Frogs and Ravens

Errors in Translation

Invisible Adjunct has posted some interesting commentary on the issue of skill sets, the PhD and the difficulties of transferring academic skills to the "real" world. (I have got to come up with a better phrase for the world that is not academe. "Corporate world" doesn't work, nor does "business world" or "the real world." It is the world that is outside of the ivory tower, but how to say that in a concise, pithy manner? Ah, hell, I'm a wordy creature anyway... what does it matter?)

It makes me think of one time I did actually find an online site that allowed you to quiz yourself on both your interests and your existing skills. (I'll try to find the URL for it.) These are my "best" results:

Number Of Matched Skills Occupation Title
77.8% (21/27) Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates
77.4% (24/31) Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary
76.3% (29/38) Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary
63.2% (24/38) Audiologists
63.2% (24/38) Speech-Language Pathologists
62.9% (22/35) Veterinarians
62.5% (20/32) Urban and Regional Planners
61.8% (21/34) Educational Psychologists
61.1% (22/36) Compensation, Benefits, and Job Analysis Specialists
60.0% (21/35) Compensation and Benefits Managers
60.0% (21/35) Human Resources Managers
58.8% (20/34) Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
57.9% (22/38) Dietitians and Nutritionists
57.1% (20/35) Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary
55.6% (20/36) Computer Programmers
55.6% (20/36) Public Relations Specialists
55.3% (21/38) Civil Engineers
55.3% (21/38) Epidemiologists
55.3% (21/38) Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists
54.1% (20/37) Art Directors
54.1% (20/37) Chemical Engineers
54.1% (20/37) Family and General Practitioners
54.1% (20/37) Internists, General
54.1% (20/37) Obstetricians and Gynecologists
54.1% (20/37) Pediatricians, General
52.6% (20/38) Marine Engineers
52.5% (21/40) Municipal Fire Fighting and Prevention Supervisors

Now, a quick scan of the above "matches" should reveal just how weird this process is. The first thing that I observe upon looking it over is that each of these requires not only experience in the field, but specialized training. If you wanted a doctor, would you hire someone who'd never gone to med school?

Okay, so how about we take a look at the actual skills employed on a day-to-day basis in my current role as an assistant professor of history and environmental studies. What sort of matches might turn up here? Let's see...

Number Of Matched Skills Occupation Title
88.9% (8/9) Interpreters and Translators
88.6% (31/35) History Teachers, Postsecondary
80.8% (21/26) Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary
80.6% (25/31) Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary
80.0% (24/30) Economics Teachers, Postsecondary
80.0% (16/20) Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary
78.6% (22/28) English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
78.6% (22/28) Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
78.6% (22/28) Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary
78.1% (25/32) Geography Teachers, Postsecondary
77.8% (21/27) Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary
77.4% (24/31) Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary
75.0% (21/28) Architecture Teachers, Postsecondary
75.0% (15/20) Graduate Teaching Assistants
75.0% (6/8) Proofreaders and Copy Markers

Again, this is just silly. I will buy the idea that someday, if I worked at it, I could teach geography instead of history. But if I were to make the switch today? Again, this is not a matter of experience or lack thereof; this is a matter of inappropriate credentials. Yes, I could teach library science if I drove myself mad with the preparations, and might be better at conveying the material to students than someone who'd never taught, but any institution that would hire me to do this and not a bona fide library specialist would be foolish beyond belief.

Note, too, that I am apparently a better match for a field I've never worked in and am not qualified for -- translation -- than the one I've been spending the last four years at.

Moral of story, I suppose -- don't expect computer-based skills tests to be at all applicable to real-world situations.

Second moral of story: academics who are trying to negotiate the transition out of the ivory tower will seize at any little thing that promises guidance, because we are woefully inexperienced at this sort of thing.

Gift Culture and Wealth Culture

How apropos. The Happy Tutor has posed an interesting question about the role of places like academia in the negotiation of values between what he calls "wealth culture" and its counterpart, "gift culture," and the implications for or in the context of a democratic society. Worth checking out...

