“Is it okay?” asks the German waitress who’s just served me sparkling water (1.70 €) instead of tap water. Of course it’s okay! By all means, take my change in Euros while I negotiate my personal existential crisis with regards to the gold standard of higher education.
What am I doing here? Cloistered in an undergraduate student dorm room I’m subletting from a French teenager, drinking instant coffee from a chipped mug advertising Nescafe, picking through a bag of museli for nutrients; I’m grumpy, jet-lagged, and have gotten none of my own work done since I arrived. Skype has replaced Facebook as my most-clicked icon, and I check my email obsessively. After three years of extreme joy living in Vancouver as a vibrant social being, I’m taking to my hermitage with a paradoxical kind of self-indulgent gusto. Everything, and I mean everything, is grounds for the most Harley-esque sentimental tears. I recognize that this is ridiculous.
Why did it happen? Months ago, more than a year ago in fact, when my supervisor offered up the experience of doing research in Germany as something that would aid my studies, it sounded like the ideal adventure. First, Romantic Aesthetics is the backbone of my dissertation. Investigations into formal lowering (or what I’m framing as the poetry of expressive letdown) in Hölderlin and Goethe comprise one half of my chapters. (The other half looks at Keats and Wordsworth). Second, I love Germany and Germanic culture. I even love German, which gets lambasted for not being such a romantic-sounding language as French or Italian. Finally, moving to Germany for six months kick-started a couple of personal goals I’d been thinking about passively for years: obtaining my Austrian citizenship and EU passport.
What does it all mean? To be “on exchange” begs the question, for what? For what have I exchanged one living situation for another? For an education, for an experience, for some privileged form of self-improvement, perhaps. To be exchanged brings to mind transactions, negotiations, and currencies; trades, loans, and valuations of all sorts; currents of people circling the globe like so many over-caffeinated commodities. In which case, perhaps it is not my living situation that has been exchanged but me. Baby Scholar AbroadTM, complete with laptop and moleskin. To act completely self-indulgent, as I’m currently doing, is to evacuate myself of any agency in this situation and blame the trade winds of academia for my having landed here.
Yet, this melancholy state is also a creative one, and it’s reminding me of something important that I’d been forgetting—something that I think remains at the forefront of the European mindset—which is that being uncomfortable keeps you alert. Living in cramped quarters, brushing up against people from all over the Continent and, at least in the University dorms, from all over the world, and trying to communicate across languages and cultures… all these day-to-day challenges disallow complacency. In Vancouver I’m very busy but I’m also very comfortable. Here, I’m getting lost, accidentally buying expensive sparkling water, communicating very poorly, problem-solving, learning, and busy as usual, which seems paradoxically to reinforce my belief that there is always enough time, that patience is more important than expedience, and that fidelity to the work will lead to its completion, so there’s no need to rush.
I’ve been here in Konstanz a week, and I’ll be here for many more.
***
About: Carmen Faye Mathes is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. Carmen studies Romantic aesthetics and the poetry of expressive let-down in William Wordsworth, Keats, Hölderlin and Goethe. Her dissertation asks how disappointing poetry reflects or responds to principles of aesthetic apprehension in Romantic-era Britain and Germany.
Carmen’s blog, the academic romantic, is a rich resource and features interviews with contemporary Canadian poets.
'Tis The Season to Apply for Research Fellowships
It’s that time of year… and no, I don’t mean for busting out the Holiday music (for that please refrain until after Thanksgiving. Thank you.). This, my friends, is the season to consider applying for research fellowships! With so many thrilling archives around, full of material ripe for analysis, it would really be a shame for scholars like us not to use them in our research—especially because libraries often offer us money to do so! Both short- and long-term fellowships are available at many major libraries and archives, and although some of these are reserved for scholars who already have their doctorate degrees, others specifically aim to help PhD candidates complete their dissertations or research for a specific article they plan to publish.
Of course, to get a fellowship you have to apply, and the competition is stiff—which is exactly the reason I’m posting about it right now. If you’ve found a specific archive with which you want to spend some quality time, it behooves you to start NOW, drafting your application and asking people to write your letters of recommendation. For the libraries I’ve looked at, most fellowship application deadlines fall between December 1st and March 1st.
I’m still new to writing research fellowship applications myself, but I’ll pass along a few pieces of advice I’ve been counseled to keep in mind. They’re pretty intuitive, but worth mentioning nevertheless.
First, define your target. There’s no sense in visiting a specific archive if it doesn’t have the materials that will be useful to you, or if those materials are also available somewhere closer to home. Also, libraries will see no sense in supporting your visit if you don’t have a specific project for which to use their materials. Thus, it’s imperative that you clearly articulate both the nature of your specific research project, and what role the library’s holdings play within that project. The former is (I think) one of the most challenging things we do in this profession, but the latter is pretty easy to manage: comb through the library catalogues and start making lists of items you would look at if you could. Although many library catalogues are not comprehensive, searching them and making wishlists will help you get the lay of the land, so to speak, and plan future academic projects and research trips, whether or not you get the fellowship. In your application, mention some of these specific items from your list (and check in Worldcat to make sure they’re not also at the library of your home institution!).
Second, know your audience. Most committees assessing applications consist of librarians whose job it is to match their knowledge of the library’s holdings to projects that will use these holdings to develop exciting new ideas. Even if readers do have training in your field, it is unlikely that they will be experts in your specific area. Therefore, your project description should eschew all jargon, so as to be lucid and interesting to an intelligent general reader. Preserve your sense of the project’s intervention and be specific about what’s at stake, but craft it for people who are not necessarily Romanticists. (This is a useful skill to hone for the job market as well!).
Third, write with authority. While avoiding jargon, show that you have a solid understanding of what your work will accomplish, as well as the competence to accomplish it. Avoid passive voice: instead of saying “It will be demonstrated that…,” go for “I will demonstrate that….”.
Fourth, specify expected outcomes. What will this fellowship enable you to do? Finish a chapter? Complete an article for publication? You don’t need more than a sentence or two, but you should show that your research will result in production of a tangible piece of scholarship. Your readers aren’t going to pay you just to think about stuff—they need to know your work is going somewhere.
Fifth, organize, organize, organize. Most of these applications are quite short, meaning you must pack a serious punch in very few words. Have a thesis statement, clearly articulate your project’s intervention and importance in your field, and be as clear and precise as possible. Ask colleagues and professors to read your proposal, and then be willing to revise (sometimes repeatedly). Again, whether or not you get the fellowship, this process is useful just for your yourself! It will help you comb through the tangled web of thoughts and find the golden thread that holds it all together—the ultimate quest of any project, right?
