Small Collaborations

Note from your steadfast author: The following is a guest post from Dr. Will Duffy, an assistant professor of English and Director of the Center for Writing and Communication at the University of Memphis. His most recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in College English, Composition Studies, and Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics. He can be reached at williameduffy@gmail.com.

I invited Will, a graduate school colleague of mine, to compose this guest post after a roundtable that he mentions in the first paragraph. Please note that the image in this post is taken from the infographic provided through a link near the end of the post. I have a copy of this infographic on the wall of my office--I think it's an excellent way to visualize the collaborative process of publishing scholarship. Please enjoy this guest post, because soon you'll have to read my dull, lifeless prose again. -- JB

So Busy

Here we are, three weeks deep into the new academic year. Of course, several weeks' of meetings, class planning, and other such business came before the actual start of the semester. I'm sorry, blog. I would've called. I've just been so busy.

Here's the thing about being busy: If you're an academic, you're busy. The job of the academic is divided in such ways that when you turn your attention to one part of it, you're neglecting another part that will then need your attention, all the while neglecting another part that will soon collapse and trap you as you dig your way out and oh God the horrors and the suffering. Well, it's not really that bad. But psychologically, that's typically how it feels.

This morning, I remarked to my wife that I don't know how people find the time to read newspapers. She replied that I used to read the New York Times routinely. And I retorted, "Well, yeah, but then I was just writing a dissertation and working on articles and applying to jobs and teaching and...Oh, yeah. I see your point."

These days, I am a WPA (writing program administrator for those very few readers who have no idea what that means), which brings with it a fair number of obligations on my time. I teach two classes per semester. I'm doing an independent study with a student because I'm a sucker, but also because she's a good student who wants to go to grad school for rhetoric and composition and how could I say no? Again, sucker. I'm chairing a search committee for a new tenure-track hire; that hasn't been too much work yet, but oh it will be. I recently became a book review editor for a scholarly journal. I'm part of a writing group of fairly active scholars. I'm working on a few scholarly projects, some collaborative and some solo. I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff. The point is: I'm a busy guy. But so what?

When I think about it, I feel like I can't be all that much busier than I was during my job market year, when I spent hours each day drafting my dissertation, preparing and submitting job application materials, and teaching a class my university had never offered before. My current daily tasks are oriented more toward maintaining and running a writing program, but I still spend time each day working on my own scholarship (never enough, it feels like) and thinking about my teaching. And if I am busier now than I was as a grad student, it's worth remembering that I am actually getting paid a decent salary for my work. There's something to be said for that.

With some exceptions, memory tends to scrub away the rougher edges of past experiences. My first year on the tenure track offered vast stretches of unstructured hours. My second year, maybe not quite as often, but I still control most of my own schedule--I still have time to reflect and write and just chat with colleagues. I am busy, but I'm supposed to be.

So why am I writing about this?

I don't want to glorify being busy. I don't want to make my lot in life sound worse than others, especially since I'm mindful of the fact that for a junior faculty member, my workload isn't all that much above average.

The notion of being busy allows me to let things slip through the cracks. Like reading recent scholarship, or working on a draft-in-progress, or maintaining this blog. Saying I'm busy justifies delays. I'm writing this to remind myself that having lots of tasks to occupy my time is not something that will change with time.

I'm reminding myself to prioritize those tasks and not to fret if one waits a little longer than I would prefer. I'm reminding myself to get away from my desk and take a walk around campus in the middle of the day. It's a pretty campus after all, and the days are beginning to cool: Perfect weather for midday walks. So I'm busy. I'm not planning to let it overwhelm me.

The Importance of Networking

A fellow rhet/comp professor nudged me recently and reminded me that I do in fact have readers who want me to pay attention to this blog every once in a while. So I thought I'd check in. And since I'm currently sitting in a hotel lobby during my favorite conference, what better concept to think about than a term that gives me some trouble: networking.