Commencement-Induced Melancholia

Today was graduation, or "commencement." It's always a little odd, as a member of the faculty, to listen to the speakers telling the seniors that they are now about to join "the real world" or to experience "real life." This time it was also rather bittersweet. I felt caught between two worlds; that of the faculty who stay and that of the students who leave. Unlike the students' departure, however, a young faculty member's leavetaking evokes concern and queries instead of congratulations and exuberant celebration.

For all my frustrations with the job market, and with teaching, I really don't want to leave this world. It is my home, flawed though it is. I understand the people who live in this world; even when they are being petty or selfish it is a kind of pettiness I can comprehend. As a day-to-day job, too, it's pretty good; the hours are flexible, the colleagues interesting, the work valuable and ethically sound, there is room for growth... It also has the value of being a true vocation, a calling, rather than something I do to get by. Granted, I'm more of a researcher at heart than a teacher, but I'm willing to do the latter in exchange for support of freedom in the former and the privilege of grinning my fool head off as 38 of "my" seniors step up to the podium at commencement.

But this is becoming an oft-repeated song and dance. Like it or not, I've been pushed from the nest this year, to try and make my own way in the "real" world. Maybe I'll succeed. Maybe I'll find some new calling even more rewarding and compelling than academia. I have a hard time imagining such a life, though. I can imagine a brave new career, and even get excited by it. But if I leave academia, I know I will also always mourn that lost life. I will regret it. I know this in the same way that I knew I was in the right place when I set foot on my small undergraduate campus, looked around, and thought "Here are my people" -- the nerds, the intellectuals, the geeks, the bespectacled-and-proud-of-it, the grad-students-and-professors-in-training. I know this in the same way I knew when I was choosing a major and suddenly thought, "... or I could be a damn good historian."

I don't want to leave, and I know I will regret leaving.

But then, it's not like I've been a choice.

Identity Crisis -- The Blog's, Not Mine

This blog is now a little over two weeks old, and it seems like it might be time to think about its future.

I've been musing over questions of content and voice as I've been wandering through the blogosphere, visiting other sites and learning which blogs I like.

There are some with clearly defined topics and voices, like Invisible Adjunct's; these sites have some flexibility, but you go to them with the assumption that you know what you'll find there. There are ones with wider topical ranges (though still able to be organized into a defined range of categories) like Dorothea's or Burningbird's or the Happy Tutor's, which rest on a combination of strong voice and topics that are interesting but not random. There are ones that are primarily a collection of links, observations, quotations, and the like, often with a political bent -- Tom Tomorrow's and Adam Felber's sites fall into this category -- these rise and fall on the pithiness of the observations, the regularity of the posts, and the extensiveness of the links. Finally, there are sites like Lilek's Bleat, which focus primarily on the life of the author, with occasional interjections of other topics, and which rely on the author's skill and personal interest to attract and keep an audience. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list of blog types, but these seem to be the forms which most appeal to me.

I think I can rule out the links-and-observations style as a dominant mode. I am certainly happy to link when linking is warranted, but it's a lot of work done on a regular basis. The most successful of these also tend to have a clear political voice and topical focus. I have the former, but I don't think I have much to add on that front; I'm happier reading others' witty comments and analysis. (I also lack the background to do a good job identifying discrepancies.) The latter also seems difficult for me to sustain; I'm too scatterbrained to sustain a continued line of inquiry. So rule out IA's approach, too. The Bleat is delightful, but, again, it doesn't feel like me. My life is often quite boring in the details -- eat, read, grade, eat, ride bike, read, eat, talk on phone, sleep -- or involves other people I've promised not to discuss in these pages without their permission. Unlike Lileks, I lack a cute daughter (or even a pet) to natter about, and I don't think my writing skills are up to making the mundanity of my life entertaining.

