academia

Over the past several months, my thoughts sometimes wander to the topic of higher education, specifically, how technology may (will?) shape how the institutions of higher education. Will the structures at the university level be impacted by technology and what will this look like? I find this a fascinating topic. Partly because I'm marginalized by the existing structure: mother of two young children. The university is a crazy structure with vestiges of medievalism and a male, leisure class that don't fit with today's high-paced, egalitarian world.

I don't think we'll see an overnight change of the problems of the tenure track system, but I do think we'll gradually see interesting developments in the use of technology. First, I think having so much information at our fingertips will change the nature of research topics and how they're presented. So much more information can be digested in a single sitting today than could be even just five years ago. Different kinds of topics could be explored more easily, from one's home computer connected to high-speed internet perusing digital images and downloading sound files, than could be when one had to travel to each individual library and plunk out sound bits on the keyboard in the practice rooms, trying to imagine the keyboard as chant.

Secondly, I think technology effects who can play. With more information more readily available, more people can play in the pool, so to speak. One of my best friends submitted her dissertation this spring with 15mo twins playing at her feet. She will readily admit that this was not possible without the internet. Even four years ago, I found this true while working on Wretched Thesis. If I couldn't take digital images of the manuscript I was working on and then perused Google Scholar by night, there's no way I could've written what I did (but then maybe the world would've been a happier place) (kidding!) (sort of). All this to say, people with obligations that keep them from committing themselves 100% body and soul to the academic institution now have a fairer chance than before to participate. That's not to say that it will be fair when they get there, but at least they chances they didn't have.

The last effect that I want to talk about at the moment is more ambiguous. It has to do with classes. I was chatting with an middle-aged professor recently, who, face it, probably is not on Facebook. He was bemoaning technology, seeing the future of the internet and the classroom as simply those dreadful online classes. I agree. One cannot simply airlift the classroom lecture format into a online format. And sometimes that happens.

So what can this look like?
I don't like to think of losing the personal interaction of the classroom, the intimacy that is so special between teacher and students and students with each other. At the same time, though, I will admit that I have a few online friends whom I have never met, but who i consider to be some of my closest friends. So maybe being personal, coram persona, isn't necessary.
One possible solution is the model of shorter bursts of times of higher intensity could be used. The one-week seminar, where everyone holes up for a week and then emerges experts. Those experiences are exhausting, wonderful, and intensely gratifying. Students could work on their own, communicating with the prof electronically, for several weeks, and then have a focus week where it all came together.
There's also a scenario where students could participate in real time conversations via their individual webcams.
There's message boards, blogs, online reading discussions.
All these things are being used already in some cases.
And all these scenarios begin to diminish the necessity of geographical location.

It's like Thomas Friedman said, the world is flat. Friedman quotes the Indian executive, "[computers] created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced, and put back together again--and this gave a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work on an intellectual nature..." (pg. 7) Friedman's executive is mostly talking about the computer industry, hardware, software, engineering. Why can't the intellectual community of the academy take similar advantage?

In the brave new world of the socially networked higher academy, you could take a class with a professor in NY and in LA at the same time. You could start a career and build on it sooner. The out-of-control student loan problem would be erased, because school wouldn't cost so much. Imagine if universities networked you with jobs and education at the same time. College is fun, but it is an unnatural environment and leaves you high and dry and in deep debt (unless you are supremely lucky) when you're done. Graduate school? more debt. And, if you're in the humanities, probably not a job.

It could also solve the problem of dysfunctional graduate departments. Advisors who don't advise and whatnot. Because a student could choose anyone in the world. Professors would have to market themselves a bit. Checks and balances would build themselves into the system. Merit would matter. Finally!

Now, the only question remains, how to make money at this? corporate sponsorship for their future work force? But then where does that leave the medievalists? and the moms? we do need to eat after all.

Lilian wrote about a book that is exactly what I have been looking for for years: Mama, Ph.D: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (Rutgers University Press 2008), edited by Elrena Evans and Caroline Grant. (A university press, no less!)

