And for my next trick....

For the better part of 20 years, I have worked to write like a historian.  For the last 7 or so, I've worked to write like a historian who wants academics in allied fields to read their work.  My interdisciplinary writing group has helped with this -- pushing me to reconsider some conventions in my field, to explain things that I wouldn't need to explain to an audience of historians, to adopt some new practices in presenting my research.  I think I've been somewhat successful in this.  I've published more interdisciplinary and multi-discipline journals than in traditional history journals since getting tenure.  But now I'm wondering if I have over-stepped my abilities.

Last year I started working on using one of my history projects (on gender-based harassment in public spaces) to connect to current policy and practice on public transit.  I submitted an abstract to the "Women's Issues in Transportation" conference and got encouraging responses from reviewers.  The questions they raised helped me draft a full paper, which my writing group then helped me work into something I could submit.  Now I am faced with three more sets of comments from conference reviewers, asking for revisions before the final round of papers is picked for the conference.

I've never been through this intense a process for being accepted to present at a conference.  I've never even had a full paper draft reviewed, let alone multiple reviews calling for revised drafts.  The reviewers' comments have been rolling around in my mind for weeks, but today is the day when I intend to roll up my sleeves and start the revision.  But I'm feeling a bit stuck, still finding myself feeling defensive in response to some of the comments.  The requests for a clearer definition of harassment is fine, a desire for more description of methodology is annoying but familiar (how do you write "I read everything can find, think about it, make lots of lists, and write until I think I have some insights to offer"?).  The one comment that gets me, though, is this: "It needs to be framed more like a scholarly paper."

Hackles up.

The implication that textual evidence is some how not real data, not scholarly, seeps through this reviewers' comments, even though they are trying to be supportive (they did say the background of the project is "interesting").  The reviewer then goes on to tell me what a "traditional" paper should look like (intro, theory and method, findings and interpretation, discussion...).  I've read my fair share of these kinds of papers.  I even written one, but they don't work well for qualitative research.  I've got an 8,000 word limit; I'm going to use the bulk of them to explore the evidence, not describing the process.  I'm going to show you what I found.  If you want to know how I found it, read the footnotes!  Gah.

I guess part of my frustration is that I was conscious that this conference is full of quant people and I intentionally "scientificized" my early drafts, but apparently not enough for some.  It is not currently a paper many history people would recognize as standard history writing (or topic).  For example, I actually make suggestions for new policy.  Gasp!  Historians never tell you what to do.  That is your job (after we've told you how we got to this place and what other people have done).  But, apparently, it is still not a fully social science paper.

I could follow the scientific paper structure, but I feel like a fraud.  This is not how I was trained to write or think.  More than that, this structure works against what history can bring to the table (the whole point of my paper!).  I'm trying to write about how we got here, bring lessons from earlier generations of activists to current issues, to fill in around and contextualize the numbers.  X women may report being groped on a subway car.  But what might those experiences mean to women, transit officials, or society?

So... here I go to try give them just enough that they will see me as "scholarly" while selling them on the idea that narrative-based arguments add value to their numbers.

So, that happened....

I turned the blog off for a bit while I stuck my big toe in some new professional waters.  That adventure didn't pan out, but I suppose it was good to stretch myself a bit and think a bit more about where I am and where I'm going.

The process was ridiculously long, but I feel relatively good about how I handled it all.  I'm a bit annoyed at the investment of time and energy that has ultimately lead to naught, especially when I know that I am a really good candidate for this particular position, but I'm also a bit relieved that I don't have to make a big decision.  As a friend said, "at least you didn't quit your day job."  Indeed.

I will continue on as chair for another year and then I will happily go on sabbatical and come back a year after that as just a plain old professor of history.  And it will all be good.

