What do you do?

Leseratte

Leseratte

Well-known member
errequatro said:
Monsters indeed.
Let me tell you an episode...
In my previous institution in London (Queen Mary University of London), I was teaching a film module about literary adaptation in the Lusophone context.
Everything seemed to be going well, my students gave me stellar reviews on the feedback I got, they were happy, so on...

Then, one day I am called to my Head of Dept.'s office.
And he said that the Professor who was my direct supervisor had raised a complaint against me.... for plagiarism.
It was as if the earth had swallowed me.

Now, at that time I had only published 1 article, in no way related with the Professor's work.
So I was really confused.
And asked for the specifics of the charge....

Turns out that the Professor had gone through my feedback (which is forbidden as only 2 people besides myself could do it) and, even though the results were very good (a majority of "green" in the traffic light system we use to grade modules), she had spotted a comment from a student which said:
"It would be good if the teacher used his own written words to explain the content of the novel "Blindness", by Saramago."

This was in "suggestions" box.

What had happened was that in our last class, which dealt with the novel in question, I asked if, as they should have done, they had read the novel.
They said that no, it was a busy period for them, etc. (which was partly true).
I had prepared a lecture, as usual, with handouts and a power point.

But because they had not read the novel, it would be pointless to go on without them knowing, at least, the basic plot of the novel.
So I told them I was going to use Wikipedia, which had a good synopsis of the novel, so I projected it on the screen.
Of course, I would comment and expand on what the novel entailed, paused for reflections and contextualization, etc.
When that was done, we moved on to my power-point, to class discussion, to actual textual analysis.
At the very end of the class, I dished out the feedback forms for the students to fill out.
And that was that.

Weeks later, I am then called to my Head of Department's office and the case was put to me.
Despite everything - the fact that the professor had access to information she has not supposed to have, the fact that my results had been very good indeed - I was going to be formally accused of plagiarism for having used Wikipedia in class.

This was what my wonderful Professor had to add to a year of work. An accusation of plagiarism... which in academia is the worst accusation one can get. My career would have been over.
This was my first job in academia, my first year as an academic...

In the end, I fought it hard. I had to have all my work inspected by a member of a different department (someone from German), who cleared me from any wrong doing, I had to call my union and had a specialist "case-worker" assigned by them defending me. She was a lawyer, specialist in the field of copyright. And once she heard the accusation for the first time she literally scoffed and said: "Plagiarism? For acknowledged material used in class? Class materials are iterative! It's absurd!".

I won.
Turns out the Professor had priors in harassing co-workers and had been given a restraining order in matters of work "supervision" as she wonderfully put it when defending herself.

As you can imagine, I was exhausted after the whole thing. I was severely depressed and I considered quitting.
Since then, I expect everything from academia. I do it for the love of researching and teaching. That's what keeps me ticking.
Nothing else.
Click to expand...
Caramba!
 
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Cleanthess

Cleanthess

Dinanukht wannabe
Liam and I go wayyy back (Liam was a young pup at the time this photo was taken, and I was a lot skinnier then):
41BcjKgGzvL._AC_.jpg
 
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Patrick Murtha

Patrick Murtha

Reader
I think adulthood was lost on me. I never bought into it and avoided as many of its rites as possible.

I like retirement for many reasons, one being that I seldom got along with employers. Teaching had its moments, but as noted elsewhere in the thread, academic infighting can be very petty, and educational administrations are MUCH worse to work for than for-profit businesses, in my opinion.

Competing-for-dominance-on-the-field-of-professional-power is not my thing in any case. I have a big enough ego but I just don’t CARE.

I had plenty of different “careers” (commercial real estate, writing and reviewing, teaching domestic and international, bookselling, paralegal work, organizational development and corporate education, bartending, retail menswear), so there was variety at least. Of settings, too, I moved around a lot. 90% of the time a solo flyer (and the other 10% best forgotten, I’m not cut out for conventional “relationships”).

I do wish I had “gone international” earlier (I was 51 already when I went to teach in Korea). I should have realized much sooner that there was nothing for me in the US (and I was an American Studies major as an undergrad!). When you live internationally, you are excused from the norms of your native country, and also to an appreciable extent from the norms of your adopted country, since you’re NOT a native. So overall it is very freeing.

The drift of events in the US since 2010 has made me very glad that I got out then.
 
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Patrick Murtha

Patrick Murtha

Reader
^ That side of it was so disappointing to me, not least because it is easy to be lured into petty behavior oneself.

A couple of times during my teaching career, I did have batches of colleagues who were first-rate, and I was grateful for those years. Sometimes you get lucky.

I was happy to have the chance to be a paralegal for a few years in the Eighties, both because it was more lucrative than most things I did AND it put me off the idea of going to law school. Now there is an ugly profession.

In retrospect, I could say that I would have done many things differently, but what would I have done in their place? I probably did reasonably well in the circumstances that presented themselves.

I always think of (and am consoled by) what Fassbinder said about the film frame: “I think that the frame is like life. Life, too, only provides certain opportunities...But I think that film is more honest, because it owns up to being a limited space. Life pretends to provide more opportunities. That’s why it’s a bigger lie.”
 
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Leseratte

Leseratte

Well-known member
Liam said:
I'm in academia right now (albeit as a PhD candidate) and I couldn't agree with you more!! Full of small minded, petty people who like to exert what little power they have, and who love love LOVE to hear themselves talk! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Sadly academic life often depends much more on one having a good personal transit among academics than on ones own intellectual achievements.
 