The book also has a website:

Mama, Ph.D. is a literary anthology of deeply-felt personal narratives by women both in and out of the academy, writing about their experiences attempting to reconcile bodies with brains. This anthology voices stories of academic women choosing to have, not have, or delay children. The essays in this anthology will speak to and offer support for any woman attempting to combine work and family, and will make recommendations on how to make the academy a more family-friendly workplace.

And a blog on the Inside Higher Ed website!!!!

When I started grad school six years ago these kinds of conversations seemed to be happening in hushed tones on the few blogs that were out there. I sought out women to hear their stories of how they made it work. And all the while, isn't it ridiculous that having a family and a profession is such a big deal that it even requires a conversation? Academia used to be for the old men who did little else. Now it's for "real people." Which is exciting. Having a variety of people in academics will lead to a greater variety of scholarship. Where I see myself in all that in the future? I have no idea. One year at a time.

p.s. Lilian's post is pretty good, too!

I don't know why I am even blogging about this, since it will likely end up in a fruitless ramble and totally uninteresting. It just rolls around in my head all the time. I'm always thinking about "when I get back into research/into a PhD program". I'm not working on anything now. Not a thing. Quiet moments I steal for sewing. It feels more productive, and it has instant gratification status. Something research doesn't have. I don't feel gratified about my thesis and the stupid thing is signed, sealed, and delivered. In fact, as I was dusting this morning, I had the thought again, "was it even any good?" Obviously I passed. And my committee members aren't the type of people who would "just be nice" and let it pass. So it couldn't have entirely stunk. But still, it's not the taste that I want left in my mouth on this hiatus from brain work. Whatever. It is what it is.

Anyway, the thesis aside, it is done after all--I do think about other things. I think that I ought to be keeping up my chops in some areas, medieval/Ren notation, Latin, languages. I should read those books that I never got to. Linger over passages I never had time for. It's more than just an "i ought to". I do want to. I miss the ol' repertoire I was starting to get familiar with, starting to make a home in. I've missed it for awhile, since it wasn't anywhere near my thesis topic. I feel like if I sit down with it, it will start coming back to me, like riding a bike. I have a very solid foundation in reading mensural notation. And I love it!

In the Christmas season, I went to hear Anonymous 4. I should've blogged about it, because it was a fantastic concert experience. Partly due to the fact that I simply cannot remember that last time I had gone to a concert. The time is measured in years, for sure. It may have been when I went to hear the Emerson Quartet in spring 2004. I'm really pathetic. But anyway, back to Anon. 4, they sang a medieval mass the parts of which they had assembled. It had a little something of everything, early polyphony, chant, tropes of varying sorts, songs. A nice showcase of 13th/14th century liturgical music. It felt really good to listen to it--and thrilling to be hearing it live--partly because I knew what was going on. Even after this break in even thinking about it, I really understood the different parts musically as I listened to them. (And I kind of felt like giving a music appreciation class to everyone around me, but I managed to restrain myself.)

Sometimes I feel annoyed. Why do I know all this stupid, esoteric stuff? What was the purpose of slaving away in grad school for 5 years? All that work is hardly making a difference in my life now. That's not to say that it won't possibly someday. It just feels annoying now.

Other than reading a little and possibly working through my facsimile, which has a great variety of 14th/15th c repertoire, I'm not sure what else I could be doing right now. There's no way I could work on an article. I do have a couple of ideas, but they would take a major investment of time and energy that I'm not prepared to give. If I do ever reapply to PhD programs, though, I don't want to have a big fat blank in these intervening years. I guess if I ever got to the point of writing a personal statement, I would've figured some of this out anyway. You can't just apply in an aimless sort of way. You have to be someone worth investing in. Whatever. I'm just not that person at this phase in my life. Especially since I'm having another baby in a few months. Yes, can you believe it!? I'm still pregnant!!

I don't want to sound dissatisfied with where I am right now, because I'm really happy to be doing what I'm doing, raising my babies. I want the freedom I have to spend hours playing cars with E. And it's hard to think of splitting my precious mental energy. It's just that, well, I am the sum of my past, I suppose. I can't just break off that bit of me I invested so much and totally shelve it. But it's there on the shelf. And sometimes I think I could be happy just leaving it there forever. I don't know. *shrug*