Summer List - 2012

In no particular order, here are my goals for this summer:

-recover my home office

-get a password management system up and running

-get tap shoes and use them (for clogging)

-ride at least three 50+ mile road adventures

-tromp or ride in the woods once a week

-put a ceiling in the basement

-read books everyday

-put new edging around front beds

-grow out my hair or chop it all off (decide before Sept 4)

-draft 3 chapters of my book

-write 2-3 new urban history lectures

-sort all my teaching files

-ride to AA to work once a week (when not traveling)

-take kids on an overnight backpacking adventure

-donate or trash at least one bag/box of stuff for every week of Jun, July, and August

-paint Emma's door to look like the Tardis (I could use help with this)

-teach Emma to cook

-help Owen find a sporty activity he loves

-develop a workable chore schedule for the kiddos

-avoid all contact with poison ivy

Quit Fantasies

It is low-level frustrating to be a new department chair. You are stepping into a bunch of different situations that are already in process and trying to take over control...usually only to learn that what you thought was going on is either way behind or far ahead of where things actually are. That is actually okay -- frustrating, but not deadly.

The problem I am wading through now, however, falls into the category of "the important stuff" -- the stuff I don't want to fuck up, the stuff this job is really about. This problem falls under the heading of "faculty retention" and it is not going well. The faculty member has been lovely to deal with, both open and patient. The administration...well, let's just say xx xxx xxxxxxx xx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxx x xxxx (edited for job security purposes), everyone is working their own agendas while still trying to look like they care, and the only one who has come up with any actual ideas has been me. Me? Yes. The brand new chair who has almost no experience upon which to draw. And everyone seems just a little too happy to tell me why my ideas can't work and not at all willing to actually suggest any of their own or figure out the right labels to apply or boxes to check to make the intent of what I suggested happen.

So yes, today, I'm having fantasies of telling them all to just go stuff it. But I'm not going to, because I'm not going to screw this faculty member. I'll get the deal to happen, even though it is fairly apparent that I have very little actual power because I don't control the right resources. And then I will no doubt trudge on to the next crisis, but there will be some trailing bitterness that will trudge on with me. It didn't have to be this way and, frankly, it was a shitty way to treat a new chair... (another edit here, recommended by a loyal Yesterday supporter).

Inside my brain...

Writing when one is supposed to be writing is often incredibly difficult. Sometimes, to be honest, I'm just running out the clock -- unable to give up on a project that is not working because "this is the time to write." Time is certainly important, but it never ensures the productivity. I may have some time, but when it comes around I often find I lack the energy or focus or (even if it sounds a bit trite) inspiration to get it done. And then I don't. And then I resent the times that are full of other things that make it impossible to write, fooling myself into thinking, "If only I didn't have to pick up the kids or sit in this meeting I would be finishing that introduction!" Yeah, right. Maybe I would, more likely, I wouldn't... It can be a very defeating cycle.

But then there are moments like those I found tonight where energy and schedule aligned completely unexpectedly and unplanned and the introduction that looked like it was going to have to sit until next week actually gets re-written. I feel a little bit like a kid just learning to ride a bike: "Wheeeeeee, I'm DOING it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Lessons from the first week

1. There are a million little "situations," none of which am I fully up to speed on. This leaves me with the impression that everything is moving really quickly and I must paddle hard to get into the current and not tip over... This is a bit frightening because this is JULY. This is the deadest month there is in the world of academe. If it is this bad now, how bad will it be in April???

2. My office is bare and institutional. I didn't do much when I was interim, but it is time to get my brain around the fact that I'll be in this office for three years. Time to get some art and a comfy chair or couch that isn't a scary dust collector.

3. Email makes this job harder. There are usually many vaguely parallel conversations going on over email and rarely are the right people connected to each other. People going off half-cocked, sending poorly-informed messages sent to people all over the campus needs to stop. I'm sure phone calls can do the same kind of damage, but it is on email that I'm seeing it.

4. There are few big decisions to be made. My life is going to be minutiae, it seems.

Losing (some of) the Noise

My experiment this term is "no-email Thursdays." I'm not telling my colleagues (yet) and I'm only cutting myself off from work email. Of the four Thursdays I've encountered so far, I managed to stay true for three of them. The week before last, I forgot. Habit kicked in and I checked and somewhere in the back and forth of History scheduling minutiae with a colleague it clicked...this was exactly the kind of time suck I was trying to avoid. The other three Thursdays were beautiful, productive things and no one died when I did not answer or initiate email for one day.

