a) a very caffeinated reviewer who is (b) extremely narrowly in the PI’s area and (c) is reading the proposal very deeply, much more deeply than how reviewers typically read proposals.

Subtlety is the enemy of proposal writing. 

You must spell it out for the reviewers why A and B together mean that C will happen. You ask, “But isn’t it obvious?” Perhaps, but say it anyway. You should err on the side of obviousness and redundancy. Bludgeon that reader with the causal links between the elements underpinning your idea. Hammer home—in no uncertain terms, repeatedly—why what you have done plus what is known from the work of others plus what you believe will be shown true in the proposed work will lead to a major shift in knowledge. Do not just drop G, O, L, and D and expect a marginally interested, stressed, would-rather-be-doing-anything-else-in-the-world-than-reading-your-proposal-now reviewer to have to figure out that you were actually planning to spell GOLD. Tell the reviewer that the implication is GOLD! Make it explicit even if you think it was already painfully obvious! Have it be as obvious as the nervousness of that poor man waiting at the bar in sentence (2), tapping and sweating and checking his time. That’s the guy whom the bartended comes to ask if everything is OK, which kicks off the narrative. The guys in sentences (3)–(5) confuse the bartender,  so he leaves them alone until they finish their drinks. Don’t make your reviewer confused. Help the reviewer help you. 

Workplace Weirdness

I don’t think I’ve felt entirely comfortable in my office at work since 2019. I don’t know what it is (or maybe I do and it’s a five-letter word, of which the last four are the name of the author of  Metamorphoses), but work doesn’t feel like it used to; my office doesn’t feel like it used to. It’s as if I’ve been a few steps removed from the physicality of that space and, whenever I am there, it’s as if I am watching everything through a looking glass. Things are recognizable but ever so slightly off — the colors are off, the people are off. It’s as I don’t belong there anymore.

***

Over the past few years, we have been fortunate enough to hire several people in my area. We prioritize assistant professors when it comes to teaching assignments: great care is taken to ensure they teach a range of courses and in a way that doesn’t deter them from developing their research programs, and  they always get first dibs. Overall, this attention to assistant professors is one of the best things about my department, and people who were taken care of on the tenure track do tend to pay it forward. Personally, I am always happy to share my materials with new instructors.

However, there’s a bit of an issue that arose in the last few years. There’s a two-course graduate sequence that I often used to teach. I designed both courses as they are critical for my research group. The first of the courses is broader in scope and relevant for a number of groups. In the last few years, two new instructors have been teaching the first course in the series; in fact, it’s been years since I taught it last. The unfortunate thing is that students no longer come out of this course knowing what they need to know in order to follow the second course in the series, which I’m still the only one teaching. This puts significant strain on my teaching in the second course as I need to spend what seems to be 40-45% of my time teaching stuff that should’ve been covered in the first course but wasn’t. It’s frustrating for me and  frustrating for students, and this semester I have had to make pretty significant changes on the fly since it turned out they literally covered only half of the material in the first course. Again, these two courses are critical for my research, and I used to be able to count on students getting a lot from them, but now they get very little out of the first one and, as a result, they don’t get nearly as much as they should from the second one.

These changes are negatively affecting my research group. I am not sure how to address them other than  by doing informal teaching during group meetings or by confronting current instructors about material coverage, but I am loath to do the latter as the instructors are junior faculty.

I probably will just suck it up and do what I can, teaching this unholy amalgamation of two courses within one, and seeing if an ad hoc special topics offering can help me bridge the gap between what is and what my students need it to be.

***

There is a longtime friend of the blog who is facing a serious health challenge, so please everyone send them good vibes and wishes for a swift recovery!

How’s everyone doing, blogosphere? 

