Category Archives: academe

Not my students’ but my own. I got the official letter today: the internal institutional research grant for which I applied? I didn’t get it. I’d actually sussed that out more than a week ago as I heard from other colleagues who’d gotten emails about their success and then a message from the dean about the overall percentage and numbers of successful versus unsuccessful in the various faculties. It was pretty easy to do the math and realize that if A, B, C and D all got emails about their grants, E, F and yours truly who got no email weren’t successful.

The letter, when it came, was brief and regretful. The feedback wasn’t entirely helpful: according to the comments, committee members felt that my application landed somewhere in-between a publication and a research project grant. They also felt that the research wasn’t entirely new (since I’d proposed moving forward from the preliminary work I’d done last summer for my paper at the Berks).

I’m hoping to learn from the failure but also not to dwell on that. I admit, it’d be nicer to have been successful than not but I’m not about to lose sleep over the one-off assessment about one part of my work given of a panel of people far outside of my discipline. At the same time, a fairly similar panel will be convened for the same competition next year – if I can ‘crack’ this one, I can better plan for the next.

So, it’s time to learn from this go-round. I would like to see what they consider a successful purely research project – I’ll review over some of the applications my successful colleagues shared during our run-up to the application. Did I err by naming specific journals in which I’d like to place the results of the coming year’s research? Would I have been better to propose a publication grant for those would-be articles? I’m doubtful on that front given that for publication grants they seem to want to give money only to people who have an accepted manuscript that needs subvention. None of my publications, accepted or under consideration for the next year would fit that category.

Mostly, I’d like to clarify how the novelty issue factored in and if there’s any point in applying for the next stage of the broader project next year. Because I’m not someone who starts and finishes projects in a blink of an eye. This work on stepmothers I want to take all the way to a monograph. If that means that my institution won’t be able to financially support me, so be it. One nice element about my kind of history is that it’s fairly easy to do with one person, a plane ticket and a cheap squat somewhere near the archives.

The upside of academia is that it’s brain work and not brawn work. Having spent some summers shoveling horse manure and school semesters running an industrial dishwasher, I appreciate not being up to my forearms in a messy stream of food and water or up to another body part in steaming muck.

The downside of the professorial career is juggling all of my various activities in one mind that doesn’t have any way to turn off the lights on the other parts of the job. Unlike my old food service gig, I’m not clearly ‘done’ when the last of the pans are washed and racked, I hang up my apron and take off my hairnet. This is the time of year when I acutely feel the round-the-clock pressures of a job that never ends even if I know that I’m more than fortunate to have this job! People enviously congratulate me on term being over. I suppose they envision some sort of slothful repose where I pop the occasional bonbon into my mouth and languidly turn the pages of some esoteric academic tome. No way!

This term I’ve taught topics that ranged from 3500 BCE to 1600 CE and stretch from Bactria to Britain – my brain is still busily processing new readings and discussions on those subjects. I’ve written a grant application that will eat up much of the summer and fall if its funded and mentored a number of students in preparing proposals for all sorts of projects that will require some further support and attention along the way if they’re successful. I’ve co-edited a book that will be in print this fall: so exciting! I’m researching and writing on several only lightly related topics, editing on yet another and occasionally having to pull my head up out of the sand to do a few time-sensitive tasks to prepare for the fall term (book orders coming soon!). My brain feels as if its being tugged in too many directions at once.

Keeping track of what’s on the go for what project is almost as much of a challenge as actually teaching, writing or marking. Without my to-do list that helps me track which assignments are marked and which have yet to be assessed, which inter-library loans I have out and which I’m awaiting, what professional society memberships are to be renewed and what research tasks are next in line for which project, I really might fall apart. I’m certain that the stereotype of the absent-minded academic had its roots in our occupation’s enforced multi-tasking. How can I be expected to remember where I parked my car if I’m trying to remember whether or not I got today’s research tasks accomplished?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another whackload of assignments to mark and I need to prepare for tomorrow’s final grad student seminar. Thank goodness my to-do list and calendar alerts are there to keep me on track!