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PrecariousProf
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read my profile
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Name: Can't
Gender: Male
Interests: Teaching. Learning. Relationships. Songwriting. Dining at white-cloth restaurants. Soccer. Planting white roses. Dreaming about new cars...
Expertise: Politics. Leading myself into temptation (and trying to get out of it). Current events. Flirting in innocent ways. Falling asleep in church.
DON'T freak out if I leave a random comment on your xanga — it's become a hobby
Occupation: Education/training
Industry: Education/Research
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
1/2/2005
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CHANGING LANES
I’m getting to the point where I’m trying to decide whether to take our ever intensifying relationship into this fast, steep curve, a blind curve, crossing the double-yellow line, zooming past the point of no u-turn, knowing it’s an exhilarating, heart-jumping place to drive but realizing it might not be in our best long term interest.
What bugs me is that I’m the one who is seriously trying to have this conversation, always. I know what Claudia wants, and she wanted it yesterday.
“Why, just why,” she complained earlier tonight, as we cuddled in front of the small television, watching two zebras doing the dirty on Animal Planet, really, really going at it, “why do you have to analyze us so freaken much?”
Forgive my naiveté. Embarrassingly I got off to a late start in this life category, definitely nowhere near the national average of 16 and 17 years of age. I do know, from what I know, that there are a couple things that can happen in the next few days. Or hours.
Just do it, no questions asked, nothing spoken before, during or after the sweaty session, just do it, who cares if the bed squeaks, and do it again later, make it be the center of your relationship; Claudia’s preferred method.
Second way: Talk about it before, know exactly what you’re getting into (literally, some may say), don’t discuss anything during, be slow, slow, slow, and call her back the next morning and play it by fear, I mean ear.
Of course I can just flee. I think. | | |
| LIPS UNSEALED AGAIN
The drama has ended. For now. Back in mid March, a good friend tipped me off that, because some powerful administrators at the university are considering a policy that would bar faculty from blogging, IT was supposed to do a monthlong audit of Internet use — without us knowing. The audit was completed today. Seems I'm in the clear. As long as I don't type anything too specific onto these pages. The administration can suspect all it wants, from many of us, but without an audit there's nothing they can do. And I'm told there are no funds for an audit for another year.
In the meantime, faculty members who have a better reason than I do to blog (a couple of education professors and several scientists), have begun to seek support for the "pro bloggers" among us. I'll let them lead the battle. I can back this cause from behind-the-scenes and not risk my job.
It's a weird situation. I mean, nobody on either side of the debate likes to talk much about this, and we think students don't know about this issue we're facing. At some point, though, the student newspaper will find out. Then the old administrators will look, uh, out of touch with what it means to live in 2006.
Speech is free. Free is speech. Free speech. | | |
| A LOST GOVERNOR
Our poor governor. He campaigned for office in 2003 declaring to “blow up the boxes” and take “action, action, action,” and make California a better place.
He’s a Republican, and he needs Republicans to pass his latest plan: A humungous $223 billion public works project, with up to $71 billion in loans. He tried getting the Legislature to pass his proposal over the weekend — a failed effort. Why? Because he needed at least two Republicans to vote for it. What happened? No Republicans voted for it. Democrats, by the way, love the plan.
Life was easier in the movies. Where, if he didn’t like a script, he could have rewritten it. Not so in politics. Oh, and he’s running for re-election in November. Do we wish him “Good luck?” Or, “Hasta la Vista?”
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| TERRIBLE AFFAIR
One of the worst things happened to a student of mine two weeks ago. She attempted suicide. Almost succeeded. Her roommate came to her rescue.
I suspected she was ill after not showing up for three classes in a row. And she’s the type of student who sits up front, participates, and never tries to sneak out early. Definitely the kind who stands out in front of her professors. Students like her who are out sick usually send me an e-mail, or have a friend drop off the homework, but none of that happened. I was baffled.
Ran into her roommate this morning, a former student of mine, in the hallway, walking toward my office. “Is she OK?” I asked. The roommate broke down faster than my dad’s old Volkswagen. No she wasn’t OK. Her mother had just had an affair, got pregnant in her 40s. Her father packed up and left the same day he discovered it. We’re talking serious churchgoing couples here. Totally stable home environment. But the student just flipped when she learned the news about two weeks ago.
I didn’t bother asking the roommate for more details. Just know the student was in the psych ward for three days, and is back in her dorm now, trying to muster the strength to go back to the classroom. The roommate has heard — and I haven’t confirmed this — that a student who tried to kill herself two years ago was kicked out of one of our sister schools, because of some antiquated policy regarding “student stability” that each campus is supposed to adhere to.
The roommate told me that only four people outside of the medical providers know about my student’s attempted suicide (the roommate, two family members whom she didn’t name, and the college newspaper editor who heard about it during a volunteer shift at the hospital).
I can’t imagine, or perhaps don’t want to imagine, that the “student stability” policy is enforced, but if it is, we must get involved to overturn it. In the meantime, I’m trying to come up with a positive way to encourage my student to return to her classes so she won’t miss the whole term. Please pray for her.
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BACK TO BLOGGING
Got myself into a little situation. Not sure how to get out of it.
The administration for the past year has been increasingly acting more like the U.S. Department of Justice — officials at the university want to know more about who we’re talking to, and what we’re saying, where we’re going, even on our off hours, and what we’re viewing on our screens.
Granted, I fully accept that administrators have a right to seek certain information on campus in order to protect the university from lawsuits, or keep certain professors from going astray, or from causing embarrassment to the institutional leaders. Most of us, though, are very careful about how we handle ourselves (OK, most of us, most of the time).
The question about blogging has been raised — blogging on our town time, on our own home computers.
“We should not allow any professor to blog under any circumstances,” one seasoned conservative professor said, pointing his index finger into the stuffy air in the conference room.
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with blogging, especially if you’re making the university look good,” countered a lecturer who just started his PhD. “If you want to attract younger and more diverse professors,” he said, “then you need to allow the faculty to modernize.”
The president finally stepped in and favored a policy that allows blogging for non–controversial academic purposes, but not for personal reasons. In other words, xanga and myspace would be barred for all professors, even if the blogging happens off site on a home computer. “Imagine,” the president said, “if a professor blogged about his or her personal life and in doing so invited students to associate with him or her on a level that goes far beyond the classroom setting and research labs.”
Oh, so he doesn’t trust his professors. Perv.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from these antiquated university types, and all the old farts that agreed with the president. I wanted to express myself. I wanted to say that some of us blog because we love to write, and have no other outlet to tell about our personal and professional experiences. I wanted to say that it doesn’t matter who reads us, if anybody reads us, because we’re merely expressing ourselves and not trying to persuade readers to think in a different way. I wanted to say this is 2006.
I wanted to go home that night and blog. I feared, however, that they would discover my xanga page and take action against me, even if a policy is not yet in place. Not until tonight have I felt it was “safe” to open up this page.
And now I have a choice to agonize over. I can get on that policy committee and find a way to speak up. I can blog only occasionally and lessen the chance of being discovered by them (before a strict policy kicks into gear). Or I can shut down my account altogether. Or I can continue to blog and deal with whatever happens whenever it happens.
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