So, I guess it's the personal-interests-and-observations-divided-into-categories mode. What will be tricky is figuring out what the core categories would be. The list of current interests in my life is always a smaller subset of my interests overall. While the large list is fairly stable, it's long and I tend to be obsessive in streaks, so what I'm preoccupied one month may be significantly different than my interests a month later. Some things are stable enough to persist, though, so maybe they could form the core of my blogging. Observe:

Interest list overall: academia; American West; animals; archival research; art; badminton; bicycle riding; blogging; book reviewing; cats; camping; canoeing; ceramics; dance; digital image manipulation; drawing; dying yarn; editing manuscript; environmental ethics, theory, activism; foreign languages; guitar; hiking; history; journaling; knitting; martial arts; Morris dancing; photography; plants; poetry; politics (liberal, green); reading; recorder; science fiction/fantasy; sculpture; singing; spinning (wool); swap meets; teaching; traveling; writing; unitarian universalism; yoga... and that's just what I can come up with at the moment!

Current interest list: yoga, grading, looking for work outside of academia, reconceiving myself, blogging, bike riding, book reviewing, manuscript revision.

Perhaps an "about me" page would be a good place to stow all of this, if I can figure out how to create one?

The other thing I need to mull over is voice. Largely I've been writing as if to myself with someone looking occasionally over my shoulder. Do I want to continue this? Do I want to acknowledge that observer more directly? Do I want to ask them questions or offer them topics for discussion? (Of course, the last question presumes that I have an audience large enough to make that worth doing!) But all of this is a topic for another post.

More Joy

Observe the newest addition to the site: two noble ravens, courtesy of the Canadian Government.

I'm not quite happy with their placement -- my coding skills are not yet up to placing them to the left of both the title and the subtitle, with both of those aligned roughly at the midpoint of the image -- but it will do for now, especially since the ravens, though I quite like them, are themselves placeholders. After I've moved and started a new internet account, I want to store some of my own images for posting. I have vague ideas about hand-drawn then scanned sketches combining both frogs and ravens, but haven't gotten around to making actual sketches yet.

HTML Newbie Joy

It is amazing how much time I can spend tinkering around with the look of this site. Mildly obsessive-compulsive? Yes...

(Ask my friends some time about how annoying I am about unevenly hung pictures and unaligned silverware in restaurants.)

In my usual haphazard way, I'm working off the existing models provided by the standard template I chose. I feel rather proud of myself, though -- today I learned what it means to create a "font class" and how to use it. What a time saver!

More Haikus

And to reward those of you who keep patiently coming back despite all the grumping and poor-me-ing, some haikus...

Out of work shortly
Moving to a new abode
But my eye feels good!



Poor yogini, she
Forms a tough new asana:
New Identity.



Many comments posted
Here, there, on so many sites
Where did I say this?



Too many parents
Many anxious graduates
Full lots -- better ride bike!



It is late tonight
Typing is easy and quick
Blog is way too long!

The other thing about all

The other thing about all this is how easily it is to slip into a sort of whiny, passive ineptitude. ("Fix it for me!")

This is undoubtedly a reaction to what is probably the worst thing about the whole experience -- the shift from being a confident participant in a world I know well to a confused and ignorant outsider trying to adapt to a new set of rules and expectations. Add in the feeling that there must be some better way to make the shift, if only I knew about it, and it's a mess!



Well, if nothing else this will give me further insight into one of my professional interests -- how human beings and human cultures either adapt to new situations or adapt those situations to fit their expectations. I hadn't planned on being part of my own study group!

Ignorance

One thing that keeps coming up as I explore the world of non-academic careers is how ignorant I am of that world. I feel like I have only the vaguest sense of the variety of career options that exist out there; I think in broad terms of stereotypes I've seen in movies, or of people I've encountered in stores or the like, or people I've seen working in the course of doing something else. But how do I know what would be interesting to me? Phrased another way -- how do I find a career that matches what I know I like and can do?

Seems pretty basic, I know. But it is really starting to bug me that I don't have much clue as to what I would, indeed, like to do outside of academia. Something with writing would be good -- but what would that be? (Would it be good?) I know people write for magazines, but how does one get to do that? What are the rules for getting in? Would I want to do the kind of writing such a position would entail? What are the other contexts in which people write things and get paid for it? Or research -- I like doing archival research, and I do know that some historical research firms exist out there. But do I want to do corporate research for someone else? Something environmental would be interesting, but what would that be? Etc. etc.