There are big, comprehensive archives, and small, specialized archives, so I thought we could start building a list of favorites! Below I provide links to three fellowship-offering biggies: huge institutions with something for everyone. But there are so many others! If you know of a great archive, or have experience using it (like Michele at the Huntington, or Jacob at the Yale Center for British Art, or Kelli at the British Library), please leave a note in the comments!
Newberry Library (Chicago, IL) – Dec. 12, 2011
Huntington Library (San Marino, CA) – Dec 15, 2011
Beinecke Library (Yale) – March 2, 2012 (also, they have a Fall application in October)
Others for you to look up, or comment on: New York Public Library, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, The American Antiquarian Society, Winterthur Library, the Library Company of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Dumbarton Oaks Library, the Getty Research Institute, Kew Library (Royal Botanic Gardens), RHS Lindley Library. . . .
Again, we’d love to hear your recommendations or personal experiences with any useful archives! Thanks for sharing.
Happy Application Days to All!
-Kelli
This Little Graddie Went to Market…
Preparing for and Navigating the Job Market: Roundtable from NASSR Conference, August 2011
If you were at the NASSR conference last month, and happened to attend the job-market roundtable organized by the NGSC, then this post will be old news…but we figured there are at least some of you who want to know all the good advice! For all their wisdom, pragmatic counsel, and encouragement, special thanks again goes to all our panelists: Alan Bewell, Julie Carlson, Frances Ferguson, William Galperin, Jonathan Mulrooney, and Juan Sanchez. To protect the innocent, I’ve detached their names from the information below; please note that these are MY interpretations of what was said, edited and rearranged for your convenience. May they prove useful to all those currently preparing to go on the job market, and to all of us hoping to get there soon!
-Kelli
Choosing between a postdoc and the job market
The Postdoc offers certain advantages over the job market. It is generally much easier to get than a tenure-track position. However, there are many kinds of postdocs, and you might find yourself with a kind of postdoc that you don’t really want; some will help you more than others to prepare for jobs. The best kinds of postdocs are the ones that allow you to do research and get out some publications (these are generally 2-3 year postdocs).
Postdocs are also more difficult to apply for than jobs. The job letter can describe your research and experience very broadly and can be used on several applications; postdocs tend to have very specified requirements that often result in more time and effort invested; you have to write several very different applications, rather than one that can be tailored to many. Second, postdocs often want you to describe a NEW project: they don’t want you to go and finish your book; they want you to work on producing something new. This means you will be pitching two book ideas. Of course, when you go into the job market, you CAN say that you used the postdoc to develop a second book project, and you will have something to show for it…and this puts you in a really great position.
With the postdoc market, you may have more success because host institutions are interested in you developing new ideas and projects however you want to. In a job situation, you have to fit in to the department, and you will need to fit your projects to the departmental needs.
Format of the Job Letter and the Dissertation Abstract
These are THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS YOU WILL EVER PRODUCE IN YOUR CAREER! They will absorb hours and hours of your time, but you should recognize that time as a worthwhile investment. Nothing will affect your future prospects so much as these two documents. There is a standard tripartite form in the job letter, and you should adhere to it. You don’t want anything quirky or grandstanding. The entire letter should NEVER, under any circumstances, be longer than two pages.
Part 1: Announce your application to the job, and make clear your suitability for the position advertised. Show that you can operate from the center, rather than the periphery. Show that you are aware of their needs, and indicate your suitability to meet those needs.
Part 2: Describe your dissertation. This will naturally be the most difficult paragraph, and you should be prepared to make 8-10 revisions!
Part 3: Indicate your teaching experience. Every school, whether they are a research university or a teaching university, will employ you as a teacher, and they want to know that you have experience and enthusiasm for it. (see “Teaching,” below.)
To conclude, your last few sentences should declare your availability for an interview.
Getting Help and Guidance with the Letter, Abstract, and Interviews
The placement committee at your university can help a lot by giving practice interviews, mentoring, pairing a job candidate with a faculty member who is NOT on their committee (who can thus see with fresh eyes, like the people on hiring committees). If you can arrange such a pairing, you should meet with this person on multiple occasions. From a student’s perspective, this can be a very irritating experience, and may seem pointless, and it might feel infantilizing. It’s alienating labor for everyone involved, but everyone needs to be cheerful and grateful for it… and it can make a HUGE difference!
When to go on the job market
When to go on the market depends on where you are with your dissertation. For the most part, you should NOT go on the market unless you are done with your dissertation, or very nearly done. If you are an exception to this, let your advisor tell you that you are! You need to be at a point when you can talk about your work with confidence, both in the broadest terms, and in the 11-second elevator conversation. It’s up to you to figure out whether you want to do a “trial year;” but recognize that this will take lots of time that can feel slightly arbitrary, and it might be a better use of your time to move forward with your dissertation. It is indeed a useful exercise, but it is more useful at certain times than at others. Be discriminate.
How to interview and give a job talk (at MLA, or a campus visit)
Interviews are formal moments, and you should dress up – but you should also be comfortable! You should not be distracted by your clothing, and neither should others. Poise is also important; sustain it as best you can through all events, but especially make sure you have at least 15-30 minutes alone before your talk to gather yourself and your thoughts.
Clarity and conciseness are your best friends. You must learn to articulate quickly and clearly what you are “about.” Learn who you will be speaking to, what the format is, and what will be expected of you (your advisor can help you find these things out.) Keep in mind that you will be talking to non-specialists in your field. You don’t need to dilute yourself and open yourself up to super-broad questions you can’t handle, but you want to give the broadest possible range of your work and its relevance. Show that you know the specifics, but that you can participate in the larger conversation. Your originality is most apparent in the CLARITY with which you articulate your ideas, NOT that you are the first person ever to think about them. Avoid vague sloppy verbs like “negotiate”, “through the lens of,” or “this is a moment where…”
The quality of your research will probably be much like that of other candidates. In the interview, the committee will probably not ask you much about your dissertation itself; they will want to know how it fits in with the larger academic conversation, the limits of your project, etc. Also, the committee won’t know anything you haven’t told them in your application letter, and in the interview they will want to know about your wider academic interests.
