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wolven7Yeah Yeah Yeahs - [Art Star]---"I've been working on a piece that speaks of sex and desperation..."
I've had these two pieces of lyrics stuck in my head, since I woke up. (System of a Down - [Roulette]). I'm trying to be more open, here, more honest, more... forthright? I feel deeply betrayed, lately, and I don't know what to do, about it.
I'm going to be grammatically incorrect, for a bit.
As you know if you've been reading, someone, recently, said that they didn't feel comfortable writing me a letter, because they didn't feel that they knew me well enough, academically, in the graduate program. (Rasputina - [When I Was a Young Girl]). What I didn't mention, at the time, was that this person was, essentially, my mentor through this process. They took the time to answer any and all questions I had, I took four classes with them, and I spoke with them, once every two weeks, about the progress of my thesis. (The Dust Brothers - [Corporate World]). In addition to being a thesis reader, this person was someone I felt I could talk to, and who I felt saw worth and value in the work that I'm trying to do.
In the intervening year and a half, I have been in contact with my former departments; sending along links and notices of conferences or paper-calls which might be of interest to faculty or students; giving talks in the student forum; keeping people apprised of my situation, and keeping apprised of theirs. (Skinny Puppy - [Haunted]). In that regard, I've been getting less and less, by way of response to my overtures. No reply e-mails, no courtesy phone calls. Silence and awkward glances... Were this a relationship, now would be the time I'd start being worried.
But I put it out of my mind. I still had friends in the departments, people to whom I could talk, and with whom I could work, right? People were simply more busy now that the school year had started, or they had a new post, or that it was mid-terms, or finals, or grades were due in, right? (Blaqk Audio - [The Fear of Being Found]). Never mind that, logically, that covers the whole of the semester structure. No no. Best not to think about that. Because what the hell had I done to become pariah? A word and a feeling that followed me through the first two years of high school. Outcaste. Never really fitting in, anywhere, never getting close enough to touch, due to some unknown Thing that wasn't in my sphere of knowledge, and therefore wasn't under my control. But everyone Else seemed to know what it was.
When I got into "healthy" (-er) interpersonal relationships, I chalked the previous feelings up to paranoia, borne of the High School Experience in what was still a new city, away from all of my old friends (who are now mere acquaintences, at best, by the way), and I filed it away, under Lessons Learned. (Gregorian Choir - [Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana Cover)]). But, lately, I've got that feeling, again. Like something I'm doing smells funny to everyone else, and no one is bothering to tell me; they're just pointing, and backing away, and then pretending not to see me. And, again, I thought it was paranoia. I thought I was being silly, and some people told me I was.
The Martinis - [Free]--- But then I got the kind of confirmation that makes paranoia into "Better Prepared," and the kind of reminder that makes you check your assumptions about people you thought were on your side. You see, there is a practice, among academics, and it's a dirty one. It's the practice of agreeing to write someone "a letter." Now, more likely than not, that person has asked of you a Letter Of Recommendation, a near-sacred trust in which they have felt that you, more than Many other people, knew them well enough to speak of their work, to speak of their skill and achievement, and their potential to do really good work, in the future. What I'm betting they did Not ask you for was a Letter of Condemnation.
Tool - [Undertow]--- Yes. People are agreeing to write "a letter," and are then writing letters detailing all the reasons they think the person in question should never be allowed into the kind of program for which they are applying. It's happened to people I know, and I have been told, outright, not to ask for letters from a few people, because they are in the habit of doing that. This kind of petty, useless bullshit is exactly the kind of thing that pisses me off about academia. You don't have the guts to say this to someone's face, but you wait, you Specifically Wait until they come to you, vulnerable, hopeful, seeking help, and do it in a form that they, most likely, won't have the chance to see? That's dirty, sneaky, underhanded, petty, and very, very small.
At least the people I asked had the decency to tell me, directly, that they would rather not write me a letter. But that still leaves me with a puzzling question.
Iggy Pop - [Passenger]---Why would someone with whom I spent the vast majority of my graduate academic career, tell me that they didn't have enough experience with me? Someone who gave me an A, an A-, and a B (not in chronological order), in the three graded classes I took, from them? (Veruca Salt - [Get Back]). Someone with whom I've held detailed conversations about their area of work and expertise, and where/how it meshes with my own interests? Someone to whose house I've been?
