Graduate Student Letters of Recommendation

 Note: Any resemblance to real persons living or dead may be a coincidence.

I don’t write letters of recommendation for students who seek a teaching assistantship. I don’t know any student well enough to judge whether he’s "a good fit". What is a good fit anyway? Someone who enjoys an environment of back stabbing, intrigue, and hypocrisy?

Sure, students have grades, but that isn’t the only measure of a student. If all of my colleagues who do write letters of recommendation were to look at students’ Facebook pages and Tik Tok accounts, I’m sure they’d see some things they’d wish they’d known about before they wrote that effusive letter and sealed the envelope.

Apparently, some profs do check students’ online accounts for incriminating photos taken during spring break. I hear about it in the faculty lounge when I run out of coffee in my office and go there to partake of the community swill.

I don’t care if a student got horse faced during spring break and engaged in a group grope and was stupid enough to allow his/her photo to be taken and posted online. That’s youthful recklessness. That’s a stage in life that passes quickly.

Some profs spend too much time doing online searches of their students. One wacko (a long- tenured female prof) developed an obsession for a student and actually stalked him not just online but in real life. Her obsession wasn’t romantic. It was manic preoccupation for finding sordid details about his reputation. It began during the student’s undergraduate studies and persisted through his graduate studies. Fortunately, he didn’t know her, didn’t ask her for a letter of recommendation, and wasn’t aware that she had been stalking him. I wonder what she might have written had he asked for one.

Another prof offers to write letters of recommendation for her male students. What the male student receives from her is a blank piece of university stationary in a university envelope. This came to light after one male student collected not the requisite three letters of recommendation but five. When he received her sealed letter, he held it to a light and saw that nothing was written on the letter and discarded it. He submitted three of the remaining letters with his application pack. When the members of the graduate studies committee opened the students’ application packs, she saw that her letter was not among the student’s letters of recommendation. She acted insulted. Many of us were aware of what she had been doing for years.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from this it’s this:

1.  Don’t ask me for a letter of recommendation

2.  Choose your advocates carefully

3.  Get a strong light

4.  Close and delete your Facebook, Tik Tok, and Twitter accounts before you apply for graduate school and an assistantship.

 

RateMyProfessors.com

I don’t care about my official class evaluations. Why should I care about RateMyProfessors.Com?

Some profs do care about their RMP ratings. Some act as though they don’t care, but they really do. I know of one professor who adds ten effusive comments for every negative one left for her. The chair of the psychology department leaves twenty positive remarks for himself every semester. You’d think that he was the most popular teacher on campus. He has more ratings than he has had students.

Years ago, profs were allowed to leave their own videos that struck back at the little snots who dinged them. That didn’t work too well for the profs who did that. The videos just left worse impressions and confirmed their negative RMP ratings.

It all comes out at a faculty party where alcohol is served. That’s when faculty members present their own “RateMyStudents” show. They talk about students that they think dinged them on both their official in-class evaluations and on RateMyProfessors.com. If students knew what their teachers said about them, they’d really strike back. They might even sue them for breaking FERPA regulations.

That’s why I don’t talk about individual students to other faculty. What goes around comes around. Besides, my grades reflect not only my biases about my students but also the unvarnished truth. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s how it works in the real world.

 

Burgeoning Student Enrollment

For years UC Berkeley has been struggling with enrollment that exceeds the university’s and the surrounding community’s ability to accommodate all of the incoming students.

Some folks in the city of Berkeley consider the incoming students an invasive species. I wish that were the case at my diploma mill. Our state legislature hasn’t done anything to limit enrollment, and it probably won’t any time soon. This university is a cash cow, a ten ton teat filled with money.

Invasive species at this university? Nope. Just fresh fish.

Our student population is self-limiting. We’re a state school, so we accept everyone who applies. SAT scores mean nothing. If you have graduated from high school, can breathe, are somewhat ambulatory, and can sign your name (or have someone who can sign it for you), you are accepted. The university will love you. If you cannot take notes, you will be assigned a note taker. Can’t take a test? The university has that covered too. Can’t afford tuition? You can get a loan.

The university will continue love you even when you drop out or are forced out because you cannot pass the tests or conform to university rules and regulations.

Why?  Because the university has your tuition money. You are expendable. There will be thousands more like you next year who will take your place, fail or drop out, and start the cycle all over again.

Our university’s unofficial motto: “In like Flynn, out like a light.

Freshman Orientation Day

I observed a couple of orientation seminars for incoming freshmen this summer. It was interesting. Both faculty and graduate students gave presentations that informed them of the various available services.

