June 22, 2008

Messed Up

Well, Movable Type just ate the relatively amusing entry I was about to post. So now you're stuck with this. It's a three-parter, and you really do need to click through and read the link targets.

First, this charming story of a much-beloved sadistic science teacher in Ohio.

Then, read this charming entry in the Conservapedia, the Wikipedia for and by conservatives.

Finally, read this charming reaction to the Conservapedia entry by Lawyers, Guns and Money's D. Make sure you read the comments -- they're choice.

And then, as a special added bonus, since I feel bad not dishing out my usual degree of meta-awareness and commentary, here's a meta-LOLCat to brighten your day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bake some chocolate-chip cookies while I despair for humanity. And try to figure out how to accomplish all of that branding, home-schooler-tormenting, and sexual-immorality-promoting I need to demonstrate so I can get tenure and not have to care about whether I do a good job in the classroom.

Posted by reparent at 5:33 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2007

Thankfulness Week Begins!

Hey, it's the first day of Thanksgiving Vacation! In the past, UVM followed the traditional Thursday-and-Friday-off model of Thanksgiving breaking. Then, after the faculty rioted, burned down the administration building, and detonated a suitcase-sized nuclear device in the office of the Chair of the Board of Trustees, the university decided to face facts. Here's the month of November, with the old days-off marked in a lovely and soothing periwinkle:

Now here's the month of November, with the actual days most students would take off marked in a more alarming shade of pumpkin:

As you can see, the students decided that they were very thankful, indeed, and needed more time to adequately consider, express, and celebrate all of that thankfulness.

So, the University decided to give everyone the whole week of Thanksgiving off. Of course, students still check out early. (Some of them very early, indeed.) But now it's a little more fair for everyone.

To begin the week of thankfulness, I'm going to start with something I am thankful for: Sharable media. Without the video-sharing sites, without Flikr, without I Can Has Cheezburger's Lolcat Builder, the world would be a much sadder, plainer, less interesting place.

And speaking of sad, plain, and uninteresting, here's a new form of sharable media I just came across -- sharable and embed-able PowerPoint slideshow viewers! Slideshare.net does for PowerPoint what YouTube did for self-indulgent video blogs! But that's not why I used "sad, plain, and uninteresting" as the segue here. On LifeHacker I came across this bright little ray of light in a dark, dark world of bad PowerPoint presentations. Alexei Kapterev is here to tell you all about "Death by PowerPoint (and how to fight it)," and thank the Lords of Kobol he is!

As an English Professor, I don't actually have to sit through that many bad PowerPoint presentations at work. (Another thing for which I am thankful!) But I see them practically every day. The English Department surrounds one of the premier meeting/presentation venues on campus, and the hallway outside my office has four large windows that look down into this large, stained-glass-bedecked room. And what do I see? PowerPoint. Almost always. And what's on the slides? Bad stuff. And what are the presenters doing? Reading from the slides. I shudder.

(I should file a hostile work environment complaint. Proximal exposure to that much horribleness can't be good for my health or my productivity.)

Anyway, watch the slideshow. There's no sound. There doesn't need to be. I especially enjoyed the Microsoft Vista Launch PowerPoint slide. Ouch!

Posted by reparent at 6:01 PM | Comments (1)

November 12, 2007

Sometimes the tests feel a little... unfair.

No time for a substantive blog post today. I'm buried under papers to grade, I'll probably have to miss a colleague's poetry reading this afternoon, and there's just no end in sight. (By which I mean I can't imagine making it to Thursday, at which point classes are pretty much over for me because we go on a week-long break for Thanksgiving. I know, I whine too much.)

A quick welcome and shout out to all the new people dropping by the blog... you're all welcome here. Kick off your shoes and make yourself at home. (That's a subtle hint that you should feel free to wander into the kitchen and make me some hot chocolate. And straighten the place up, will ya? We're expecting company!)

I'll leave you with this: a single cell from one of the most brilliant and ... odd ... comics on the web, Nicholas Gurewitch's Perry Bible Fellowship. (Which, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the Bible, fellowship, or anything or anyone named Perry. I've chosen this one because it pretty much sums up how I'm feeling today. You think you know what's going on, and you think you know what's expected of you. Then the test takes a decidedly nasty turn...