When I hear that term, as I imagine is true for many of you, I get this image of desperate people in suits--I guess many of us who have gone on the job market can picture precisely such a conference--trying to climb up the ladder by meeting the right person at the right time. Academia is certainly not immune to the potent mixture of anxiety and ambition that leads people to think of networking in this way. Academics have ambition, and there are probably few careers that generate as much anxiety as this one, with its constant search for the next goal (completion of a PhD, publishing, securing of a job, publishing, working toward tenure if you're on the tenure track, promotion through our very limited number of ranks, publishing, etc.). Networking has always struck me as a distinctly negative, self-serving social activity, and I just can't shake that terminological association. As one of the leaders of a three-day workshop I just attended said several times, a belief our field holds dear, words gain their meaning from other words.

If I think networking has these sleazy, uncomfortable, awkward, selfish associations, why use it? Okay, fine. It's not really the term I have in mind. When I go to conferences, I go to meet new people and see old friends and colleagues. I go to be a participant in my professional community. There is a term that resonates with me: community.

In the grand scheme of things, I have only been going to conferences for a few years now. I was in the second year of my PhD program before I attended a national conference. But in that short time, I have made numerous acquaintances in my field, acquaintances that I find a lot of value in. I don't value them because I think they helped me get a job (although I'm sure they did) or because they are the biggest, most famousest names in my field (although I do know some of them). When I talk with someone I have met at a conference, either five years or five seconds ago, I feel the privilege of talking with someone who has read much of the same scholarship I have read, who has gone through similar kinds of education, who has faced similar challenges that I face as a scholar, teacher, and administrator. And the reward of networking (ugh, that term) is not some future material gain or points scored in some intangible, invisible game of prestige building. The reward is feeling that sense of community.

A small example: When I began composing those post, as I said above, I was sitting in the hotel lobby all on my lonesome. I was engaging in a little bit of people watching and saying hi to people I knew when they walked past, but I was really just working. A paragraph into this post about the importance of networking, a colleague I met at this conference five years ago put her own work down, crossed the lobby, and asked me to join her and another colleague because, even though we are all working quietly, we can at least work together.

I never feel more connected to my community than when I'm at this conference. What we do is absolutely networking. You meet a person who introduces you to another person. Or, as happened to me this morning, you meet a person you realize you sort of know because of another person--an accidental form of networking. Or you just sit beside a person and talk about coffee. Networking can be an organic process: a putting down of roots, a rhizomatic experience. So those of you who don't like conferences because you don't like networking, just remember that you're talking with people who share so many of your values. You're talking to your people.

Okay, that's enough positivity. Blame it on my being on the road at my favorite conference. It gives me "all the feels," as the kids say. Next time, I promise to find some darkness to speak to so you know it's still me. Better yet: Maybe I'll invite my mysterious colleague Doctor Pretentious to be a guest blogger. Now that's darkness.

(The first photo, Suzie's Bridge, was taken at Ephiphany Farm in Bloomington, Illinois. The second photo was taken at the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana.)

One Year Down

In December, I wrote a brief reflection on the end of my first semester on the tenure track. And now here we are in early June, and I haven't written anything about my first year on the tenure track? That just seems wrong. But don't worry, dear sporadic readers of this sporadic blog, I've been thinking about it. Here are a few thoughts on what I've learned after my first year.

(Don't worry. That picture will make sense later. I'm just giving you incentive to keep reading.)

1. Not all problems have solutions
The bright-eyed, bushy-tailed assistant professor wants to do all the things from the first minute he or she walks in the door. Or at least, that's what I wanted.

"You have a problem? Let me solve it through my unique and winning combination of naivete and bewilderment! What could go wrong?"

Any program, department, or institution is going to have more problems than could ever be counted. And there are some that you will sense immediately that just can't be solved. Try to figure out what those problems are so you don't waste valuable time and energy (and good will among your initially amused colleagues) trying to change the world when you can't.

Hey, I'm not saying just throw up your hands and walk away from problems. Okay, so actually that's exactly what I'm saying. But remember, you have years ahead of you to deal with problems. (Spoiler: That last sentence will be featured in this list in just a few minutes. Stay tuned.) And you aren't the only force on Earth who wants to bring about change. So calm down, little guy. Take a deep breath. Then get back to your research.

