Better and Worse Ways of Managing Work and Family?

 Baby G. finds herself in day care starting this week, and I've decided that I'll be heading over there 3 times a day or so to nurse, at least through the summer.  I suspect some of the people at day care and at my work place think I'm crazy, judging by the looks I've gotten.  I appear to be too attached to my kid, perhaps?  Or not attached enough if I'm putting her in day care?  Either way, I appear to lose and maybe, on some accounts, so does Baby G.  But I have to say I myself think I've got a pretty good hybrid situation going on: someone else changes the poopy diapers while I write my book, and I get to take breaks by sitting in a rocking chair and nursing.  At least initially, this arrangement is seeming like a good compromise in the whole thorny work/family balance issue.

I was speaking to graduate students yesterday about this very issue, so I thought I'd post those remarks here and see what conversation ensues.  Is my apparent "balance" the best thing?  Are there other ways to balance this?  Is balance even possible?  One of my colleagues also speaking yesterday mentioned that she thinks there's no such thing as balance - that word implies that there are scales all equally weighted down.  In reality, she says, some days are more work and some days more family needs.  So read and please weigh in!

Men and women both have always had to find ways to juggle work – as in putting food on the table – with family. That’s called real life.  Work and family are simply part of life.In this era when we think of work chiefly as something we do away from home, and raising family as something we do at home - of course I think there are better and worse ways of finding a work/family balance.  I’m an ethicist after all.

 One of the reasons I first started thinking about academia in the first place was because I saw my undergraduate professors being moms and academics and I thought, this looks like a good gig.  My undergraduate adviser, a medieval historian, had two kids and was clearly very involved in their school and activities.  In fact, I remember doing a project for one of her courses that involved developing a medieval history program for her daughter’s class at school.  And, I thought that it must be great to have a job where you have the summers “off” to spend time with your kids.   My undergraduate mindset was a bit naïve, especially regarding summers off, but I’ll get to that a bit more later in my talk.

Later on, while doing doctoral work at Duke University, I came across professors who were waging a protest against what they saw as an established effort to separate work and kids too much.  Duke is an R1 institution – meaning it is highly research oriented – so that faculty always feel pressure to publish, even when they’re not at the office.  I remember one of my professors putting it this way: “I feel like I have to choose between baking chocolate chip cookies with my kids or working on my book.”  I thought that was really sad and so did they – and it helped that this was a theological institution, and so they thought that particularly a place concerned about Christian life and church ought to be more concerned about children and their parents.  So they began to protest a bit – one professor brought her adopted young baby with her when she taught her classes, until the baby was about a year old.  Other professors petitioned for, and got, a paternity leave policy complete with stopping the tenure clock.

So all of these encounters with other people trying to balance work and family in academia helped me figure out how I wanted to try to balance things in my own life.  Following, in no particular order, are some of the things you will probably want to consider as you finish your doctoral work and make it into the wide world of academia:

1.      Consider carefully the kind of school you want to work at.  Most people do doctoral work at research institutions like Duke, and research institutions tend to try to perpetuate their own. Thus it can seem like research, research, research is the best way to go.  That’s just not necessarily so.  If you love research, then go for it – but just know that if part of your goal has also been to live out in the country in a big house, do organic gardening and raise eight kids, you’re probably going to need to hire a lot of help. 

For my own part, initially I thought that I wanted to teach at a small liberal arts school, which is where I had my first job.  I looked specifically for jobs that seemed to be good places to raise a family.  My first job was at a lovely liberal arts college, small, and community-centered.  Its faculty frequently entertain each other at their homes and it’s the kind of place where faculty feel free to bring their kids who are on school vacation and their dogs to work. They have one of the best maternity leave policies in the country – a full semester paid, with no teaching or other duties.  When I interviewed there, the committee, as well as many other people, made particular points to bring up their families, where the best schools were, what day care options there were, and the like.  Those were all indications to me that here was a place I wanted to work, because here was a place I could envision having a satisfying life that included both my vocation and my family

2.      Now I was lucky.  I had a few job offers on my first go-round in the job market, so for me, I had a choice, and I made my decision on the basis of family friendly policies.  But I recognize that academics don’t always have choices about the schools they’ll work for.  Which brings me to my second recommendation: when you land a job, negotiate a contract that is family friendly.  Check out a school’s website and see if you can find their maternity policy.  If you can’t, learn to ask veiled questions about “leaves” when you get to your on campus interview to see if can learn more.  If the maternity leave policy is non-existent (which is the case at a surprising number of schools, even though the lack of a maternity leave policy is illegal) – or if the maternity leave policy is meager at best, negotiate for a full semester off from teaching.  It’s healthier for both you and your baby.  For men, negotiate paternity leave, especially if your wife is planning to go back to work.  Negotiate a reduced course load even if you can’t get a full semester off. 

And always, always, negotiate for stopping the tenure clock. Having leave is not enough: taking care of a baby full time means you really don’t have time to do research or service, both of which count in getting tenure.  By stopping the tenure clock, you push back getting tenure by another semester or a year, but that’s often (though not always) to your advantage.

One of the things I negotiated too, was my husband’s job.  We had decided we’d go wherever one of us got a job, and try to negotiate for the other one.  It’s key in trying to maintain family balance when you’ve got young children– because we didn’t want a situation where we were working on opposite sides of the country. 