Have Fun!! We all got into this profession because we enjoy it! That’s not to say that you don’t act rigorously professional, but in an interview you should communicate not only what you know, but HOW you know! The people who are interviewing you want you to succeed; you don’t have to convince them that you have the intellectual goods; they already think you do because they invited you! You are a colleague. Keep in mind that it is a conversation! The more it becomes a conversation, the less it becomes an interrogation…you win! If the committee is having fun, it will make a difference. Be human. Respond to questions as they occur, but keep it natural. This isn’t Trivial Pursuit. It’s okay to acknowledge when you don’t know something; keep in mind that such times are opportunities that demonstrate how you think about new ideas. Don’t be afraid to risk some intellectual playfulness. You can go out on a limb and have conversations, and be willing to stretch yourself.
It’s not always all about you. There is a good chance that at least one person on the committee will be crazy, and not necessarily liked by their colleagues… there are dynamics going on, like when you go to Thanksgiving with your in-laws. J Not everything that goes on between the people there has to do with you.
Both research and teaching are important. Don’t assume too much about what a school wants, based on its reputation as a research institution or liberal arts college. Always be prepared to talk about both your teaching and your research, and how they integrate. This will serve you well no matter what kind of institution you apply to.
Teaching – It is SO important!
Different universities may have different degrees of emphasis on research, but they ALL will emphasize teaching! In order to get an interview, you do have to have a strong letter and strong research; that is, teaching will not get you the interview. However, once you GET the interview, your teaching experience will often get you the job. Make teaching matter to you as a graduate student, and make sure you get experience with it. Don’t treat it simply as a part-time side job that you put second to your research. Make sure someone writes a letter of reference that can say something about your teaching. Invite a faculty advisor to observe you, so they can write with real knowledge.
Make teaching important to you in the interview. YOU can bring it up! Ask questions about teaching. Take time to find out about the kinds of courses offered at the university. Put together some sample syllabi, and be prepared (and excited) to talk about them. When you are talking to the director of undergraduate studies, teaching will be particularly important.
At this point in your career, a teaching portfolio is not really necessary, but you may want to leave some samples of courses you have taught or would like to teach with the committee. However, don’t make the mistake of giving the committee too many papers before or during the interview…. You want them looking at YOU, not at the six syllabi that you have constructed. Try to focus on perhaps one course that you might teach, and talk about it.
How to demonstrate your teaching skills at a campus visit
The job talk will likely be your most important teaching moment. Approach it like a teacher. Imagine the talk like a seminar, in which a lot of ideas are discussed, and everyone feels they’ve been engaged in an important exploration. Then, think of the Q&A as a class about your paper, with you as the teacher! Keep in mind that many search committees are new to the process too, and they sometimes fumble. So, YOU are the teacher. Find ways to let them know the important things about you. Take control in a diplomatic way to make it work; find creative ways to engage with difficult people. You’re at the beginning of your career, and no committee is under the impression that you aren’t! They are looking for potential, for how you organize your thoughts and think on your feet, and how much you respect the ideas of others, and yourself.
It sometimes happens that interviewers set up a sort of artificial class in which to observe you. IF this happens, discuss interesting and relevant things, listen to and interact with students, and finish on time.
How to act once you might have an offer.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. A job offer is just a gleam in the eye of a department and a candidate until an official letter arrives from the university. Until then, sit tight and be patient; don’t start asking questions about employment benefits and all those details. You can do that later.
Once you have your official offer (and if you have only one), you should feel free to ask for some time to deliberate. This is the time to inquire about various policies, money issues, and to make it known that taking the job might complicate your family situation. Through all the discussions, stay focused on the most important goal: a good situation over the long future. Don’t compromise your future relationship with your colleagues by being a tough negotiator.
If you have more than one offer, you should inform the chairs of both departments, so they can talk to each other.
If you don’t get a job offer, makes notes about the process while your memory is fresh. Review your experiences and your materials. Take a little time to remind yourself that jobs are hard to come by, and that it may not be your fault…then read something fabulous to cheer yourself up. 🙂
Q&A:
How is the job situation in Romanticism particularly?
Sometimes, Romanticism can get swallowed up by scholars of 18th or 19th centuries… romanticism does seem still to be regarded as its own “thing,” and as a component of an expertise, it still has a lot of traction. The field seems to have been quite agile in adapting itself to academic categories, without losing its identity.
Should Romanticists spin themselves for 18th-century or Victorian jobs? And if so, how?
Most importantly, you should make your own intellectual center very clear and honest. You can speculate out loud in your letter about ways that you might pedagogically fulfill the university’s needs, but don’t fake it. Be yourself, and be honest. If the university wants 100 years, that’s probably a teaching mandate, not a research mandate. They just want to know if you can teach stuff from a full century. As long as your research is interesting and worthwhile, and you can teach about a century of stuff, you’ll probably be fine.
Do interviews really sometimes happen in hotel bedrooms at MLA?
There are some regulations trying to be put in place, but you may have to be creatively professional. Don’t underestimate search committees’ bad behavior; awkward things may happen! Make sure that you have enough time between interviews, even if they are in the same hotel, or in the same city. If you are late, the committee won’t adjust their whole schedule for you.
Some departments are shifting to phone interviews, skype interviews, or interviews that happen even before MLA?
For better or worse, MLA is losing its centrality and control over the hiring process, and this does make expectations much less clear. The “rules” set up by the MLA are voluntary, and universities can choose whether to participate. Videoconferencing offers many advantages: not everyone can go to the MLA, you can reach internationally much more easily, and whole committees can be present. We are moving into an era in which this will be more and more common, and more important to think about. Check into what videoconferencing options are available to you, and learn how to use them!
For those interviews/offers that occur before MLA, you can ask for some time to consider, at least until after MLA.
Skype interviews and phone interviews present a different set of challenges from in-person interviews, and you should definitely practice for them. Especially practice when to know you should STOP talking. Practice pausing 30 seconds into a response, to watch/listen for cues that others might want to redirect or jump in. Practice putting your thoughts in order, so that if you get cut off, you have communicated the important information! In a phone interview, it might be good to talk explicitly about the process, and invite the interviewee to break in, or to expect pauses from you. It might be good to call your own voice mail, and practice talking to a machine for a limited amount of time!
In Skype interviews, be aware of the background you set up in your screen shot…there are lots of possibilities, and you can give people insight into the kind of person you are (both good and bad). This is risky, though, and a neutral environment is probably best.
