For all those who keep insisting that Wikipedia is a citeable source.
For all those who keep insisting that Wikipedia is a citeable source.
In the rest of the world, it’s not enough to just be a writer anymore these days. You have to be a writer and a networker and a marketer and your own promoter. Authors have blogs, twitters, face-to-face meetings in order to make sure they get heard. And having networks and a persona counts for something. Being a “person” that people can see, meet, and relate to counts for a lot. Being more than just a text name on a page to people is important.
But in academia, it seems as if the only thing that still matters is writing and publishing. The only thing that “counts,” at least. Doesn’t matter a sh!t bit how much else you do in service of the field, or in teaching students, or in admin duties for the department. The ones that get ahead and “make it” are the ones that put themselves first. We’re even taught this at the dissertation stage—some departments I know will forbid their dissertators from taking on responsibilities outside their dissertations. And we’re constantly told, “oh, you’re dissertating. Don’t worry about coming to x meeting or teaching x class well. Just focus on writing.”
And this is the most frustrating attitude ever to those of us who actually care a little bit about building a research community or teaching or collaborating or learning, even. ”Academia,” I’ve learned much to my immense dismay over the years, is not at all about education.
One of my growing disillusionments with academia is the blacklisting of students and people who leave the academe and “leave the field” for industry positions. While you’re in academia, people are your friends—some of these people you work very closely with for years on end and develop personal relationships with—and then all of a sudden, when you leave the field, they disappear, nowhere to be found. This cutting of ties is ridiculous. Who wants to be a part of a community where friendship and human connection is contingent on your job?
I understand that relationships can fall apart naturally if you no longer share common interests or the like, but having developed relationships with people in academia that go beyond simple workplace pleasantry, why should those relationships be in jeopardy just because I decide to leave university life? (If I ever decide such.)
from Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement speech in 2005.
A good one to keep in mind, for the corpus linguists out there.
"You need to let your words go, let them be imperfect, know that tomorrow they’ll be wrapped around dead fish."
MFK Fisher
aka: things I learned the hard way and wish someone had told me as a first year.
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2011/06/06/advice_for_graduate_students
sad, but true!