3.      And the final tip I’ll share here is: academia is always a pressure cooker.  You’ve got to take your own breaks and not apologize for them. This is how my undergraduate self was naïve about summer vacation – the dirty secret is that faculty aren’t really “off” in the summer.  They’re catching up on the review essay they promised a publisher, or teaching a class to try to earn a bit more money, or working on the book or articles so they can get tenure, and so on.  The pressure to keep going and going never quits, even at a teaching school.  At my first school, there was some pressure to apply for faculty research grants in the summer because having good faculty who do premier research is one of the ways a small school keeps its name known. 

One thing I discovered pretty quickly,though, was that I truly enjoy doing research and so I made a move to work at a bit more of a research-oriented institution with a master’s and doctoral program.  It’s not as high-powered as Duke, which is good.  I realized early on that I don’t want to work at a Duke or a Harvard or a Notre Dame.  So I moved here – and I immediately became even busier, what with master’s and doctoral committee work, and MORE research requests from publishers, in addition to the pressure to give our doctoral program a good name by being a good researcher and teacher myself.

It’s all too easy to get caught up in that, and sometimes I get caught up too much I think.  But here’s what I aim to do – I aim to leave my work at the office, or at least not touch my computer or work till the kids are in bed, once I am at home.  I take my kids to my academic conferences and I bring them to my office when I’ve got to.  I keep my weekends as free as possible for hanging out with my family.  I don’t go to as many evening functions as I would if I did not have a family.  I miss out sometimes on meeting some great people – and it may, in some corners, also mean I don’t get to “advance” in my field as quickly.  But I think that’s part of life.  So to go back to what I said at the beginning: I don’t think I ‘have it all.’  I’ve made some choices over others and that affects both the job I seek and the family life I can have.  My priority is finding a way to make this academic work that I am called to do – being a theologian – go along with the other work I am called to do – be a wife and mother.  It’s not like one of those is more part of who I am than the other. 

The School, The Church, The Society as a Business....

Which would you rather work for:

1) a company where managers assess your skills by giving you a "benchmark" - a set number of items to sell, or cases to process, or things to build, or money to make;

2) a company where managers look at the total group of workers and develop a company plan based on its workers' strengths, allowing for those workers to voice concerns?

For me, it'd be the second.  That model seems much more to respect me as a person with dignity and worth.  The first has the advantage of being easier, but also seems more arbitrary, clearly less concerned about me than about reaching a certain kind of "output" for which the workers, rather than the managers (and certainly not the CEOs) can be blamed.

I was thinking about this because, as many of you know, Philosophy PhD Husband is going back to school to get a degree in accounting, and one of his (rather awesome, in my opinion) business school profs was discussing the differences between many contemporary CEOs in American corporations and the so-called Toyota Way - especially Principle 4, 'Level out the workload.  Work like the tortoise, not the hare".  I do not claim Toyota is perfect - last year's recall is an example of that.  And it remains to be seen how well the company will pull out of the earthquake and residual crises.   His professor, among many other business guys at his school, think very little these days of CEOs making hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not way, way more) while not according dignity to their workers.  (To say nothing of the fact that if workers' pay had risen the way CEOs' pay had, on average, workers ought to be paid $50 per hour. Ahem.)

And yet, at least as a starting point and on paper, Toyota seems to respect its workers' intelligence, and the general ethos is that a company is not there for itself alone, but that to help workers is to help the whole.  By contrast, many American corporations work from a top-down, micromanagement sensibility - one that kills peoples' thinking and doesn't respect their free will.

The prevailing tendency in nearly every place of work these days is to assume a "business model."  After all, say people I've worked with on church committees, businesses are known for efficiency and getting things done while still turning a profit.  Surely those are things that schools and churches can learn from? 


I admit to be adverse to considering the church or the school or the public library as fundamentally "businesses" because human society is not for the purpose of efficiency and turning profits - but as a thought experiment, I'm willing to run with this analogy for a bit and consider that if we are going to see places where we work as "businesses" perhaps there are better and worse ways of understanding "business"?

Guess which way also functions in many school districts, churches and other groups that are part of American communities?  We do not go "like the tortoise", but expect schools and churches to show improvement within three years.  If that doesn't work, fire the lot and put in a new philosophy designed to help the students, or change out the pastor, or get more marketing techniques in to reach the seekers.  It's too fast - it doesn't respect that human life requires a bit of time to process, to fine tune, to think and reflect and, dare I say it, learn from our mistakes. 

Let me take the time to focus a bit more closely on schools, though I think I could write similarly about churches here. A friend of mine was a librarian in a school that was closed and completely "restarted" because of its lack of performance over three years.  Since she was fired along with all the others, she had to find another job in the school district, but all the librarian jobs were taken, as were all the jobs where she felt she had experience and qualifications.  So she took a job as a third grade teacher.  That meant she was the "new kid" at the school; the other third grade classroom teacher knew all the students (and in fact had taught most of them the year before as second graders in her dual 2nd/3rd grade), and so made a claim on all the kids who did not have ADHD or learning disabilities, who were not from impoverished families where a kid might not have breakfast in the morning, who were generally high performing test takers.  At the end of the year, both classrooms were assessed the same way, and my friend was deemed to be the "worse" teacher though she had all sorts of knocks against her to begin with.  She felt she was lucky to have helped the kids improve their reading and  math skills in any way at all, since she spent most of her time doing behavior reviews and separating kids who were being dangers to the other students.