2. Lots of problems do have solutions...but you might not be that solution
In fact, you could make things worse because you don't know what the hell is going on to begin with. These first two things on the list really add up to one important maxim: Sit down, shut up, and listen. You'll learn so much by observing as much as you can, whether in department meetings, university committees, administrative searches--the list goes on. Be a sponge. Soak in all that messy bureaucratic goodness and hush.


3. You can help out, you know.
Does that seem contradictory? Yeah.

You didn't get hired just to sit in your office and write the next great monograph on Emerson and death. Well, maybe some of you did. But even if you did, you're expected to do other stuff too. So while you're sitting there being quiet and being a sponge and such, understand that occasionally you're going to have to speak. People will want to hear what you think. Sometimes.

Good luck figuring out when you're supposed to speak up. I didn't say I mastered all these things.

4. Look for balance.
If you're being a good sponge and you're also locking yourself in your office to write that article or monograph and, somehow, you're still remembering to show up to teach your classes, you're doing great! You're also going to find that you're tired. That may be because all of this takes up a significant amount of time. So you need to look for balance.

First, you need to try to set boundaries to separate one part of your job from the other. Will these boundaries hold? Of course not! But unproductive blah will overflow your entire existence if you don't at least try to fight back the forces of chaos. Things I've started doing? Oh, you still think I'm telling you how to do this. Well, shut your office door. It's astonishing, but an academic's closed door is sort of like a cloaking device. "Huh. His door is closed. He must be on vacation in Bermuda, which is what I assume all professors do with the majority of their time." And the other, infinitely more important thing you can do: turn off the damn email. Just turn it off. Walk away. Email is the biggest time suck in your entire job unless you try to keep it under control. There's a little burst of happiness that comes with answering an email. Ignore the addiction. Get help. Remember back in grad school when you used to read books? Try doing that again. Maybe take up blogging.


Second, decide how you plan to distinguish the boundary between work and home. For me, those boundaries are strong. There's literally a state line between me and my office. When I cross that state line, I am off the clock. This is, of course, not entirely true. I will check email at home, despite what I just said in the last effing paragraph. I can also grade at home. But my home is inhabited that these small creatures whom I suspect I had some part in generating, and they tend to demand my time. And I want to give it to them. For many academics, this strong divide between work and home simply doesn't exist. So I would never urge someone else to adopt my model. Instead, think about how to strike a healthy balance between work and whatever not-work you have.

5. You've literally got the rest of your life.
I promised above that I was coming back to this one. The first year felt like it went by in a blur. I got some scholarly things done. A couple of publications, some serious drafting of articles after having to start over on them, a book review, a great conference presentation, and more conference presentation proposals accepted. I wish I had gotten more done, but I was productive. I did a pretty decent job teaching my classes if I do say so myself. I got involved with a number of ongoing projects in my department. In short, I did bunches. And I was generally good-natured about it, as were my colleagues. Not bad for a first year. Now I'm looking toward a summer that's dedicated to research and writing and a new year during which I will teach new classes (and a couple of repeats) and face new challenges. And I feel good about it because this is what I want to do. It's a lot of work, but it's work that I enjoy. Besides, I'm moving into an office with a window! A freaking window! All challenges are now surmountable! (Note to self: Reread 1 and 2.)

Now, this list could go on and on forever. I wanted to hit just some of the highlights that ultimately point toward a mentality about academic work. Yes, the tenure clock is going tick tock tick tock tick tock. Believe me, I hear it. But I'm making good progress toward that goal: I'm developing interesting projects and learning how to be a better, more efficient researcher. I'm accruing important teaching experience with accompanying strong evaluations. I'm building relationships throughout the university with cool people who have cool ideas. The way I see it, as long as I avoid developing a messiah complex and keep on working while remember occasionally that I have a family I like to hang out with, I'm doing okay.

That being said, I posted a little query to my writing group several weeks ago--see, I told you I've been thinking about this post for a while--also, 6. Get a writing group.--stop interrupted yourself, Jacob!--asking some colleagues at other institutions what they learned during their first year. Here, with apologies to my colleagues for not including everything and for inserting editorial comments at will, are some of their thoughts:

--Get used to being an "expert on X." This ain't grad school anymore, folks. That PhD behind your name means people expect you to know something.

