This these are some biggies. Cover letters. Personal essays for applications to scholarships. Writing our bios for when we submit for publication.
It sounds daunting to me. Mystical. And it should be the furthest thing from it. So I want to share our experiences somewhat. We’re all working on a teaching philosophy in 6700 and all that theory is super but I want to know approaches to the businessy side of things. I’ll look in your posts for advice but anything I find I’ll post about.
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Actually about teaching, though, for reals.
I’ve been looking at the ideological kerfuffle, the sudden urge to teach ideology. Yes we need to talk about this. Sure. And I think that’ll have to come through from now on in our professional communications for a time to come. Do I need to only talk about my commonalities with the university’s ideology? What if I see things as systemically fucked and I’m trying to be the bug in the machine but not the rabbit eating the power cables? Forget about it in the classroom and in the office and in all my professional communications? I’m beginning to see that will be a fun, essential thing to consider before acting, but will come at the cost of there being times I won’t want to hold back. We’re freaking out about Trump right now and how he narrowly lost the popular vote. Now all these proud closet Trumpers and bona fide evangelists (I use this word to rag on the god-emperor jokes themselves), too are feeling like they won, and they did. But we think the people who won don’t like us, our peoples, or at least don’t vote that way.
And in case you haven’t read this, here’s a decent spot to start considering what you align with in academe-politics: http://www.chronicle.com/article/What-Now-/238422
It’s there even if you did read it, too. It doesn’t go away.