My friend's case is not an isolated case.  The school district lacks the ability to think creatively about where to place an experienced librarian.  The school district itself is at the mercy of politicians, who want the US to be "like" other countries in terms of success at math and science and who simultaneously see teachers as the enemy because of their unions and their high cost wages.  The problem is, politicians aren't in the thick of things and can't really *know* how to fix the mistakes teachers themselves see.  School administrators, who are closer to the ground than the folks in the capitol, can often barely see the individual problems because they're looking at a different set of problems. 

That's why I like the Catholic social teaching principle of subsidiarity - the idea that accords respect to every one by recognizing that everybody's got some gifts others don't. When it comes to society, each level of society can deal with certain problems that other levels of society do not need to be part of.  The local soccer team should not be a matter for the President of the United States to deal with.  I think when it comes to the question of unions, and states, and schools, subsidiarty has been run over roughshod.

The proverb suggests you can't win the race by being a hare.  We've been trying to be hares - we've been trying to fix "problems" that did not develop overnight, by too quickly aiming for the institution and trying to fix it, top down. But study after study suggests that all sorts of things might be causing problems for our children today that have little to do with good or bad teachers: diet, video games, lack of parental involvement, parents' divorce at an early age, entitlement, helicopter parents, societal values that do not value children or that value them too much, et cetera. 

If I were going for a business model, I'd rather aim for one that had a "hare" approach.  A model that focuses on workers' dignity and ability to contribute in relation to their specific skills (even if those skills are put to creative uses) is better for society than one that ignores the unique capabilities of people in favor of "outputs" and assessment, regardless of the person.

The Baby Days of Spring Semester

My grandmother talks about "the dog days of summer" - those days where it's so hot nothing seems to get done.

Well, I'm having the "baby days of spring semester."  Baby G. is getting more active by the minute, and I even think she's at the beginning of doing some teething (!), so that it's more difficult to get writing done.  I do still have that book manuscript due: I think I'll have to start moonlighting to get drafts done.  Typing one-handed was hard enough, but typing with a squirmy baby is much tougher.  My maternity leave also ended on Tuesday, so I'm back at work doing administrative tasks.  Most of these are being done at home, though I do get into the office for a brief meeting here and there (and bring the baby, of course).  Hard to do that during these "baby days" as well.

It isn't just that Baby G. is more active that makes things harder to do, of course.  The day care center called last week and said, "We have a spot for your baby in May."  "I'd rather wait till August."  "In August, she'd be too old to enter with the incoming baby class and therefore you wouldn't have a spot till she's two."

Hmmm.  For those of you fortunate enough not to deal with day care, let me translate. The day care center tries to keep a balance of younger and older babies.  They have twelve spots in the younger baby room (6 weeks to 12 months) and twelve spots in the older baby room (12 months to 24 months).  The babies rotate in groups at the appropriate time (they move in May, August and January) so that there's always an incoming class of younger babies, and always a like-numbered group moving up to the older baby room.  Since the total number of spots available for babies stays the same, the only way to get a spot if you don't rotate in early is for someone else to drop out.  Guess how often THAT mythical experience happens? So that's why in May, Baby G. is good to go at five months, but in August at eight months would be unable to go.****

I didn't know all this initially and so was quite taken aback.  I want to stay home with Baby G. till August, and I can do so because I'm on contract till May 15th (I'm presuming I'll be offered another contract that starts again in August ;-)): she'll be more independent of me then because she'll likely have started solids and by that time, I'll be screaming ready to get out of the house and teach some college students.  That's how it was with L. anyway.  I stayed home with her for nine months and was glad to spend the time but equally glad to get back to work.

I thought briefly about other options - I know of a couple other day care places that could probably take Baby G in August.   But the upsides of this day care are that it is on my work campus, L's preschool is there, and it's a close walk or drive from my house.  All good.  Other day cares are 20 minutes' drive one way in the opposite direction.  I had that experience the first year I went back to work - the 1.5 hour commute to get L to day care was not conducive to much family life at all.  You can probably imagine yourselves how much better our lives have been as a family once we could cut that drive out of the equation.

I feel somehow like I'm robbing Baby G. of some time if I send her to day care in May - she'll still be nursing pretty much full time even if she's on solids.  And I'm not sure I'll quite be ready to let her go.

 I know, it's the conundrum every mom faces anyway, and I'm very fortunate not to have to face it as soon as most moms in the US.  The likely thing we'll do is pay for May but hold off on actually putting her in day care till late June.

Still, the fact that time is swiftly running away from us makes me want to hold on to these baby days all the more.