Should we devote our greatest energies toward publishing, or toward finishing and polishing our dissertation?
There’s no question that having a well-placed article will speak well for you. However, the main decision is based on a very careful and scrupulous reading of the writing sample that you send in. The published article can be very powerful window-dressing, and it puts you into a different echelon of candidates…but your submitted writing sample will be most important.
If your dissertation project is under revision, and you think of it more as a manuscript than as a dissertation, how do you talk about it – as your book, or your dissertation?
Committees want to know how close you are to finishing; they don’t want to see that your project is continually evolving into nowhere. Be specific about what parts are truly finished. (Did you finish the dissertation, and now you are beginning the book manuscript?) The committee might ask “what are your plans for your dissertation”? You have two options; you can turn it into a book, or chop it up into 3-4 essays. Once you graduate, your dissertation is finished and done. If you’re at that stage, talk about your book project, not your dissertation. Talking about the book project allows you to talk about the dissertation without actually saying it. Committees aren’t expecting you to have your book already accepted by a press, and even having a book may not always work to you advantage. It is just one of many, many factors. Just do the best you can to present yourself as honestly as possible. Keep in mind that when a university hires someone to tenure-track, they’re imagining hiring you for 40 years. The big picture is the most important. Keep your perspective.
If you’ve been NOT getting hired for a long time, and you’ve been adjuncting for ever, is there a point when you should cut your losses and consider other careers? Is there a point when you’re just going to look stale, compared to other candidates?
Because the job market is tough, you are not going to look stale as fast as perhaps in the past…but you should be honest with yourself, and decide what your own psychological stamina is up for. It is tough, and you will need to look inside yourself and decide what’s right for you. BUT, don’t make a quick decision and get down on yourself too easily; be realistic about the fact that it may take 2-3 years to find a tenure-track position. Recognize that such delays don’t necessarily mean that your work is not up to par. Stay focused on what matters, and what makes you happy about your work – the research, the teaching, etc.
What other sorts of academic jobs are available? And if you get an “alternate” kind of academic job, does it hurt your chances of going back on the market for a job as a professor?
In some ways, it depends on what you’re doing. Some “alternate” jobs are perfect fits for the particular professorship. And it IS important to think about alternate jobs too. We are multiply talented people, despite being very focused…and sometimes developing ourselves on other disciplines can make our minds more fluid and mobile in terms of how we envision ourselves.
Next Thursday 8/11, 10:30am: "The Job Market" Roundtable at NASSR
“The Job Market” — NASSR Day 1: Thursday, August 11, 10:30am.
The NASSR Graduate Student Caucus is proud to present a roundtable on the job market. Come hear luminaries in our field give us critical advice on how to land the positions we’ve worked so hard for.
Speakers and topics include:
Alan Bewell (University of Toronto): Teaching issues.
Teaching portfolio: What should be included? How do you
demonstrate you are a good teacher?
Julie Carlson (University of California, Santa Barbara): When
is it best to go on the job market, before or after you are
finished with your dissertation? The MLA interview: what to
expect. Some tips regarding a good job talk, what to wear,
the importance of the question period, etc.
Frances Ferguson (Johns Hopkins University): What to do if
you get a job offer? How job candidates should talk about
their personal situations with prospective employers. Job
negotiations. What can you negotiate? leave? A prestigious
postdoc? Perhaps also something might be said about how one
should understand things if you do not end up with a job offer
or a campus visit.
William Galperin (Rutgers University, New Brunswick): The job
letter and the dissertation abstract. Genre of the job
letter: What should be in a job letter? What should not? What
are some viable formulas? Should we follow the standard format
(dissertation description,teaching experience, etc.)?
Jonathan Mulrooney (College of the Holy Cross): Interviewing
tips, as well as preparation for campus visits. (differences
between research universities, liberal arts colleges,
colleges, etc.)
Juan Sanchez (UCLA): sharing his recent job market experience
and post doc advice.
See you there!
Life of the Mind – and Body
Ah, Summertime… that magical season when the New Year’s resolutions we made so many months ago to eat healthier and get more exercise become infinitely more feasible (and enjoyable), and when our motivation to do so is exponentially increased by the very real chance we will be wearing a swimsuit in public. The weather in Colorado has been beautiful these last couple of weeks; the glorious morning sunshine seems perfect for a run, and the fantastic afternoon thunderstorms beckon me to throw the windows open for the fresh air and natural yoga soundtrack. My husband, the man who loathes (and I mean loathes) exercise, is suddenly super-jazzed about P90X—such is the power of summer.
“But wait!,” you say—“Kelli, this isn’t a fitness blog! What does exercise have to do with studying Romanticism?” Stick with me; this isn’t just a tangent based on my (ahem) slightly greater desire to be outside on a bike than working on my prospectus. It’s actually inspired by some advice from one of my faculty advisors. Our university had been bringing in several potential new hires for job talks, and we happened to be chatting about the incredibly demanding schedule facing the candidates. We joked for a minute about training for interviews like training for a marathon, and suddenly she got serious and said, “I’m not kidding. In the time leading up to interviews is not the time to stop working out.” At first I was surprised by this, but after pondering it for several weeks, it makes complete sense. We might think we live the life of the mind, but the truth is, our schedules and work habits can be quite taxing on our bodies—and taking care of our bodies can indeed make us better at our jobs.
Now, I don’t have to tell you that academia and fitness don’t exactly go together like peas and carrots. We all know that we spend long hours hunched over computers, books, and stacks of essays. Chances are we also tend to over-caffeinate in order to make it through those long hours, and as a result might have trouble getting good sleep when we finally hit the sack. If we commute long distances or have to eat in a hurry, our food choices will probably not be great, and at the end of a day like that, exercising and cooking real food might be the last things we want to do. Yet it’s exactly these propensities that make building fitness and nutrition into our habits all the more crucial.
Let me be clear: though we all like to see a chili pepper or two next to our names on RateMyProfessor.com, this isn’t about looking hot (though if you’re lucky, hotness may be a side effect). It’s about taking care of ourselves so we can meet the demands of our profession, both now and long into the future, while feeling strong, happy, and more balanced. In case you need convincing, Let’s explore some of the ways good nutrition and exercise can directly affect our careers for the best:
- Energy. Dynamic teaching, mindful grading, attentive research, and mind-blowing writing/revision all require energy! So do patience, friendliness, and gregariousness, qualities bound to shine through in job interviews and administrative duties. Both the tangibles and intangibles we get judged on in our work can only be improved by our having more energy–and real, long-term, sustainable energy comes from fueling our bodies with nutritious foods, and strengthening them with basic fitness.