--Say no to things. (HOW DID THIS NOT MAKE MY OWN LIST?)

--Write daily, even if that means you're just setting aside time to think about your writing.

--Make friends with colleagues, in and out of your department. Not only is this important because we are social creatures and we benefit from human interaction, but also because you learn more about your institution by talking with those who necessarily see it from different perspectives.

--Think of your research in terms of agendas, not in terms of single projects. Who do you want to be as a scholar? When people in your field say your name, what kind of work should they associate with it? (Personally, I'm hoping to launch an important research agenda based on the rhetoric of doughnuts. The research is going to be delicious.)

Finally, the most important thing I learned in my first year on the tenure track. I have so much more to learn. About my institution, my colleagues, my students, my research, my own scholarly habits, and so on. I finish my first year feeling mostly like I'm pretty sure I can probably drive to campus without possibly getting lost. I probably picked up a few more things too, but what can I say, I'm modest.

Hey readers, see that box down there below the text? Turns out, you can leave comments! Give it a shot. If you have something you'd add to this list, or if you want to tell me I'm dead wrong, go for it! I'd love to hear what y'all think about this. I'm especially interested in your thoughts on developing the Journal of Doughnuts. Or--and this is a crucial distinction--the Journal of Donuts.

A Research Oasis

The end of March marks the beginning of the end of the academic year. When we meet for the first time after break, I always tell my students that the final weeks are going to feel like an adrenaline-hyped haze. And this is made even more extreme by my institution's academic calendar, because our spring break was last week, leaving four weeks of class after the break is over. And with the end of the semester comes a rush of papers to comment on, department and committee business to conclude, administrative business to continue (forever), and so on. T. S. Eliot briefly brushed the soul of we the academics when he declared April to be the cruellest month.

We're busy, in other words.

So when spring break arrived, I treated it as an opportunity to get ahead (catch up? stay on top of? I don't know) on research. I received a research fellowship for the summer, and I certainly plan to dedicate a significant amount of time escaping heat and humidity by poring over this keyboard to produce scholarship. But I wanted to make spring break count as a productive week, separate from the other obligations I must satisfy. I wanted it to be a research oasis.

What a "research oasis" looks like for me:

So I came into the office last week on days that I would have preferred to stay home and enjoy the brief respite from my half-hour commute and my windowless workspace. And I did research that I had been planning for a couple of months.

Not so long ago, I posted about the realities of rejection in every writer's life. I've gotten rejected often enough lately. One article that I was particularly excited about was sent back to me from a journal with, shall we say, less than helpful feedback. ("Umm...yeah. Of course I read this. Sure, I did." This is how I translated the editor's notes, probably quite unfairly.) I brooded a little and set it aside. Then an idea for how to approach the project from a new and probably much more productive direction came to me one day, with the aid of some of my colleagues from afar with whom I discuss ideas. But I didn't have time to do it.

Fortunately, Jacob from December knew what Jacob in March would want. A spring break uninterrupted by other demands. So I planned my classes accordingly. I had no student writing to respond to for more than a week. (That statement deserves italics, as any writing teacher would agree.) I counted on the faculty tendency to take advantage of breaks to disappear for just a little while, and sure enough, the influx of emails slowed to a tiny trickle. It was my kairotic moment. I had created an oasis.

Last week was my oasis. I thought about research methodologies. I set aside my conclusions from my previous approach and jumped in, letting my new method lead me toward new conclusions. I made pages and pages and pages of notes. I coded information. I read article after article. I examined multiple kinds of artifacts, letting my methodology guide me to what would help me to explore my question.

And it felt good. I don't know what this research will yield yet. I am on the tenure-track, so I certainly hope it leads to publication. But I tried to enjoy that brief window of uninterrupted research for the joy research provides. Tenure is never far from my mind, but I want to find joy in conducting research and producing scholarship. I don't want the pressures of tenure to be my only motivation. And last week was enjoyable.

Today provided me with a brief extension of my little oasis from last week. I pushed aside tasks that probably should have gotten my attention. I have another writing project that needs to be finished by the end of the week. I am working on an exciting conference proposal with colleagues from across the country. There's another writing project I'm sure my co-author would love for me to pay even a little attention to. I need to think more about a book project. Always more. Always more.