Here is what I've learned:

1. a day in the middle of the week is probably the BEST day to stay off email. Most of my colleagues teach on Thursdays and are therefore quite busy. They seem to assume that if I don't answer it is because I am similarly busy (I think) -- only I don't teach on Thursday (delicious, delicious Thursdays!). Friday or Monday we have the (fiction of the) weekend and people are twitchy about getting answers before people "go away" for the weekend (altho many don't go away...see point number 3 below). I can always mop up whatever crisis has exploded on Friday morning and not leave anyone hanging as we head into the weekend.

2. I have to prepare. I have to go into my email on Wed night and pull out whatever I need for the work I have planned for Thursday. This means I have a chance to answer late-in-the-day emails and I HAVE to plan my Thursday. Guilt and control freak tendencies go down and productivity goes up.

3. I want more. I want no email weekends. What I am learning, however is that my colleagues have pretty much lost all sense of boundaries. One of them sent an email asking for a discipline vote on something at 8pm on Friday and then was back on line early Saturday afternoon complaining that only one person had weighed in. (I saw all of these on Saturday evening but was so annoyed by it I waited to answer until Sunday night -- should have waited 'til Monday!))
This job is already severely lacking in boundaries as anyone who has ever gone anywhere with me and knows that I carry a book (or three) with me pretty much constantly knows. Why can't we have weekends? I'm not going to pretend that I don't work on weekends. I do. But at least let me stick to doing the reading and grading that is necessary and keep the piddly requests and political crap for a weekday? And then there are the students... I'm thinking email allows us just way too much access to each other and that we all need to retreat to our separate corners. Email, for example, allowed me to learn that a student in my methods class only today found the instructions for the paper that is due tomorrow. Really, do I need to know that my students take my assignments so seriously that they only start them the night before? No, I don't. I'm sure they do this. I'm just sayin' that I don't want to know!

Anyway, the upshot is that no-email Thursdays are pretty damn awesome and I intend to keep them up and look for ways to further limit the noise and improve my focus.

Cooking

Not eggs, but work. The last few days I've been on my game and made some real progress. I finished the anti-porn/Minneapolis article and sent it off, I nailed down the community partners and research projects for URS 450, I negotiated my way through a stack of readings on neighborhood activism -- putting some in the article and picking others to go on the 450 syllabus, I did a bunch of organizing for the WILL program, and now I'm working on the public toilets piece again.

It feels good. When school gets out in the Spring, I revel in the freedom to let my mind and work wander, range, and roam. Somewhere in the middle of the summer, that gets a little painful, though. It starts to feel useless rather than freeing. And that is is the headspace from which I have emerged this week... which means the 'gearing up for the start of term' activities and the need to produce finished research projects actually feels like a kind of a relief.

Rejection

After a couple of weeks of reading applications and conducting 27 interviews, I've made my picks for who will join the WILL (Women in Learning and Leadership) program in the fall. Sending out acceptance letters was easy -- congratulations, get registered, look for first meeting in Sept, contact me if you have questions, etc. etc.

The time-consuming and rather annoying task, however, has become writing the rejection letters for those who will not be joining us. I am only the incoming director, you see. I don't officially take over until Sept (or July... no one is quite sure) and I need to stay in the good graces of the outgoing director (who is stepping up to be Associate Dean of my college and someone I will need to work closely with on some things) so I have to follow her wishes on a few matters dealing with the administration of WILL at this moment. And she has made it very clear -- as has the director of the WGST program -- that I need to tailor rejection letters to the individual student. I'm supposed to be encouraging and positive.

But see, I'm not so good at that and I really don't see the point. The great bulk of people that I'm rejecting are people who don't make the GPA cut off. Honestly, they never should have applied and they should have known this since the 3.0 requirement is clearly stated on the application. "I'm sorry, we are unable to accept you because you do not meet the clearly stated and long established criteria of the program. If you are able to pull your grades up, we'll be happy to consider your application next year." Is that encouraging?