Click the picture above to see what happens.

Posted by reparent at 2:44 PM | Comments (0)

October 4, 2007

Meet Miss Ann Thrope...

When I was an undergraduate (and then a post-baccalaureate), I attended massive universities, and had classes all over. I had favorite and not-so-favorite parts of campus. I had places that I thought of as "my" spots.

When I started grad school, that all changed. Suddenly I wasn't on North Campus for a chem class, and then racing to West Campus for Italian. I was in Mills Hall for every freaking seminar. At Pitt I was firmly ensconsed within the Cathedral of Learning. At one point, one of the grad students a year or so ahead of me calculated the number of hours he had spent in the main seminar room. It brought tears to his eyes when he saw how high the number was.

Teaching sometimes allowed me to see other buildings. I was lucky enough to get to teach in a state-of-the-art computer lab in the Gardner Steel Conference Center while in my last year at Pitt. But for the most part, I lived, taught, and studied in one building.

The same goes for UVM. The English Department has long taught in the building in which our offices are located, Old Mill, and the connected Old Mill Annex building and Lafayette Hall.

I know there are other parts of the campus, but I don't get to see them. Well, that was the case until just recently. My irrational demands for computer classrooms (imagine an English teacher needing computers! Scoff! Sputter! Incredulity!), and the campus-wide space crunch caused by ever-increasing enrollments mean that I am (and all of my colleagues are, as well) now being sent all over campus to teach.

And while I see a steady stream of humanity passing outside my office window, there really is a difference between watching the students who walk past the Old Mill, and watching the ones who walk between the Business College and the science buildings. At least, the students seem different. But it may be just that the attitude is decidedly not what I'm used to seeing and hearing around Old Mill.

I'm reminded, every Tuesday and Thursday as I walk across campus to my graduate seminar (which is held in the Business college!), that while I really like my students (grad and undergrad), I don't really like... people.

I'd make a terrible Walt Whitman.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers
-from "Song of Myself," Section 5.

See? That's Walt. Me? Not so much.

Posted by reparent at 4:39 PM | Comments (1)

August 22, 2007

Pre-Semester Panic?

Last night's fortune cookie fortune:

Clear your mental, emotional and psychic space and you'll see.

Is it a sign of the impending start of the new semester (and two new courses I've never taught before) that I don't seem to remember how to do any of that clearing?

Posted by reparent at 10:20 AM | Comments (1)

August 13, 2007

Academic Freedom? Not So Much.

One of my good friends recently sent me the link to this article from the Vancouver Observer about a Canadian psychology professor's recent nightmare at the U.S. border.

Andrew Feldmar, a well-known Vancouver psychotherapist, rolled up to the Blaine border crossing last summer as he had hundreds of times in his career. At 66, his gray hair, neat beard, and rimless glasses give him the look of a seasoned intellectual. He handed his passport to the U.S. border guard and relaxed, thinking he would soon be with an old friend in Seattle. The border guard turned to his computer and googled "Andrew Feldmar."

[. . .]

Before long the customs guard was engrossed in an article Feldmar had published in the spring 2001 issue of the journal Janus Head. The article concerned an acid trip Feldmar had taken in London, Ontario, and another in London, England, almost forty years ago. It also alluded to the fact that he had used hallucinogenics as a "path" to understanding self and that in certain cases, he reflected, it could "be preferable to psychiatry." Everything seemed to collapse around him, as a quiet day crossing the border began to turn into a nightmare.

You should read the entire article. It is profoundly disturbing.

I would say more, but this blog is Googleable, too.

Posted by reparent at 4:36 PM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2007

Busy busy busy (part the next)

I promised to talk about my feelings about the end of the Potter series today, but I have been overtaken by events, so that post will have to wait until tomorrow.

In the meantime, here are a few interesting tidbits:

ITEM: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the fastest-selling book of all time, with at least 4.1 million books flying off the shelves in the first 48 hours of its release. It's possible that the figure, as Scholastic insists, is actually 6.9 million. In any case, you won't be seeing Deathly Hallows on the New York Times bestseller list. Ever. Michael Giltz explains why. What do you think about this outrageous traveshamockery?