- Brainpower. I don’t know about you, but I come across a LOT of studies exploring how children’s diets can affect their performance in school. What we may not think about as often, is that food and brainpower are still connected when we grow up! Check out some of the research HERE. None of it is particularly surprising; eating a variety of whole grains, fruits and veggies, lean meats and dairy, good fats, and not too much sugar seems to be best for both brain and body. Exercise has repeatedly been shown to help too, including breathing, stretching, and meditation (yes, I’m counting meditation as an exercise).
- Greater ability to prevent and combat repetitive stress injuries. Better posture, muscle tone, and overall body awareness might seem like nice but inessential little things, but they can help combat some of the most common ailments facing people in our line of work: repetitive stress injuries to the back, neck, wrists, elbows, and knees. We get these injuries from slouching over our computers for hours at a time, and for regularly carrying around bags laden with laptops and books. You can train yourself to recognize when you’re straining your body, and adopt some basic preventative measures. The stronger muscle tone you develop from regular exercise means you’ll have the strength to sit up straight and carry your backpack properly. All those in favor of avoiding slipped disks please say “Aye.”
- Greater ability to connect with the realities of Romantic-period life. Okay, maybe this is a stretch…but I just got back from a research trip to England, and I must say that some of the greatest moments of connection I’ve felt to Romantic-period writers came while hiking in the Lake District, or tromping across miles of public-access pathway in the Midlands. Middle- and working-class folk of the Romantic period walked miles every day, a reality hard for us to connect with unless we do it once in awhile. Our bodies will learn things our brains alone cannot. Of course, we don’t need to live exactly like someone in the 18th-century to understand or appreciate the conditions in which they wrote (thank goodness!), but if we get the chance to feel, with our own feet, what it’s like to walk from village to village, or across a moor while avoiding sheep-dung, or up a rugged granite peak in the rain, we want to be ready for it!
Of course there are myriad other benefits to good nutrition and exercise, and you probably hear about them often enough that you can chant them in your sleep. Chances are, you already have some sort of fitness regime that appeals to you, and some goals in mind. However, I know I always like suggestions, and since minimal investments in equipment and gym fees are a must for graddies on tight budgets, here are a few effective things you can do on the cheap!
- Walk more. Park further away from your destination. Take the stairs. Even talking your “evening constitutional”, as one friend calls it, around the block will help clear your mind, get your blood flowing, and burn a few calories. Enjoy the natural world around you—it’s summer, for crying out loud!
- Take advantage of your university’s or community’s rec center. Some U-recs offer free classes to faculty and staff (if you happen to fit in that category), and in any case, whatever fees they charge are probably cheaper than your local gym.
- Find a friend to work out with, or make friends while you work out. If you know you’re meeting up with someone, you’re far more likely to fight the impulse to skip. If you can’t find a workout buddy, taking a class can be an excellent way to meet people and make friends—combatting feelings of isolation that can sometimes accompany folks in our line of work, especially when we feel it’s taking over our lives. Jogging groups and community or club sports teams abound; check out your local Craigslist, or community rec centers.
- Find an activity you enjoy! Yoga might not be your thing, but you may love racquetball or swimming or hiking. If you think it’s fun, chances are, you’ll keep doing it! All the better if it’s free.
- Find things that you can work regularly into your schedule. This is where walking makes a lot of sense, but check your local library or Goodwill for workout DVDs, and look for free workout videos on YouTube or HULU.
- Make a goal – do something you never thought you could! Confession: after finishing my Master’s, the combined stress of school and the termination of a sad relationship saw me quite overweight. I hated running (hated!), but decided I would sign up for a 5k. And you know what? I did it! And I felt so proud of myself that I signed up for another! My next nemesis to conquer was biking; I was terrified of it! But I made 2007 my “year of the bike,” and started small by taking a spinning class (mostly so that when jumping on a real bike, I knew I could make it to the top of my street). I’m a terrible swimmer, but In 2008 I did my first mini-triathlon, accompanied by my 66-year-old mother (and by ‘mini’ I mean shorter than sprint-distance). These things have built up a whole different side of my confidence, including my confidence on the job. They were hard, but SO COOL. Also a bit addicting. Believe me, if I can do these things, you can too! Races can be expensive, but they give you a concrete goal with a deadline, a built-in cheering section, and something awesome to post on Facebook when you finish, so you may find them worth the occasional investment.
- Find ways to eat right. This is really such a personal issue, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m not always very good at it. We all have different habits, and foods that we like or dislike, or ethically oppose, or can’t digest. Still, it is imperative that we find ways to eat healthy and nutritious foods that fit our needs even on a busy schedule. That schedule is probably never going to change, right?—at least not if we get those jobs we’re working so hard to prepare for. Thus, we must take stock now of the ways we eat, and improve them (ideally through lifestyle changes rather than diets). Do your research! There are plenty of online resources to aid with this, but one little thing that helps me a lot is to make sure I pack easy, healthy snacks with me when I head to campus. To me, “easy” means minimal preparation, and “healthy” means that the food provides nutrients, fiber, protein, and not too much sugar or saturated fat. Nuts, seeds, fresh fruit, dried fruit, raw veggies, string cheese, yogurt, and bars with easily-recognizable ingredients and not too much sugar make good candidates. If you balk at spending $1.50 on a Larabar, and have access to some form of blender or food processor, look up a recipe and make your own! Good times.
Ultimately I’m no fitness guru, and my own beach body will still be staying far away from a bikini, thanks. For sound, research-backed advice on fitness and nutrition, you’ll definitely want to look for better sources than this blog! However, I don’t have to be a superathlete to know that when I’m exercising and eating right, I feel happier, stronger, and sharper, and I have a lot more energy (except, you know, after a workout when I drag my sweaty, red-faced, frumpy body back to my house and lay face-down on my floor because I can’t make it to my bed). I also (minus aforementioned moments) feel a lot more attractive, even if my appearance hasn’t changed. Whether or not I still have pounds to lose is beside the point; exercising and eating right means I have increased energy to do my very best, greater capacity to remember what I study, and more confidence to look people in the eye, flash a brilliant smile, and know I’m worth paying attention to—in my teaching, my research, my writing, and my job applications. Win, win, win.