The manager of the campus book store explained how to make sense of the professors’ required books lists. I didn’t understand her explanation. Now I know why my students come to class with no books for the first few weeks of classes. (No one explained why so many books were required for some subjects and why some professors’ books never appeared on the shelves, nor was it explained why some professors required students to shell out $150.00 for a ten pound book when only one chapter would be needed for class).

My policy is one class, one book, and I advise students to buy it at the used book store across the street from campus.

Someone from the bursar’s office spent twenty minutes explaining university payment and check cashing policies: It doesn’t cash checks, not even ones issued by the university. It does accept cash and debit card payment for tickets issued by campus police and the parking garage Gestapo. Payment may also be made at the campus cop shop.

Someone from the registrar’s office explained the drop/add procedure, but it was not explained why there was no refund issued for a class dropped after a student had attended only one class. Students were admonished to be patient and not raise their voices at the buttercups who work there but cannot explain the statements that their office issues to students receiving financial aid.

The captain of the campus police put on an impressive audiovisual show about its SWAT team and its advanced weaponry and tactics. It featured the armored water cannon tank that it bought from the government a few years ago. Campus police also rolled out its new fleet of drones that are expected to be fully operational by early spring. The presentation was capped by a warning to all would-be campus reefer smokers that “campus police will find you and take you in handcuffs if you are found smoking the stuff anywhere on campus”. 

He emphasized anywhere. Right after that, he introduced campus police dog Stercutus, named after the Roman god of odor. If I recall Roman mythology correctly, Stercutus was the same god as Stercutius, the one that supervised the spreading of manure on the wheat fields. The police chief informed the rapt audience that the dog was  nicknamed Scoot.

If I were invited to make a presentation to help the incoming university freshman, I’d keep it short and simple.  

“Approach university life as you would a plate of brownies made by a stranger. Chew carefully, and expect nuts. Eat slowly for you may soon get a bellyful.”

 

Quiet Quitting

There has been a lot of talk about “quiet quitting” in the news lately. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that explained the term. I thought that it was an alternative to throwing a hissy fit or (worse) planting poison pills in the workplace in the form of malicious gossip, then raising hell and slamming the door on the way out. (It has happened here a few times).

I was wrong. It’s about not quitting but staying on the job and putting forth minimal effort. The “quitter” sticks around, collects a paycheck, and spends most of his time goofing off so that he can save his energies for pursuing his personal agenda.

This has been going on in my classes for years. The paycheck, of course, is a passing grade.

Quiet quitting is a tradition among faculty in academia. The university hires people with advanced degrees who aspire to live a quiet contemplative academic life, people who profess passionate desires to grow intellectually and to impart their students with their gained knowledge and insight.

A few actually do possess a passionate desire to grow intellectually and to create sagacious students’ discerning minds. They publish prolifically. Some stay long enough to be granted tenure, but around here, most leave after they get a whiff of what goes on behind the scenes. It isn’t pretty.

A funny thing happens to some after they’ve been hired and make their ways to the tenure track. They publish a minimal number of papers in fringe publications, become chummy with people in the department and with administration, and then they’re full-fledged members of Le Country Club Academe. We don’t hear much about their research or critical papers. Some publish books about writing technique, compilations of essays that they’ve typed up over the course of a year or two. Publishers agree to publish them because they’re sure that they’ll be used in class at this university for years to come (but that’s not always the case).

Many times, that prof moves to another university, and their faculty friends order their books for their own classes but never use them. Students are stuck with buying an extra sixty to one hundred dollars for books that they’ll never use in class and the university store won’t buy back.

I haven’t published anything in years. I quit publishing several years after I was granted tenure. I haven’t read a paper before a committee of my peers (as if I really have any peers around here). I don’t get involved with graduate students or do any advising unless I am forced to. I haven’t been kicked off the graduate faculty. I just cruise along, not making any waves or noise. I don’t express any controversial opinions, and I don’t get too many students pissed off at me enough to give me bad evaluations that might call my teaching into question.

I Quietly Quit a long time ago.

My status may change. The new-ish department chair announced that the department may begin conducting mid-tenure reviews. I have a few years to go before I can retire to that waterfront lot my wife and I intend to build upon as soon as this diploma mill appears in the rear view mirror. maybe I should get cracking on a book.

