Finding (or building) community in grad school

I care a great deal about being a well-rounded person.

I didn’t get a lot of guidance about higher education while I was in high school, and I went off to college at a top institution without a lot of understanding of what possibilities existed. After I graduated, I made a really active decision not to go straight on to the next academic step. Part of this was uncertainty about what I wanted to do, but the other piece of this decision–and it was a big piece–was that I’d felt really sheltered. I’d spent my entire life in school. I didn’t really know what it was to be a “real” person.

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When Teaching is Like Social Work

I am writing from the 11th week of our semester and kicking myself. What was I thinking agreeing to write a post at the end of April? So here you have my most honest and unfiltered thoughts now that I am nearing the end of my first year teaching community college full time.

Wow. It is hard. It is brutally hard on my body in a way that is completely unfamiliar from my previous experiences in higher ed. Teaching so many students at two different campuses requires much more communicating than I have done as an academic introvert. And it’s not just the teaching/ meeting with students/ grading responsibilities. While my students try to complete freshman writing, they are dealing with childcare worries, hunger, homelessness, domestic violence, drug and alcohol addiction in their families, and significant health concerns.

Welcome to Tenure, She Wrote’s new bloggers!

In our most recent call for regular contributors Tenure, She Wrote received many amazing applications, and it was hard to select just five new women.  We selected new members who will increase the diversity of voices represented here at Tenure, She Wrote, and we can’t wait to see what they have to say. Here they are:

CaptainTenure is an associate professor at a small private institution.  In addition to her teaching, research and service duties, she is responsible for faculty development at her college.   She has been a big fan of Tenure She Wrote since the beginning and is honored to join the team.   She tweets at @CaptainTenure.

Dr__Klotz is a tenure-track faculty member in English at a community college in Northern California.  She is interested in social justice, community literacy education, and digital pedagogy. Aside from settling into a new full-time teaching load, she spends her days hiking, reading science fiction, and drinking California wine. She tweets at @Dr__Klotz.

QTChimie is a smiley genderfluffy queer who loves science enough to make it a day job, interested generally in human disease. Q spent a few years working in the real world after undergrad and is now running back to academia for a PhD. They are also an artist and maker in media ranging from pencil to steel to cloth. They enjoy dismantling the patriarchy by being confusingly sweet, educating folks about healthy relationship dynamics, and taking really cute photos of their pet rats.

PunkeeProf teaches literature and writing at a small liberal arts university in Iowa. She likes it when she makes food that people enjoy, when laughter is the dominant noise in a room, and when students exceed her expectations. She hates very little, but it’s almost always warranted. You can follow her @ThePunkee.

Sciencella is a postdoc at a large public university, working in a social science field that combines experimental work with fieldwork. She has lived in 4 different countries on 3 different continents in the last 10 years. When she is not working, she enjoys watching trashy TV shows, drinking beer, and cooking. She tweets at @DrSciencella.

Reflections on blogging for TSW

As one of the founding members of Tenure, She Wrote, it’s been a little over two years since my first post and I find myself reflecting on what blogging for TSW has meant to me. This is my first foray into blogging and so when I started, I was fairly uncertain about what the experience would be like.  Over the past few years, I have used the blog as a way to work through various challenges that came up in my life–both the good and the bad.  (See here for a full list of my previous posts.)  TSW started up in my first year as a faculty member…a fortuitous time since I was experiencing a lot of new things and had a lot to process!  I was able to use the writing process to provide clarity about the issues that had previously been bouncing around my brain. It was terrifying at first to expose my thoughts to the world*, but also liberating because it reminded me that I am not alone in this experience.  Over the past few years, I have learned that if I am having an issue, then often many other people are too.

But blogging is not without its own set of stresses.  

Collaborations, Slurs, and Being Heard

TW: Discussion of homophobic slurs

There have been plenty of times in life when I’ve had men assume that I don’t know what I’m doing or saying, and treat me accordingly. I’m mostly used to it when I go to a car shop to pick up oil, but have recently had it happen in one of the most egregious manners I’ve ever experienced within academia.