ITEM: One of my colleagues had asked me a few days ago to help her to set up a course blog. UVM supports and hosts faculty, staff, and student blogs using Movable Type, which is nice of them, but MT isn't easy or intuitive. To prep for my meeting with my colleague, I set up a new blog, Standing Still, and have started posting how-to instructions for doing different things with MT. I hope to make the blog a useful resource for my entire department. Next up: including images in posts. If you have struggled or are currently struggling with MT, especially at UVM, zing me an e-mail with topics to address in later posts.

ITEM: Henry at Crooked Timber ventures into the Dark Side of the Force and joins Facebook. I've gone back and forth on this question, and have not yet joined, even though (or perhaps because) UVM has its own Facebook chapter now. Besides the issues Henry discusses, I'm also concerned about infringing on my students' space. What do you think?

ITEM: And finally, something specially for The Spouse (though other academic spouses may find it eerily familiar). Ph.D. (Piled Higher & Deeper), a web comic by Jorge Cham that I recently got tipped to, has quickly become one of my faves. If you suffer from graduate school, or are a recovering graduate student, Piled Higher & Deeper may be right for you. Here's a strip that I found particularly amusing/distressing, and if you've ever inflicted your own academic work on a non-academic significant other, or been the victim of this sort of abuse, you'll get a kick out of it too:

Posted by reparent at 2:48 PM | Comments (3)

February 22, 2007

A Digital Dartboard?

Over at the course blog for CyberCultural Studies, I've started a "briefly noted" series I'm calling a "Digital Dartboard," because it gives the students ideas about digital culture to put on their dartboard. Each Dartboard post will include three or four odd, amusing, disturbing, and/or otherwise provocative tidbits about digital technology and culture that you (and, ideally, my students) may find stimulating.

The awesome aleatoric power of the dartboard (which is similar to, but independent of, the outstanding oracular power of the Magic 8 Ball), cannot be overestimated, especially when one considers that I am making my students write ten (gasp!) short analyses of digital culture over the course of the semester. I know, I know. I am cruel.

So, check it out. The first entry in the dartboard is here, and I'll post links to later entries as they get uploaded.

Finally, this weekend, the Spouse, some friends, and I will be driving down to Boston, where we will experience TOMB. I'll post about it when we get back. Even (especially?) if it stinks, it should be interesting. I may even be able to wrangle an article or a conference paper out of it.

Super, ultra, I-really-mean-it-this-time finally, you may have noticed that I'm (still) having problems with comments on this blog. The spam is killing me, and that's even after I've set the security level to Shoot On Sight. So, bear with me. I'm not willing to require TypeKey (even though it's free), because some of my very favorite people have had problems with it. This means that sometimes your comments may not show up right away. They may take a few hours (or days) to show up.

Posted by reparent at 11:30 AM

October 4, 2006

The Blogger SAT Challenge -- The Results!!!

A little while ago I mentioned "The Blogger SAT Challenge" -- a not-so-scientific experiment in comparing the writing of bloggers with the writing of high school students on their SATs.

First, the good news. My entry scored thusly (out of 6):

And for all of you wondering what the super-secret topic was, here it is:

The essay gives you an opportunity to show how effectively you can develop and express ideas. You should, therefore, take care to develop your point of view, present your ideas logically and clearly, and use language precisely.

Important Reminders:

• Since this is an online version of the test, you will get 20 minutes instead of the usual 25
• An off-topic essay will receive a score of zero.

Directions: Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." -- Booker T. Washington

Assignment: What is your opinion on the idea that struggle is a more important measure of success than accomplishment? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

If you'd like to read the entries, click here.

Second, the even better news. My entry was scored by the "expert grader" thusly (also out of 6):

The first score is from other bloggers. The second is by one (I'm guessing each grader only read one entry, but it may have been two) of the following: David Bruggeman, Suzi, Elisa Davis, Natalie Hudson, Battlepanda and Lisa. I don't know any of these people, but I agree with the score.

I'm a horrible (now) high-school writer. When I was a student in high school, I was a whiz at the Linda Richmond-esque mode of extemporaneous "The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire; discuss" mode of motiveless oration. And it does have its uses. For one thing, it really does demand a close attention to structure and organization.