****This is roughly the way I understand it. The director told me about all the quid pro quos too, which seemed to amount to: "SOME older babies will get in in August, but not yours."   So the upshot is, it's all way complicated, involving waiting lists and other sundry info and it doesn't really work the neat way I described above.  Ah well. This is why I am not a director of a day care center (God bless her) and I'm quite sure I'd have a hard time dealing with parents exactly like me ;-)

Academic Job Search II - Networking

For the other posts in this series:
Beginning a search  First Interview       On Campus Interview      Contract       Rejections
In the general workplace, the standard job-seeking adage is: "It's not what you know, it's who you know."  That doesn't really work in academia because it IS, in part, what you know (or how you think?).  One of the standard adages in the academic job search is, instead,: "You get your first job because of your advisor's work; you get your second because of the work you do."  In other words, the network of people your advisor knows is really important for that first job; you, as a beginning graduate student, are presumed to have not much of a network.

This is a holdover from the days when previous generations of scholars really did rely heavily on their advisors for their jobs.  Indeed, I think many academics in the past could get away with not networking in the sense we might mean today. A phone call was often all that was needed to land a job somewhere and if one wanted to progress, a well-placed article in a top journal could do the trick.  The network functioned much differently than it does today, for the most part. (Philosophy PhD Husband claims that his field still does kind of operate in this way.)

I wonder how true this is anymore.  OF COURSE,  letters of recommendation are extremely important and in general I suspect that having a letter from a more well-known professor is a boon for an applicant. (Though it may also be a hindrance - students of Stanley Hauerwas have long suspected that they get jobs in certain places because of their advisor's work, while not even getting a second glance in other places, because of their advisor's work.  Is this true?  We shall never find out.  The academic job search is not known for transparency.)

On the other hand, there are schools (often smaller liberal arts schools) that tend NOT to hire those from big name schools or with big name advisors because they're worried about the Attrition Effect.  That is, there's a sneaking suspicion among academics that everyone wants a job "up the ladder" and everyone wants to be at an R1 (research school with low teaching requirement) university.  Students from big name schools, it is presumed, are the ones that especially can break into R1 atmospheres, and so they're the first ones to leave smaller schools.  So why not short-circuit THAT eventuality by hiring someone who is from a less-well known school and less hireable by R1s?

It's a cultural assumption and it's not clear to me how true that is. It's just not clear to me how much of a "ladder" really exists in academia.  It seems to me that it's more about figuring out what balance of teaching, research, and service works for you, and that the R1 hankering is more of a false desire instilled in graduate school because so many PhD programs are at R1s.  Plenty of PhDs have their fill of R1 academic life in graduate school and have decided it's just not for them because they love teaching more.  Plenty of PhDs at liberal arts colleges have found ways of doing good research even while having a high teaching load - and dare I say, even do better research than some at R1s because they've had to make time to do it and stick to it more than those who have perhaps a bit too much time on their hands.  (Which is to say: when you're applying, don't preclude community college jobs or high teaching load liberal arts colleges just because the prevailing attitude in graduate school is that an R1 is the best place to be.  Community college listings, by the way, do not tend to be listed in the national conference journals.)

All of the above ought to demonstrate what I pointed out at the end of "Academic Job Search I" - so much of the job search is NOT about you.  There's an "academic voodoo" at work that will leave you scratching your head wondering, "Why NOT me? Why didn't I get that interview/job/book contract?

So instead, let's focus on the things you can worry about when it comes to networking...

1. Do rely on your advisor, but not overly so.   Definitely get your advisor's advice but don't leave it there.  Do some networking yourself.

2. Network at national conferences - Most conferences now allow graduate students to be members - use that to your advantage.  Submit a paper proposal but even if you don't get one accepted, try to get to the conference anyway.  (NB: hostels and sleeping on floors are cheap housing options.)  Publishers flock to these things.  Use the time to browse the books of various publishers to see which ones publish in your area(s).  Perhaps even talk to an editor about your project and see what the result is.  Go to publishers' cocktail parties.  Introduce yourself to speakers at panel presentations and say what/how/why their work interests you, along with mentioning that you are a graduate student at such-and-such school and might be looking for a job in the near future.

3. Network at regional and institutional conferences - Be one of the people to volunteer to pick up people from the airport, or attend dinners with guests.   Paper acceptances are often easier here; use that to your advantage because you never know where that random conversation you have after your paper session will get you.

4. Devise a graduate student conference at your institution (with help from friends) -  Getting to know graduate students in your field is an excellent way to network.  That grad student you meet this year may be on a hiring committee at an institution in a year or two. Invite a non-grad student scholar to give a keynote.  A) It can go on your CV and B) it's another person you've gotten to know.

5. Research Assistantships - Take advantage of the work your professors give you to make connections with other scholars, if those opportunities come up.  Copy editing, organizing conferences, and the like are all helpful ways to network.

6. Others?  Any one else have good networking tips for graduate students or even faculty members?

Special Tips for Women and Moms: Women, I hate to say this (I really do) but it is still the case, I think, that women are expected to "know" something about feminist theory in relation to their fields.  While I think it need not be the case that you must write a dissertation on feminism, I think it is very likely that a school will presume "feminist theory" and ask you a question about gender.  So it's a good idea at least to have familiarity with gender questions in your field and to have read some books.  Take a class if you can; otherwise attend some feminist theory sessions at conferences (or attend a feminist theory conference) and do some networking there.  Women, too, have a network - it isn't just about the "old boys' network" anymore.

