Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> Whine, whine. Teaching is fun. If you don't think so, you should quit grad
> school. After all, teaching as a prof isn't that different from teaching as
> a TA, just better paid. It's part of what the job entails, even if promotion
> isn't based on teaching except at research schools. I loved teaching, except
> for baby logic, both as a TA and as a prof. Not that it helped me in the
> end.
>
This is flamebait, right? Sometiems threads on these lists kinda work like some mad puppy chasing and chomping on its own tail damn sure that the pain it's feeling can't be worse than the pain it's inflicting.
Whine? Teaching is work. Work and fun only go together in say a sentence like, "Golly its fun watching them work." If you thought teaching was all fun, you weren't doing it correctly. Either that or you were perhaps some highly skilled and motivated ratebuster. No wonder you were pushing differential rewards.
Now I'd prefer to avoid a Yates farewell redux, but I've been teaching for 15 years and have yet to experience it as fun. There's lots of positives and pleasures that I might theoretically on a good day enjoy from teaching, but I don't find fun fitting in there. Had we the time, I might inquire into your views about the joys of dentistry.
At least fun was something grad school was upfront about. There'd be none.
While you would think that folks entering graduate school would know very well that 1) the unemployment rate for their discipline has remained stuck at the historical high it achieved during the great depression so that the chances of getting a full-time job in that discipline has you more likely being hit by a falling space station while you are crumbling from the lightning that just struck you first, and 2) regardless of what XXXXist you want to be in order to do research and get invited to all the cool parties because you're one neat expert, the global career translator has you simply listed as "teacher," but you'd be wrong.
Career prospects and the precise way in which one acutally labors in that career are surprisingly not well communicated. Nor does the professional focus allow for a lot of reflection about the futility of one's chosen vocation. Sure people are savvy and the good lord knows you'll not fine a more motivated bunch of whiners. But the reality about jobs and the actual labor peformed only becomes clear after the investment has been made.
And I can't think of a larger group of professionals for whom training in their actual labor is almost completely absent. Academia denies that teaching is really what its all about since there is so little devoted to actually preparing for classroom instruction and course development.
And incidently, without too much insult intended, I've found that full-time faculty often to be the most clueless about the happenings in the labor market - this despite their professional involvement, recruitment efforts, talking to the recently hired, etc. Academics swing to all ends and generally miss the mark; some see their profession as singled out for falling skies while others take the Ronald Reagan trip and see job openings out there so things can't so tough. Worse than clueless are those faculty that impose or support hiring criterion that they themselves couldn't have survived, but thats another matter....
Whining indeed...
DB