The other people are folks who had nothing to offer and little to say... people who could not say why they wanted to be in the program, what issues they are interested in, etc. etc. So how do I explain this while being encouraging? "I'm sorry we are unable to offer you a place in the program and we wish you the best of luck in finding something that excites you enough that you can say more than three words about it."

I'm trying very hard to not think that I am jumping through these hoops just because this is part of a Women and Gender Studies program. I reject tea party feminism where being nice to women takes precedence over doing good work and producing meaningful results. Rejection happens and we all need to learn to deal with it and not expect to be coddled through it. There is good reason why the program has a GPA requirement -- it can be intense and it is not for struggling students who need to put academics first. And if you are not invested in the program, the students who are will come to resent you for not doing your part and that will distract us all from doing what we need to do. So..."Thank you for applying, but we are unable to offer you a space in the program." Now, go study.

Ouch

Okay, this is it for a while. My right arm -- that would be my mousing arm and the one attached to my yuiopghjklbnm fingers -- is hurting. I've got internet elbow and carpal-tunnel-graded-too-many-papers-itis. Since there are still more papers to be graded and it pains me more than the joints and tendons to not write comments on them, I've got to scale back the 'puter time. I've give my Scrabble games to E (watch out!) and set my Facebook status to something that begs to not be changed for two more days...

I do have a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking 8 laying around. I may try to get that up and running... and then I can dictate comments for my students and yammer out all the blog posts running around in my brain. Then I can save more precious right arm for other amusing pursuits :)

How to Write a Book in Only 1 1/2 Hours a Week!

Actually, I don't know how to do this, but I seem to be trying to figure it out. Wednesdays between 2:15 and 3:45pm, I write. Then I stop, sit on it for a week, and then try to get the groove going again a week later.

I shouldn't complain too much. I did some good stuff today. I almost have enough to send off a chunk to my writing group. I'm on deck for discussion next week, so I have to get them something... and soon. Couldn't I have just one more block of time?

Brrrrr....

I am currently sitting at the dining room table, trying to write. I am wearing: a hat, yoga tank, long sleeve t-shirt, wool sweater, fleece pull over, undies, long johns, jeans, wool socks, and clogs. And I have blanket over my legs. And I'm still cold. I realize that if I got myself moving I'd probably be just fine, but I need to tie my ass to this chair and finish this project!!!!

A Day for Me

Being department chair means that my days at work are filled with doing things for other people -- administrators, faculty, students -- and doing tasks that with which I have little familiarity -- budgets, strategic planning, scheduling.

But today I am not going to campus. Nope. Once I get the kids off to school, it's all about me and things I do know how to do. On today's agenda: editing the galley's of my article on challenging gender segregation in bars that is coming out in Feminist Studies this fall, reviewing an edition of Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives (a book I teach with frequently) that is being revised for a second edition (and I particularly like that I get paid $225 for doing this task!), and attending a workshop in AA on teaching about conflict.

And to top it all off, I get to ride my bike (a rare opportunity these days) to that workshop on what promises to be a lovely, crisp, and sunny fall day.

Bye-Bye Summer

Here it is. The last evening of summer.

This was not the bloggiest of seasons for me. Like many of the friendly blogs in my world, YesterdayLooksGood got very little attention. Her sister blog, Breaking the Code, got even less.

I meant to record more of my happenings -- they are fun to look back at, a way to solidify memories, etc. -- but many posts were never started and of those that were, I abandoned more posts than I actually published.

Using my calendar and a scroll through the drafts-never-published here are the highlights of Summer 2008:

In May, we went to Traditional Arts Weekend at Wheatland. Just like always, and nicely so.

In June I went to Minneapolis/St. Paul for a conference and research (probably the highlight of my summer in terms of work).

In June, E finished 4th grade (which she loved) and O finished Kindergarten (which he tolerated). They understood that they were supposed to be happy about summer, but they didn't quite know what to do with themselves with day after day of unstructured time. Apparently, they didn't feel the chores I assigned them was the kind of structure they were looking for, however. They did a week of low-quality day camp that convinced us they were better off rattling around the house bored and beating on each other than in that environment.