[NB: Men, I think it's often seen as something uniquely good if you, too, can contribute intelligently to gender conversations.]

At the same time, a caveat: women and especially moms, may find themselves gravitating toward precisely gender related topics that they're experiencing in their lives.  I'm currently on maternity leave and find myself suddenly interested in The Moral Life of Babies.  Other topics might include the history of motherhood or marriage, the biological mothering drive, the psychology of children, et cetera.  I think it's excellent to think about these topics.  I also think you'll want to consider carefully how wedded you want to be to "traditional women's issues."  Some people end up making that their focus; others end up feeling stuck there.

Academic Job Search I - Tips for the pre-interview stage

For other posts in this series:
Networking   First Interview       On Campus Interview      Contract       Rejections
I have been wanting to discuss job search tips (applicable to everyone but with some special considerations for moms on the job market) for a while now.  When I wrote the post, though, it turned into an extremely long post no one would want to read.  So, here for your reading enjoyment are shorter versions of that blog post (which people may ALSO not want to read, but at least I'll have tried ;-))

Usually, people come to me seeking tips on the academic job search in early fall.  I don't mind offering tips any time of year, but I hate to say it: early fall is just a tad too late when doing a job search.  So I'm posting this now in the hopes of helping people out a little sooner.

The academic job search is in a category all its own.  Imagine, first of all, that every.single.job offered involves a nationwide search (in many cases, international search), and then imagine that this job search only happens once a year (that's right: one time per 12 months or you have to wait a year), and then finally imagine that each spot will most likely have over 50 applicants, but more probably over 100 applicants for the spot.  With all that in your head, you're beginning to get a sense of the academic job search.

[You're thinking: there must be a caveat.  Well, there is, somewhat: the above is for full-time, well-paid, generally tenure track positions.  If you're just looking for a part-time temporary position, or adjuncting work (pay at $2500 or less per class per semester), those are usually offered (again, nationwide) between March and July - after people have said they're leaving to take new jobs elsewhere and institutions find themselves at loose ends trying to find someone to cover their fall classes.]

I've been on the job market three times and had countless first round interviews and eight second round interviews, and been on a few hiring committees myself, so I'm basing my tips on those experiences.  (My mistakes, mostly.... ;-)) This post is about the pre-interview stage, where you have to write the cover letters, CVs, teaching philosophies, research statements, and whatever else the school might be looking for, in the hopes of getting an interview. 

In a word: it's YOU, Academic (Cue those Dr. Oz books...).  It's all about you at this stage.  You're trying to showcase your best self (cue Oprah music).  So what does that mean, practically?

1. Take a close look at the job ad.  Is it focusing on research, teaching, or a little of both?  If you can't tell, presume a focus on teaching as that's where most of the jobs are.  If their focus is teaching, when writing your cover letter, you'll want to focus, therefore, on teaching as the second paragraph.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen cover letters focus on the dissertation.  Not a good strategy.

2. Take a close look at YOU in relation to the job ad.  I know the job market is tight.  I know that you're willing to take almost any job because it's a job.  But watch my words here: it REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, won't help to apply for a job that you know is way out of your field.  REALLY.

I cringe to think that I applied for a church history job in my first job-seeking round.  I really am a theological ethicist but I wrote my dissertation using Augustine to comment on the contemporary theological scene.  I milked that Augustine angle for all it was worth, but I'm just not a church historian.  I never got a reply back from that school, wasted postage and time writing a dazzling (but apologetic) letter explaining why even though I had a PhD that said "theological ethics" I could teach church history.

Don't waste your time and money on that kind of thing.  If it's a general position (includes the words "general" or "broad" or "multi-") then that might be worth your time, but if they're looking for someone that specific and you know it isn't you, don't do it.

3. Take a second look at the job ad in relation to YOU.  On the other hand, there will be job ads you might pass over automatically because you think it isn't "you."  Take a second look at those.  There will be some jobs that don't at first look like good fits, or maybe the job ads are just too vague.  In those cases, ask advisors and friends what they think about that position.  It might be worth a look.  My first real academic job was not one I initially thought I could apply for, but I am sure glad I did!

4. The mysteries of the "cover letter" revealed....  Fill in the blanks, amend as necessary for your particular skills...
Address
Date
Dear ____________

I am writing to apply for your job position that appeared in ________________.  I am ABD/PhD candidate at _____________ studying ______________  with (name of professor).  I believe I have the background and skills you are looking for.

Paragraph A.  Teaching paragraph (unless this is a research position, in which case switch with Paragraph B)  I notice that you are looking for someone with ______________ qualities and I see that your university/college has an emphasis on ____________.  I believe I have qualities you seek because I have already taught ____________ classes.  My students think I am awesome, based on my teaching evalutions.  In fact, one student suggests in a course evaluation, "_______________." My particular strengths in teaching include, but are not limited to, entertaining lectures, fast, fun-filled debates, amazing discussions that include acting out parts of the readings, and tests that my students enjoy taking.  I teach writing in the following way: _____________. I always ______________ when I teach because my students love it so much.  I have certificates in teaching with technology, teaching gender, teaching diversity, teaching practical reasoning, teaching students to read, and I won the "Best Teaching Assistant Award" last year. 