Academic Miscellany

There is this university-level committee I am on, and every meeting is a trip to the Twilight Zone because the meetings are where I get to meet Bizarro Xykademiqz—someone who superficially seems like they would be similar to me, but are actually the exact opposite. Seriously now, there’s a person (a woman, in case it matters) on this committee with whom I disagree 100% on everything. It’s so weird. There hasn’t been a single thing we’ve seen eye-to-eye on. Not one! We are both opinionated people, which is why this issue comes up, but it’s still a little shocking. The other folks are spread out in between while this person and I hold two opposing views. It’s very strange for both of us to be in academia (granted, in very, VERY different disciplines) yet have virtually nothing in common, at least when it comes to viewing the work of this particular committee. (I might also be having tiny panic attacks at the thought of having to interact with this person outside of the committee.)

***

This year, I’ve started advising undergrads in an interdisciplinary program. Recently, a student came to me with a course plan that is so unbelievably packed and so high-level, that I was shocked and was a bit at a loss as to what to advise.  I didn’t want to tell the student outright that their load was too great, because some people are quite capable and the student does have a 4.0 GPA so far. What surprised me was the fact that they are dead-set on getting into graduate school, which is fine, but they don’t really know what subfield they are interested in and aren’t even trying to figure out what they want. They just seem to want to somehow tunnel through undergrad courses and get to graduate courses as quickly as possible (the course plan is chock full of graduate courses), but it’s not because they are interested in the topics. Rather, it’s as if they’re being chased by demons (read: likely parental expectations, internalized or not) and the only way to escape the demons is by enrolling in upper-level grad courses as soon as possible and take as many of them as possible. I told the student that maybe they should take a breath and enjoy their undergraduate experience, focus on making friends, maybe take some more courses for breadth, but the student seemed laser-focused on this breakneck pace that will have them complete grad-level coursework before they earn their bachelor’s degree. I did tell them that, too. I honestly didn’t know why they wanted my advice. I don’t know this student well, and maybe they’re a savant so this workload is nothing for them, but again it doesn’t seem like it. They appear to be moving fast for moving fast sakes and aren’t driven by curiosity or specific interest. Several times, they asked if they could skip this course to get to that course; I asked why, but they never had an explanation. It felt like curricular whack-a-mole, with the student focused on getting to hit all these high-level courses, without giving themselves the time to process the material. If I’d known the kid better, I would’ve been more insistent that they stop and smell the flowers or, if not flowers, then perhaps beer and sweat at some campus party. There’s such a thing as taking your undergraduate studies a little too seriously.

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 How’s the spring semester going for you, blogosphere? 

Well, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news

The good news is that my novel will be out in March. 

The bad news is that Academadness will therefore NOT be out in March. 😩 I’m pushing it back, yet again, this time to May. 

Learning how to write short fiction and then long fiction that people might wish to read apparently isn’t enough. It turns out I am now neck deep in figuring out how to promote and market myself. This might be my most brutal endeavor yet, and I’ve birthed multiple children and countless research papers and grant proposals. What are the best days of the week and times of day to post something on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram? Mind you, the answer is different for different platforms. Is Canva Pro worth the money? Why the heck is it law to have to specify a physical address at the end of a newsletter? Should I pay for a virtual mailbox? Or just get everyone to subscribe to my website and receive blog posts as newsletter? And don’t even start on getting reviews lined up before the book comes out! Is NetGalley worth it? Probably not, but what about doing it as part of a co-op? How about forgoing NetGalley and just sticking to  BookSirens or Booksprout? And how does Bookbub fit into all that? 

In other words: 

PullingHair

In all seriousness, I know all this would be necessary even if I had gone with a big press.  And my publisher, as small as it is, has been doing a bang-up job with every aspect of the process so far, so no complaints there. (Btw, if you’re a longtime blog reader and would like to read and review an ARC of the novel, send me an email or contact me through the blog contact form.)

In academic news, semester proceeds apace. This one isn’t too bad in terms of my teaching workload, but I need to ramp up my grant-writing efforts, which means papers have to go out ASAP. So that’s what I should be doing instead of being a dilettante publicist.

More on academic stuff soon, and in the meantime, some Twitter levity.  Or at least I thought it was levity, but upon inspection of my bookmarks, it turned out a high percentage were of the existential-dread variety. 😬 Oh, well.