Stop Puking Up The Sixties

                 Stop Puking Up The Sixties

That’s what the graffiti demanded. It was spray-painted on the wall of the Student University Center. I take this sort of thing personally. When I saw the message spray painted in Day-Glo orange (a vestige of the ‘60’s), I did a personal inventory. Did someone see me wearing my tie-dye T-shirt as I mowed my lawn last week? Has someone objected to my Jimi Hendrix Are You Experienced? poster in my office? I got rid of my bell-bottom jeans a long time ago, though sometimes I wish that I had kept them. I’ve seen them go for a pretty penny on ebay.

I finally got an iPhone awhile back. It's my first cell phone, in fact. I didn’t get it to appear tech-savvy or current with social trends, or even to be accessible to the department chair whenever she goes on a tear.  I got it for when the university land lines go out and the walls of this old rat hole of a university come tumbling down. At least then I'll have a chance of being rescued. The department chair doesn’t know that I have it. Otherwise, she’d text me with all of those memos that I hear other teachers talk about. I pull it out of my pocket in class to pretend to check my messages and quickly put it back in my pocket because there’s a school policy about not using a cell phone in class. I’m not too sure how that affects my students’ impression of me. Most of them don’t even know what a land line phone is. The iPhone isn’t old nineteen-sixties technology like the Corona typewriter (aka boat anchor) is.

At dinner, I had a discussion with Anonymous Family about the graffiti and just how personally I should take it. I wondered if my manner of dress might negatively affect how others perceive me. I proposed that I update my footwear to Skeechers or maybe a pair of Nikies.

Anonymous daughter jumped on that immediately. “It’s pronounced Skechers with a short e. Forget it. And forget new Nikes too. That’s what the geezers wear when they go swalking around the mall.”

Swalking? What the hell is that?

I thought about a new poster for my office. “Hey, how about lending me your poster of that singer who wears red dresses and crimson lipstick? She’s really cute.”

Anonymous Daughter rolled her eyes.

Anonymous Son chimed in immediately. “Dad, if you put that Taylor Swift poster in your office, everybody will think that you’re a dirty old man. I’ve got Ratt and Motorhead posters you can have. They’ll look so rad on your walls.”

I have no idea who Ratt or Motorhead  are, so I declined. I don’t know what rad means either. Isn’t a rad a unit of measurement for radioactivity? Radioactivity is anti-Green, so rad would place me right in the middle of the Cold War. That’s really “‘sixties”.

I turned to Anonymous Wife for some sort of direction but she gave me a look that said I’m not going to say anything. You’ll have to work your way through this on your own.

“Dad,” Anonymous Daughter said, “don’t take that message so personally. You dress just right. You’ve worn the same sweater every day for as long as I can remember and you wear your reading glasses around your neck on a chain and those khaki pants and white socks go great with whatever those shoes are. They're shoes, right? Don’t change anything. You are what you are. You are a professor and you look like one.”

I love that child, even though she just described what I think a geezer who swalks around the mall looks like.

As we cleared the table, my wife made a suggestion. “You know, you could enlarge my photo to 24”x30” at the university print shop and hang it on your wall.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she didn’t look like a modern cultural icon. After many years of marriage to me and having born two children, though, she is still trim and beautiful. I often wonder what people think when they see us together. 

“You mean that photo of you wearing the bathing suit during our honeymoon at Hilton Head?” I asked.

“No! The one that your brother took of me last Easter,” she said.

So I brought the photo down to the university print shop to have enlarged to poster size.

 “New chick, prof, or an old flame?” the wiseass kid behind the counter said.

“It’s my wife.” 

“Whatever,” he said.

I moved Jimi to another wall and tacked up my wife’s 24”x30” enlargement on the wall to my right, directly across the room from my office door.

I noticed that whenever I left my door open, people slowed down as they passed. (They usually walk faster. I don’t know why).

After my last morning class today, I left my office door open.

“Who is that?” one of the passing first year lecturers asked.

“That’s my wife.”

“How sweet!” she said and headed back up the hall.

Not long after that, another admirer stopped and asked about the poster. Then another. Then another.

I was about to stand up to close my door when the department chair appeared at the threshold.

“Awww. That’s so sweet. You should tell your wife to drop by sometime. I haven’t seen her since the Christmas Party a couple of years ago. She is SO much prettier than Jimi Henderson.”

Jimi Henderson?  Henderson? I wasn’t going to correct her. She’s an old millennial who sailed through school and earned her PhD when she was twenty-six and has climbed to the top of every university ladder since. She’s a Women’s and Gender Studies professor who doesn’t take correction from males well.

She sounded so sincere, almost as if she liked me. As I basked in the rays of her momentary (but dubious) admiration, I almost revealed that I have a cell phone, but my better judgment made me keep my mouth shut.