I hope you all have a great summer getting out into the sunshine (or into an air-conditioned gym), and working on your own resolutions! If you have a fitness/nutrition tip that has made your academic life even a little bit better lately, please share it in the comments below! Then, pat yourself on the shoulder for doing something that’s good both for the mind and the body. Way to go, superstar!
-Kelli
My First Acquaintance with Visual Artists & Ballerinas in Eugene
Looking back, each term of my first year of grad school has offered its own distinct set of lessons. This quarter, after some really good experiences, I’ve realized just how crucial it can be to connect not only with like-minded passionate scholars in the field, but with contemporary practicing artists as well. As a result, I’ve arrived at a greater appreciation of the importance of getting outside my own work, concerned as it is with art and literature of the historical past, to interact and network with creative minds working today, particularly those with similar interests in critical theory. Early on in the term I had the opportunity to to see the Eugene Ballet Company’s final performance of the season that featured a visually stunning experimental performance called Tyranny of the Senses. Later, for this year’s University of Oregon Art History Symposium, we hosted an artist’s talk given by a really fabulous performative video installation artist and sculptress Faye Mullen (MFA Student, University of Toronto) who spoke on one of her latest video pieces, to never forever-à jamais. I’ve included examples of both here in hopes that some of you might take a moment to look at the works and respond as well, being that it is after all (and at last) summer break.
Also, on your end, I’m interested in seeing you all comment on a couple of other things:
(1) The type of interchange that occurs in your respective departments between creative writers and literary historians. If there isn’t any, would this be something you’d find desirable?
(2) Whether or not you feel that you’ve benefited from exchanges across the divide between creative writers/artists and scholars.
In Lawrence Hall–at the UofO–us cultural historians are definitely very much the minority. We’re surrounded by architects and artists working in a variety of media, running the gamut from printmaking, metalwork/jewelery, new media, to painting. Oftentimes, even in Art History seminars, we’re outnumbered by architects and artists. I feel as though I’ve really benefited from a dialogue between those who study art and those who create it. So, I’d definitely love to hear whether or not there are similar dynamics that go on in English graduate programs.
That said, to share a couple specific works with you all, I have to say that I’m totally captivated by choreographer Gillmer Duran and composer Brian McWhorter’s Tyranny of the Senses. The ballet left an indelible impression on me for the way it collides contemporary dance, projected images, and a soundtrack that pans intensely across the stereo-field (think U2-Joshua Tree).
One of the things I’ve found most exciting, in chatting with a couple ballerinas from the company that have subsequently become a part of my core group of grad school friends, is the recognition that shared concerns on both sides of the scholarly/artistic divide can really line up. Since my interests in critical theory are primarily geared towards understanding the process by which works generate their meanings through continuing processes of (reader/viewer)ly interaction, I was most struck by a conversation I recently had with one of the ballerinas who talked about the way Duran’s work created a space in which she and the other dancers are actively encouraged to re-interpret each individual performance through their own acts of improvisation against the ballet’s multimedia elements. For me, it was really cool to see that the post-structural concepts we’re exposed to as scholars actually do resonate with the ways in which contemporary practicing artists working in a variety of media think about their own work.
Lastly, and along these same lines, I thought it a good idea to share with you all Faye Mullen’s work (given that it engendered such a good discussion at this year’s grad symposium up here) (fig. 1; For a 9 minute excerpt of the 52 minute piece, please click here.) In my view, Mullen’s art really engages some crucially important issues related to the contemporary domestic-sphere that, because of its embodied exploration of identity, for me recalls Mary Wolstonecraft’s ideas concerning the detrimental way dependence of mind and body are integrally related. I found it interesting in talking with her after the talk that theory still drives work on both sides of the artist/scholar divide. At least in Canada, artists are strongly encouraged to deploy theory in explaining their art when applying for public grant funding. What really impressed me was that, while some artists react negatively to such a demand playing being placed on their work, others view it as a challenge that can spark the absorption of additional layers of creativity into their artistic practice, something that I imagine resonates with the way many of us might view the role and continued relevancy of critical theory within the humanities.
Increasingly, I’m realizing that the divide between scholarly and creative work runs even thinner that I’ve initially believed. Hope you enjoy taking a look at these works, as I have, and I strongly encourage comments, since I’d love nothing more than to continue the conversation.
The Myth of Summer Vacation
This time of year I am regularly regarded by my friends and family outside of academia as someone who is “off for the summer.” In my imagination, someone who is off for the summer gets a tan from working or playing in the yard during the day, kicks back on her front porch to enjoy a refreshing iced tea with her favorite lazy reading, takes her dog for hikes, and has the time to organize her closets and rid her house of the things that she hasn’t used since who knows when (and promptly takes them to the local Goodwill or Salvation Army to prevent further consideration). I often find myself frustrated when others imply that my job as a graduate teaching assistant affords me this sort of luxury. On the other hand, I recognize how fortunate I am to be away from the office for three months or so (that is, if I am not teaching a summer course or finding some other office to call home for a brief stint). If doing so is financially feasible, I do not have to teach a single class or report to the office for meetings until August; unquestionably, this is a privilege—a privilege that few fields offer.
Recent discussions here at the NGSC blog regarding the potential for academics to constantly be “on the clock” have me thinking about the relationship between work and summer (thanks Brittany Pladek!). Despite the seemingly popular notion that we all spend our summers “off,” as Kelli Towers Jasper pointed out, summer often means finding a way to pay the bills. We graduate students work odd jobs, pick up a summer class, tutor at Barnes and Noble and the local library, offer our skills at summer camps and so on. In fact, summer often means forcing ourselves to stick to a schedule even more stringent and demanding than that of the fall or spring semesters. We must find time to earn a(nother) living, continue our research, write a blog/article/chapter, plan for our fall courses, and the list goes on. This doesn’t seem to be exclusive to contingent faculty and graduate students, though; for full-time faculty the summer offers the chance to work on their own research and spend time away from the seemingly constant pile of undergraduate and graduate marking.
I recently crafted my summer reading schedule and found myself looking at a list of things I “must read by September,” rather than a list of things I’ve been hoping to read since…well, I can’t even remember. Here again emerges (at least the potential for) the always-working, always-on-the-clock academic. So, NGSC readers, I wonder, can we “clock out” just a bit this summer? Do the summer months afford you time away from the office, so to speak? If so, how do you spend your time?