I used the term oasis because the word blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. An oasis is generally always just out of reach. And as this summer gets ever closer, that time I have marked off for research and writing, I have to remember the realities that will keep pushing that oasis a little further away. A new baby. New administrative responsibilities. New class preps for the fall. But getting even just a couple of days back to back can prove to be incredibly productive.

Screen Time

When I walk down the long hallway on the second floor that leads from my office to the other side of the building, I tend to glance casually in my colleagues' offices. Nothing intrusive. Just a brief acknowledgement that the myths are true: There are other lifeforms in academia. A person can forget that sometimes, plugging away in the confines of one's own office and one's own cluttered mind.

Over the course of a few months, a realization began to dawn on me. Or perhaps less a realization and more a synthesis of observations made on a daily basis. Either way, I reached a conclusion that both stunned me and didn't surprise me at all.

We spend a lot of time looking at screens.

• Here's an average Monday for me: I arrive around 8:15 and open my computer. I check email, glance at Oncourse (our learning management site), guiltily flip to Facebook, speed read two or three news articles. Then I finish prepping for class and head off for my 9:30.
• When I get back seventy-five minutes later, I open my computer, check email, glance at Oncourse, guiltily flip to Facebook, speed read two or three news articles. I comment on a student draft or two, which I do using Track Changes in Microsoft Word.
• And hey, look, it's time for lunch! I've been working hard, so to take a break while I'm mindlessly consuming my salad, I check email, glance at Oncourse, guiltily flip to Facebook, read another article or two.
• Then it's time to get back to work. Maybe comment on another draft or two, maybe read some scholarly articles, maybe beat my head against an article draft for a little while. Then the day is done. Phew. That was hard. Better check my email before I go home.
• I'd better pack my laptop and take it with me so I can spend some more time working later in the day. (In fairness, I rarely work at home, so carrying the laptop back and forth across the Ohio River is more a sacred tradition than anything else.)

This isn't a post about time management, although there are some clear issues with that. This is about how the life of the mind seems to have become the life of the screen.

When I was an undergraduate, I would occasionally see one of my favorite professors walking around campus with a book in his face. This guy really took a stroll while reading. I would probably fall and break my face, but I recall being impressed by this engagement. When I stopped by his office, his computer was sitting in a corner, sadly neglected, while he was sitting at a table reading a book or writing on student drafts. It looked great.

In my strolls down the hall, it is extremely rare to see a colleague reading a book. I mean, it is an odd sight. Do we read less? Of course not. Well maybe, but I don't have any data to support a claim like that. Instead, I will go so far as to say: We read in different environments.

Above, I broke down what a typical Monday looks like. Here are the tasks that absorb my time on a typical day:

• Email
• Reading and commenting on student drafts
• Searching for and reading scholarship for my research
• Putting together plans and documents for classes
• Conversing with colleagues dispersed all across these United States
• Writing

One of the most amazing things about technology is how it enables us to stay in contact with one another in multiple ways. A writing group I participate in meets exclusively online, since we have members in Georgia, Texas, North Dakota, and California. We use Facebook as our meeting space for exchanging drafts and feedback, posing questions, setting goals, and updating one another on our failures and successes.

But of course, the biggest problem with being available through multiple avenues is...we are all available through multiple avenues. We receive student emails at all hours of the day, and we feel some compulsion to answer them quickly, even if it's the next morning. Faculty members email one another from thirty feet away to conduct business that would probably be wrapped up faster face to face.

We are no longer absorbed by screens: They absorb us and we become in important ways indistinguishable from screens. They become what we are because most of our work is there. Just imagine if you teach online courses. For now, I do get out of my chair on Mondays and walk down two flights of stairs to teach my course.

When I was writing my thesis, way back in the before time, I drafted whole chapters by hand, but I imagine that has more to do with the relative expense of laptops at that time. But I remember those drafting sessions with fondness. I had spent hours with sources that I knew I would be using, condensing notes and quotations onto cramped notebook pages, so that they would be portable. Then I would go to libraries, coffee shops, wherever to escape that damned screen. And I would draft.