In late June/early July, we went to my folks' cottage. This is a trip I have done for years, but this particular trip came with some twists. I went without my dog, for one. It was her favorite place in the world. She was dune colored and loved to romp there. [sniff]

In July, I became a stay-at-home mom. I struggled with this for awhile. I finally had to accept that my sabbatical was over and stop trying to parent and write at the same time. Things got much easier after that. I scheduled playdates so I could launch a new article and get ready for classes, but I also took other people's kids on adventures with us, rode bikes with my pups, went blueberry picking, hit the pool and the waterpark, danced to the bands at Crossroads, became a regular at the Tuesday farmers' market, and visited many area parks. The kids and I even rode our bikes in the Heritage Festival parade (which I think we all found pretty boring).

In July, E went off for a week at sleep-away camp. I loved camp as a kid and went for multiple weeks (regular, horseback riding, competitive swimming, and, my favorite, sailing) so I was rather excited for her. She did great there but was incredibly tired when I retrieved her. The promised "vegetarian option at every meal" also turned out to be salad and peanut butter sandwiches, so she was mighty happy to have a plate of pasta plopped down in front of her. I had hoped that a week apart would get the kids out of the negative patterns of taunting they had developed. It didn't. Almost as soon as I had fetched her I heard from the backseat, "mom, he's looking at meeeeeeee!"

July also meant beerfest and I had a lovely time with my dad, brother, and many buddies. I didn't pick a "best beer" this year, but I enjoyed several ryes... and I really enjoyed that there were several ryes to enjoy. Worst beer: Jolly Pumpkin's Perseguido. It almost doesn't seem fair, since I don't like their beers/sour beers in general, but EVERYONE in my universe that day agreed that this one particularly sucked.

In August, we went to Dunegrass, the music festival in Empire, MI. Year #2 for us and it held up well, which is not surprising because the kids are now old enough to be fairly sturdy on such outings, we took the camper and therefore had cushy digs, and there is a beautiful beach with great dunes just down the way. moe. wins for best band, I think. Particle was the same as always, only I was too tired to get into the groove this year.

Also in August, S finally got me to play water polo. Okay, yes, it is fun. Water polo easily slid into the hole left by us quitting clogging (E lost her interest and I wasn't going to force it). The kids could swim in the shallows while mommy dunked the college boys... then we would all go home mellow and tired. E wormed her way into one game and played well. I'll coach a tweener team next year if the pool folks will let me! Most of my other exercise came from the bike. I think my fitness level peaked somewhere in late August. If I had to pick a day, I'd say it was when I rode (read: held on for) the local shop ride: 32 miles in about an hour and half. Otherwise I rode with Bike Ypsi many Sundays and took to early morning roll outs so that I could do 20-30 miles and be back in time for W to leave for work. (Tom's right: it's a great time because there is no wind!) My favorite ride became the Saline-Milan route (40 miles), though it was hard to squeeze in on weekday mornings.

The last bit of August contained my birthday weekend. I celebrated Bike Ypsi's first birthday, helped break in Andre and Stephanie's new house at their first party there, closed the pool for the season, and celebrated my many revolutions around the sun with my extended family.

September saw me not only enter my forties but also take on my first big administrative job: department chair. The kids went back to school. We celebrated surviving that momentous week with a bonfire at the party barn, including a birthday king and queen, and chocolate cake with a milk fountain built in.

But the signs of fall have started to arrive. E started soccer, the rain pushed the last Crossroads act (Black Jake and the Carnies) inside, and it was time to make pesto. I rode 50 miles last Saturday to help make 35 pounds of pesto at Jeff's house out in Chelsea. It poured for much of the ride, but it was warm and I loved it except for my fogging glasses. On Sunday, I rolled out in the ran again to ride Tom's Taco Tour. Five taco stops over 19 miles and we ended -- very wet -- at the Corner.