Patrick Murtha

Patrick Murtha

Reader
Leseratte said:
Sadly academic life often depends much more on one having a good personal transit among academics than on ones own intellectual achievements.
Click to expand...

Very true.

Thinking about these ideas further, I would say that when immersed in fiction, I read about adulthood as an outsider, and one reason I could never be a novelist myself is that I don't have sufficient personal knowledge of it. I am quite serious about this. Like anything, it is both a strength and a weakness.
 
B

Ben Jackson

Well-known member
Patrick Murtha said:
I think adulthood was lost on me. I never bought into it and avoided as many of its rites as possible.

I like retirement for many reasons, one being that I seldom got along with employers. Teaching had its moments, but as noted elsewhere in the thread, academic infighting can be very petty, and educational administrations are MUCH worse to work for than for-profit businesses, in my opinion.

Competing-for-dominance-on-the-field-of-professional-power is not my thing in any case. I have a big enough ego but I just don’t CARE.

I had plenty of different “careers” (commercial real estate, writing and reviewing, teaching domestic and international, bookselling, paralegal work, organizational development and corporate education, bartending, retail menswear), so there was variety at least. Of settings, too, I moved around a lot. 90% of the time a solo flyer (and the other 10% best forgotten, I’m not cut out for conventional “relationships”).

I do wish I had “gone international” earlier (I was 51 already when I went to teach in Korea). I should have realized much sooner that there was nothing for me in the US (and I was an American Studies major as an undergrad!). When you live internationally, you are excused from the norms of your native country, and also to an appreciable extent from the norms of your adopted country, since you’re NOT a native. So overall it is very freeing.

The drift of events in the US since 2010 has made me very glad that I got out then.
Click to expand...

You did so much Pat. But as the semi-literates in my country says "Man must work." Love your experiences though.
 
B

Ben Jackson

Well-known member
Patrick Murtha said:
Very true.

Thinking about these ideas further, I would say that when immersed in fiction, I read about adulthood as an outsider, and one reason I could never be a novelist myself is that I don't have sufficient personal knowledge of it. I am quite serious about this. Like anything, it is both a strength and a weakness.
Click to expand...

Please, Pat, can you explain by the term "reading about adulthood as an outsider." Is it novels in the style of Dostoevesky (say Crime and Punishment or Notes from the Underground)? Novels with solitary characters with a philosophical ambience?
 
Leseratte

Leseratte

Well-known member
Patrick Murtha said:
I think adulthood was lost on me. I never bought into it and avoided as many of its rites as possible.

I like retirement for many reasons, one being that I seldom got along with employers. Teaching had its moments, but as noted elsewhere in the thread, academic infighting can be very petty, and educational administrations are MUCH worse to work for than for-profit businesses, in my opinion.

Competing-for-dominance-on-the-field-of-professional-power is not my thing in any case. I have a big enough ego but I just don’t CARE.

I had plenty of different “careers” (commercial real estate, writing and reviewing, teaching domestic and international, bookselling, paralegal work, organizational development and corporate education, bartending, retail menswear), so there was variety at least. Of settings, too, I moved around a lot. 90% of the time a solo flyer (and the other 10% best forgotten, I’m not cut out for conventional “relationships”).

I do wish I had “gone international” earlier (I was 51 already when I went to teach in Korea). I should have realized much sooner that there was nothing for me in the US (and I was an American Studies major as an undergrad!). When you live internationally, you are excused from the norms of your native country, and also to an appreciable extent from the norms of your adopted country, since you’re NOT a native. So overall it is very freeing.

The drift of events in the US since 2010 has made me very glad that I got out then.
Click to expand...
Coming to think of it, I suppose I avoided any stage of development that came after adolescence. Not physically, that would be impossible. But I come from a Peter Pan generation. And while most of my friends married, took stable jobs, had children and led responsible lives I somehow remained stuck to Peter Pan.
 
Patrick Murtha

Patrick Murtha

Reader
Ben Jackson said:
Please, Pat, can you explain by the term "reading about adulthood as an outsider." Is it novels in the style of Dostoevesky (say Crime and Punishment or Notes from the Underground)? Novels with solitary characters with a philosophical ambience?
Click to expand...

Partly that. But also, and this is specifically “American”, I was not on the inside of the married, childed, house- and new car-buying, defined-by-professional-employment, upper-middle-class-or-bust world so well described by John O’Hara, John P. Marquand, and Louis Auchincloss, three novelists I love, even though I DID have the same educational background as those strivers. So I am definitely outside-looking-in there. Being gay is a small part of that outsiderness, but only a SMALL part. It is more about choices.
 
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Patrick Murtha

Patrick Murtha

Reader
Leseratte said:
Coming to think of it, I suppose I avoided any stage of development that came after adolescence. Not physically, that would be impossible. But I come from a Peter Pan generation. And while most of my friends married, took stable jobs, had children and led responsible lives I somehow remained stuck to Peter Pan.
Click to expand...

I relate.

Simone de Beauvoir once wrote that living “normal life” required so many lies and subterfuges, it would be completely exhausting. ?
 
Patrick Murtha

Patrick Murtha

Reader
One way I look at the competition is this, which I learned as a student at Yale (you get to observe a lot). Never play “the game”. You know, the one where some idiot offspring of an oligarch emerges from the womb with five billion points, and you start with zero and have to try and catch up. That game is for SUCKERS. Make your life about something else.
 
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