grooming
I had a coffee with a senior professor in my field, spending his last years before retirement at a prestigious university here. I'd worked with him, to some extent, whilst completing my degree in England, so it wasn't totally out of the blue. It was, nominally, a 'good to catch up' coffee, although it was clear from the outset that I wouldn't have contacted him if there hadn't been a fairly transparent agenda on my part - the need to re-establish, cultivate, and refine a professional network here in the States. Thus, despite our having not seen eye to eye at times, we had a long talk yesterday.
One of the main topics addressed was the stark difference between the training I received in England and the American graduate student experience. Specifically in terms of professionalism. He actually used the word 'grooming' to describe the coccoon of support and feedback in which American graduate students are nurtured for the giving of talks, prospectus reading groups, peer thesis groups, mock MLA interviews, mock job talks, etc. The pedophile overtones were probably not present intentionally, but they did rather strike a chord - how much of the training received by graduate students in American institutions is, in fact, infantalizing? Which is not, of course, to dismiss the value of having the sorts of training processes he described, but rather to question the parallels between the overprotective trends of child-rearing in the last 30 years and the 'raising' of graduate students.
Admittedly, I'm trying hard to keep the sour grapes out, something I was largely successful at in yesterday's conversation, though perhaps less so here. Not having had the grooming, the opportunity to 'practice' interviews and job talks, the learning process with regards to such things has instead taken place without a safety net. Which I don't regret - the giving of talks and interviews is not something I feel I struggle with greatly, yet these are skills I learned against the cold glare of audiences or a panel of interviewers facing me down across a table (or in a posh hotel suite). Feedback on talks before they're actually presented, on mock interviews conducted by those who have and will conducted them over the years, is clearly an asset for those who receive it. But the construction of a certain homogeneity strikes me as less than ideal. Hiring committees clearly hire on 'chemistry' as well as other factors: they are, after all, selecting someone to be a colleague - potentially quite an intimate relationship - for years. Yet I wonder to what extent the homogenizing of the presentational aspects of talks and interviews (as you've undoubtedly notice, I've left the question of substance, of quality of work, entirely aside) has led to a self-fulfilling replication. And also whether the transition from infantalized, groomed graduate student to 'adult' professor is so carefully midwifed as to occlude, perhaps preclude, different processes of maturation.
Hmm. What sorts of wine can one make from sour grapes?
One of the main topics addressed was the stark difference between the training I received in England and the American graduate student experience. Specifically in terms of professionalism. He actually used the word 'grooming' to describe the coccoon of support and feedback in which American graduate students are nurtured for the giving of talks, prospectus reading groups, peer thesis groups, mock MLA interviews, mock job talks, etc. The pedophile overtones were probably not present intentionally, but they did rather strike a chord - how much of the training received by graduate students in American institutions is, in fact, infantalizing? Which is not, of course, to dismiss the value of having the sorts of training processes he described, but rather to question the parallels between the overprotective trends of child-rearing in the last 30 years and the 'raising' of graduate students.
Admittedly, I'm trying hard to keep the sour grapes out, something I was largely successful at in yesterday's conversation, though perhaps less so here. Not having had the grooming, the opportunity to 'practice' interviews and job talks, the learning process with regards to such things has instead taken place without a safety net. Which I don't regret - the giving of talks and interviews is not something I feel I struggle with greatly, yet these are skills I learned against the cold glare of audiences or a panel of interviewers facing me down across a table (or in a posh hotel suite). Feedback on talks before they're actually presented, on mock interviews conducted by those who have and will conducted them over the years, is clearly an asset for those who receive it. But the construction of a certain homogeneity strikes me as less than ideal. Hiring committees clearly hire on 'chemistry' as well as other factors: they are, after all, selecting someone to be a colleague - potentially quite an intimate relationship - for years. Yet I wonder to what extent the homogenizing of the presentational aspects of talks and interviews (as you've undoubtedly notice, I've left the question of substance, of quality of work, entirely aside) has led to a self-fulfilling replication. And also whether the transition from infantalized, groomed graduate student to 'adult' professor is so carefully midwifed as to occlude, perhaps preclude, different processes of maturation.
Hmm. What sorts of wine can one make from sour grapes?
posted by itinerarium at 10:19 AM
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