On the other hand, it's also deadly dull.

And, possibly worst of all, it reinforces dichotomous thinking. Writing prompts of the type included on the SAT and in the Blogger Challenge almost always present two options and ask the writer to make a persuasive case for one of them. In the real world, we know that "You are either with us or against us" is a logical fallacy. Demanding that developing writers conform to this sort of on-off cognitive world-view is demeaning to them and a waste of a grader's time.

Chad Orzell -- a physicist, and one of the architects of the Blogger Challenge -- reflects:

I think these results do support my original point, way back when this whole thing started: it's a lot harder to write a good short essay on demand than you might think when you have the chance to look at the question at leisure. Even bloggers, who spend a lot of time writing short essays of their own free will, don't do all that well with a set topic and a tight time limit.

Orzell's right: writing good, short essays is hard. But I wouldn't call what the SAT calls for "a good essay."

I was especially intrigued by the comments by the "expert graders":

I was struck by the number of writers who felt that musing about some aspect of the question, or one of the words in it, or one of the stories it reminded them of, was a reasonable way to respond to the directions.

Goodness! How... willful of them.

Often writers tried to be clever with roundabout ways of coming at the question, but it only made my job as a grader more difficult, and grumpy graders don't give fives and sixes.

If anything, the bloggers were *worse* than high school students in getting to the point and staying on topic. They also tended to equivocate more, to argue the merits of both sides, which, though it might mark you as a reasonable person in normal discussion (in real or online life), actually hurts your SAT score.

Heaven forfend that "expert graders" should be forced to contend with complex approaches to the topic at hand! Don't they know that issuing anything other than a "Sir, yes sir!" or a "Sir, no sir!" over and over again (the New York Times article that started the Challenge informs us that "longer essays were more likely to get a high score than shorter ones") dishonors the spirit of open inquiry and skillful expression that these writing exercises enshrine?

But my favorite has to be this gem:

I was struck by the number of people who wrote essays without apparently thinking the directions applied to them. They made assumptions about the assignment, or decided that they were better judges of what the assignment should be, and then wrote what they wanted to write rather than produced what they were asked to write.

I smiled, but I wondered why do they think a scorer (and after all, pleasing the scorer is what matters much more than self-respect when taking a test) cares about their opinions?

"[W]hy do they think a scorer ... cares about their opinions" indeed? After all, the prompt only asks "What is your opinion on the idea that struggle is a more important measure of success than accomplishment?"

I'm giving the scorers grief, but it's not their fault that they're being forced to behave this way. It's the nature of the beast.

The New York Times article gives a brief list of tips for writing a high-scoring SAT essay. Here are a few more that, mysteriously enough, didn't make the final edition:

• Reduce your complex set of ideas, opinions, and experiences into easy-to-spew talking points. Talking points are the new essays.
• Begin your writing with a clear statement of your position. That way, the grader (or anyone else) won't be burdened with having to read any more of your essay.
• Repeat, repeat, repeat! Your grader/reader may forget what your position is if you don't restate it in each paragraph.
• Never, ever question the false dichotomy presented to you as the wisdom of the ages! Resist the infernal urge to comment on its hackneyed topic! And foreswear the temptation to question the question being put to you! Like the Pope, We are infallible. And we are not amused by your so-called "free thinking."
• Regardless of what you write (you are in control of your writing, aren't you?), or what you realize while you're writing (this isn't the time for thinking, it's a timed writing exercise!), or the weight of the evidence on the other side (you did pick the more obviously correct position, didn't you?), don't ever change your mind as you write. And for goodness sake don't ever concede that the other side might have some virtue. That's a quick trip to a low score!

Orzel concludes that bloggers are "dumber than high-school kids." I disagree. We're just not as obedient when it comes to reductive, intellectually demeaning busy-work.

And thank the gods for that!

Posted by reparent at 2:45 PM

June 20, 2006

Summer School, Redux and 'Net-enabled

Alright. So, the summer course is now going virtual.

Because of its low enrollment (so far), my course on Expository Writing will now be offered online! Registration goes until the first week in July.

That means that no matter where you are, and no matter what crazy hours you're keeping this July and August, you can take this class. And you can register for it right here.