I'm used to knowing the options, rhetoric, culture, procedures, etc. of looking for work in academia. I know the questions to ask, the things to worry or be joyful about, what places to seek out or avoid, the appropriate gestures in the dance between committee and candidate, etc. I know the difference between applying for work in history versus environmental studies, for example, and the drawbacks and benefits of both. When I look beyond the ivory tower, I feel incredibly stupid.

For example: three apparently essential and expected practices in the non-academic world -- sending thank yous after interviews, contacting people at the target company in the hopes that they may be able to create a position for you, and checking in regularly with the hiring parties for updates and to show your continuing interest -- are annoying and unproductive in academia.

I suppose the thing to do is just jump in and get my feet wet and keep my eyes open for something interesting. I do wish that there was a more systematic way to approach the issue than simple blind chance. If I don't know what I want, or what is available, how can I sell someone else on hiring me?

Again, I suspect that there must be solutions to these problems; I can't be the only person who has asked such things. But I've forgotten -- if I ever knew -- where to begin looking for the answers!

Selling Oneself to Different Audiences

I was looking over my resume (does anyone know how to code accent marks so that computers other than Macs can read them? I'm tired of feeling like I'm writing "ree-zoom" instead of "reh-zoo-may") this morning and thinking about what I've emphasized. I was trying to see it through the eyes of an employer, in other words.

What I saw was confusion, so I tried to figure out what exactly made it give that impression. I think it boils down to three things: first, parts of it look like an academic c.v. still, so that sends mixed messages. Second, it looks very high-powered for an entry-level position -- especially of the types I'll likely get as a temp. Third, there is virtually no formal employment experience to correlate with those skills. Over-qualified and under-experienced, apparently. Heh.

One message was that I was in possession of fairly specialized knowledge of research procedures, archive types, and source materials. Yet my listing of employment didn't seem to jibe with this -- it was a litany of reader/assistant/instructor/lecturer/professor. (Plus none of those lasted for more than 3 years.) So: first change: invent a job title to deal with the research end of things: how about "Freelance Historian -- Research and Analysis"?

Next was a variety of technical skills -- knowledge of computer programs from the old stand-bys MSWord and Excel to a handful of graphics and database programs (including web design) to more specialized ones like ArcView for GIS; hands-on technical skills related to photography, drawing and digital image manipulation; and this is all cross-platform -- I prefer Mac but I can make PCs dance if not dance and sing. Again, to an outsider, there is no clear connection between this and my employment record. How do I leap this gap? Do I write an explanatory paragraph or do I dream up another new job title? Would something like "Information Management Specialist -- Self-Employed" work?

A related section deals with my writing and analytical skills, notably the papers I have written and my book reviews. Shall I call myself something like "Independent Book Reviewer" or would this still work as part of one of the previous two?

(The dodgy thing about inventing these titles is, unfortunately, that although I did do these things as part of my professional life, no one has actually ever paid me for them. At least for the book reviews I can claim to have been working for a "client.")

Then there is a cluster of skills related to presenting information to an audience: experience with PowerPoint, SmartCart computer projection systems, slide projectors, boardwork, good speaking skills, several papers presented at conferences, not to mention all the time in the classroom. Here the link to my employment record is more easily seen; I can probably leave this alone.

Another clump centers around teaching and evaluative skills: curricular design; assessing student work; career counseling; designing exams, assignments and instructional materials; mentoring. Again, pretty straightforward, though I'd need to explain why a particular employer would find this useful.

A related grouping deals with what could be called management skills: overseeing student graders, directing class projects, mediating tensions within student project teams, managing workshops, overseeing student presentations and classroom dynamics, monitoring both large group discussions and multiple small group discussions. Again, the list of previous positions held should fit in.

What's rather weird about this list, I realize, is that it's only the last three clusters that are the ones I've been paid to do; the first ones are all things that I've pursued on my own out of interest or desire to make myself more marketable. Hmm...