What this summary, focused on specific events and dominant trends, glosses over is the emotional terrain of my summer. It is hard to characterize, but I think I have spent much of the last three months trying to get my head in the game -- whatever the game may be. I've been sad, I've been unfocused, I've raised indecision to a near art form, and somehow I became a procrastinator. I've decided I'm angrier (in general, or maybe it is that I am easier to anger) than I realized. This is not to say that I was not happy this summer. I was, at times, but these other things had me pulled off in too many directions to focus on the things that made me happy. So this is the problem I am tackling this fall: how to be in the right place... or at least how to be in the place I am. How old-school hippie-ish, eh? Yeah, well, I seem to need to go back to that school. To frame it positively (and find a way out of this post!), my goal for the fall is to be good with where I am and what I am doing in that moment and not overthink where else I might be. I'll be in that other place soon enough.

Some Chair on Chair Action

Last week and then again today, in carrying out my duties as department chair, I got to spend some time trying to round up chairs. Not other department chairs or the chairs of any committees, but actual furniture.

My department complained about classrooms being short of seats. Facilities people told us there should be plenty of chairs. We explained there weren't. They threatened to take our conference room chairs. Our admin assistant stood them down on Thursday morning. Other chairs were found to fill out the classroom by Thursday afternoon. But then, over the weekend, said chairs magically disappeared from our conference room.

So today I got to write terse e-mails to high level administrators about missing chairs. There has never been a finer use of my skills.

Back in the Saddle

After fifteen, er... maybe closer to sixteen, months of not teaching, I gathered up my books and papers and headed into a classroom today. My voice is certainly not in condition, especially for a three hour class, and I only made it through 45 minutes before the scratching at the back of my throat began. Other than that, I seemed to remember what I was doing. I learned a few names (that I will forget again before next week), got them to talk, made a few laugh, and none of them (yet) took me to task for the outrageous cost of the books I asked them to buy.

I'm thinking that my six hours in the classroom each week this term may very well become my refuge from being department chair. Here's why...

Tally from the first two days in the big corner office:

memos with incorrect information distributed: 1 out of 1
poorly worded e-mails: 2 out of 5
icky political situations I'll need to dodge: 2
complaints about my colleagues that I need to deal with: 3

Cleaning up my act

This morning's distraction/writing warm up activity was to unsubscribe myself from lists/mass mailings that are cluttering up my e-mail in-boxes. It felt good. NARAL, NOW, Amnesty International, you all do lovely things, but I don't really want to know about every single one of them... just take my money, keep your website current, and I'll check in when I can.

Now I just wish someone would come along and so a similar "unsubscribe" for all the tangible things cluttering up my life. I'd work on it myself, but it is REALLY time to work now.

Dead People

Can I go back to researching dead people now, please? Pretty please? I am just a ball of adrenalin after making a bunch of cold calls to potential oral history subjects for my upcoming research trip to Minneapolis. I'll take the adrenalin over the anxiety I had before the calls, but, geez, this is not a part of my work that I enjoy.

It seems so simple... "You were involved in this thing. I want to know more about that thing. Will you talk to me?" But it's not. I hate to impose, I worry they'll say no, I worry I haven't prepared well enough, scheduling is a nightmare, finding a location is an even bigger nightmare...

I've only done a dozen or so interviews, so the whole process is still daunting. Though, honestly, I think I will still be twitching on my 100th interview.

Some of the stress I invent. I always expect to have to work harder to prove myself but now that I think about it, no one has ever asked for my cv and no one has really interrogated me about what my motives/politics are or what kind of argument I intend to make with this research. I guess that is the advantage of interviewing activists. Obviously they thought the cause was good enough to devote some significant part of their lives to, so I guess they just assume that my interest is the same as theirs!

Two interesting bits from today's calls: one guy did ask was my interest was in the topic, but then he was a business owner in the neighborhood and not an activist, and he was easily satisfied by my two sentence reference to community organizing around quality of life issues in neighborhoods and surrounding commercial districts. Another woman turned out to be an activist from a later period than I have been working on (see one of those surprises I dread!) -- but her story is great and she is wonderfully thoughtful about her participation, local politics, tactics/strategies of community orgs, etc. that I am going to interview her anyway. All I could think while I listened to her on the phone today was, "I should get her in front of my class" -- they would be amazed.