Someone who I am damn sure wrote a strong letter for someone who took One class from them, and on whose thesis committee they did Not sit?
Something smells rotten in the state of the Department.
Being grammatically correct, again.
So I feel betrayed, and I am questioning whether these types of practices are things with which I want to be dealing, the rest of my life, in a series of fields that are always going to hold my work as fringe? (LUXT - [Fiend]). Should I even be bothering to Try to talk to these people, through the methods of theory and ritual and analogy, or whether I should simply accept the fact that, when they hear "Modern Meta-Theory of Magical Practice," or similar, their eyes are all going to glaze over, and they will start a rote investigation of "primitive" thought, in the old anthropological mode, rather than bringing to bear new ideas and theories, on an old topic, to better understand what's going on, when we talk about "Magic?" Should I try?
When Advertising is simple? When Marketing ideas come naturally? When I know how to position and colour and say and offer things to people so that they can't stop thinking about a product? When I have the combination of skills, knowledge, and people, to work with, to show people how to make their businesses and lives unstoppable forces to be reckoned with?
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - [The Miniature]--- Because I have those skills. I know those people. I don't have the experience doing it, though, is the problem. And I don't know where to find it, yet. If I want to give the giant middle finger to academia (If I want to quit, like a big baby, because it's too hard), then I need to know what the alternative is, and how to make it happen. I need to find a consulting firm with which to intern, or a Think Tank, in some area that intersects with the kinds of things I want to be doing. Biotechnology, or something, so I can look at the ethics and practices involved in creating the policy to regulate them. But finding one. There's the key
I'm tired of doing work that doesn't interlock with the things I want to be doing. I'm tired of working in a place with as much daily stress and conflict as is present at my current place of business. I need a paycheck, to be absolutely sure, but I need satisfaction in my work, too. In my work and in the people around me, and in what we do and give to people, every day, which should be something honest, something real, something that doesn't do an end run around their more reasonable expectations, but instead seeks to openly find the place where what they expect overlaps with what we are physically, mentally, and ideologically capable of offering. I don't know that academia can offer me that, any more.
I don't know that I can, without becoming independently wealthy, take the time, or have the resources (emotional, mainly) necessary to Make The Changes, I want to see, there.
Jerry Reed - [Another Puff]--- Because I've been being those changes, for a while, now, and I just remembered another thing he said, and I need to sit down and think about it seriously:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Marilyn Manson - [Misery Machine]--- Part of me wants to see if I can win.
I've had these two pieces of lyrics stuck in my head, since I woke up. (System of a Down - [Roulette]). I'm trying to be more open, here, more honest, more... forthright? I feel deeply betrayed, lately, and I don't know what to do, about it.
I'm going to be grammatically incorrect, for a bit.
As you know if you've been reading, someone, recently, said that they didn't feel comfortable writing me a letter, because they didn't feel that they knew me well enough, academically, in the graduate program. (Rasputina - [When I Was a Young Girl]). What I didn't mention, at the time, was that this person was, essentially, my mentor through this process. They took the time to answer any and all questions I had, I took four classes with them, and I spoke with them, once every two weeks, about the progress of my thesis. (The Dust Brothers - [Corporate World]). In addition to being a thesis reader, this person was someone I felt I could talk to, and who I felt saw worth and value in the work that I'm trying to do.
In the intervening year and a half, I have been in contact with my former departments; sending along links and notices of conferences or paper-calls which might be of interest to faculty or students; giving talks in the student forum; keeping people apprised of my situation, and keeping apprised of theirs. (Skinny Puppy - [Haunted]). In that regard, I've been getting less and less, by way of response to my overtures. No reply e-mails, no courtesy phone calls. Silence and awkward glances... Were this a relationship, now would be the time I'd start being worried.
But I put it out of my mind. I still had friends in the departments, people to whom I could talk, and with whom I could work, right? People were simply more busy now that the school year had started, or they had a new post, or that it was mid-terms, or finals, or grades were due in, right? (Blaqk Audio - [The Fear of Being Found]). Never mind that, logically, that covers the whole of the semester structure. No no. Best not to think about that. Because what the hell had I done to become pariah? A word and a feeling that followed me through the first two years of high school. Outcaste. Never really fitting in, anywhere, never getting close enough to touch, due to some unknown Thing that wasn't in my sphere of knowledge, and therefore wasn't under my control. But everyone Else seemed to know what it was.