Grad Students In the Moonlight…
Here’s a shocker: Graduate School is a significant financial investment. Some begin graduate school with already significant school debt. A fortunate few attend schools that can afford to fully financially support their graduate students, but it’s tough to find a Master’s program that guarantees funding; even PhD programs that give tuition waivers and stipends for teaching can still require students to pay all or some of their health insurance and their student fees. We all know how many worthy things we can spend our precious stipends on—books, conferences, travel for research, rent, utilities, groceries—and we also know how quickly those stipends can run out. Fellowships and grants are fantastic when granted; loans are slightly terrifying; none of this is news. It is not my purpose today to complain or dredge up all of our financial worries; I actually feel very fortunate to spend hours of each day researching interesting things and teaching great students, and for now I find a certain bohemian charm in this life of genteel poverty. I do, however, want to acknowledge the reality that, given our financial positions, most of the graduate students I know find creative ways to supplement their income. In this season of scrambling for summer employment, I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at the moonlighting second-lives of scholars.
In talking with my friends and fellow graddies, I’ve actually been really impressed with the range of jobs people do in addition to their teaching. Some stick close to academia, working as research/administrative assistants, freelance writers/editors, tutors, library instructors, and department office staff. Summer teaching positions at community colleges and year-round high schools level are at a premium. I feel incredibly lucky to moonlight as instructor of an online community-college Humanities course, based in another state (it’s a carryover from my previous life teaching there in person). One friend has a paid position organizing/running an annual conference. Some folks pick up short-term gigs as AP graders (a one-week commitment), and the shortest-term jobs are always welcome: just this week I received emails offering 5 hours of employment helping run graduation festivities, or two hours helping to proctor a final exam; I imagine the positions filled within seconds.
I’ve been interested to find how many graduate students take second jobs outside academia. Nannying seems to be a popular one, and a natural result of department professors seeking childcare. Bookstores and coffeeshops are favorites. Some love waiting tables. Hotel desk clerks can discreetly do homework during slow times. I even have a friend who walks dogs. Some are fortunate to have jobs directly related to their hobbies (play in a band with paying gigs, anyone?), or even to their dissertation work: one of my good friends works as a full-time administrator for a humanitarian organization that helps women in Uganda, while dissertating on contemporary literature and transnational female identity (Tackling so many things has put her “on the slow boat,” as she says, but how cool that it’s all connected!). I’m sure all you readers could name dozens more interesting odd jobs you and your friends have taken as graduate students, or various ways you save your hard-earned cash– anything to keep from selling our plasma, right? (Um, not saying I haven’t thought about it….)
The fact that grad-students moonlight is not at all strange or difficult to understand; what is strange is how reluctant I have felt to talk about it. Maybe it’s just me, but that little phrase in my offer letter, “you may not accept other University employment that would result in your being employed more than 50% time by the University unless you receive approval by the Associate Dean of the graduate school,” has had me a little bit spooked—as though extra employment, even outside the University, is at least a breach of trust, if not of contract. “A second job?!,” I imagine a shocked voice say, “How dare you squander the investment we’re making in you by not spending every spare hour in the library!”. Judging from Brittany’s last post, I’m not alone in feeling some of this anxiety. Now, there are some fellowships that do not allow recipients to have other employment during the time of support, since the point really is to enable him/her to spend every waking, working hour on research. You might want to check the terms of your own contracts, but I’m willing to bet that for average grad students with part-time teaching loads, this stipulation doesn’t apply.
This isn’t to say that holding down extra employment is easy, or that our schoolwork and/or the job don’t sometimes suffer. We all have that haunting feeling that somewhere, someone is spending more time than we are researching and writing and publishing brilliant articles—because let’s face it, that person probably does exist. Still, today I want to send a shout-out to all the folks who, like me, are cobbling together a living while also managing grad school, and might have felt a little sheepish to admit it. Way to go, I say! I think we should give ourselves a collective pat on the back for supplementing our income, minimizing our student loans, making ends meet, and acting like responsible adults. Best of luck to all of you in your summer endeavors!
Post written in early spring
Scene: Last Friday, the elevator in the English department building, 6 pm. Having just polished off this semester’s pile of marking, I was headed home to relax: watch reruns of bad 80s sci-fi, or attack the issues of Scientific American that had been accumulating on my desk since March. In the elevator, I met one of our department’s senior scholars. I asked her casually if she was also headed home for some leisure time. She looked at me—to steal a line from A Christmas Story—as if I had lobsters crawling out of my ears. She then laid out, with good-humored acquiescence, her workload over the next few weeks. Between marking, administrative duties, conference-papers, and her own research, there was no “one day / [to] give to idleness.”
The episode set me thinking about my own future as an academic. One defining feature of our profession is its status as “vocation” in the older sense, from Latin vocare: a calling, not a job. We’re not in it for the money. Dedication to liberal humanism doesn’t clock in at 9 and clock out at 5, because our quotidian commitments are simply the lens through which we focus the larger “life of the mind” we’re supposed to be living. The inculcation of this attitude in our students—the love of knowledge and its importance to creating engaged citizens—is the M-4 carbine in the humanist’s self-defense arsenal: standard issue.
All of this is well and good, but I sometimes wonder if it also enables the development of a sort of martyr mentality. We’ve all, I’d venture, participated in commiseratory gripe-sessions with our colleagues in which we detail just how much work we’ve got on our plates, how little time we’ve got to do it, and how much sleep/fun/sanity we’ve burnt on the altar of academic aspiration. These conversations are a great pressure-valve, a useful communal catharsis, but in my experience they also carry a slight flavor of underlying competition. What we’re willing to sacrifice for academia becomes, like Isaac, an index of our devotion. Standing in the elevator, having just revealed that I had indeed “clocked out” for the day, I felt a twinge of guilt: was I a bad academic? Having committed myself to this calling, was it a moral and professional lapse to want to mute that call (even for a weekend)?
I think the answer is “no,” but an answer we’re oddly ambivalent about endorsing. I literally-just-now received a facebook message from a friend postponing our coffee date to discuss the new Doctor Who: “Holidays don’t matter in Grad School. No plans, just this albatross on my neck.” Really? The albatross, of course, is hung “instead of the cross.” My friend’s comment thus casts academia as convulsive penitential submission, the mortification required of sinners who will never meet the ideal. Where did this attitude come from?