Paragraph B - the research paragraph:  I notice that you are looking for someone who has __________ interests; I share many of those interests.  My dissertation focuses on _____________. (Go on about your dissertation for no more than 2 sentences).  I am also interested in ____________, ___________ and ________ and hope to ____________, which fits with your university mission in ___________ way.  I have published articles in ______________ journals and won a research award last year so you won't be sorry you've hired someone who hasn't studied _______________.

I am enclosing my dossier and I look forward to discussing my application with you further.  I will be at the _________ conference but you may also reach me at _____________.

Sincerely,


NB: I, of course, had very few of the "extra" qualifications suggested in this letter, but I did tailor each letter to the school and explain why I thought I'd be a good fit.  That's really the most important thing: tell the school about you and why you think you're the one they need.

5.  The mysteries of the "teaching philosophy" revealed....   Some schools ask for these and lots of applicants find them mysterious.  Well, they are a bit mysterious, so here's a help:

Explore   Lecture      Write    Create       Guide     Think    Exasperate    Listen     Tell   Funnyquote  Discuss   Weirdquestion    Wastetime   Analyze     Mentor     Empathize    Sympathize     Regurgitate    Drinkcoffee

Circle the words that most appeal to you and then consider how your teaching fits (or not) with those words.  Then write a 500-750 word essay that discusses your teaching using the words you circled.

* Seriously, the purpose of the teaching philosophy is let the committee get some sense of why you want to teach and what style of teaching you have.  My own teaching philosophy started with "Funnyquote" and developed that theme, with a bit of "write" and "mentor" thrown in.

6. Research Statement -  First of all, DO NOT wax poetic about your dissertation.  Your research statement should give a sense of broad areas of research, and your next potential project in some detail.  Of all the things you write for the job search, this one is the most fun because a) it's neat to dream and b) it's fun to look back on this later and discover that none of the things you mentioned actually resemble your future research.

And while we're here, let me reiterate that you SHOULD discuss your dissertation in your cover letter, but keep it brief (like two to three sentences - you can do it!) and then demonstrate how awesome you are because you have research interests beyond your dissertation.  (You do, don't you?)

7. Don't lie on your CV.  All joking aside, if your paper isn't published yet, but you've sent it for review, just say it's being reviewed.  If you were a teaching assistant and not the main professor, say you were a TA.  Don't falsely bulk up your CV just because you're worried you won't stand out.  Those of us on the hiring committee well remember being graduate students trying to fit in to academia - and we're sympathetic to those beginning years.  You just simply won't have the publications, teaching experience and service that older colleagues will and that's okay.  Will it cost you an interview?  Perhaps - some schools do like to have people with some teaching experience so someone who's taught their own class may well win out over someone who's "just" TA'd.  Others may give an edge to someone with research experience.  But not always, and not necessarily even usually.  Sometimes the people who get the jobs are people who have no real time experience in either teaching or research, leaving you to scratch your head and wonder, "Why NOT me? I had this and this and this...."

8.  Which leads me to the following statement (and this will not be the first time I say this...):  Academic job searches are NOT rational, not ultimately.  It will make sense why a committee will reject some candidates (only has a master's degree in music when we're looking for an ABD or PhD in history) but it will not make sense why the committee doesn't call YOU for an interview.  Sometimes, you'll be surprised that they DID call.

To quote someone who once interviewed me: chalk it up to "academic voodoo." This is why, after you send off your application it is no longer really about YOU though you'll continue to need to put your best foot forward.  There are all kinds of reasons why someone might or might not call for an interview, including lack of funding, departmental personalities, institutional personalities, inside candidates, lack of funding, sudden change of heart, institutional donors, how large a department is, what someone had for lunch that day, and lack of funding. 


Special considerations for the women/moms out there: None at this stage, except to remind you that in this, as in all job searches, at the beginning stages you must pretend you have no family. In some fields, it helps that you're a woman (if your field is mostly male); in others, gender is a neutral thing.

Being Truthful about Being Human: or, "Having it All" Revisited

I apologize for the blog break.  Last Saturday, I attended a symposium with other theologians, and I spent last week writing the paper for that symposium.  It went well, by the way, and I really enjoyed it.  It also makes me think, once again, about the whole concept of working mothers "having it all."

I took the whole family with me to the town where the symposium was - actually, THAT fact was more Philosophy PhD's choice, since he 1) wanted to make sure that I made the 3 hour trip okay by myself (which meant him coming with me); 2) wanted to get out of town; 3) was maybe ever so slightly worried about being alone with L. for a whole day (?).  I'm guessing here.  In any case, they all came with me.

Baby G. actually went with me to the symposium, too.  Most of the time, that's a big "no-no" in academia, especially if you're presenting.  At least, I haven't generally felt welcome to do that.  But when I was asked to present a paper, I was already 7 months pregnant, and knew that in February there WOULD, God willing, be a baby to show for it all.  I also knew that I wanted to nurse the baby and therefore knew that my being away from her for a full night plus a whole day would likely not work.  (She does take a bottle here and there, convenient for quick meetings and such...but a whole day and night?  Philosophy PhD responsible for the feeding and care of a 3 year old plus an infant?  I'm sure he would have balked.)  Frankly, I'm not sure if even she were solely a bottle-taking baby, I would have left her for that long at 2 months old.  I suppose that's one of those "your mileage may vary" things, highly dependent on the parent and the baby.  At 7 months pregnant, you have no idea what kind of baby you'll have nor how you'll feel.  And, given that the baby could conceivably have come at any point up to January 11, when they would have induced for post-term pregnancy, the symposium could have been only a month after the baby was born.  All those caveats.  Despite it all, they kept their invitation open and I decided, why not?  It sounded like a fun symposium, and this is one of the several reasons I went into academia - to think about topics with other theologians!