This past week, I have been revising a presentation that I will give at a conference in a couple of weeks. It's writing, so it's screen work. I used to draft by hand, but that stopped years ago. I wrote my entire dissertation on my laptop, most of it sitting at a tiny little desk in a TA office cubicle. But when I'm revising, I try to disconnect. I turn off the screen and mark up a printed copy. I have to get away from the screen. The screen becomes a distraction.

 It's freeing to scribble new phrasings on the margins, or to mark out entire paragraphs that I know no longer have a purpose, or to draw arrows to suggest reorganization schemes. I can be bolder when I'm scribbling on paper. After all, I'm not really "rewriting" it yet. That's screen work.

I am feeling a desire to get away from the screen more often than I do. Computers, tablets, smart phones, the Internet--all of these technologies have enabled me to accomplish lots of things. This blog is the product of those technologies. But maybe it's time to remember what I can do with other writing technologies. Maybe it's time to find out if I was a better writer when I wrote entire chapters by hand. Maybe I want to be that odd guy on that long hall of offices who is filling up notebooks rather than writing one email after another.

You know, I think I'm going to leave my laptop on this side of the Ohio this weekend.

Working Through Rejection

Okay, so isn't that one of the coolest photos ever? Well, maybe not for that homeowner.

That huge boulder rolled through and demolished a big section of a house in Italy in January. Another boulder, even bigger than the one pictured above, rolled toward another house and stopped just shy of ramming its way through. Here's the story if you want to read about it. When I saw that image, I knew it was going to make its way over to the old blog, and I knew the context.

I've been thinking a lot about rejection lately. Don't worry: This isn't going to be a whiny post about how difficult it is to get research published or anything like that. Don't get me wrong, though. Wanting to take some time to complain to friends and close colleagues about such rejections is a perfectly legitimate activity. It's healthy, even.

Instead, this post is about what can/could/should (?) happen after rejection. Last year, I went through and managed to survive the most catastrophic activity any academic can experience. I went on the job market for a tenure-track position. I am fortunate that the market in my field, as opposed to most academic areas of specialization, is quite robust. Here's a very cool visual representation maintained by Jim Ridolfo from the University of Cincinnati to strengthen my point. That's a lot of little arrows, people.

Anyone who has ever been on the academic job market, whether successful in securing a tenure-track position or not, knows the barrage of rejection that comes with that particular activity. Here I am, a year later, and I still occasionally get a Human Resources auto-generated rejection email from jobs I applied for sixteen months ago. Just a little reminder, the email seems to say, we still don't want you. That's more a quirk of software than an actual rejection, but as Geoffrey Pullam recently noted, these automated systems are sending communications to actual human beings. In fairness, some of the rejections I received were heartfelt notes from department and search committee chairs that reminded me that human beings were deeply involved in this process.

So, yeah. You get rejected a lot on the job market. Some of those rejections hurt more than others. And when you're sending out work for publication, you get rejected. Journals are complex ecological systems that answer to different groups, that have different budgetary needs, etc etc, all of which to say: just because a journal rejects your article doesn't mean your work doesn't have merit.

So I tell myself. After all, this post is about working through rejection. And I just had an article I've been working on for a long time rejected by a big journal in my field. I was not surprised by the rejection, but who wouldn't feel discouraged? To that end, here's a little timeline I've been thinking through for working through rejections of this sort.

Day 1: Sulk. Feel sorry for yourself. Question whether you should quit and go get a job at Blockbuster Video (if those even still exist). Complain to a close group of friends, colleagues, mentors, spouses, whoever. In other words, let yourself actually feel the sting.

A point on professional etiquette: Respond to the rejection to thank the editor/search committee chair/any non-automated-email-sending-entity for his or her time. And really mean it. These people don't like rejecting you any more than you like rejecting them. I like to do this on Day 1 because it prepares me to remember what I need to on Day 2. Speaking of which...

Day 2: Remember that you are a professional and an adult who has learned how to handle rejection. If you didn't read through the reviewers' comments (if it's an article) or you just scanned that initial email for the "we regret to inform you" language and then cast your eyes to the sky and bellowed "Why me?" over and over again (for a refresher, see Day 1 of this schedule), then Day 2 is an excellent time to read through that material more carefully. Just read it. Don't work on it. Just read it.