Awesome, I hear you exult. And yes, it is.

I had wanted to make the class an online course from the beginning, but was rebuffed by the bureaucracy. Now, the power of the Internets can be unleashed!

E-mail me at richard dot parent at gmail dot com for more info. The course is going to rock. You can be part of it.

You'll be glad you did.

(The stunning image is from Exploding Dog, which you really need to visit, if you don't already.)

Posted by reparent at 7:47 PM

April 17, 2006

What's Grad School Like?

For a few months now I've been toying with the idea of writing a post about graduate study in English.

Now, through the magic of Procrastination and the Internets, I don't have to.

First, for your reading pleasure, I give you Dr. Debra Hawhee, who taught briefly at the University of Pittsburgh, where she proved to be an incredibly amazing mentor. In this post, Professor Hawhee riffs on What to Expect When You're Expecting... to be an Academic. Oh, and be sure to read the comments.

But wait... there's more!

Via Boing Boing, here's Scott Eric Kaufman's Disadventure: The Text Adventure for Dissertators!. And if you act now, you can get this Disaddendum absolutely free!

So, what are my thoughts on grad school? Well, it's pretty much like Debra and Scott say. Only less funny. Sometimes.

P.S. -- I did the math and I'm in my 92nd month of academia. Creepy. What about you?

UPDATE: Now with 100% more working links to Debra Hawhee's blog! Absolutely free!

Posted by reparent at 11:15 AM | Comments (4)

February 24, 2006

Role Models

Briefly noted --

Academic über-blogger Michael Bérubé points our attention to a charming poll on David Horowitz' Front Page Magazine site -- "Who is the Worst Academic?"

Horowitz is, of course, the leading figure in the so-called "Academic Bill of Rights" movement, which aims to purge liberalism from college campuses (or at least to fairly and accurately balance said liberalism with equal doses of conservatism). So you know he's not asking which professor on the list puts in the least prep time before class.

No, this list comes from his new book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Unfortunately, Horowitz doesn't bother to rank the threats, so we have no way of knowing which is the worst.

Well, now the Internets can take care of that hard work. You -- yes you! -- can now vote for whomever you think is the worst (i.e., the "most dangerous") professor in America. Bérubé encourages us all to vote for him:

Right now I’m leading Eve Sedgwick by the slimmest of margins, and as you know, I have no Diebold apparatus to fall back upon. But don’t worry about ballot-stuffing! This is FrontPage.com, people—a website whose unofficial (and yet universally acknowledged) motto is “Sloppiness R Us.” There are no limits, no limits at all, on the number of votes you can cast from one IP address. So stop by FrontPage today, and vote for me as America’s Worst Professor. I thank you, and all that is good and holy thanks you.

But on a tragic note, for some reason yours truly has been thoughtlessly left off the list. I'm crushed. I really am. But one day I will be on that list. One day I will rule the list as the David Horowitz-crowned "Worst Professor in America." And I will wear the crown (or tiara, whichever), with pride.

An Assistant Professor can dream, can't he?

Posted by reparent at 1:23 PM | Comments (1)

October 10, 2005

Panel: Coming Out as a Scholar

Anyone who is going to be in Burlington from 1:30-3pm on Wednesday the 12th of October is invited to come to a panel discussion moderated by yours truly.

As part of UVM's celebration of National Coming Out Week, "Coming Out as a Scholar" will bring together lesbian, gay, and straight academics researching diverse topics such as queerness in Native American populations, the history of gender and sexuality in the British Empire, LGBTQA issues in nursing, and the ways queerness is "played" or hidden in online communities, to discuss possibilities, pitfalls, and what it's like either being out on campus or studying "out topics."

The panel will include:

Paul Deslandes, Assistant Professor of History
Brian Gilley, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Cheryl Laskowski, Assistant Professor of Nursing

and the discussion will be moderated by Richard Parent, Assistant Professor of English.

Coming Out as a Scholar
1:30-3pm, Wednesday, Oct. 12th
North Lounge of the Billings Student Center, UVM

For more information, feel free to zing me an e-mail at REParent (at) uvm (dot) edu.

I hope to see you there!

(x-posted on 095 and 340)

Posted by reparent at 2:00 PM | Comments (4)