When I got into "healthy" (-er) interpersonal relationships, I chalked the previous feelings up to paranoia, borne of the High School Experience in what was still a new city, away from all of my old friends (who are now mere acquaintences, at best, by the way), and I filed it away, under Lessons Learned. (Gregorian Choir - [Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana Cover)]). But, lately, I've got that feeling, again. Like something I'm doing smells funny to everyone else, and no one is bothering to tell me; they're just pointing, and backing away, and then pretending not to see me. And, again, I thought it was paranoia. I thought I was being silly, and some people told me I was.
The Martinis - [Free]--- But then I got the kind of confirmation that makes paranoia into "Better Prepared," and the kind of reminder that makes you check your assumptions about people you thought were on your side. You see, there is a practice, among academics, and it's a dirty one. It's the practice of agreeing to write someone "a letter." Now, more likely than not, that person has asked of you a Letter Of Recommendation, a near-sacred trust in which they have felt that you, more than Many other people, knew them well enough to speak of their work, to speak of their skill and achievement, and their potential to do really good work, in the future. What I'm betting they did Not ask you for was a Letter of Condemnation.
Tool - [Undertow]--- Yes. People are agreeing to write "a letter," and are then writing letters detailing all the reasons they think the person in question should never be allowed into the kind of program for which they are applying. It's happened to people I know, and I have been told, outright, not to ask for letters from a few people, because they are in the habit of doing that. This kind of petty, useless bullshit is exactly the kind of thing that pisses me off about academia. You don't have the guts to say this to someone's face, but you wait, you Specifically Wait until they come to you, vulnerable, hopeful, seeking help, and do it in a form that they, most likely, won't have the chance to see? That's dirty, sneaky, underhanded, petty, and very, very small.
At least the people I asked had the decency to tell me, directly, that they would rather not write me a letter. But that still leaves me with a puzzling question.
Iggy Pop - [Passenger]---Why would someone with whom I spent the vast majority of my graduate academic career, tell me that they didn't have enough experience with me? Someone who gave me an A, an A-, and a B (not in chronological order), in the three graded classes I took, from them? (Veruca Salt - [Get Back]). Someone with whom I've held detailed conversations about their area of work and expertise, and where/how it meshes with my own interests? Someone to whose house I've been?
Someone who I am damn sure wrote a strong letter for someone who took One class from them, and on whose thesis committee they did Not sit?
Something smells rotten in the state of the Department.
Being grammatically correct, again.
So I feel betrayed, and I am questioning whether these types of practices are things with which I want to be dealing, the rest of my life, in a series of fields that are always going to hold my work as fringe? (LUXT - [Fiend]). Should I even be bothering to Try to talk to these people, through the methods of theory and ritual and analogy, or whether I should simply accept the fact that, when they hear "Modern Meta-Theory of Magical Practice," or similar, their eyes are all going to glaze over, and they will start a rote investigation of "primitive" thought, in the old anthropological mode, rather than bringing to bear new ideas and theories, on an old topic, to better understand what's going on, when we talk about "Magic?" Should I try?
When Advertising is simple? When Marketing ideas come naturally? When I know how to position and colour and say and offer things to people so that they can't stop thinking about a product? When I have the combination of skills, knowledge, and people, to work with, to show people how to make their businesses and lives unstoppable forces to be reckoned with?
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - [The Miniature]--- Because I have those skills. I know those people. I don't have the experience doing it, though, is the problem. And I don't know where to find it, yet. If I want to give the giant middle finger to academia (If I want to quit, like a big baby, because it's too hard), then I need to know what the alternative is, and how to make it happen. I need to find a consulting firm with which to intern, or a Think Tank, in some area that intersects with the kinds of things I want to be doing. Biotechnology, or something, so I can look at the ethics and practices involved in creating the policy to regulate them. But finding one. There's the key
I'm tired of doing work that doesn't interlock with the things I want to be doing. I'm tired of working in a place with as much daily stress and conflict as is present at my current place of business. I need a paycheck, to be absolutely sure, but I need satisfaction in my work, too. In my work and in the people around me, and in what we do and give to people, every day, which should be something honest, something real, something that doesn't do an end run around their more reasonable expectations, but instead seeks to openly find the place where what they expect overlaps with what we are physically, mentally, and ideologically capable of offering. I don't know that academia can offer me that, any more.