I’ve already suggested one possible source, our need to distance ourselves from the utilitarian mentality that increasingly dominates university culture. I think another might be the job market, which has gotten so competitive that it sometimes seems like the only way to land a tenure-track position is to don the albatross. My colleague in the elevator may not have gotten where she is today if she didn’t sacrifice as much as she did. I guess, if that’s what it takes. But I can’t help wondering if that level of commitment drains our vocation of what made it so attractive in the first place. After all, Wordsworth may have celebrated reading and thinking “long and deeply,” but he still nagged Hazlitt (excuse me, “Matthew”) to ditch the books and go outside.
Then again, maybe all of the above is a manifestation of my own anxieties. Have any of you encountered the attitude I’m describing, and if so, what do you think of it? What is the right balance between academic-life and other-life? On this most fitting of days to discuss martyrdom, how much academic self-sacrifice do you feel is appropriate or virtuous?
Unabashed Admiration for the BWWC
Last week I attended the 19th annual British Women Writer’s Conference in Columbus Ohio, and I’m still on a kind of academic natural high. In the interest of full disclosure I must tell you that I went partly to present a paper and partly because I’m co-chairing the conference in Boulder next year, and thus needed to observe its workings. It was quite a large conference: 250 people, as many as 6 concurrent panels, and fantastic keynote speakers. I was impressed by the smooth operation of it all, but more than that I found myself impressed by the conference’s ethos. It was genuinely inspiring. I’m going to struggle not to gush in this post, but seriously—what a wonderful experience.
One of the most important things I realized over the three days I spent there was just how indebted I am to the scholars who have gone before me, a fact made all the more clear since many of them were in attendance! I had not realized how recently the canon of 18th and 19th century British Literature has opened to include many of the women writers now considered some of its pillars—but only 19 years ago did a group of graduate students recognize the dearth and decide to do something about it by organizing the BWWA. One speaker pointed out the importance of the tenure system, since many of those who have published books on what were obscure women writers, did not venture to do so until after they had tenure; this seemed incredible to me, but in later conversations several people I spoke to confirmed the statement. Somehow I had imagined that the women’s movements of the 1970s had accomplished all this work; realizing that it has happened in my young-adult lifetime, and that many of the scholars who brought it about are still in the midst of their careers, really humbled and inspired me. The very people I was mingling and chatting with were some of those who had made it possible for me to work on the things I’m working on. Even more incredible is that so many of them were graduate students when they began to make a difference!
This brings me to the second reason my respect for the BWWA has increased: they really, truly believe in the power of graduate students and this belief is built into both the structure and spirit of the organization and conference. Though many of the students who began the BWWA are now full professors who serve on the executive board, they entrust the planning and running of each year’s conference to grad students at the host university. Responsibilities include all the logistical things (location, lodging, food), but also the academic things like choosing and inviting keynote speakers, choosing a theme and writing the call for papers, and reading submissions and organizing panels. I was so impressed with the group who ran this year’s conference, and likewise impressed by the many expressions of trust, confidence, and appreciation the BWWA board and many of the higher-ranking conference attendees expressed to them. (And it really was a beautifully-run event; completely well-organized, and in a gorgeous location). The BWWA also strives to sponsor a few travel grants especially for graduate students, and this year they added a grant for “contingent faculty,” to reach out and include those in the tough space between graduating and finding a tenure-track position. In short, the whole feeling of the conference seemed to be one of graciousness, inclusion, and enthusiasm for everyone’s work—a real collegiality that reached across rank and age and letterhead. I chaired a panel that featured two imposing professors (one the editor of an academic journal and the other from Yale), and I was a little nervous…but then I found myself taking notes as much on their manners as on their papers, because they were so impressively gracious! Each time she was asked a question, the Yale professor would share her thoughts and then say, “Thank you so much for bringing that up! What do you think about it?” Great conversations and intellectual exchanges took place in that panel.
I do wonder what some of the male attendees thought of their BWWC experience, because the conference population is overwhelmingly female. I’m not sure whether this happens because women scholars tend to be more interested in women writers, or because the conference itself mirrors its project of creating space for the women of history to speak by creating space for today’s women scholars to speak, but it’s certainly noticeable, and in a really cool way. I find myself often thinking about how I navigate my professional life as a woman—the personae I adopt when I teach, when I write, when I present. A recent study found that when letters of recommendation portrayed a candidate (regardless of that candidate’s gender) as “nurturing” or “warm,” they were less likely to be hired than a candidate recommended as “assertive” or “independent.” The point is, gender stereotypes still materially affect our professional lives, and I know many women scholars feel a bit more conscious of playing the professional part than men do. There were more men at this year’s conference than in some years, I’m told; the BWWA board is not exclusively female, and men make valuable contributions to the organization and conference—but still, one of the really wonderful things about the BWWC was a sort of communal letting down of the hair. It didn’t necessarily feel any less professional, just a little more…down to earth, maybe? It’s difficult to describe. Conversations might as likely turn to the challenges of breastfeeding in a suit or helping a 12-year-old with his homework, as they would to Mary Wollstonecraft or Elizabeth Gaskell (and I can just imagine Wollstonecraft and Gaskell discussing the same types of things!). On a bus trip a big group of us got laughing about what “type” of academics we were—the scarf academic, the chunky-jewelry Chico’s academic, the Birkenstocks academic, the e-bay Anthropologie academic, or (in my case) the Target sale-rack academic (they have great cardigans!). Nobody felt self-conscious about ordering a chocolate martini, or savoring a crème brulée, or complimenting someone on their shoes, or gushing about one of the Regency Reenactment dancers’ crocheted gloves (yes, we enjoyed a performance of Regency dancers). It was sort of like a super-smarty-pants girls’ weekend out. One professor who has attended the conference for years called it her “Old Girls’ Club.” While I generally feel pretty good about the respect shown to women in academia, there is still something to be said for female friendship, and I would say I really did make friends at the BWWC.
In all, I came back from Ohio with newfound respect for what the BWWA does and how they do it, as well as perspective on how the work we do as graduate students can palpably, materially affect the profession for good. Building the Association has clearly been a labor of love for those who have participated in it, and I’m excited for the opportunity to make my own contribution throughout this next year. Our committee here in Boulder will be pouring our hearts into planning the 2012 conference, to make it just as great of an experience for future attendees as I had last weekend—and even when our turn is over, I look forward to participating with the BWWA for many years to come.