So... it all turned out fine. I have 5 interviews lined up or coming together. All is good. Now I just need to calm down.

I Knew I Couldn't Sabbaticalize Forever...

Because the job change from the south to here, my tenure and sabbatical clocks were not aligned. Most people at my university go up for tenure and then (assuming they get it) they go on sabbatical. It is good. At that point in your career work on your first big research topic should be complete (or you wouldn't have gotten tenure) and you need the concentrated time a sabbatical allows to get deep into your second project. That way, when you come back from sabbbatical, you have a solid base to work from. Also, people have had a chance to forget that you exist and that you are now tenured and therefore are just the right person to serve on this that and the other committee....



But as I said, this is not how it worked for me... I got tenure and then had to hang around for another 3 years until my sabbatical came around. I was fresh (tenured) blood and way too visible, so I got pulled in lots of directions. The service demands that come with being an associate professor are enormous. As I prepared to go on sabbatical (nearly a year ago!), I resigned from everything. There was some work that it was tempting to stay connected with, but I didn't do it. I cut all ties, figuring I could start fresh and with a bit more intentionality when I go back to teaching in the fall.



But now the plans for the coming academic year are reaching a frenzied level -- everyone wants to nail things down before the end of this term. I learned two weeks ago I am to again be discipline representative for History. I'm going to be on the Curriculum Committee for the college. I'm teaching an overload in the fall (4 courses instead of 3). And I was just asked to come back and take up the directorship of the Civic Engagement Project (something I did for essentially 5 years!). Considering the state of my discipline and department, I turned down the latter, but it wasn't easy. I don't want that initiative to fail after have helped to birth it. Other opportunities to say "no" are coming... I can feel it. I'm thinking part of my coming down from the sabbatical needs to be assessing and prioritizing my service work. I've actually seen colleagues just flat out say that they will never do this, that, or the other. I'm stunned by this and more than slightly annoyed that that means the work will fall to others (like myself). But then I think, if they get to do it, maybe I can too. This would be a new concept for me, that's for sure!

Fairness vs. Sameness

A dinner table conversation turned to this topic the other night. I can't quite recall its origins... probably something to do with food quantities or bedtimes or chores but it has been funny to see that the topic is also cycling through an on-line discussion on my campus at the moment. The issue at hand there is whether or not it is "fair" to the men of the university community that there is a Women's Resource Center on campus and not a "Gender Resource Center," "Men's Resource Center," or just plain "Resource Center."* As you might imagine, there are a couple of contributors (and I literally mean 2) who got and keep the discussion rolling with insightful comments such as "all the women I know are strong" and "to have a resource center for women tells women that they are weak."

I'm on sabbatical and trying to stay out of the fray, but I have been checking in on things. It has been fun to see my colleagues -- most of whom are women's studies faculty -- answer the critics from their various disciplinary perspectives. You put a philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, and economist together -- all citing evidence -- and there are some pretty convincing arguments on the ways in which women are situationally disadvantaged by their gender (though not necessarily only their gender) and the core set of resources that might be made available to mitigate these disadvantages. Of all the comments, though, the only one that sent my brain somewhere new came from a literature professor and I thought I would share with you a link to the short story she recommended.

Maybe it is just the sponge-like brains of children, but my kids got it pretty quickly that something being fair did not mean that things had to be the same for everyone. That thinking about what is fair might better be done through looking at what people need rather than counting out the beans so that everyone has the same amount. I wonder if the critics of the WRC will be willing to try and wrap their brains around that.



*By the way, the WRC is really about more than women. In particular, much of the programming goes to support the LGBT community, those with non-conforming gender identities, community involvement, and childcare. Interestingly, that the center's scope was wider than "women" doesn't seem to have been the source of the original objection to the WRC.