I don't know that I can, without becoming independently wealthy, take the time, or have the resources (emotional, mainly) necessary to Make The Changes, I want to see, there.
Jerry Reed - [Another Puff]--- Because I've been being those changes, for a while, now, and I just remembered another thing he said, and I need to sit down and think about it seriously:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Marilyn Manson - [Misery Machine]--- Part of me wants to see if I can win.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 05:50 pm (UTC)i've been reading you for a while now and i'm confused, frankly. trust me when i say that i completely understand how difficult it can be to get people to understand largely conceptual, intangible concepts and translate them into something that i can give to people and make them say "oh, i see what you were trying to do there."
you talk a lot of theory, but what i don't really see is a product. and i don't mean that in a "this has to earn me money" commercial aspect, but as in a point. the "so what?" if you will.
put simply, i don't know what it is you want to do. what thing do you want to create? and, ancillary to that question, what is it that you want that thing you have done to accomplish?
if you were in an elevator with someone who had the ability to influence your life and you only had five minutes to explain your concept to him, what would you say? i don't think you're concise enough to produce a purpose statement yet.
if you want to write a paper that blows the minds of the people in academia, then write it. you don't need their permission to blow their minds. it's nice when they invite you in for peer reviews, but which is more important, their respect or your concept? honestly, i would give the same advice to someone who was whining about not wanting to write a novel without an agent.
don't let someone else define your success for you, but also remember that it's nice to be able to point at things you have done and say "i did that." what do you have to show for yourself at this point?
food for thought.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 06:11 pm (UTC)I try to divide my life into doing the best that I can at my day-job then investing my free time in the activities I care about and to simply enjoy them. Because it DOES make me happy when one of my authors mentions me in her dedication, or blogs about how much she enjoyed working with me.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 06:34 am (UTC)So, I have to admit, that does inspire Pride, in me. But that's pride in any job well-done, and in being seen as the best at something. It doesn't resonate down into Love Of The Work Itself... Not here.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 06:11 pm (UTC)Of course, I ended up somewhere I THINK I'm happier (ask me again once I start my diss) so all ends well. Of course, I'm also starting to think there's better work being done in my fields outside those fields now rather than in them. So. Ugh. Something is wrong. Toothgrindingly wrong.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 06:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 07:46 pm (UTC)This just about sucker punched me. It's a very apt description of not only my own experience in school, but also what my son is going through.
I don't know what it is in the human pack behavior that signals the others that 'this one is different' but we definitely have it in spades.
I think you should fight and win.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 11:57 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I have a job that allegedly requires me to have people skills. I can fake it pretty well now but it's tiring.
Sorry for the tangent.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 04:18 am (UTC)I imagine folklorists and a host of other specialties are subject to these problems in varying levels of blatantness as well. Maybe there is a support group for the academically arcane and cutting-edge to the point of perceptively obscure. I am only partly joking about the support group, I bet there are others in this position whose ears you could bend on this? I'm not assuming you haven't sought out like minds in related disciplines... but it sounds from my limited vantage point like you could use subculture fortification.
Best wishes with all of it, very, very much.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 04:42 am (UTC)You know, I'm going into Nursing, but not because it is the most ideal career I've ever encountered. I'm going into it because it's steady work that pays well, the education is chearp/short, is open to alternative therapies and makes real tangible differences in peoples lives. Vance is considering it at this time for the same reasons. I know that like you, I have a lot to offer the world, but I've struggled for years to find my Place, for like you, I've been an Outcast too. Academia is rough road for the Outcast, and V says that's part of why he left when he did, and why in retrospect I'm thankful I didn't get in. What has happened to you is unjust, unfair, infuriating, and will likely continue because of the "fringe" nature of your work. The ivory tower is extremely political and slow to change. It's not going to get any easier.
You're more than welcome to join us in our nursing classes, we both agree you'd make a fantastic critical care nurse or EMT (we've actually talked about this for at least a year now - healing is a magickal art after all). Just throwing that out there, we outcasts have to band together :D
Whatever you choose to do with your life, we'll have your back.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-18 04:17 pm (UTC)I don't know.
But thank you.