I'm at 2 sentences.

...of my proposal. The chitchatting outside is not helping me at all, btw. You want to see the sentences? Here they are:

This proposal explores the transcultural development of an academic dean, moving from the Greek immigrant enclave of Weirton, West Virginia through graduate school, Fulbright experiences in Greece, research and policy at the Office of Education, establishment of a professional association, and finally to a deanship at the prestigious [to remain nameless] University. Threading through this life is a passion for learning, teaching, and promoting the study of other languages and cultures.

Basically I need to work from this to somehow discussing how this passion for other languages/cultures, founded deeply in who Alatis is, inspired his life's work and found many outlets but in other ways put him at odds with the culture in which he was operating which doesn't value other languages in the same way he did. A typical transcultural conundrum. I guess, I don't know. If I knew, I would write it more definitively but at least this is a start.

Writing Stage Fright

Still in the transcription dungeon from my oral history interviews, I came up with a new (possible) solution. Actually, it wasn't my idea, it was my oral history narrator's idea. He asked me if I was writing, and I said that no, I was still spending all of my time (approx. 3 hours 4-5 days a week) working on transcriptions. His response: Sometimes you just have to stop.

So I thought about it. What if I finish up the transcriptions from two more important interviews (approximately 3 hours of tape or 12 hours worth of work) and then just quit for awhile and write the proposal? I can still continue to "check in" with my narrator, but as I develop material for the dissertation it will be more helpful to talk to him and make sure that I'm on the right track, don't have gaps, and have correctly interpreted his words.

So I tried this today - pulled out my now seemingly ancient from a couple of months ago proposal outline, and started to try to put onto paper the beginning of the proposal I had come up with last night.

Nada. Stage fright. And then people came to my office, we joked around, etc. Now that it's quiet again... I think I'm actually scared!

Alright, buck up. Time to work. Let's see if I can go go go!

What is work?

I find myself often asking the question, "Am I working?" Not in the sense of I'm sitting around reading PopSugar (OMG, John and Jennifer are dating again?) or something, but often I find myself reading an article sent to me by a student, sifting around on the internet and looking at something on educational leadership, like the Saving Alma Mater blog which I find thought provoking. And I wonder, am I really working?

The problem in the "knowledge economy" is that when you're really a knowledge worker, work may not look like much sometimes. And wasting time on paperwork and bureaucratic procedures, while it may make you look busy and important, doesn't actually constitute the substantive kind of work that brings results. When you're in a job category such as mine (we'll pretend my title is Assistant Director, since that's the level of work I do), you have to define for yourself what work is and whether or not you're accomplishing it. If you have a good supervisor then he/she can help you define those goals, and even if they're vague, once you start moving towards them it gives you a sense of accomplishment.

I think I've found myself a bit floating - caught between the busywork that can take up a lot of time yet not really making the time for the substantive kind of work that is so essential to what I do. I go from meeting to meeting, meet with student after student, fill out form after form, and I get to the end of the week and think, I haven't really gotten to the big, important stuff that I need to be working on. Anyone can meet with students or fill out forms or go to meetings. It take someone with my skill set to build relationships, find opportunities, and make action plans for going out and seizing them.

Part of this kind of work does mean staying current - really current - with what other thinkers are doing. Maybe there needs to be set aside time each week when I actually do this and do it for real. Also renew my subscription to The Chronicle.

Candidacy!!!

So in a short(ish) time, it'll be "Dr. Cole" to you. I've passed my comps and am now officially in candidacy.

For those of you who don't live in the ivory tower, candidacy simply means that I'm done with my coursework and comprehensive exams and will spend the rest of my time in my PhD program working on my dissertation (although I've been collecting data for the better part of this year, cheating time a bit I guess!).

So when do the raise/additional employment opportunities come in? (see below)

From Wikipedia:
A Ph.D. Candidate (sometimes called Candidate of Philosophy) is a postgraduate student at the doctoral level who has successfully satisfied the requirements for doctoral studies, except for the final thesis or dissertation. As such, a Ph.D. Candidate is sometimes called an "ABD" (All But Dissertation or All But Defended). Although a minor distinction in postgraduate study, achieving Ph.D Candidacy is not without benefit. For example, Ph.D. Candidate status may coincide with an increase in the student's monthly stipend and may make the student eligible for additional employment opportunities.

U Wannabe U

There's a new book out by a sociologist who critiques the new, corporate university and a review of the book here.

Also, there's a critique of the book which includes this synopsis of the book from James Garland's "Saving Alma Mater" blog:

Public universities are increasingly headed by job-hopping professional managers. Like the “efficiency experts” of yore, these new corporate wannabes seek to root out waste and duplication and shed programs that don’t make money. But they mostly chop the academic side of the enterprise, siphoning off money to expand their empires. They have little loyalty to their university and its principled values. They measure their success not by the advancement of learning and the personal growth of students but by the size of their salaries and the bottom-line numbers on balance sheets. They arrive on campuses spouting banal clichés from the business world (“doing more with less”), and their seldom-justified strategies for transformation are mostly empty rhetoric.

"Job hopping professional managers..." who most likely, have a PhD and understand academic culture to some degree. I work at a rather "corporate" university, and I believe that sometimes these sort of approaches are beneficial. Also I'd like to be a "job hopping professional manager." It's funny, though, what I'm discovering in my research is that faculty love to lambaste the dean, whether it be for being too corporate or not protecting them enough or any other host of complaints. It's a difficult job, being dean, and I think that no matter what the era or what the new complaint flavor of the day is, there will always be tension between faculty and administrators.

A Sewanee Tragedy

Shock and sadness. Four young Sewanee women were in a car accident on their way to crew practice, most likely, this morning, and two of them tragically died. Please pray for the souls of Katy and Kathleen and for Arden and Corinee to have a speedy recovery.

I'm almost in tears, this is so sad. Sewanee didn't need any more angels.

http://news.sewanee.edu/news/2009/10/01/university-mourns-students-killed-in-early-morning-accident.380

I love this place

I was walking across campus to talk with a development officer about alumni relations, and I reflected on how great this university is. I mean, that's not to say it's perfect (between furloughs and everything else, how could it be), but sometimes I think that its imperfections offer a really special experience to students.

I'm quite attached to my alma mater, Sewanee, because of the close-knit community it fostered and the fact that my professors had open doors, and often, houses to their students. However, Sewanee lacked the diversity and "messiness" of my present institution. Sewanee was idyllic. It made for perfect look-book photos. Here, you have construction, students dressed like total slobs, and confusion. However, you also have so many more opportunities, so many more types of students from all socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds and from all around the world. Not to mention that generally, they're really great students to work with and for. That's not to say you never get students who feel they're entitled, but generally they are open to learning and grateful for the opportunity. They refresh my spirit whenever I talk to them and I genuinely love working with them.

And this is after walking across our huge parking lot and almost getting hit by 10 cars. Wow. I must be in a good mood.

And we have perfect look-book photos, too, full of students doing cool things in labs, galavanting across campus, and interacting with a diverse and interesting set of peers.