The symposium planners and people were fantastic!  They welcomed the baby; one of the participants walked my baby around while I gave my paper (he totally didn't have to do that) and generally it went well, at least from my point of view.  (I don't know about theirs....)  But the fact is, I wouldn't have gone at all if I couldn't have brought her.  It was my sine qua non.

But I want to add still further to the reflection on all this.  I was one of only two women in the room, and the only woman with young children.  Actually, that's rather common both in my field and in academia in general.  There are a few fields that have more women than men, but for the most part, that's not the case.  The men there were all family guys themselves, so quite understanding about issues with kids - but still, there's a gender thing there.  I'm the only one who has breasts, to put it bluntly.  Whatever my brand of feminism at other times and places (I tend to favor post-modern feminism), in situations like this, I seem most like a cultural feminist, because there IS something to their idea that women have undervalued attributes like breasts.

This is especially so in the workplace.  It's one of the reasons why I am angry about this country's maternity leave policies, because the underlying view seems to be that, "Oh, OKAY.  We'll hire a woman, but after she's hired, she has to pretend that she doesn't have a uterus, breasts, children to pick up from school, or anything else that leaks 'family'."  (And let's not make this a those-Europeans versus these-Americans thing, since that seems to devolve into cross-ocean name-calling and discussions of who is most/least responsible when it comes to the national budget. For example, I was speaking to a friend in Uganda last week, where the national policy is three months...)

The standard of pretending one doesn't have a family belongs to a time when men could pretend that they could arrive at work and appear unconnected to family life precisely because they didn't have bodies that betray otherwise.  Well, I think partly because women have been in the workplace for a while, that attitude has been changing/changed for a while too.  Lots of men now proclaim themselves as family men and leave meetings to pick up kids early.  Our maternity leave policy is SO nineteenth-century - and while we're at it, the lack of a paternity leave policy is SO twentieth-century.

So let's be truthful about ourselves.  We are a people who work and who have families, even if we're not married with children.  That doesn't mean "having it all."  That's a statement about the way humans exist - and have existed for a long time.  Let's break away from the false ideals from the mid- to late- nineteenth century and post-World War II about women and men and families.  People have long been merchants with families, farmers with families, restaurateurs with families, etc.  Work wasn't always imagined as cordoned off from one's family life.  I think it is largely because we started to imagine a space called "the office" that family got pushed to the wayside - but that's too straitjacketed a way to live.

Having such a hugely separate place called "work" or "the office" is too great a luxury for us, I think.  I know my detractors will say, "But children are too distracting," and actually, I agree with them.  I'm a big fan of well-paid child care, but I also think there are many times when we are too quick to say that children don't belong.  Like, for instance, at academic meetings where for many participants, the main things aren't the papers but getting together over beers to discuss their field.  I do, in fact, judge academic meetings by how welcoming they are to children.  Society of Christian Ethics: excellent.  Other rarefied societies of which I am/have been a part?  Not so much.

Overall, we need better work policies in terms of hours, flexibility and the like.  We need to be able to be fully human, fully with families and also fully participants in the economy.  To pretend that we are machines or just individual objects in space, unconnected to each other, isn't realistic or good.

Just as a related aside: while I was on partial bedrest during pregnancy, I watched the entire series of "House, M.D."  (Never seen it before.)  Anyone else ever notice that ALL of the characters on the show have failed marriages, no children, no spouse, even no significant other (unless married to each other)?  There's an interesting underplot about work becoming family if you make it to high enough/rare enough ranks.  And obviously, the "best" doctors can't be ordinary, or mingle with the ordinary - that is to say, people with families.  It's kind of life marriages in Hollywood: can't associate with the plebs, because it "just won't work."

How to "leave" gracefully? Or, maternity leave - how DO women do it?

I continue to be somewhat amazed by how blurry the idea of "leave" is - I don't know that I'm really "leaving" except that I don't have official teaching classes this semester.  I know that people say the key to leaving is just to refuse to participate - easier said than done.  Besides which, maternity leave is a bit different.  I'm having a good time so far hanging out with the baby but I do have to go back fairly soon so it's helpful to keep up with things.  Consider what I've got going during my "leave":

TEACHING

• Continued issues with grades from last semester.  Hope to have this one done this week if possible!Can't just drop the students who protest grades from a previous semester; can't hand this off to someone else either.
• Directed reading with master's student (meets once a week online during leave, in office once I'm back).  This is from a student who originally was a master's thesis advisee, then decided to do the work in a directed reading instead.  I agreed to be her thesis advisor; don't feel like/don't want to drop the directed reading now...
• Honors thesis student advising - review and grade thesis writing; agreed to this 1.5 years ago and need to honor that...
• Masters' thesis students - I have two current students - meet and revise writing as needed; agreed to do this at least a year ago; need to honor that...
• Possibly 2 more letters of recommendation, depending on whether said students decide to apply or not

