Becoming the People We Read About & Why History's Still Relevant

Suffering from a bout of insomnia this morning, I polished off Julia Child's My Life in France, a great little book (not nearly as lengthy as her cookbooks) that I'd been stuck on for about a week; it's amazing how I read half in the book in a fit of rest and then, sleepless, finished off 150 pages+ this morning. It seems so odd when I think about some of the other books I have going that I'm muddling through: The Emperor of All Maladies and The Worst Hard Time, the former because of its sometimes-lengthy tangents into the science and concomitant scientific-jargon of cancer and the latter for unknown reasons. Nonetheless, it's always satisfying to complete a book, especially one whose author I've been imitating for a week or so in the kitchen. The result has been some delicious concoctions and the conclusion that I'm imitating Meryl Streep playing Julia Child, not actually Julia Child. (I just can't master the finer, airy tones of her voice; I can only make myself more high-pitched.)

Oh how adorable Paul and Julia Child were, always choosing to send out Valentine's Day cards because Christmas was simply too hectic for them.

At the moment, I've got some delicious honey-cinnamon-butter-glazed squash in the oven and it looks promising! But, I couldn't help but be conscious of the fact that in my journal today I recorded all the wonderful food I've been eating for the past few days while Nathan was visiting. There's a sense that as I read more, I try to write more. This conclusion doesn't seem extraordinary, but it does have vast implications. It means that as I write more, I trove my mind for increasing details to be recalled to the page. It's giving my writing (journal-writing, at least) a broader consciousness that means I am recording experiences I wouldn't otherwise note. Having watched (okay, I muddled through) the Republican debate this weekend, I also scribbled-off a few political observations. The result: a journal that is decreasingly selfish. Writing seems to be becoming a less selfish pursuit than before as my broader, worldly observations turn into essays, commentaries on news websites, etc. Maybe I'm just being optimistic.

As a historian, I found it difficult to take Julia Child at face value. Forgive me, I'm a natural skeptic (which, according to some people make me a negativist). It was quite the conflict, to love her and interrogate her every word simultaneously. What I loved most was her self-consciousness, her belief in her own ignorance, her feelings that she was never quite good enough that co-existed with her natural optimism...how refreshing to discover someone quite like me! It was also another check mark on the list of strong women, women I love. The history of women, especially those who forge their own paths resembles and do it outside the mainstream movements. (She talks so little about the way in which she was an icon for women.) I guess, maybe that is how I imagine myself someday, that is, existing outside the mainstream of queer people and yet blazing a path for others. Oh the dreams Julia Child gives me!

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Here's a link to a great article about jobs and historians (notice: not jobs for historians) from The Chronicle: http://chronicle.com/article/Historians-Reflect-on-Forces/130262/

Given my personal squabbles with UMF's History Department and my own feelings about history, I found the article timely and poignant. It touched on feelings I hadn't really been able to verbalize: this idea that I am going into the field of Social Work, but I am a trained Humanities and Social Sciences scholar and that I will find a place for those skills within Social Work and, more importantly, within the job market.

Bottom-Up Reform, Higher Education Reform & Grey's Anatomy

I want to thank all of the faculty and staff at UMF who have been supportive of me as I've been publishing my "Crisis in Higher Education" series with The Farmington Flyer. I believe everything I am saying and I truly wish it didn't have to be said because the more I know, the more disenfranchised I feel from the institution I have studied at and worked for, for the past four years. I especially want to thank the person (who must remain anonymous so as not to jeopardize their employment) who informed me this week that my articles have become the discussion of the infamous President's Council. If you're not aware of what the PC is, it's okay. I didn't know it even existed until a month ago. Ostensibly, I've only been able to gain a little knowledge of it -none of it from the administration, of course -but what I know troubles me.

Here's what I've heard: the PC is a group composed of the upper administration of UMF and the Director of Athletics. Not a single faculty member sits on this council. The PC is responsible for, among other things, creating schedules. The Director of Athletics sits on the council to make sure that there are as few conflicts as possible between athletic practices and classes. In addition, the PC decides issues of tenure, hiring, and firing (for all those people they don't give tenure to). It's quintessentially tyrannical and disgusting. **Disclosure: if any member of the administration reads this and would like to elaborate on the President's Council's duties or refute my claims, please do!**

But I'm happy to be telling you about all this. Why? First, it is a gesture toward transparency, the ultimate check and balance. Second, it is just another way in which I tell the story of the student. Here, I am standing up for the rights of students and faculty who are being subverted. Maybe it's not much, maybe it's nothing at all, but it is an attempt at the very least to work from the bottom to call for institutional reform. It's the reason I applied to a Master's program in Social Work. It's why I will tell my 'coming-out' story for an art (queer-art-politics) project this weekend. I don't have time to set up a tent and Occupy something and defend the proverbial 'little man.' But I am a visual/written artist and I can tell a story and hope, hopelessly hope that someone listens.

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Some other food for thought: where did Grey's Anatomy go? I know it's become this kind of primetime soap opera, but it was so delectable! They just killed Teddy's husband and now I want the second part! Also, anyone unfamiliar with Mumford & Sons or Fela Kuti should get familiar.

Mel is back on Tuesday and even though we can't see each other for at least a week, I'm cracking a huge bottle of wine for her in celebration.

Must knowledge be demonstrable to be valuable?

Alan Bennet's drama and the subsequent film adaptation of The History Boys features a scene in which two of the boys vying for Oxford and Cambridge suddenly get up and begin enacting a dialogue in front of the other boys in the classroom. Having learned this scene (and other shrapnel pieces of cultural knowledge: Gracie Fields' "Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye" and the difference between the conditional and the subjunctive tenses in French), the boys are trying to justify another teacher's "General Studies" class and its goal of creating "well-rounded individuals" by acting out their knowledge. Their teacher Mr. Irwin remarks, having figured out what they are quoting, "God knows why you learned Brief Encounter."

The title of today's blog post comes from a New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/education/edlife/edl-24masters-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me) asking whether the Master's degree is the new Bachelor's. In today's economy, the answer is, unfortunately, 'yes.' Reading the article, we find that Master's programs are becoming hyper-specific; we are professionalizing degrees. Who is benefiting from this scenario? Certainly not students who are putting themselves deeper into debt. Answer: schools and companies. Schools fill more seats, make more money. Companies connect with schools, scoop up their best students. The key word here is 'professionalized.' It is not to say that the English or Anthropology Bachelor's doesn't make you qualified, it means that all your knowledge, especially your unquantifiable knowledge (reading The Atlantic, trivia guru, your ability to act out all the melodrama of Brief Encounter) does not fit into the corporate ideology. In sum, because 'the market' is penetrating the walls of 'the institution,' this ideology has infected universities.

If this system didn't involve collusion between businesses and schools, it would be easier for consumers (e.g. students) to change the system, to refuse the status quo. Nonetheless, the system will change. Inevitably, the inflationary value of education will collapse in a tulpenmanie moment. It will only come when the overall educational ideology of the U.S. stops holding college professors on a pedestal as paragons of success and shifts towards an embrace of creativity and individuality. Then, and only then, will corporate ideology shift toward the notion, popular in Residence Life departments, that differences are good; differences make us successful.

Truth: my love of books might not translate into direct profit for my employer. But, my ability to connect with co-workers who also love books might make me a happier employee, a more productive employee, a leader through my creation of strong group dynamics, etc. It is the aforethought to see "random" knowledge" as "indirect" profit.