Day 3: Get back to work. If it's a manuscript, start making plans for revising and targeting a new publishing venue. (Better yet, have a back-up plan in place to begin with. I've already gotten that rejected article to another journal because I had that plan ready to go.) If it's a grant, remember that there isn't just one fiscal year ever and start making plans to try again. If it's a job, well...Maybe go back to Day 1 and work through this again. That's a tough one.

The principle is simple, and I know I am far from the only person to say it, but it bears repeating. When you get rejected, you "feel the feels," as the current vernacular seems to go, and then you get back to work. That house ain't rebuilding itself. And really, how often can your house get plowed down by a freak geological incident? (Don't answer that question.)

Because as professionals, we are not defined by rejections. We are defined by what we do.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

The beginning of the semester is one of my favorite moments of a course. I walk into a classroom full of students who are curious and occasionally slightly frightened or intimidated. What they don't know--one of the greater open secrets of teaching--is I am usually experiencing those exact same feelings. Just this morning, I stepped into a tiered classroom. Now I have to confess: it's quite small. It can fit 25 people comfortably, but certainly no more.

But this is what it looked like to me:

Huge. Cavernous. Impersonal.

I've never taught in such a room before, so the strangeness of the environment only intensified my nervousness. And that's a good thing.

That sense of being overwhelmed is a useful experience, because it reminds me of how my students are feeling. This particular course is a sophomore-level writing in the disciplines course, so I am dealing mostly with students who are fairly comfortable with being in a college classroom. But I can look at their faces and know which ones are feeling anxious about being in yet another writing class and the ones who are irritated that they are in yet another writing class and the ones who are somewhat excited because they are in yet another writing class. Anyone who has taught, no matter their field, has seen all of these expressions and more.

The academic calendar and its divisions, whether into semesters, trimesters, quarters, or any other conceivable ways of dividing time, provide instructors with the chance to start over, to try again, to test new ideas. That's what is most exciting to me about the beginning of the semester: Everything is still possible. I could be walking into what I will, in years to come, think of as one of the best courses I ever taught. More likely, I'm walking into a class that I will look back on and think, well I could've done worse. But that forward gaze, that burst of pedagogical optimism, is potent.

Instructors are always experiencing new challenges, big and small. A classroom with a different layout is merely a physically felt challenge, so it's easier to notice. This is also, for instance, the first time I am ever teaching a class quite like this. (You'd think I'd be more nervous about that.) I am incorporating technology in ways I haven't tried before. I am putting more trust in my students to work with one another than my control freak nature typically allows. I designed a lighter schedule so I have room to adjust to the rhythm of the course without feeling like I'm behind. I am working with a textbook that I've used before and rejected, practically out of hand. Newness, newness, newness!

And that sheen of newness--a phrase I just used when introducing myself to my students to explain why I couldn't answer a reasonably simple institutional question without looking for an answer--spills over into all my endeavors.

Suddenly, I can see my research agenda anew. I am in the process of rethinking how to best use my time and where to focus my energies. I have dreams, big dreams, but some of them are less attainable as a brand new scholar. So while I work toward those bigger projects, I can work on smaller projects that help me to establish my presence in the field and in my university.

Likewise, I see departmental situations somewhat differently than I did in the heat of my very first semester as a TT faculty member. Things feel less pressing, because if there is one truth about human organizations, they are slow to change. I ain't just going to fix the world in a semester. And I shouldn't want to. Since I am a historian of higher education, I should in fact know better than most that what I see as "problems," others see as traditions and best practices. Tread a little lighter, new guy. More institutional knowledge means a more informed perspective. Imagine that!

(Don't get my wrong: My fundamentally quiet nature means that most of the struggles were going on in my head anyway. I wasn't exactly shaking the foundations around here. But even my head could benefit from a little more quiet, thank you very much.)

So while the rest of the world in January talks about resolutions, I am thinking: I get to try it again. It isn't so different, except that I get to experience this feeling of renewal more often. I'm embracing this feeling of optimism as I start my twentieth semester as a teacher. After all, if things don't work out the way I want them to, there's always next semester.