RESEARCH

• Presentation at the Symposium on The Powers (a la the books by Walter Wink; I'll be writing about him more in the coming days) - agreed to do this a while ago; could probably miss if I HAD to.
• 6 more chapters to write on The Book - 4 of which are partially written in some form, phew
• Proposal for a conference paper on children and moral formation - could sidestep this one if necessary, though that would "put me back" in terms of having research to do next year. 
• NB: Actually this relates to one of the key problems pre tenured academic women find they have if they take maternity leave.  Their research goes way down, and that's because a lot of academic conferences/publications/etc. require the foresight of a year or two of advance planning.  That's why insitutions with good policies stop the tenure clock, to allow women to jump back in to things after they've returned and "make up" some of the "lost" time.  (I'm a bit loathe to call spending time healing from pregnancy and labor, and raising a newborn "lost" though)
• Continued work on a collective theology blog in progress for the past year.

SERVICE

• Department chair seach, involving attending the public and departmental presentations.  I COULD argue to sidestep this one, actually, but that's probably not a good idea all in all.
• Assistant professor search - same as above, but this one I may actually sidestep; depends how baby is.
• University wide committee I'm on - need to continue to participate in once-a-month meetings even through maternity leave because of the topic and its relationship to other things I do at the uni.

I do actually have a point to saying all this beyond a kind of "hey look at all the stuff I do" ego statement.  Several studies have suggested that untenured women with children have a more difficult time getting tenure (the opposite is true for men, apparently!)  This really interesting 2010 study suggests some of the same thing I've experienced - the never ending nature of the job affects the way one understands family once children are in the picture.  While academia has the BIG advantage of being flexible, its very flexibility is also perceived as a liability for women with children.  Flexibility means one has a bit more control over time during a typical 9 to 5 day; it also means that there are often required events that happen outside a typical day.

But unlike the article I've linked, I think that non-acadmics face some of the same issues that academics do.    What say you, other women out there? How do you manage being on "leave" while also knowing you'll be back in a pretty short amount of time?  How do you manage the mommy track issues faced by women who have careers and children?

How to Write Heavy Blog Posts

I haven't updated in a few days because I've been thinking about a pretty heavy topic that is in the news these days: state legislatures wanting to curtail higher education.  Which in turn leads to curtailing of humanities, which in turn leads to less creative, less flexible, even dare I say, less ethical minds.  A mind trained in humanities as well as engineering is a mind willing to take some risks and be wrong some times.  A mind trained under our "Teach to the Test" policies that we have in secondary education, and which are now moving to higher education in the form of "assessment" is able to see the extent of the law but not able to think about possibilities.

(I've been thinking about all this while on maternity leave, by the way, because I know that my maternity leave is great compared to most women's in America.  And I think to myself, why should that be the case?  Most women, most families, most children should have what I have.  Instead of academics having to be defensive toward state legislatures, I think the opposite should be happening. But instead we seem to be collectively trying to take academia down the road we've taken business in the last two decades and make them into star production factories but not places where work OR quality of life are valued highly.  If we thought work mattered, we'd take pride in it, rather than considering it a drudgery.  Likewise, if we really thought families and friends mattered, we'd value leaves that help us be better families and friends.  I'm often amazed when I'm talking to people who did factory work or construction work in the 50s, 60s and 70s.  They had pride in that work and others saw it as important too.  My grandfather was a plumber and also a very influential man in his community.  I don't think he'd have the same kind of respect today.  He also worked hard - but he had more time off then that Americans do now.  Not sure the production push of the 1980s was really a benefit...)

In all the writing about why America seems to be a falling star in politics and economics,  let us consider that one of the reasons might be the moral formation of our students, or lack thereof.  Because teaching to the test is moral formation whether we recognize it as such or not - but I'm not sure it's morally forming the kinds of attitudes we want to see in our students.   I think it DID, on the other hand, bear some of the responsibility for forming a business culture that just barely stayed to the right side of the law and saw little or no purpose in a morality that might be beyond law (And I would add, this is a culture my business ethics students all wanted to be part of and so made themselves conform to).

That kind of culture has not really failed, despite what pundits say.  I think we see it all around us, in both political and economic sectors.  It continues to be a problem, and we educators continue to form students in it.  Until we can think of education, and humanities, in ways that go beyond showing legislators the "bottom line" and "evidence (generally via tests)" that students learn something in my classes I think it won't get better.

My reasoning is based on something Jesus said: "By their fruits you will know them."  My students' fruit lately has been far less creative - and less willing to be wrong for once - than before.  My business ethics students speak of wanting to make money as fast as possible so that they can get to live what they think is quality of life - buying all the latest tech gadgets and playing with them.  So rather than complain that "America" seems to be losing influence, let us think in terms of the fruit we see in our students and younger business colleagues.

Anyway.  I've been working on a post (not this one) these past few days about what can be learned from academia when it comes to work and state legislatures, but it's made me rather "rant-y" and incoherent kind of like what you see above.  Some day when I like those drafts, maybe I'll post them.  For now I'm just submitting this humble post.